This is Kylie Bruehler. Her sad face doesn’t quite match her playful dress. She’s sad because she’s at a funeral for both her parents. Her parents were killed on October 1st when a driver veered his truck off the road and struck them while they were taking a morning ride on a tandem bicycle.

According to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, no charges will be filed against the driver because “They believe this was an accident and that somehow the driver lost control of his truck.”

This is where I get very, very angry.

Every day millions of Americans drive around in cars. I’m fine with this. I drive my own very often. I do ride a bike to work as much as I can, but I’m no crazy car hater. But I do feel that American car culture has taken what is essentially a two ton steel block on wheels and made it into a God-given right of every citizen.

Let’s look at this situation. A man driving a very large truck “accidentally loses control of his truck.” In doing so, two people are killed. One instantly, one given the gift of suffering for a few hours. Now, it seems to me that if you wield something poorly, and it ends up killing two people, at the very least you should probably not wield said object any more.

If I was at home with my shotgun, and I “accidentally lost control” of it, and it killed both my son and wife, I wonder if the Sheriff’s Office would charge me with anything. I wonder if they would say it was an accident. After all, why should I be expected to ALWAYS be in control of my shotgun when it’s in my hands? Oh right, because it’s a tool that can have lethal implications whenever it’s in use. Good thing cars aren’t like that at all!

Why not take this person’s driving privileges away for the rest of his life? Can’t do that? Then how about a couple years? But no, this guy will be allowed right back on the road the very next day. His privilege to drive is deemed more important than the lives of two people.

The driver was given a license. The premise of the license is that the state is saying you are able to control a motor vehicle. This driver has proven that he is unable. Why does he still have a license?

If he had veered his truck to the left, and struck oncoming traffic, he would have gotten a ticket for wreckless driving and been deemed at fault for the accident. But because he veered his truck right, and only hit a couple people on a bike, it’s no one’s fault. Where the fuck is the logic in that?

You can find stories like this all over America. If a car gets hit by a car, it’s another accident, someone is faulted, someone pays, sometimes people even get jailed. If you hit a pedestrian or a cyclist, it’s a tragic accident, but by golly that’s just life. Everyone go on about your business.

The point of my ranting is this: a car is a serious piece of equipment. It kills over 100 people a day. We need to start treating it like what it is. There is no God-given right to drive. If people show they can’t use a car responsibly, we need to take it away from them.

I haven’t put up video in a while for 2 reasons: 1, I’m lazy, and I hate video editing. 2, Noah isn’t all that interesting anymore.

OK, maybe that’s not true, but we have certainly let down our former 300-pictures-per-month selves. I think there was one month in there where we took like, 4 photos. You’d think he was our third child or something.

He’s getting really smart. Too smart really. We’ve realized that we can no longer talk about him like he’s no in the room. That’s annoying.

The other night Teresa said she needed to take a shower, saying she was “stinky.” Due to her choice of vocabulary for Noah’s diapers, my son thought my wife had pooped her pants.

I’ve found out why disciplining a child is so hard. It’s not the strong will. It’s the fact that you don’t ever want to do it. I’d much rather just eat dinner than place a kid in a chair facing the wall 48 times in 5 minutes. When he starts acting up I think to myself, “Really? This is what you want to do for the next 30 minutes?” THAT’S really annoying.

Every night around midnight to 3am he comes into our room and sleeps on the floor. It’s not terribly annoying, but I know it’s going to cause issues in the future. We’re both putting off fighting it cause neither of us want to fight him at 3am. I know most of this will fall to me, as Teresa becomes and irrational she-beast when you wake her at night.

That’s all I can think of to post right now. Sorry this isn’t more funny or entertaining…See? This is why I didn’t want to do this in the first place.

Oh, and I have some video. Somewhere in the middle there you’ll see we’ve been blessed with the most patient cat in the world.

One last thing, to add to the vacation post. I came into the kitchen Friday night to find the fridge pouring water out onto the floor. Several gallons of it. Now we get to replace all the wood laminate in our house. Yay.

It didn’t start with a V.

For me personally, everything Started Saturday morning as I participated in my first ever bike race. FM24 was a 24 hour Alley Cat race in downtown Atlanta. From noon Saturday to noon Sunday my 5 man team had a man on the road. By the end we had done 32 laps total. That’s just under 400 miles in all, 83 Miles personally. Needless to say, I was tired. Despite this, we took off Sunday afternoon, after the race, rather than try and travel through Monday morning traffic.

Everything was moving along fine until about 7:30, when my car headed up a hill, and seemed to refuse to change to a higher gear. I cut off my cruise control and as I began to slow down I heard a rattling sound coming from my engine. Yay. My oil pressure light came on. I pulled into a station, checked the oil, it was very low. Funny, the oil change the month beforehand said everything was working fine. 3 quarts of oil later my dipstick finally said I was at full, but it was too late. My hopes that enough oil could drown out an klinking engine were in vain.

We found a hotel and stopped for the night. This is where the adventure began. I’ll try and keep this brief.

Morning. Hotel guy recommends a mechanic. We go into town at 15mph, klinking along. Can’t find the guy. We pull into the first shop that appears open. Two men walk out of the garage with the most pained looking faces I’ve ever seen on a man not currently suffering kidney stones. They say bad things like “melted bearings” and “replace engine.” They send me over to “the only other guy in town I’d trust.” Oh, that really instills hope.

We find THAT guy, he seems to know what he’s talking about. Teresa comments that he’s completely unlike any other puhy mechanic she’s ever talked to. Ray of sunshine in the storm. Thanks Scott of Mike and Sons. We call up some rental places and everyone is out of cars until the afternoon. We find one that has a single car on the lot. I bike over to them (Thank GOD I had my bike with me, so useful throughout all this) and get a van. 500 bucks. Oi. At least we have plenty of room for people and luggage.

We finally get to St. Augustine. The condo is wonderful, literally across the street from the ocean. Monday goes on just fine.

Tuesday starts, and both Teresa and Noah feel bad. Noah is coughing up a storm. Tree soon follows. Sore bodies and fevers.

We find out fixing the car will cost us 3 grand. We go for it, figuring I’d rather spend 3 grand on MY used car than buy someone else’s used car for 8 grand. Also, the new engine is 30,000 miles less than the current one. So we’re a couple days into our ‘vacation’ and we’ve already spent about 4 grand. Yay! The time we spend in Historic St. Augustine is always cut short by Noah looking over-heated and barely conscious.

We finally decide Noah has been sick for too long once Thursday comes around. We go in to a walk-in clinic, and Noah is diagnosed with Swine Flu. We can only guess that we picked it up from the hotel. Upside, it’s just Tree and Noah. Still got one guy up and running to care for the others. (Consider this foreshadowing.)

Friday is spent sitting around the condo. The rest of the gang go down to Daytona Beach. I realize that cable really isn’t worth paying for. We decide to cut the vacation short and leave Saturday. After all, moping around home is always more satisfying than someone else’s place.

Saturday comes, and I wake up with a cough. Yay! We spend the day in the car. 7.5 hours to get home. Everyone is miserable and couching and generally no fun. Every time we stop we have to keep Noah and Teresa out of the public as much as possible. This is more difficult/annoying than it sounds.

We get home. Toby practically mauls us all night. We sleep.

It’s now Sunday. We awak slowly, mull around the house till noon, dreading the trip BACK to Valdosta to return the rental car. Yeah, since everyone else was out of cars, we went with the local place, and now we have to return it ourselves. we think it’s a 3 hour drive. It’s actually a 4.5 hour drive. A second day with three sick people in a car for 8 hours. Yay!

The drive down is wonderfully uneventful. I burn 5 CDs so I can be entertained on the ride down, but I find the CD player in this crappy rental barely works. By barely I mean it plays the first 20 seconds of the first track of each CD. Another day of listening to awful radio going in and out.

So, after all this, we finally arrive in Valdosta, pull into the rental place, find the key drop-off box, and it turns out God is not yet done with trying to kill me. The big, fat keyless entry key does not fit into the envelope-thin drop-off box slot. Awesome. We call several numbers (Thank God for internet enabled phones) and finally get a hit when we dial the number on the top of the credit card receipt. “Andy” tells us to hide the key somewhere. I just know the car will be stolen and this “Andy” character will no longer exist and we’ll have to buy them a van.

4.5 hours back. We’re home. All three still sick. I have to take off work now that all my vacation time has been used up by this week of wonderful family time.

And sometime next week I’ll have to drive all the way back to Valdosta to pick up my car. Yay!

This morning I learned a lesson: Given the chance, a toddler will always exert his power over you.

Noah wakes up, and before he’s standing he’s asking to watch TV. This is his way. We always give in, as we’re too tired to fight, and PBS has wholly satisfactory programing. I usher him to the den, turn the TV on, and I go to, well…”do my business.”

Once past the “point of no return,” I notice there’s no toilet paper in the bathroom. “How funny,” I thought, considering Teresa had just told me the night before of Noah’s new, helpful ability.

“Noah!”

“Coco!” he replies.

“No buddy, I need your help, can you come here for a second?”

“I eat! I eat!”

“Noah buddy, come here. I NEED you.”

No answer. I hear Sid the Science Kid tell Noah his “super duper schmuper big idea.” I begin to wonder if Teresa purposely hid the toilet paper so I could experience this first hand.

“Noah?”

I hear feet patter down the hall. Then it gets quiet. I figure he’s gone into his room. Then a tiny head pops around the door frame with an accompanying “huh?”

“Oh Good! Noah, can you get daddy some toilet paper?”

“Coco!”

“I’ll make you some coco once I’m done here, but right now I need you to help me.”

At this he disappears back behind the door frame. A second of silence, then the sound of feet pitter-pattering down the hallway.

Sigh.

“Noah? Come on! Mommy said you helped her!”

Silence. “Noah?”

Pitter patters again. Tiny head appears. “Huh?”

“Toilet paper…please?”

His head disappears once again. This time I hear the hall closet door opening. Success!

I hear him begin to struggle. I hear the crinkle of the plastic around the toilet paper. I hear more struggling. Noah begins to cry. It’s an angry cry. It’s the cry of a toddler knowing a quarter pound cylinder of paper is standing between him and his precious chocolate milk. Pitter Patters. Head. “Huh?”

“No luck?”

“Coco?”

“No buddy, you HAVE to complete this task before I can make you coco.”

Head disappears. Crinkles. Tears. Rustling. Pitters, patters. Head appears, followed by a torso.

Suddenly a sense of elation comes over me. The boy holds in his hand the precious commodity I so longed for. The item which we struggled together for. He physically, me in spirit.

“Awesome bud!”

He stands there. Looking at me.

“Coco?”

“Yes, just hand me the toilet paper and I’ll make you coco.”

Then, something awful happens. I hear a sound from the den.

“Toot toot.”

Noah’s ears perk up. It’s Thomas the Tank Engine. He’s gone before I can try and shout over the music, attempting to drown out the siren’s song of little British kids singing about shunting trucks and hauling freight.

Laying on the floor, about 8 feet in front of me, is a single roll of toilet paper. I sigh, collect up all that was my pride, throw it in the trash can, and perform the “Waddle of Shame.” For our Japanese readers, you may know it as, “The Shuffle of Dishonor.”

So what have we learned today? Well, as I said up top, a child will taunt you in your weakest moments. But I also learned that we’re so meaningless to them, once they’ve put us in these horrifically shameful situations, they don’t even value it enough to stick around to watch you at your lowest.

After I wrap things up, I come out to the den, to face my assailant. I walk in, stand in the doorway, and wait. He stands motionless, hesitating to acknowledge my existence. I release the breath I was holding. He turns his head slightly, never taking his eyes off the TV…

“Coco?”

Helpful indeed.

Starting Saturday at Noon, ending Sunday at Noon, I’ll be racing with a 5 man team. Each lap is about 12.2 miles. It’s up to your team to decide how you’ll ride. You can do a lap at a time and switch, you could take a couple, three laps at a time, however you please. There are two ultimate goals, highest lap count, and highest points. Points are achieved by doing side missions, most of which are secret until the race begins. After all, the whole time the race is going on, 4 of your team mates are sitting around doing nothing.

I’m nervous to say the least. I road the course Monday, but other than that, my bike has been hanging in the garage all week. Events of the week fell just right so as to prevent me from riding to work at all. Maybe tonight I’ll try and ride, or, worse case scenario, I can try out that bike trainer I got at a garage sale last weekend. Something weird about watching TV while you bike though…

I feel very unprepared. Exercise aside, I have no idea what to bring. I’ll be camping, sort of. I’ll never go longer than 3 hours sleeping. So I probably won’t bring a tent. Plus I have a slight romantic notion about sleeping under the stars. In reality I’ll just hate myself for not bringing a tent. I’ve never ridden with endurance in mind, so I don’t know what to eat or drink. I’m basically just skimming youtube tutorials and articles on race nutrition, trying to pick up as much as I can, all while not being willing to go out and spend a bunch of money on crazy ‘gels’ and other such fitness nutrition supplies.

I plan on twittering and such during the race. Apparently you can watch the race “live” in Google Earth from the race tracker. Not sure what it will do. No video or anything that fancy…but it’ll track the race somehow I guess.

This is a long, rambly, unentertaining post, and I apologize for that. I’ve had a long, rambly, unentertaining day, and I just want it to end. But while I feel like just vegging out on the couch, I’ve got to motivate myself enough to give this race real thought so I can prepare.

Blah.

//

As I said last week, getting Noah to sleep has been a task. We spent three nights standing outside his door, putting him back in his bed each time he’d get up. Then we had two good nights where he was sufficiently pooped and just conked out. Unfortunately tonight he’s back to his old games. He finally quieted down for a few minutes, so I sat down here to write, and within a couple seconds I heard his door open, and before I could get out of my chair I heard the pitter patter of his feet across the floor, and found him streaking across the hall towards our bedroom, screaming “Mommy! Mommy!” Again, he prefers whichever parent isn’t currently putting him to bed, and his ultimate goal is always to be on the floor in our room. Always.

Before it was lights out, he was trying to convince Teresa the best bed for him is me, laying on his floor. He demonstrated this, and truth be told, it didn’t seem so crazy when coming from the mouth of an adorable little boy. Then again my judgment is always swayed by a cuddling toddler.

Teresa just leaned into my door to let me know it’s going to be another marathon night. Maybe that’s my cue that it’s time to switch shifts.

The layman, and even many in the recording industry, have a fuzzy idea of what a producer does. Considering many people do it in many different ways, the definition isn’t even all that solid, so I’ll spell it out from my perspective. My ultimate goal with UVM is to help them make the best album they can. That’s generally what any producer does. It’s all about having some outside perspective, and some managerial skills so the artists can be the artists and not worry about logistics. My initial focus will start on song structure and ironing out any so-so things so their songs are top-notch. I know from experience that some times a band would rather ignore a tricky transition or other part of a song for the sake of getting it finished. It works for a little while, but it’s just passed down the line until the listener has to suffer through it. It’ll be my job to pressure the band into facing those issues in the hopes of ultimately improving the song(s). It’s gonna be a lot of tough love.

I kinda feel like talking about how excited I am to do this sorta makes me seem less professional. I mean, after all, the producer is supposed to be the experienced guy helping out the band. They know I’m coming into this with a lack of experience, but hey, that’s one of the benefits of having friends. It’ll be interesting to see if we can all separate the job of producer from the friend, and avoid any personal squabbles throughout the process. The whole thing will be a learning experience for us all.

I just finished recording a group, Absence of Ocean with the intent to hone my recording and mixing skills. Of course, having two records under my belt is pretty much nothing, but with my scant free time, I’ve gotta take what i can get. I’m pretty happy with the way the AoO stuff came out, but for them I was simply acting as an engineer, just getting their songs down to tape, trying to make it sound as good as possible (for the time we had). In that case, I had no real input into their song structure or instrumentation. If I didn’t like the way they did something, I just kept my mouth shut. With UVM, it’s kind my job to go, “You guys really happy with that? Doing so without coming off as a smug a-hole is all part of the job. Like I said, it’ll be a learning experience.

I’m hoping this may be something I can continue to do. I’ve said before I don’t think I’m a very creative person, just skilled. I feel like this may be to my advantage in the case of producing. I may not be very confident in writing a song myself, but I do feel like I can help a songwriter hone a song into something really good. We’ll see if that’s all talk or if I actually have the goods over the next few months.

I’ve decided I want to try and follow the process here. Someone may find it interesting, some helpful, and for myself it’ll probably help me gather my thoughts on the whole process.

So tomorrow I’ll sit down with the band and I’ll go over my intentions and we’ll see where all the boundaries are. From there we’ll discuss scheduling and organization, and if that doesn’t end in yelling and fisticuffs, then maybe I’ll get onto some initial comments about songs.

Wish me luck.

Just over a month ago I posted about turning the lock around on Noah’s door, giving us the ability to easily lock him in his room. Well, we’ve changed our minds and decided this isn’t a good idea.

Over the last month Noah has taken to coming into our room and sleep on our floor. It started out with an early morning, maybe 3am, and Noah wouldn’t go back to his bed. I can’t remember the exact details, but it ended with him voluntarily laying on the floor next to my side of the bed.

Since then its continued to get earlier and earlier in the night. 1am. Midnight. 11pm. It’s come to the point where as we put him down for bed he asks to go lay on our floor. We even tried this one night when he refused to sleep. It had gotten to around 9:45, and we just gave up and put his blanket out on the floor for him. But then he preceded to just toss and turn and kick the wall.

So last night Teresa and I made the decision we would stick it out and put Noah to bed, sans locks. As soon as she left the perfectly silent bedroom he began to cry. She sighed real big. “Ten minute shifts” I said. “You go first!” she replied.

I’ll admit, I’m biased, but the ten minute shifts idea was genius. It was the only thing that kept my sanity intact. And even the 10 minutes felt really long. You’d be surprised how many times a toddler can lay down, let you shut the door, and then get up screaming and open the door within one minute.

Noah tried everything. He tried lamenting about the missing parent “Mommy Gone!” when I was on, “Daddy Gone!” when it was Teresa’s turn. Sometimes he got confused. “Daddy Gone!” “No Noah, I’m right here.”

He was thirsty. He was hungry. He was scared of the ‘”roars”. He used every pity tactic he could. I’m pretty sure one of the many books on his bookshelf must be a psychological operations field manual, cause that kid can break a man down.

We each took a try and sitting with him quietly until he’d doze off. Both of us found he’d just wake up as soon as his face hit mattress, so we gave up and just kept laying him back in his bed, not saying a word.

I was pretty sure we’d go on forever, but finally, at about 11:30, Teresa laid him down, he complained for about 15 seconds, and then fell silent. That was a welcome relief to be sure.

So yeah, that’s my update after a month long hiatus. In summary, I think locking my kid in his room kinda messed him up, and fixing it sucks. May not be the same for you, but now you have one anecdote to reference someday. I don’t blame myself or anything, no great remorse over screwing up my kid. I never said I knew what I was doing.