Tempting Friday the 13th

The last day of Spring Break was a blank page in my calender. I had nothing planned and got it in my head to go skydiving. Yes, you read that right. It's something that I've always said I wanted to try, so I found a company called Skydivesf up in central Sonoma County. I called my colleague Gene V. and he was game to go. So we were on our way.

I will say that the experience was a total rush and the only time that I really was apprehensive was on what seemed to be the interminable flight to 13,000 feet and that moment the door of the plane opened. I jumped in tandem strapped to my guide, Torsten, who was quite a character. I gained infinite confidence when I discovered this was jump number 10,291. If he hadn't had an accident, then statistically speaking, it wasn't going to happen on this day.

Upon landing, I was feeling a rush of adrenline unknown to me before. I had to sit on the ground for a few minutes. Gene also had a great time and got a video of his free fall, which he will give to the Physics teachers at school to use as a teaching aid. It was a glorious day.

The Visit of The Mom

SPRING BREAK!!!!! And Mom visits. It was a good visit and I only lost my temper with her once (ok, one and a half times). But the role of therapy in my life allowed me to identify why I things she said or did got me and then I was able (the fact that I recognized that it was my duty to was a big therapy learning moment aas well) tell her why I was frustrated.

"Mom, I don't care if you cut and freeze the strawberries" comes from the fact that when we got home from being out for the day I didn't really care what she did nor did I really want to make any decisions. I like having quiet time when I'm done with the day. Probably a good thing for me to tell the persons I date in the future.

One of the highlights of her visit was a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I also took her to see Jersey Boys, which she liked. And, well, you all know that I like it too.

That's My Alma Mater

From an article written by Patrick Mattimore in today's San Francisco Examiner on students' college rejection letters....

"Lots of schools are vying for the "most emphatic rejection" prize. Cornell University is leading the race, informing students in consecutive sentences that the electronic rejection they are reading will be confirmed in a following letter that will make the rejection official. We don't want you. Get it? We really don't want you. The "snuff out all hopes" double rejection strategy appears to be colleges' latest attempt to improve their U.S. News and World Report selectivity rating. Two rejections for the price of one. What tipped the scale in Cornell's favor is that they even include an invitation for you to visit their Web site to get information about applying to transfer to Cornell after your freshman year, so they can reject you again.

Mom and Dad were onto something...

From NPR:

April 2nd, 2007 -- "Letters from Ernest Hemingway to singer Marlene Dietrich have been unveiled at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. Tom Putnam, the library's director, tells Steve Inskeep the correspondence suggest a flirtatious (but platonic) relationship between the two celebrities."

For those of you who still haven't clued into the signifigance of this posting, this would have been a filial love in the Chen household. You can listen to the story here.

Proof that children love me (and yes it's reciprocated!)

The transcript of a conversation between my friend and colleague Kelly B. was emailed to me the day after I ran into Kelly, her husband and their two-year old son Blake. We tooled along West Portal while I pushed Blake in his toy motorcycle. Apparently, I've made (and have made for awhile now) quite an impression on the young lad.

"i wanna see ernie"

"you wanna see ernie?"

"yeah, ernie push it"

"ernie pushed your motorcycle?"

"yeah. ernie shorts on!"

Panama Pictures (Slightly Delayed)

The skyline of Panama City which lies on the Pacific Ocean and faces south

The Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal

These "mules" are small locamotives run along the side of the ships and keep the boats centered with guide wires.

Nikolas, Kristin S., myself holding Peter at the Panama Canal

Fort Clayton (where Kristin's family lives and no longer an active military fort) as seen from the Miraflores Locks

The Guari Guari restaurant in Bocas del Toro, where I had the great $14 six course meal and where I slept in the......

.....the hammock

The view from Cerra Punta

Looking west into the Cerra Punta valley and Costa Rica beyond from the highest point along the Sendero Los Quetzales.

Who is this?

A view from along the Sendero Los Quetzales.

This picture I found on my camera.......the couple who returned my camera to me. A testament to the fact that good things in the world can happen.

There are good people in the world

Read the following email I got from an employee of Continental Airlines:

Dear Mr. Chen;

A couple has written in that they met with a man named Ernie in Boquete recently, and he left a camera in their car. They originally met the man on flight 875 on February 17, sitting next to them on their flight. There were two men with the name Ernest on that flight, so I am writing to both Ernest’s’ to ask if it was you, and if so, may I give them your full name and mailing address so they may return the camera? They would like to send the camera to him, and asked me to assist in locating the correct person.

Guess who just got his lost camera back? Pictures to be posted soon. Thanks to the Robinsons of Olympia, WA for making the effort to get my camera back to me!!

"The Lives of Others"

As a reward to myself for finishing my 79 student reports by noon today, I went to go see the German film The Lives of Others. For me, a movie rarely lives up to its hype, but this one blew my mind. It easily moves into one of my top three movies ever. I can't tell you how well it was written and acted, but more importantly it so displayed in full view the pain and suffering of living in a totalitarian state. Thank whatever higher power that I was lucky enough to be born in 1970 in a democratic country and not behind the Iron Curtain. Talk about winning the life lottery on that front. This film won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

What was really excellent for me is that all those years of high school German is still rattling around in my head. I was able to recognize some of the basic German that I heard and is a testament to the fact that if we learned things as kids, even if we don't use them, they are there and able to be recalled at the drop of a hat.

PS: By the way, to finish up the last post.......we got our candidate!

Cliffhanger

One of my Math Department colleagues has decided to pursue graduate school studies and so we've had to start a search for a replacement. The name of a veteran teacher at a school in San Francisco who lives in the East Bay and has two children under 5 was looking to reduce her commute by working at a school closer to home. This candidate already has an offer in hand from our rival school in the area.

She came to visit us on Thursday and our Headmaster apparently hand delivered an offer and contract Saturday morning. Also on Saturday afternoon, the school held a celebration of Math and had NPR Math Guy Keith Devlin speak about the history of mathematics ability. The candidate showed up.

Will we win or will the other guys win. I could analyze the pros and cons but I don't think it serves any purpose. Keep your fingers crossed.

123

Ok, so Peter S. gets major cool points for sending me a link to try and name as many countries that belong to the United Nations as possible in 10 minutes. Out of 192, I got 123. Try and beat me. Here's the link to United Nations Country Quiz. Let me know how you do!

I Wanna Be In A Boy Band

When one reflects upon being gay I think of all the stereotypes I don't fit but then the ones that I do. The gaydar for me goes off when I reveal how much I LOVE musicals. Today, I saw the 2006 Tony Award winning musical Jersey Boys. Watching the "Four Seasons" on stage and seeing how cool it must be to perform with a group of guys on stage is something that all of a sudden something I wanted to get up and do myself. Not sure that I'm going to act on it but know that when I get the soundtrack, I'll be trying out the moves here in the privacy of my own home!!

I must, however, end by mentioning something that crossed my mind. In the year 2030, will be be watching musicals called something to the effect of "The Boys of the Backstreet"?

Panama Part 4:Houston, We Have A Problem

The high of finishing the Quetzales trail was extended the next morning when Jeff took his family and I out to one of the Smithsonian's research plots. We took a small hike (part of it on the same trail that the first isthmus crossers used some 500 years ago) to a ridge that looked like any other forested site in Panama. However, upon closer inspection, one would see the trees were of different species laid out in a specific grid and tagged with an identifcation marker. Jeff's work down here is to coordinate and keep running the many reforestation studies and projects that are being done here in the tropics. The goal is to find out what combination of species, planted in what order will produce the quickest biomass growth as well as provide attractive habitat for native fauna.

A great deal of reforestation is done with monocultures of trees such as mahogany (African) or teak (Asian) which grow quickly, are monetarily valuable and serve as a vehicle for carbon sequestration, but aren't necessarily a long term viable solution since monocultures are more susceptible to disease and these trees will eventually be harvested.

For example tree A is known to have roots that are quite efficient at turning decaying organic material into nitrogen which is needed in soil for other flora to use. However does tree A grow more quickly when it has a great deal of direct sunlight or if it provided shade cover from another tree? To find out two saplings of tree A were planted three years ago. One is still standing in the open and the other had a fast growing large canopy tree planted adjacent to provide shade. These are the kinds of experiments that Jeff is doing throughout Panama. He's got another cool study coming up on watersheds and how they retain water and disburse it depending on percentage of forestation. It's the scientific process in action.

After saying goodbye to Kristin and her family (big shout out to the hospitality from their family) I arrived at Tocumen International to check in for my routine flight back to Oakland via Houston. The agent at the desk couldn't find my reservation until he discovered that I had booked my return for 3/24/07 and not 2/24/07.

Oops.

With a $100 change fee, I was rebooked on standby for the two flights. I got on the flight from Panama City to Houston without a problem. I even got an aisle seat. But at that point, my luck had run out. Upon arriving in Houston, I get to the gate for the flight for Oakland and I am told that the flight is in an oversold situation. The agents are already looking for passengers to voluntarily take a flight the next day. They were already up to $500 dollar vouchers. I wasn't getting on this flight.

And for the gods to rub it in my face, this flight to Oakland had on it a fellow math colleague and his girlfriend, a fellow 6th grade teacher and his wife and lastly, a former student mine and his parents. All of them had confirmed seats. So as they boarded, I headed out to the taxi stand to take a cab to go get a hotel.

When life gives you lemons you make lemonade. A shout out to my friend Thom B. (of NASCAR fame last summer) who has officially become my gay tour guide to cities in the American South. I called Thom in Orlando and he pointed me to the right part of town to go to enjoy the rest of my evening. There was no point in staying near the airport because the first two flights on Sunday to Oakland (or San Francisco or San Jose) was booked and I was given a seat on the 6PM Sunday evening flight. A $55 (Houston is a big spread out place, people) cab ride to the Best Western downtown was followed by checking out the scene at Westheimer and Montrose. I have to say that I did enjoying the big country music playing pool hall/sports bar that I got to go for an hour before bed. As I've said before, places with lots of real estate (unlike NYC and SF) have these large open spaces to open welcoming gathering places. They also give better service. The coke that I ordered was massive. For the same price in SF I would get enough coke to finish off in one large gulp.

Sunday morning, I changed plans. I decided to take a cab to the other Houston Airport (Hobby) and rented a car and drove down to the Johnson Space Center to take a tour. It was the best $18 I spent in Texas. On the tram tour, we saw Mission Control (unfortunately there wasn't a shuttle in space at the moment so the place was empty) but we did see people in the Mission Control for the International Space Station since there are three astronauts living up there at the moment. On the tram tour, we also saw the building where astronauts train to do all those things they do in space, like work the robotic arm. And no, there was no mention of the woman who tried off her romantic counterpart. There was also no mention of diapers.

The highlight (or perhaps lowlight) of the visit to the Space Center was the fact that I took a shot at landing the space shuttle on the simulator and crashed it four times. And I was on the novice level where all I had to do was take care of the altitude and nose pitch. The simulator stabilized the side-to-side pitch for me. And let me tell you, the simulator was quite sassy in its analysis of my failures!!!

If I had had more time, the Houston Rodeo was just starting its week long run in the new Reliant Stadium. I drove by it because it is located right next to the Astrodome, which I wanted to see. I'm surprised it hasn't yet been demolished considering the newer Kingdome in Seattle already has been.

The car was dropped off at Houston-Bush Intercontinental (Enterprise daily rental $19.99 what a deal) and my flight home was non-eventful. The lesson? Make sure you double check how you book your flights!!

Panama Part 3:Sendero Los Quetzales

After returning to Panama City on Tuesday morning and spending the day with Kristin's family at Rio Mar Beach about an hour and a half west of Panama City, I flew back to the western portion of Panama to hike the Los Queztales trail.

On the map from the previous entry, you'll see just south of Bocas is the town of Boquete. As the crow flies, these are less than 20 miles apart, but between them is a set of extinct volcanos which serve as the Continental Divide and are the spine of the country of Panama. I flew in to the town of David (third largest in Panama) and took a cab up to a little town called Bambito. Picture a road coming from the bottom of the map above directly into Boquete. Picture a parallel road to the west of it and that is where Bambito lies. I stayed at this beautiful resort (the most I paid for a hotel the entire time) and the weather was perfect. Temperature in the 60's in this high altitude (about 6,000 feet above sea level) little town.

On a whim, I followed a dirt road that extended from the back of the resort up a hill and two miles or so later I was rewarded with finding this most amazing high mountain meadow with grazing cows and sheep. Occasionally a man and horse would ride by. I climbed a bit further and was further rewarded with this amazing view of Volcan Baru, which I would visit the next day. I don't feel regret about losing my camera in this situation because I didn't bring it with me. The image is my own for me to have for myself. It was such a special moment, perhaps the true highlight of my trip.

The next day, after being served breakfast by Latin America's Vince Vaughn look-a-like (HOT). I caught the local bus which runs up and down the road from David up to the town of Cerra Punta. Shhhhh, this town is totally undiscovered by developers. I didn't see any American tourists and there aren't any big houses with security gates around them. This town, at 6,500 is just a hop, skip and jump from the border with Costa Rica. Actually, I rode the bus a couple miles further up the hill to the little town of Guadalupe.

From here, I set out to climb up to the trailhead of the Quetzales Trail. What was so cool is the the Quetzales Trail links the town of Cerra Punta to Boquete. I had my backpack and was hiking from one place to the next. It reminded me of hikes that one can make in the Alps of Switzerland.


This photo take from a Google image search, but I stood right at this location and took a photo of this sign.


A picture of the Quetzales Trail taken from Wikipedia

I strategically chose to hike the trail from Cerra Punta (6,500 feet) to Boquete (3,500 feet). This was not your well worn, well maintained European hiking trail. This was a slip and slide on one's rear end in places kind of hike. The hike itself was spectacular as there were vista points but most of it was under the canopy of a cloud/tropical forest. The hike took me 6 hours and my quads were killing me for the next few days. All I can say is Dr. B, he did a freaking amazing job for my feet to have held up to this pounding.

Near the end of the hike, I ran into a couple of fellow American hikers who turns out sat next to me on the flight from Houston to Panama City. We started talking and it turns out they are from a little town outside of Olympia, WA. We bonded and it was nice to end the hike with nice people who weren't all about bragging about what they had done and saw. They were there for the enjoyment of the moment.

We arrived at the trailhead and the ranger station was still a 3km trek downhill. My quads were dying so they were nice enough to give me a ride. It is their rental car that I left my camera. There is a miniscule possibility that I might get it back. The couple had yet to visit Bocas and were planning on it later in their trip. I told them about Ozzie's restaurant and if they go there and mention me, I left Ozzie my email address. It's a lot of things to have to go right for it to happen, but stranger things have happened!

That evening I treated myself to a wonderful dinner at a highly touted restaurant in Boquete. After hobbling a half mile to the restaurant, I was floored that the interior was straight out of New England B&B. White linen table cloths, flowers in the center of the table, polished silverware, you get the picture. I had an amazing ceviche followed by a huge piece of fresh grilled trout. It turns out the chef at the Hotel Penomene is a Swedish transplant and has brought his flair to Panama and now brings it to the local seafood to make amazing meals.

I have to admit that my hotel in Boquete had DirecTV and I watched American Television well into the night. I got caught on my episodes of the OC and Gilmore Girls. Ahh, now I know why Christopher went AWOL on Lorelai.

Friday morning was spent wandering around Boquete and then hopping on the bus back down to David and a flight back to Panama City. This portion of the trip was one of the highlights of my week!

Panama Part 2:Bocas Del Toro

As you can see from the map above, there is an group of islands in the northwestern corner of Panama of which the main town is called Bocas. I flew from Panama City to Bocas on Air Panama a 50-seat Fokker. The total flight time was about an hour. I landed in Bocas 8AM knowing little about the place other than it was highly touted by Kristin's husband Jeff who had recently returned from the area. Going solely on his word, there I was at the Bocas airport wondering what next? I walked out of the one-room airport onto a dirt road and there I was. I was not expecting to see houses that appeared to be ready to be blown to shreds with the next big windstorm. I surprised myself at being taken aback at the lack of touristy amenities, such as quaint shops and a tidy looking main strip. Everything looked rickety and unkempt and I never really got used to it.

I guess part of my lack of enthusiasm for the place stemmed from the overcast and drizzly weather the I flew into. I whipped out my handy-dandy guide book and had breakfast to plan my day. My first stop was to sign up with an outfit that ran an all day trip up the coast to see manatees. The guy at the shop stated that he needed people to fun the trip and had three signed up for Wednesday (this being Monday) and so it looked like it was more than likely to run. He pointed me down the street to a guide service that took people out on day long trips.

The trip had so much potential, but ultimately had few truly memorable moments. It was a group of 14 people in a boat of which there was another truly awful American couple from California. They were recent transplants from LA to Northern California and all the stereotypes of braggadocio American's was true for them. Did I really need to know how quickly they had sailed from the South Pacific to the Galapagos a couple years ago? Umm, no.

The first stop of our trip was to go see dolphins. I was a bit skeptical that we would see them, but ultimately we did. I wish there had been more of them and that they were jumping out of the water like Flipper, but I was excited to see a couple dolphins up close nonetheless.

Picture of a couple thatched roof huts built on stilts over the water

Next stop was some snorkeling followed by lunch at the restaurant one would have seen above. The snorkeling paled in comparison to the snorkeling I got to do last summer in Puerto Rico but I attribute that partially to the fact that we weren't taken to a really great spot but also that it was overcast and the light was poor.

After lunch, the skies opened up and poured. We were taken to the famous Red Frog Beach. There were other tour groups there and everyone was huddled underneath a big hut. It looked straight out of Survivor and I was ready for Jeff Probst to come out and give us some immunity challenge. It's a sad thing to know that Red Frog Beach is being encroached on by developers and the open access and lack of buildings will soon be a thing of the past.

The rain continued to come down (and it's no Seattle drizzle my friends, we're talking Central American downpout) and the other members of the boat opted to skip our last stop and go directly back to Bocas.

Upon arriving in Bocas, I went to check to see if the manatee trip was going to run and saw that the group of three had rescheduled for the following week. Ugh. I then set out on trying to find a place to stay. And the intrepid traveler story begins.

I came to Bocas during the middle of Carnival. There was NO rentable place to sleep anywhere in town or on the neighboring islands. NOTHING. So I came up with my next best plan. I rented a bike and planned on riding out to a beach and sleeping there on the sand. I literally had come to Bocas with a towel, swimsuit, basic toiletries and a change of shorts. It was going to be a long night.

I located a beach about two miles out of town. It looked like I could nestle down and get some cover from the trees, but I was screwed if another Central American downpour occurred during the night. So to treat myself before the long night, I biked to a cute looking restaurant that I had passed coming out of town which was advertising a six course meal for $14. Yeah, prices in Panama are still kind of reasonable. This wasn't some lame six course meal either. I had a salad, some fish, fried egg with bechemel sauce, bread with goat cheese and spinich, pork cutlet with a nice sauce and chocolate ice cream with orange sauce for dessert.

Over the course of dinner, I found out from the waiter that he (a German) and his wife (a Spainard) had moved to Bocas a couple years back and bought their building, renovated it so the front had a beautiful covered open air dining area and then turned the back of the building into their living quarters. The name of the place is Guari Guari.

Being the ballsy and desparate guy that I was, I asked Ozzie (the owner/waiter) my story of how I didn't have a place to stay that night and whether I could sleep in the hammock they had. He said yes and I solved my lack of lodging for the night. Minutes later, downpour. And we're talking buckets.

Picture of the hammock I stayed in.
Picture of the rain coming off the roof in sheets.

The next morning I woke up and it was still overcast and raining. Realizing that my trip to see the manatee was probably off, I cut my jaunt to Bocas by two days and flew back to Panama City. There were other adventures to be had in Panama!!!!

Panama Part 1:The Canal

Picture of Ernie, Kristin and her kids Nikolas & Peter with a Panamax ship in the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal

The postings from Panama will all have the captions of the photos that I would have posted had I not left my camera in the car of a very nice couple who gave me a ride down from the Boquete Ranger Station into town on the third to last day of my trip to Panama. So the question in many of your minds may be, why Panama? My friend from high school, Kristin S., moved down to the country with the Canal last year as her husband took a job coordinating native tree reforestation. So, why not go visit?

I really can't do the Canal justice except to say that I could sit there all day and watch the ships go into and out of the locks. The Canal is actually oriented North-South with the Pacific Ocean on the southern end and the Caribbean/Atlantic at the northern terminus. Transiting from the Pacific to Atlantic one enters the canal and reaches the Miraflores Locks. Here's a link to see a two Panamax ships in the Miraflores Locks. In two separate steps, a ship is raised about 50 feet where it exits into Miraflores Lake and a couple miles later is raised up another 30 feet at the Pedro Miquel Lock.

Picture of a Panamax before being raised.

Picture of a Panamax after being raised.

At this point a ship enters the 8 mile long Gaillard Cut. It is the Gaillard Cut which was where the majority of the digging was done in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Because two ships cannot fit side-by-side in the Cut at one time, groups of ships traverse the Cut in one direction. When they clear, then another set can traverse the Cut in the opposite direction. This bottleneck limits the number of ships that can be in the Canal system at one time.

Proceeding out of the Cut, a ship enters Gatun Lake, formed by the damming of the Chagres River. Gatun Lake is 85 feet above Sea Level. Ships continue North until they enter the three step Gatun Locks which bring them back down to sea level. Ships then exit into the Atlantic Ocean ready to sail off to their final destination.

The Panama Canal is an amazing feat of engineering. I can't put into words the excitement I felt everytime I saw a huge ship being raised or lowered. The large ships have this regal look about them as they slowly glide into place in one of the locks and then in one continuous motion are lowered.

Hurdle Number 1

In the ongoing saga of the conversion of the building in which I live/own to condominium, a important milestone was reached this week. Our lawyers submitted our application to the Bureau of Streets and Mapping (BSM). Getting everything in order to get to the point of submission took just over one year. Here's what's to come:

•BSM completes initial review of application and draft of parcel map.
•BSM sends application to Bureau of City Planning (BCP) & Dept. of Building Inspection (DBI).
•BCP must approve of application and then BSM reviews map.
•BCP issues its decision with its additional requirements
•We must clear up any issues with BCP
•DBI issues its decision with any additional requirements
•Surveyor works with DBI to clear up issues
•BSM issues approval of map
•Still more to go

The Omnivore's Dilemma

It's cliche to say that reading a book can transform how you view some part of your world because it seems as people say it all the time, however, it recently happened to me when I read the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. I read it in anticipation of Pollan coming to speak to our school for an assembly a few weeks ago.

Michael Pollan

I have begun to think much more closely about the choices I make when eating and to understand that organic isn't everything that it is meant to be. Most importantly, I've learned about the concept of sustainable agriculture. The chapter in the book about grass was riveting reading.

Moon Over San Francisco Bay

Independence

In my senior Economics class, I warn them that if they comprehend the concepts and are paying attention, they will perhaps become more conservative (politically) in their thinking as they encounter the market killing implications of taxes the issues surrounding price controls and subsidies. Remember that teaching in the Bay Area, most of my students are lifelong liberals and pretty adamantly vocal ones at that. So when I claimed to be a registered independent, I sensed a bit of incredulity at my political persuasion. Of course, I tend to vote the Democratic candidate or position most of the time, I told them, but I have voted for Republicans in the course of my 18 years of voting.

This got me thinking, in all my years of voting, I can only name three candidates for state or national office that I can remember going with the GOP candidate. The first is quite obscure that being Representative John Miller who was the incumbent congressman from my district in Seattle back when I first started voting. I think he's the only Republican I voted for twice. When I lived in New Jersey, I voted for Governor Christine Todd Whitman, who became head of the EPA. Alas, sadly, I never actually had the opportunity to vote for my favorite politician, Bill Bradley as I arrived after his last election to the Senate in 1994. As a resident of New Jersey, I did vote for Democrat Robert Toricelli. Oops. Lastly, I proudly admit to have voted for the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger in this past election. I have voted Republican in the past (and I know this makes Mom happy) and will do so in the future when the candidate is right.

I Finally Learned This Lesson

Long time readers are well versed in my "issues" with friends who produce (ok produce sounds a bit industrial, but I'll not edit since this is a blog and my true feelings should come out even if not exactly PC) children and then have those new ones become the focus of their lives and subsequently disappear from mine.

(SS ARE YOU READING THIS?!!?!?!?! You've won your battle!!!)

As I was biking home yesterday from BART, I passed by the house of a friend of mine from a 1986 summer program Debby G. who with her husband and 2-year old son, moved here from Washington, DC a few months ago. They live a five minute walk from me (that's pretty cool to have a friend from childhood move across the country and land in the next neighborhood over) and I hadn't seen her at her home since their move. So I stopped in and was invited over for dinner. I wasn't shunted off to the corner like I thought I would. In fact, Debby was grateful and overjoyed at having company.

So, the lesson? When couples have kids, us singles have to go to them. It's not as if they don't want to see us, in fact I sense that they are wanting to see us friends, but due to the constraints of raising a baby/toddler, the spontaneous dinner out is a relic of their lives. As long as I'm willing to put up with/enjoy having conversations broken into bits and pieces around cutting food for the child or a bit of babytalk, I can reclaim my friendships with my childrearing friends. Plus, how can I resist the opportunity to lay on the floor and having a 2-year old climb all over me and pinch my eye?