Ethan's First Camp Out

Ethan got his first taste of camping with his Boy Scout pack over the weekend. It was just an overnight camp out at one of the several campgrounds (three family campgrounds and five group campsites) located at nearby Mt. Diablo State Park.

We stayed at the Wildcat Campsite, a nice tree covered site with very little parking and very little level ground. The very little parking meant that people had to carpool. The very little level ground meant that we didn't wake up in the same spot in the tent where we went to sleep. Ethan went to sleep in the middle of the tent next to me, but woke up in a ball in one of the downhill corners of the tent. The tree covering was a plus though that allowed us to wake up to some people wearing sweatshirts to keep warm even after the sun had arisen. This was in sharp contrast to the valley below that looked like a sea of warmly-glowing golden yellow hills. Even at 7:00am, the hills below already looked blazing.

The boys were kept busy. They had day time activities aimed at allowing them earn belt loops and badges. The older boys helped with dinner. Our den was in charge of the games. Although there wasn't a campfire, there was a fire pit that the boys used to roast marshmallows and make smores. After dinner, the dens got to entertain with skits and singing. The scouts got an astronomy lesson, got a chance to make popcorn making, and take in an evening hike.

The next morning there were some that were up at the first crack of daylight, which was probably a little after 5:00am. Most of the campground was up by 7:00am. A flag ceremony was held at about 8:00am, right around breakfast time. This was followed by a short drive to Rock City for a hike to Sentinel Rock (need to be careful here as there is poison ivy everywhere).

After most of the group had packed up, one of the dads who is an expert tree person helped a couple of the scouts get a chance to go tree climbing in a harness. This same dad is the one hooked up a tree hammock and a tree swing that were both hits with the scouts.

Ethan is ready to go on his next camp out!

Contra Costa Valley Swim Conference

Win or lose, Naomi and Ethan continue to enjoy swimming. Naomi's in her third year of swim team, while this is Ethan's second year. They've both made good strides since they started swimming with the Seahorses.

The Ygnacio Wood Seahorses are one of seven teams in the Contra Costa Valley Swim Conference (CCVSC). The CCVSC is a recreational swim league made up of two teams from Concord, two from Walnut Creek, and one team each from Pinole, Antioch, and Brentwood. The number of such swim teams in the area is incredible (see the Aquatic Times site).

The kids practice every weekday and have two meets a week until late July when they have their league, City and County championships. Here's a video of Naomi from their latest meet against the Forest Park Flyers. She's in lane 6, the rightmost lane.

One Sea Pony and Two Seahorses

Ryan likes to tell people, "I'm this many," putting up four fingers as in the picture. Another interesting Ryan fact is that he likes to wear blue jeans even on a hot summer day.

This photo was taken just before the team photo was taken.

Picture Day!

It was picture day for the swim team today. Imagine trying to shepherd over 125 kids onto risers in the bright sun and telling them that they have to sit still. Sounds like an impossible task, doesn't it?

Here's the team picture of the Ygnacio Wood Seahorses for 2008. Ethan and Naomi are in the picture. Can you find them?

Swim Meet Versus Forest Park Flyers

Swim Meet Versus Valley Vista Barracudas

The kids are making progress with their swimming, but most importantly they continue to have great time. Ryan is not swimming yet, but he is their biggest fan. In some of the videos that we have you can hear Ryan cheering on Naomi and Ethan.

Here's a clip of Naomi swimming the backstroke at the meet against Valley Vista. She's starting to get the hang of swimming backwards in a straight line.

Ryan Anderson - NBA Bound

Ryan Anderson, top player for the Cal Bears the last two years running, announced today that he's staying in the NBA draft. No doubt a blow to the Bears, but a result that was not too surprising.

For you Cal fans out there, here are the top ten reasons why Ryan Anderson is moving onto the NBA (play the accompanying video clip for the source for this top ten list):

10. Not only can Ryan shoot, but he can also shoot from the hip!

9. He can dunk! I know that you Cal fans will find this both amusing and amazing.

8. He can go right and left just like Big Bird now!

7. He is a supporter of Rod Benson's "Boom Tho" movement (Benson is a former Cal player who has been entrenched in the D-League, the minor league baseball of the NBA, and is moonlighting as a blogger for Yahoo! Sports through their Ball Don't Lie blogs on NBA basketball).

6. He's ready like spaghetti and in there like swim wear.

5. He is environmentally conscious and recycles.

4. He's like Captain Planet with better footwork (and looks great in tight fitting silks).

3. He can take on Kevin Love one-on-one and defend him outside the arc.

2. He's really 30 years old, not 20 (okay, this was just Benson messing with Ryan).

1. He's a great kid with his head in the right place (he finished up all his class work at Cal this semester, unlike many early entry players who just drop out of school, while auditioning for his next employers in the NBA).

Contract Karma by Fear the Beard

Got this off a site called Fear The Beard that claims to be the East Bay culture blog with a high basketball IQ. I'm not that up on the Warriors, but I think the name of the site is a play on a Warrior slogan. The Beard is a nickname of sorts for Baron Davis, ex-UCLA baller and current leader of the Warriors. It's like saying, "fear the Warriors...they're coming for ya with the Bearded one leading the way!"

Baron is hoping for a contract extension from the Warriors, but it's possible that one might not be forthcoming (they have younger players that could play the same position and he's been injury prone). He still has one year left on his contract for something around $17 million. He could opt out of this contract, but it's unlikely that he would get more than this amount for next season. On the other hand, he could opt out and sign a longer term contract with another club for a higher total amount, but less on an annual basis, but who's counting when you're talking about millions of smackeroos.

The clip below is of Baron trying to do good because he says, "it's better to give than to receive." But the FTB guys know what this is about given the title of the post: Contract Karma.

A Real Life Unicorn...Sort of

At the Center of Natural Sciences in Prato, Italy (a town near Florence), a single-horned deer has been born. Deers with such a single horn are rare. This deer has a twin that has the normal set of two horns.

A Blast from the Past

I came across something the other day that I hadn't seen in quite some time. This is proof (I suppose) that you can find almost anything on YouTube.

When I was in Japan for a year in the 80s, there was a female singer who was all the rage. It was 24/7 Akina Nakamori. You could not escape her music, picture and videos.

We went to a robata one evening and they had a television blaring her video. Later at a kisaten (a Japanese cafe) near the train station there was more Akina on a television. Then at the train station there were near-life sized ads featuring every where you looked.

Another time, we went out and one of the stops was for karaoke. Stopping for karaoke in itself in Japan is not amazing, but seeing the same song sung over-and-over-and-over was bordering on too much. The Japanese pop idol wannabes that took the stage to be like Akina had their pop idol's every move down, able to exactly mimic Akina's every movements as they sang her hit "Desire."

Here's one of her many videos for the song "Desire":



And here's a site that has an English version of the same song: Desire

Swim Meet Versus Antioch Delta Skimmers

June 7, 2008. The swim season continues onward.

Naomi swam the freestyle, breaststroke and butterfly. Ethan swam the freestyle and backstroke. The following are videos of Naomi's breaststroke (in Lane 5) and Ethan's backstroke (in Lane 1).

"I Am From" by Ethan

I Am From

I am from China, Japan and Berkeley.
I am from visiting my cousin, our grandma and grandpa's,
going to karate and being at Boy Scouts.

I am from building a derby car with my dad,
going swimming in the summer and going to Seattle.

I am from chow fun, mochi and butter noodles.

I am from hugs, how was your day and poems before bed.

I am from Ojiichan, Obaachan, Casey and Dorothy.
I am from Naomi and Ryan.
I am from E.E. and Buddy.

I am Ethan Avery Emoto

The End of Another School Year

The end of the school year comes with a flurry of field trips and end of year activities. For us, the activities have included a visit to the Smith Family Farm, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, Los Vaqueros Dam and Reservoir, the 3rd graders' flute performance, the 1st graders' "How Does Your Garden Grow" musical, a preschool musical parade, the Boy Scouts bridging ceremony for Tiger Cubs to Wolf Cubs, and the Girl Scouts bridging ceremony for Brownies to Junior Cadets just to name a few. Now bring on summer!

Swim Meet Versus Pinole Seals

We had our first swim meet of the year today at our swim club against the Pinole Seals. Both Naomi and Ethan swam, with Naomi swimming the butterfly (also known as the fly) and the backstroke. Ethan was even busier, swimming in the breaststroke medley relay, freestyle, breaststroke, and backstroke.

Here's a video of Naomi's backstroke. She's in the second lane from the right (lane #2).

Summer's Here...Sort of!

We spent one day of the recent three-day weekend at a Six Flags amusement park in nearby Vallejo. Although it was not a scorching day, the water rides were still quite popular. You can't see her, but Naomi and some friends are on the boat in the video below. Yes, there were more than a few people who got soaked.

Mom's Going on a "Retreatment"

Ryan: I'm going to miss mom.

Dad: She's still here.

Ryan: But she's going to go away for her retreatment.

What Ryan was referring to was that Dorothy was going to be gone for a women's retreat for the weekend. He probably heard us use the word "retreat," and for some reason thought that he would add his own touch to the word.

When I told Dorothy about this, we had a good laugh! I suppose it is a treatment of sorts!

Oregon, where boys are boys and...

...girls play basketball.

Here's a story about a 12-year old girl in Beaverton, Oregon who has been banned from playing in a private boys' basketball league. The league cited an obscure league rule prohibiting mixed gender play saying that rules are rules. When asked why she had not been banned previously, the league said that they are under new management that enforces policies. Of course, policies are policies just like how in Oregon boys are boys, unless it comes to basketball.

In case you're wondering, the inspiration for the title of this blog was Susan Butcher. Over one five-year span, she won four Iditarods. This spawned the saying, "Alaska, where men are men and women win Iditarods,"

Skyping

We had our first experience earlier this week with video calling. In the words of our kids, "It was cool!"

Auntie Yuki has been trying to convince us to sign up with Skype for maybe a couple years now. Well, we finally signed up and placed our first call using our new web cam.

The web cam has a few other capabilities like being able to take pictures and save video clips. It's also possible to enhance photos. We used the web cam to take the picture below impossibly showing Ryan with facial hair.

3-2-1 Go, Race Cars!

Ethan is in his first year of scouting. One of the big events for Boy Scouting is pinewood derby cars. The scouts are given basic materials to build their own cars to enter in a race. Our Pack had its race earlier this month.

Ethan picked the colors. I tried to sway him away from Stanford colors to no avail. It's the only car with these candy cane colors. Ethan also helped with some of the sanding, painting and installation of wheels. He was also the official decal affixer. There is some science to this "kiddie" fun. It turns out, the real serious racers likely spend much time correctly weighting their cars and polishing and lubricating their wheels and axles. These are probably the keys to winning.

This was our first time racing pinewood derby cars. We did not really know what to expect. We did learn a lot for next year. We didn't win, but had a great time.

The video below was shot by one of the fathers in our den. Their car finished in 3rd place. Another car from our den won the top prize. We almost won a prize too: the Turtle Car Award for the slowest car able to make it to the finish line. After seeing the video, you'll probably agree that calling these "slower" cars "turtles" is a misnomer. We had "victory" snatched from our grasp when the winning car just barely rolled across the line a few second after our finish.

If you watch the start of the video closely, you'll see Dorothy.

New Soul

The MacBook Air commercial features a catchy tune. It's a song called "New Soul" by Yael Naim, a French-Israeli singer/songwriter. Here's the link to her web site: http://www.yaelweb.com/

And here's the video for the song. Enjoy!