We have all been Flight of the Conchords fans for almost three years now (even before their HBO show) and last night finally saw them live. Our seats weren’t the worst, but only by one row. I should have been on the ball about getting tickets but waited a couple hours too long. They sold out fast.

The Seattle Times Review was spot on. I found it hard to understand at times because of the acoustics at the Paramount, but not enough that I’m going to write them (the Paramount, not the Conchords) nasty emails about it. Bret and Jemaine were off the charts hilarious.

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Wow, looks at those smiles! 

Its been a while since I posted. Between moving into the new house, cleaning the old house, and making final plans for my trip to South Africa I haven’t done much else. Our departure date is now a mere week away. It still seems a little unreal. Since the day we bought our tickets and made our reservations at the parks, nearly six months ago, it has always felt quite distant. It may not be until we actually lock in our seatbelts on the plane that the reality hits me. Curtis and I hope we’ll be able to post some updates during the trip.

Our first few days will be in Kruger National Park general campsites (Punda Maria, Mopani, and Satara). As part of our stay, I have scheduled night drives and, hopefully, a bush braai (this reservation has been tricky). Then we have two nights in the Gomo Gomo private game reserve where I hope to get some excellent shots of Leopards, my favorite animal, from the open land rovers.

After five days of a relaxed African bush experience, we’ll leave modern conveniences and join four others and follow two professional trackers on a 3 day, 50 mile hike through lion country on the Sweni wilderness trail. I expect this will be an amazing experience and plan on capturing plenty of photo and video footage of the process. Others on this trek have been charged by Lions, threatened by elephants, and encountered snakes, bugs, heat, and exhaustion. Sounds awesome!

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I loved summer as a kid; I dread it as a parent. At least the out of school part. Not because I don’t want the kids to have fun and get a break from school, it’s because they get so freakin’ bored and I feel responsible. I don’t remember being bored as a kid. Was I? It seems like my kids are constantly bored and I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong as a parent.

I grew up in a small town surrounded by friends. There was hill after hill of Utah wilderness to explore right out of my front door. My kids live in the middle of suburbia and spend most of their time stuck indoors because of the rain and houses that fill the horizon in every direction. In addition, I don’t know many of my neighbors…there aren’t five kids of assorted ages in almost every house in the neighborhood. As a kid, I played constantly…basketball, football, rode bikes in the hills, had dirt clod wars, hunted with bb guns, and even some Dungeons and Dragons. Sometimes we’d even pack up supplies and as many as ten kids (ages 6-13) would hike several miles out of town, make a fire, cook dinner, and sleep under the stars. Just us kids.

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I’ve had to work out of town for the past two weeks. Today is the first day of summer for the kids, so I brought them with me this week. Although they are well behaved teenagers, they still like to make noise and have some fun on occasion; nothing wrong with that as long as it’s not in the hotel. So before we went in to the lobby, I told them to be professional while we were here. No running around, being loud…that sort of thing. I also told them there were cookies in the lobby and they could help themselves.

Mikayla responded in her professional adult voice, “Excuse me, but may I enjoy one of your circular yummies?”

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(Click the Orca to go to my wildlife photo album)

For three years now we have spent Memorial weekend camping at the San Juan County park on the San Juan Island. These islands are a short ferry ride out of Anacortes, WA and are excellent for whale watching. The first two years, several pods of whales swam right past the beach 2-3 times each day. I started to think that it was normal and expected the same thing this year but it didn’t happen. Luckily I had booked us a whale watching trip (we had never done this before) and on our 3 hour boat ride we saw plenty of Orcas and I was able to get pictures that were much better than I had in previous years.

If you want to camp on the islands, you have to make reservations early. Every year I call the day the reservation line opens (usually around St. Patrick’s day). This year I had 2 phones on redial and I sat for an hour and a half dialing constantly before I finally got through (and the camp was already half filled for Memorial Weekend). I know one of these years I won’t end up so lucky and the family will be disappointed.

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Curtis has been having a hard time with a kid at school. He’s tried to avoid him for the last few weeks because of teasing, name calling, and threats. To Curti’s credit, he’s ignored most of it. So I was pretty surprised when I got a call yesterday that Curtis had to go see the principal because he’d been in a fight and the other parents want to press charges.

I’ve been there and it’s no fun to be bullied. I used to try and make friends with my bullies…sometimes it even worked. One of my worst bullies in 4th grade ended up being one of my good friends through High School. In 9th grade (I was still short and an easy target), I gave a kid that used to push me around a Snickers bar. He went from bullying me to protecting me. We never talked and weren’t really friends, but if he was walking by and somebody was bothering me he’d put an instant stop to it. I felt like I had a personal bodyguard, it was great! But it didn’t always work. Once while trying to befriend one, he took a quick swing and hit me in the jaw. There was a lot of blood and my face was swollen for weeks. Twice I got hit in the face and never fought back. I go back and forth as to which is better. Sometimes I’m glad I didn’t, other times I wish I would have…

So I can’t blame Curtis. The other day on the way home the harassment was upped a notch and the other kid said he was going to beat Curtis up when they got off the bus. Curtis said he tried to hurry home but the kid came after him and threw down his backpack. There were other boys around egging them on, which made it worse, so when the kid came in close Curtis hit him in the face. The kid jumped on him and they were wrestling on the ground when the kid’s mom came and put a stop to it all.

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 7,332 square miles of protected African bush cushion the border between South Africa and Mozambique. Known as the Kruger National Park, it is the largest game reserve in South Africa and my favorite place in the world. I spent six or so days in 1989, two weeks in 1993, but haven’t been back since (unless you count a recurring dream).

Roads wind through the park, connecting the small village-like areas where you can eat lunch, rent a rondavel, and get out of your car (it’s against the rules to even open your car door outside the gates, for obvious reasons). These camps keep you safe from, among other things, the “Big 5″ (lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos, and buffalo). All visitors must be in one of these camps or out of the park by sundown, or face serious fines.

There are drawbacks to driving your own car through the African wild, as compared to an open land rover on a private game reserve (which I have also done). Being restricted to roads means you can’t get as close to the action and you don’t have a personal guide with a radio streaming the location of wandering creatures. But for me, being able to drive my own car, at my own pace, never knowing what I will find around the next corner dwarfs those benefits.

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I normally don’t play games like this, but as I was laying in bed I had some good ideas. I’ll answer my mom’s challenge to write about 5 things I didn’t expect to happen in my life. Rather than writing about what I expected at age 25, I’m going younger. Five things I didn’t expect in my life when I was growing up. They are negative, I’ll warn you now. But I had high expectations as a kid. The good news is that I’m getting used to being mediocre.

1. That I’d get divorced

I never imagined this one. As a child, there was no divorce in my family…extended family included (and my parents come from huge families). Later as a teenager there were two, but percentage-wise, it’s a tiny proportion. It’s just something that wasn’t considered. Families stayed together. Parents worked on things and stuck it out. It was hard to know which to rate first, this one or number two (below), but I decided this one has shaken up my world than anything else. I still often feel disoriented, like I failed in other peoples eyes, and sometimes like I’m standing out in the middle of a desert with no idea where I am and where to go. Up until the moment Kim said the words "I want a divorce and I’ve already seen an attorney," I didn’t expect it. There were clues, I knew things weren’t going good, but I never expected she wanted to actually end it. It sucked. The next three months were the worst of my life, but then ushered me into some of the best. Looking back it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Believe me, I never imagined I’d say those words.

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I realized as a teenager that I would ever be as selfless as my dad. One night after coming in well past dinner time I walked into the kitchen where he was putting the final garnishments on a baked potato. It was covered in cheese and sour cream and made my stomach rumble just to look at it…especially since I hadn’t eaten dinner and it was almost bedtime. He saw me drooling and handed it to me.

"Here, you can have it, I’ll make me another one."

Not only did I take his food, but I knew then and there I wouldn’t have done the same for him. But I was too hungry to feel guilty.

Twenty years later and I still can’t say I’m that selfless. I really like baked potatoes. And as my kids will tell you, I rarely even share my soda with them. So in those areas I may not do so well, but I there are some others where I think I earn my title of "father."

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