The kid invented this new game where they jump on one end of an overinflated camping mat, thereby launching something or someone on the other side into the air. These are trained professionals - do not attempt.

Just a couple of videos this week. First, my surfer friend took some video on Friday of both his son and me. The waves were big but nasty - breaking all at once so it was hard to do anything. I opted for my boogie board, and he got a shot of me before getting pounded.

This week I had the chance to think back to a guy that used to occupy the cubicle next to mine. He is a nice guy with a good personality and sense of humor. I will now complain about him even though it is in poor taste since he can't defend himself. He is what I will call a "yeasayer". According to him, everything that he touches turns to gold - he is always one step ahead of everyone else. Recently, though, I've run across some persuasive evidence that he's mortal like the rest of us. A few examples - he switched jobs and now works at a company not too far away. A few weeks ago, some of my friends from work met the yeasayer for lunch. As the former manager of a doomed product at our company, one of the first things he said was that he'd already launched 4 new products at his new job. A little digging revealed that the products were in fact small plastic wingnuts. He also used to give us periodic updates on the market-topping returns of his day trading activities. Since I think day trading is pointless at best, I often expressed skepticism. A current check of his hottest pick (Garmin) will show a decline of over 60% in the last 6 months. He also used to talk about his north county home - often saying that "my home earns more in a year than I do". This was well after home values started to plunge - his area was "one of the few exceptions". We had some friends from business school visit last week, and the wife's parents live in the same town as the yeasayer. Turns out that home values are down 35% from the peak. In the end, I can think of lots of cases where I've shown the same kind of bias - it's probably human nature. I guess it just means that being confident and outspoken doesn't increase the probability that a person is right (Dad may actually argue that the two things are inversely related).

This week Kai finally realized some instant consequences from his mischievous tendencies. We are always telling him not to do stuff - don't get into mama's makeup, leave papa's shaving cream alone, stay out of the spice rack - stuff like that. Marie had told him to just leave the listerine pocketpack strips alone. Kai, of course, thought he knew better. Unbeknownst to Marie, Kai had grabbed 3 or 4 strips and rolled them into a ball, which he palmed to conceal as Mari loaded the kids into the car to go somewhere. Once they got going, Kai started to cry. When asked what was wrong, he fessed up - "I put the mint into my nose". One look confirmed that this was indeed the case - the listerine ball was up his left nostril. His eyes were watering. His nose was running, and every breath seemed to introduce a new cloud of menthol gas into his sensitive nasal cavity. Having eaten, but not snorted, listerine strips, I'm imagining this felt like squirting a turkey baster full of vapo-rub up one's nostril. Lacking the skills to solve the problem, Kai begged for help. Marie stopped the car, and plugged Kai's right nostril while Kai tried to blow out the left one. On the tenth try, out shot the snot covered powerball. Marie made a special call to my desk at work to tell me about this, and we both had a really good laugh. It's not often that the circumstances are right to get Kai some instant consequences.

This may seem strange, but I finally thought of a name for a bad habit I have. Sometimes, instead of doing the dishes, I do the wishes - reorganizing the piles of dirty dishes, and shoving some of them into the sink so that it doesn't really look like there are that many dishes to do. If the pile looks small enough when I'm done, I can just leave them for tomorrow.

We had Kai's birthday yesterday. Marie put in a lot of work, and we had a great time. Stu and Adrianne also came over, which was great. Here are some pics.

We also had the fathers and sons campout this weekend. It was a little on the toasty side, but Jerome, Kai (rookie) and I all had a good time.

The below video is not me (of course) but is a guy from work that I sometimes go surfing with. He is very serious about riding the wild sea pony, and owns 4 boards. I took advantage of a rather lame longboarding conditions to pull out my waterproof case-enclosed flip video recorder. I only filmed for about 20 minutes, but it was fun.

And another video - this of Kai trying to make Quinn laugh. This activity alone absorbs almost 80% of Kai's waking hours.

Just a video this week. At the reunion, Gpa Ohki took Jerome to Borders and let him pick out some things he wanted. One of the items Jerome was most excited about was this rocket. The video is kind of long, but it shows how stuff works in our family. Jez is always trying to get stuff to work, Asha is always offering helpful advice, and Kai is actively trying to mess things up. Anyway, the rocket was a big hit, and we had a lot of fun with it.

Now that we have 4 kids, and one of them is close to turning 9, I've started to think in earnest about how I can get my kids to do jobs. The concept of jobs (be they Saturday jobs, KP, or whatever) in the campbell family is as central to our existence as Sunday dinner. Who can forget the strangely satisfying smell of 409 that accompanied a complete wipedown of green/blue island wall on the other side of the kitchen range? Or for that matter, the dread at receiving the worse of the two bathroom jobs (floors and toilets?). I have realized, though, that just as soon as my kids would actually be able to do some of these jobs, they will be rendered nearly useless by the universal rebelliousness and angst of the teenage years. Note that on the handy chart I have provided, the willingness to pitch in asymptotically approaches negative infinity before reaching the age of 12. This leads me to the concept of the sweet spot - a short period of time when the child's real ability is sufficiently positive and they still are willing to do something when asked. The product of the two functions only becomes positive after age 6. This fact was reinforced this week when Asha called me at work: "Guess what Dad? I'm the mom right now. Mama is feeding Quinn, and I just picked up the whole garage, play area, vacuumed everything and made all the beds." If I had been Dad (and been at home), I'd have feigned losing consciousness. As it was, I told her how proud I was of her. I returned home to find that she really had done all those things, and had done a darn fine job to boot. In the interest of full disclosure, I never hit a sweet spot during my childhood. The week that I finally learned to pumice the ring off a toiled bowl was probably the same week I told Mom and Dad that it was fair for them to do more work because they decided to become parents.

The last couple of Saturdays have been shockingly unstructured and laid-back. I have been liberally indulging in a variety of Alton Brown recipes (pizza, shrimp ravioli, pan-fried chicken, man-burgers, pancakes) - we even bought a cast-iron skillet for $30 since Alton said we had to. I don't end up wanting to make everything he does on "good eats", but I will be attempting corned beef as soon as my saltpeter from amazon.com arrives. That's all for now.