An old friend/coworker recently emailed me asking how things were with the family and myself. I replied with an exceptionally long email, and decided I should post excerpts here, for others who might have the same questions... Click the READ MORE link for the rest of the details...

Regarding Halloween this year:
Last year only about a dozen or so
kids came to the door, and my wife had bought a LOT of candy. So this year, I
just bought one large bag from Costco. Well. we actually ran out after about
the 30th or 40th visitor!
In just the past year, a lot of new families have moved into the area, so
that's probably why the significant change. This is/was an older
neighborhood, about 40 years old, and most of the people were in their
70's/80s. So they've been moving out to retirement communities and selling
their house on this very hot market, and families like ours have been moving
in. So we hit it at a great time of transition for what is normally a very
non-changing, nice families, neighborhood. ;-);-)

Kids are doing great. William (9, be 10 in December), is in his second year of Kungfu, is in chess club, has become fanatical about role playing gaming (non-computer) since I introduced all three kids to it recently, and
I'm trying to keep him from going overboard on that. ;-);-)
He's now using email between family members, and loves playing multi-player game classics such as Warcraft 2 and Diablo. All three kids are totally addicted to Neverwinter Nights. William read The Hobbit last year in 2nd
grade. He's now started the Lord of the Rings. He was dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween today.

I'm going to post Halloween pics shortly today on
my site.

He prefers to be sedentary, so I kind of have to push him to do physical stuff, but he's really good about doing Kungfu every day. He's a bit of a pessimist, and that may be a bit my fault, but we're working
on it. ;-);-)

He's struggling with OCD and anxiety issues, but doing ok in school. We're working with counselors to help him with that. I've been teaching them meditation and breathing techniques, and those are slowly sinking in.
He is most content "playing in his imagination" in his head, reading, playing video games and watching tv, and role playing gaming (paper and dice).

Brennan (7) is being active as always, despite his asthma. We tried him in
Kungfu this summer, but he kept goofing off, so we pulled him (much against
his wishes) until he's a little more mature to behave. ;-);-) He's been close to
whooping my tail in Warcraft, and is acing Neverwinter Nights.
He's good at being active, and helping around the house, riding his bike,
inline skating, scooter, running (despite asthma), and more. He's struggling
with controlling his temper, which has had him in trouble sometimes, but he's
making progress. He's a huge optimist, very positive, and loves people. He
loves role playing gaming and games, and a little tv, but he's most happy
being active, playing with others, going outdoors, mountain biking, and most
of all doing stuff with daddy. (as they all love). ;-);-) Brennan is a real
"doer" who expresses his emotions of the moment very strongly. He love
cuddling the most.

Drake (5) is the youngest, probably the toughest (out of necessity), and will
probably be the largest of the three (burly and tall). He is a real
"watcher", and shy with people at first, but very outgoing once he gets to
know them. He's actually doing very well with WC2 and NWN. He also loves
paper and dice RPGing, He does a GREAT orc voice, I should record it, it's a
hoot from a 5 year old. He also has a bit of a "Dark side". Long before he
played video games or role playing, he always wanted to play "the bad guy",
while his brothers were the good guys. I'm not sure how much of that was just
the other two putting him there, but he fully embraces it now, though I try
to dissuade him. ...
He enjoys rough housing with his brothers and others (they all love that of
course). Loves hid and seek and tag. Likes to watch tv waaaaaaay too much.
Enjoys moderate hikes and some bike riding, though not as much as Brennan,
much more than William does.
He's doing well in private school in Kindergarten, he'll be joining his
brothers at Evergreen next year. Evergreen is one of the "best" public schools in the Mead district, and the Mead district is the one of the "best" districts in the Spokane area (we kept our house selection to try to make sure they ended up in that school).
The private schools here aren't quite what I thought they should be from a private school
from them, as well as the expense, and Evergreen is an exceptional school, though I generally don't
like public schools.

Karina is going to school now taking her generals. She is thinking of becoming
a nurse possibly. But it's early yet since she just started this Fall
quarter, taking a course in precollege map to work up to her requisites. She
is very excited today because she had the best grade on the midterm test
today. And the teacher pointed it out and praised her and all, I think she
said she had a 96% on the test.
Woohoo! You go girl! ;-P

She's doing the "craft fair" thing on the weekends, She registered booths at
the three largest fairs in the area. Her website is www.karina.org, the
undeveloped catalog is dev.karina.org
I'm trying to take pics of all her stuff, especially her great angels, before
it's all sold off. She says this is the last year she's going to do this.
We'll see... ;-P
She has been taking Kungfu on and off the past year as well. And she just
started going back to the gym this week. Her weight is still not good (380
lbs). But her health is better than 2 years ago, even though she skips Kungfu
and working out for weeks or months at a time. She can kick quite high with
good balance, and woe betide anyone who tries to mug her without a
weapon. ;-P
She's been reading fanatically the new Robert Jordan (11th) book, and the
Harry Potter book she recently finished, after re-reading all the books
leading up to both.
She's made lots of friends here, and is active with them frequently.

I'm acting as "Mr Mom" now. I control the finances, groceries/shopping, and do
most of the cooking. We are eating much healthier now, but eating well too (I cook a lot
of gourmet and other recipes). I'm enjoying this (quasi-retired) still busy,
but less insanely intense life style. Though it's still overwhelming with school on top of everything else.
I've posted some of what I've been
cooking on the website.
I love it here in Spokane. Though my heart is always with Northern California,
I'd say this is the closest "2nd" I've been to in the USA (about 25+ states
I've been in for any brief or prolonged periods). The economy is much more affordable than
CA, the city is large enough to have all the necessities, but not TOO large. It has an excellent education and medical infrastructure (multiple major hospitals and suppoorting structure, two community colleges, several other colleges, and universities).

We feel like we almost live in the woods (which is a good thing from my view), even
though we're only 3 minutes from the malls and such, and everything is within
15-30 minutes. Surrounded by trees and life. Since most of the trees are
evergreens, it stays green year round, rather than the brown "ugliness" of
winter in other places. There is a "winter" of actual snow and ice, but very
moderate compared to Utah, Idaho, Nevada. Very temperate summer (actually
cooler than the Bay Area many times by a few degrees). Over 100+ lakes within
100 miles in any direction. Awesome outdoors life here.
Reasonable "cultural culture" here. Though certainly room for improvement there.
I'm hopefully getting my Internet radio show approved on a community FM radio
station here in the next few weeks. I've donated streaming for their signal
as well. Check them out here:
www.kyrs.org
You'll see the streaming link leads to one of my servers.
I don't agree with much of their politics, but I agree TOTALLY with their
approach to free speech, civil liberties, etc.

I have started being trained by the Kungfu studio to become an instructor in
their style. I'll be starting with the kids in a few months, and adults after
a year or so.
Physical therapy is going well. I "graduated" from the first level, and am now
at the 2nd tier, which is more a "Sport training" level.
I'm VERY sore from the first Friday session, but no injuries, and I did handle Kungfu yesterday just fine. No injuries, just soreness, is a VERY good thing, and a welcome change to the pattern of pain and injuries of the past years.

There's a third more
intense program from PT for "professional sports level". I don't know that I'll go to that third level or not.

My goal is to be at Kungfu a
minimum of 3 days a week for 2-3 hours per day. Eventually maybe 4-5 days per
week.

Also a therapist who used to teach Karate, says, when I'm ready he'll hook me up with teaching the
children in the Children's Asthma center of Sacred Heart hospital as
well, which he apparently did years ago.

School is chugging along. I've never liked academia, and have always struggled
in school, except for my computer science degree. But I'm trying to make the
best of it.
I'm full time this quarter taking:
Overview of Therapeutic Recreation
Intercultural Communications
Medical Terminology

I've been chiseling away at my required 1500 hours of volunteer/work related
work for the prerequisite before I can start the 16 weeks internship as part
of the degree requirements.
I'm majoring as a Recreational Therapist, and minoring in Music for music
therapy.
I've been learning the African Djembe drum, in addition to continuing with the
Native American wood flute, guitar, bass, harmonica. I've been taking on and
off voice lessons to try to get better with vocals too.

I LOVE my online broadcasts, but due to a busy schedule I just cut it back
from 3x / week to 1x / week, in the hopes that I'll be doing the Radio
broadcasts with KYRS 1x /week as well.
My site for all this is:
www.thesyntheticzenshow.com
or
www.synthzen.com

My show time is now:
Sundays 4 am to 6 am UTC/GMT (that's 10 pm to Midnight Saturdays for Pacific
time).
I've been working on my two Broncos. One is lifted 6", with 32" tires. It's an
awesome off road beast, but a POS other than that. That's the black one. :-p:-p
The red one is "a more civilized" Bronco. It's a great family mobile, that I
can take them most anywhere, and it's in great shape, though it's needs a
little work.
It's going to cost me about $200.00 to replace the melted/burned parts on the
motorcycle. :-):-)
Luckily my Zaurus wasn't in the bag, as it usually is, else that would have
been a $930.00 handheld lost. But I did lose all three of my Kungfu uniforms,
and my primary eyeglasses, as well as my whole quarter's work so far and
their sylabi (?). But, could have been a LOT worse. I'll post the full
version of my stupidity in that event at some point as an update to that same
article already on line.
I've been working on the house, the landscape.
I'm still working on a (way overdue) database project for a client, for extra money for my "useful gadgets" such as the Zaurus.

I'm Game Mastering a role playing gaming group twice per month (http://eagroup.merp.com) based in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth.

So, that's probably WAAAAAy more information than you wanted. And if you
actually managed to read through it all, you should get a reward for
patience. :-P :-P

But, that gives an overview of the highlights of current events for our clan.
Cheers!