Last year, it was Benjamin and Mason at their post, watching Sam get on the bus:
This year, Ruby and Benjamin stand (sit?) guard as Mason kills time before heading out to the bus stop:
I hadn't intended the timing, but the photos were taken almost exactly a year apart.
Next year, it will just be Ruby and I, as Benjamin boards his kindergarten bus. Brandy attended the orientation the other night. We're looking forward to Benjamin's full-day adventure, in part because we know he's ready and is going to love it, but also because Brandy and I will have larger blocks of uninterrupted home-office time.
As any parent knows, though, this is a bittersweet realization. Next thing you know, the fledglings will be fleeing the nest more frequently and for longer periods of time. I have no idea how the time passes us by so quickly.
Gratification will not be instantaneous, however. Even at a pace of between 15 and 25 installations per month, it will be 2012 before each of Southwest's more than 540 jets are outfitted. Nevertheless, it is another reason to put Southwest near the top of a business traveler's preferred airline list.
As The Cranky Flier points out, wifi fits Southwest's business model and passenger culture. Seat yourself, and be in charge of your own entertainment or productivity.
For Southwest, this is the perfect technology. They’ve long avoided inflight entertainment because it adds cost. Airlines haven’t been able to charge for overhead movies for a long time, and in-seat video is costly. It’s not just the content but also the weight and the extra pieces that can break in each seat. It’s just not a Southwest way of doing things. But wifi is different. It does add a little weight, but it only gets installed in one place so you don’t run the risk of having a problem at every seat.
More importantly from a business standpoint, Southwest's testing on a limited number of flights has shown customers are willing to pay for a wi-fi perk. There's been no announcement yet for what the pricing will be, though. Southwest promises an answer to that question in Q2 2010.
Introduce a mileage tax to make up for lost revenue caused by fuel-efficient drivers paying less in gas taxes? Your tax dollars are hard at work as state and federal officials ponder that very issue, according to today's Washington Post.
The article outlines a few of the debates that will rage at our -- quite literal -- expense:
Invasion of privacy (not that any of us with E-Z Pay or similar transponders have paid much attention to that until now)
More taxes in general (do we really think the gas tax will be supplanted?)
Should more efficient vehicles get a tax break (or the reverse, i.e. The Hummer Tax)?
My personal objection, though, is rooted in the double-speak regarding the motivation. What is guiding our transportation policy these days? Are we striving to reduce greenhouse gases, or are we motivated merely by the shortfall in federal highway system's maintenance budget?
One of the points made in the article is fewer people are driving these days, and the drivers that remain drive more fuel efficient cars. Car makers, albeit influenced by government regulation, are in turn striving to build and sell more fuel efficient cars -- some that could reach 100- and 200-miles per gallon efficiency.
So we will have the ability to drive farther and more efficiently, but will get penalized for that distance with a mileage tax?
Here's an idea. Want to keep us off the road? Let the highway system go to seed.
Granted, I'm the last one to heed in this debate. I commute 600 miles round trip twice a month, and there's very little that could be done in the near future to provide an alternative or prevent the trip altogether. But if there's going to be a mileage tax, I'd feel a lot better supporting it if I knew it was improving long-term transportation options.
Benjamin descended the stairs and asked his brother, "Where's Mom and Dad?"
"I don't know," Mason answered, his head buried in a video game.
I called out from an adjacent room, letting both boys know where I was, and also replied that Mom was outside, walking Ruby.
"Oooooohhhhhhh," Benjamin said, in a resonant fashion."So that's why it is so quiet down here."
(This was from the boy who minutes earlier was providing our Sunday-morning, newspaper-reading soundtrack by singing a medley of "We Will Rock You" and "Pants on the Ground.")
My oldest son, Sam, recently placed second in his school's geography bee, among several other accomplishments in the month of January. One of the stepping stones to his geographic success was knowing which state's residents have an average commute longer than 28 minutes:
I'd never have guessed that one corrrectly. Commuter Son #1 knows more than Commuter Daddy! To be fair to my commuter knowledge, this question came during a map-aided, visual-clue portion of the program. Still, you have to like that the apple is not falling that far from the commuter tree.
I know all this thanks to Brandy capturing some of the key moments on video. I completely missed out on attending the geography bee in person. I was smack dab in the middle of a training session that I could not reschedule, given some pressing deadlines at the time. The irony was I was 20 minutes down the road, and not the usual 300 miles away on one of my regular excursions. My proximity made the miss all the more excruciating.
One of the benefits of my half-home-office, half-on-the-road work situation is a predominant ability to arrange my schedule so I can attend these sorts of events in person. Sometimes, when work is at its most stressful, being able to attend the kids' special moments in school and elsewhere keeps me motivated -- and frankly working harder. An hour missed during the normal business hours usually translates to two hours or more worked after the kids go to bed.
Missing the geography bee made me 0-for-3 over the course of a few weeks, though. Just before Christmas, I had also arrived late to both Mason's and Benjamin's holiday performances on separate days.
Thankfully, with a major launch out of the way at work, I've rejoined the family. Over the last few weeks, I've attended two band concerts, taken Mason to a previously unscheduled basketball game, and even found time to walk with Mason and our dog, Ruby, to school on a couple of mornings.
Hopefully, I'll continue to keep my inner Dud at bay for a while.
" and "
