JamesAsh.com

My son has been looking forward today since early in the school year. Today was the sixth grade NASA field trip. He’s on student council at school and they have been doing fundraisers for months to help get the cost down.

The event started with a lockdown last night at 8pm. They were all going to sleep at school to make it easier to make the 4:30 AM departure time. Unfortunately, he came down with a fever at 6pm. You can feel the panic in the air. A virus has been going around his class that started with fever and was ending with the runs. That’s not what you want when you are going to be stuck on a bus for 5 hours each way.

My son is always the optimist. We decided that if his fever, which was over 101 at the time, was gone at 3:50AM, I would take him to school so he could catch the bus. He believed his fever would be gone, but it wasn’t. It was only 99.6. He was distraught. I don’t blame him, but it puts you in a tough spot as a parent.

I found an article online that has some tips for what you can do to ease the pain of disappointment.

First, listen to your child. It provides them with comfort and everyone likes to be heard, even as a child. Second, share your personal experiences. Your child needs to know that they aren’t alone. Next, offer perspective to your child. Help them see the bigger picture without saying things like “It’s not that bad…” or “It could be worse.” Finally, be understanding. It might take some time for your child to get over his or her disappointment. That’s ok.

Being a parent isn’t always easy, but it’s a choice we made. I hope this helps you manage those times where your child is unconsolable.

It’s probably not much of a shock, but I don’t care how my yard looks. The same can’t be said for my neighbors. They spend hours each week meticulously mowing grass and trimming trees. For what? They spend all of their time inside. They don’t get to enjoy their handiwork.

Maybe the best thing to happen to me was my oldest son becoming old enough to be able to cut the grass for me. Today, I taught him how to use the grass bagging attachment to the push mower. I’ll admit that it does make the yard look better. The main thing is me not having to do it. I only pay him $10. I tried to lay out a plan for him to show him that if he saved his money, he could buy a car when he is old enough to drive. It didn’t stick.

I took some time trimming trees. It’s fun to hold something that could be used to remove a finger. I’ll have to get a fresh pair for interrogations when my daughter is old enough to date. “Use those fingers to remove anything and I’ll remove those fingers.” That’s got nothing to do with yard work though. That’s fun. Cutting grass isn’t.

The excitement of the day was finding a turtle in our backyard. Of course, my kids were all afraid of him like he is a dragon. My kids are scared of everything.

But the neighbors should be happy. The yard is looking nice, for this week anyway.

You read the headline correct. I have begun the process of returning The Zephyr to the internet airwaves. For those unaware, The Zephyr is MY modern rock radio station. I ran it successfully for a couple of years before shutting it down amid the birth of a newborn, uncertain royalty rates, and some internet trouble.

Things have advanced from a technological standpoint these days. I can now rent a remote computer that has the audio software on it to run my station, meaning that I won’t be bothered by local power outages or the new AT&T U-verse data cap. Revenues are always the issue. How much am I going to have to pay out of my own pocket every month to keep this thing alive?

My hope/plan is to be able to build enough of a following that I can move my programming to a HD station locally. If nothing else, this will lower my streaming bill. I also feel like real internet radio in cars is around the corner in a very mainstream way. Now seems like as good of a time as any.

What do you think? Do you spend a lot of time flipping around your crappy radio dial? Is there a station out there that really does it for you? Is internet radio something that you enjoy?

This morning, my wife took the kids down to her dad’s house for a big family gathering. Her grandmother is advancing in years, and although still full of piss and vinegar, she’s no longer independent. She is headed to Florida to live in a retirement community that her daughter works for. That has to be a tough decision, but it is for the best and she will be well cared for.

I didn’t go.

I have some emotional flaw about family gatherings. First, we have always kept our families separate, so I don’t feel like my in-laws are MY family. That means I don’t feel the sense of obligation that I should feel. Second, these things are kind of depressing. Going back to my youth, I remember having gatherings for elderly people and then they would pass away soon after. It got to the point where I equated family gatherings with pending funerals, to the point that I would spend time praying that someone wouldn’t make it to the gathering or that the honoree wouldn’t pass away the next day.

It happened with both of my mother’s parents – one last gathering and then POOF. Gone. Emotionally damaged.

Perhaps that’s not the right way to be. We all have obligations, whether we like them or not. Too often, I shirk mine when it comes to family. I prefer to live solitary, but that’s not how social protocols work. You have to go.

I think I have mentioned in this space that it has been a number of years since I celebrated Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter with any kind of family outside of my wife and kids. Really, I can’t avoid them. I’m not sure what it will take for me to move on and rejoin society. Maybe this year. Or maybe not.

After writing at a blistering pace (for me) last week, I was held up this week penning my masterpiece: How To Save 104 The X, the modern rock station in Baton Rouge. It’s not without flaws, but it is the only modern rock station that we have. Without it, the quality of concerts will suffer.

It baffles me that modern rock stations always seem to falter in Baton Rouge. They perform respectably in New Orleans and Lafayette. Our demographics are not that dissimilar. I’m not going to get into pointing fingers as to why Baton Rouge fails and simply say this: modern rock,a format that needs to break music to survive, is hindered most when it is allowed to become stale.

After spending 5 days on what now reads like a business plan for succeeding with modern rock in the Baton Rouge market, I learn in the Daily Report that the station is being flipped to news/talk. I’m not sure that the ratings will be better, but I am sure that it will breached to get advertisers. The problems it will face are simple. It’s not on a very good signal. It is not being built around quality local talent. The top syndicated talent is already on the air on the market leading AM station.

I guess this means that Baton Rouge will get Glenn Beck on the air. I don’t even know who else is an option. Rush and Hannity are on WJBO. That’s a tough block to beat. But afternoon drive is open. Mornings are a possibility too. Who knows? Maybe it’s the right call. But its a sad day for music lovers.

It’s been a long time since I have been in school – over 10 years, in fact. That didn’t stop me from having to pull an all-nighter on Wednesday to help my son finish his science fair project. I’m not sure how we arrived at that point, other than my wife being a procrastinator of legendary proportions. We started on the project in January. There was no school last week, so we could have finished everything then. None of that happened though.

When I say we, I mean my wife, my son, and myself. You can’t trust a sixth grader to get a project of that size completed on his own accord. It’s just not realistic unless the kid is some kind of super nerd. According to his abstract, he thought he “has seen holograms and thought hey, I could be a young person that could make one.” We obviously have our work cut out for us.

Over a month ago, we made a series of holograms to test out our experiment and get ready for the real thing. That revealed a two-fold problem. First, our idea of using temperature of the specimen as the control was shot because condensation was messing up our images. Second, the holograms don’t last forever. They started turning brown after a couple of weeks. This caused us to have to rework our premise, as well as delay the real experiments to try to maintain a good level of quality for the actual science fair.

To make a long story short, because let’s face it, no one gives a rip about my kid’s science fair, instead of using the week to get all of the poster boards assembled, it sat around.  The experiments were done, so we had the results, but a lot of things needed to be assembled and placed on the board.  Assembling the board that you see on the right took until midnight.  Was it worth it? Nope.  We didn’t win the science fair. I’m just hoping for an A at this point.