The Family Xmas Letter, 2024

Nice shot, Shannon!

Ho ho Hawaii! This year's Family Xmas Letter is coming to you from Kauai, the most gorgeous of all the Pacific islands according to your author who has only seen this one and that just once before in...oh gee, 2011. At the time, Gideon wasn't even crawling but used his magical combination of alluring and sticky to catch a lizard (maybe more than one, in which case, not unlikely, he ate the others before we found out). Felix, then almost four years old, was up for any adventure, land or sea, and crashed his kayak as a direct result of overconfidence (possibly not his overconfidence--details, details). In retrospect, our boys are little changed.

Anyway, we're here, avoiding the deadly surf all day and staying up listening to dog riots all night, but damn it looks good (see vacation photos, below). As for the rest of 2024, it was another one of those skibidi years in which we moved, lived in various flavors of chaos, watched our finances go haywire, and yet somehow got great things done individually and as a team but mostly individually. Read on!

QUBIT

Qubit, sock hunter

A dog doesn't change much from year to year, but fortunately for desperate Letter writers dog science runs ahead, sniffing out exciting new findings. This year, the discovery (thank you alma mater) that canis lupus familiaris process olfactory inputs using the vision centers in their woofy brains: those deep snuffles of mystery spots on the ground are the equivalent of you or I standing enraptured in front of Wheatfield with Crows...and then peeing on it. When not vandalizing priceless art you will find Qubit running back and forth in the yard in fruitless pursuit of squirrels and raccoons, the latter of which she has somehow never before noticed. I guess some dog things do change and that's it.

TALIA

Open wide!

Talia, aka "low-key funny joke mom" (reference lost, sorry, it's probably something about how she says "I get jokes" when she doesn't get a joke but who knows), spent most of the year managing our house rebuild which, from the outside, looked like a lot of back and forth to Home Depot. A tough job, it also required trips to tile shops as far afield as Lisbon. At several points along the way Talia recharged by indulging in extreme exertion, including a week riding to LA, many days hiking the Grand Canyon, and the most miserable hour of her life getting a parking pass for the Nāpali Coast (seriously, much, much harder than the trek itself). After all this she is still afraid of riding her bike downhill but has gotten well used to writing checks with a lot of zeroes.

FELIX

Air pushups

Felix, in a largely successful attempt to get us accustomed to a home without him, has been increasingly absent these past many months. Indeed, weeks go by when you'd never know he existed if it weren't for the near-continuous stream of tardy notifications sent from the high school attendance office. Still, we've managed to pick up a point here and there, mostly while picking up laundry from his floor. We know you snort-laughed back in 2020 when we commented that Felix was majoring in Bed Wars, a reference to his at-the-time-and-ever-since-then-also excessive gaming. This year he's gone pro, having been invited to take on the role of alpha tester for the ski simulator Grand Mountain Adventure. It took some effort to convince him not to include this "achievement" in his college applications, especially given the nearly unbelievable amount of other activities he had to write about, many of which these parents at least had never heard of. Happily, all (?) that work is now done and we expect to hear back from colleges shortly before it's time to write the 2025 Family Xmas Letter.

GIDEON

Arrest me

Last year we blushingly reported on Felix's first appearance in a newspaper, and this year Gideon tops that with two such appearances! Unfortunately--and here is where the blushing really comes in handy--both were in police logs. Gid, in his rap persona as "Lil' Jit," has twice now committed trespass in a quest for the perfect album cover shot. The latter instance ended with him being escorted off the Richmond Bridge by the CHP, which would have done wonders for his street cred if only someone had gotten a shot of it. Gideon is no longer allowed to dress like a terrorist but we treasure the shot above as one of the rare ones in which his clothes fit. In non-perp news, Gideon graduated middle school this year and, not to be difficult or anything, decided to go to the other high school, you know, the one that is a thirty minute bike ride away rather than just around the corner. This new school may or may not be the better choice academically, but either way it doubles the amount of parental email we have to ignore. To break up his commute, Gideon got a job at a high end importer of balsamico condimento located between home and school (the more you order the harder he has to work, so go for it!) and is now making big cheese. We imagine this work will at some point find its way into his music, assuming he can find a rhyme for "vinegar."

AIEC

In paradise you never run out of grapefruit

Sick of being called "Mr. Shuldiner" by police officers and other unwelcome callers, Alec renamed himself AIec and got a new phone, both of which turned out to be gimmicks lacking any noteworthy AI features. In a major compromise, he made himself a new pair of cutoffs that are marginally longer than the pair shown above. Having less pants feels like progress, but in general he finds everything else goes very slowly. AIec is still employed but had an excellent tanning season despite this, again, as shown above.

THE HOUSE

Not done

Is done if you are willing to use cardboard as carpeting and plywood for kitchen counters which we are so again, officially, it is done. For details, consult the relevant blog posts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 to be written.

THE VACATIONS

As mentioned above, we ran off to Kauai for vacation, a transparent and not-so-cheap attempt to win the best annual photo album contest in which we are all competing all the time. Below, our entry for the year, with an occasional shot of construction so you know what it was we were vacationing from.

That's all from 2024, a year in which politicians reached new lows while atmospheric carbon levels reached new highs. We'll see you in 2025 which, we confidently predict, will again be a year in which politicians reach new lows while atmospheric carbon levels reach new highs. Stay sane, stay safe, and stay sane!

Rebuilding, part 4

Construction? What construction?

If, like Qubit, you are equally at home everywhere (or, to be more precise, equally at home everywhere Talia is) then living in a construction site is no big deal. Likewise if you are Felix or Gid, both of whom have only limited attention to spare for their non-digital living spaces. But for the adults managing things the experience is...trying. There is the hassle of running a household when the house itself is continuously changing around you, the disruption to your work-at-home schedule, and, most annoying, the frequent and not entirely predictable presence of unwelcome construction workers on a Saturday morning. The price of progress, I suppose.

Progressive

And much progress there has been. When we moved back in mid-August the boys had bedrooms and that was about it. Talia and I slept in the barn. Without functioning bathrooms we relied on the public toilets at the nearby Town Hall and showered at the pool. Our kitchen was a camp stove and dorm fridge out behind the garage. There was electricity in a few spots in the house, and some overhead lights, but all of that was turned on or off via a single switch in the excitingly unfinished fuse box.

Bath to be

Since then, almost every day has brought some new element of normal domesticity--another working toilet, a real bed, proper flooring--with it. It took a couple of months, but we now have mostly complete bathrooms, fully functional lighting and electricity, and, as of yesterday, heating. The front doors have been delivered and are nearly ready to be installed, the kitchen is in progress with major appliances scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, and all of the exterior and most of the interior has been given its final coat of paint. Closet doors, window dressing, kitchen countertops, and doorknobs are all needed, and there is much work to do outside the house (a rebuilt pergola, a restored yard, and whatever we are going to do about our disaster of a driveway), but the end is in sight.

Early signs of normality

Are we happy with the results, such as they are? Oh yes. The boys' bathroom, and in particular their shower stall, is great, and ours, nearly done, will be too. The wood finishes are all lovely, not least the domestic hickory that now covers our floors. Our reduced bedroom feels somehow larger than our old one and, to our surprise, accommodates our king bed quite nicely. The house passed through the late-summer heatwaves comfortably even without airco, and we face the winter with confidence thanks to demonstrably excellent insulation and what we trust will be functional gutters.

Finalizing exterior paint selections

More pictures to come in what should be the closing post of this series (part 1, part 2, part 3).

Mayor for a day

When you live on Court Lane I guess ruling comes naturally. Felix, while not a king, has recently become the mayor, or rather a mayor, for the day, the first such Fairfax has had. He applied, he was selected, and, after some coaching, he was handed the gavel and told to run the show. And what a show it was! In typical Fairfax fashion, and very much for better and for worse, the Town Council, together with many of our neighbors, inducted policemen, celebrated a variety of initiatives and people, got an earful about our current homeless crisis, and on and on for over four hours. Despite a lot of mayor-directed (regular mayor, not mayor-for-a-day) sniping and what I'm sorry to report is a typical level of participant animosity, Felix maintained his trademark poise and kept things moving. Fans online and off, delighted by his pro-clapping platform, are calling for him to return, and certainly he enjoyed the experience, but whereas there's no time to get a new candidate on the November ballot and whereas he has upcoming college applications and whereas he isn't ready for his Calculus test and whereas he should walk the dog, it is hereby proclaimed that four hours of mayoring is enough for now.

Rebuilding, part 3

Dining in

We're back! Yes, as of this past week we have returned to our old-now-new home, or, more precisely, to the barn behind it, the house itself not yet having a kitchen, bathrooms, electricity, or, in most places, a floor. That makes it sound worse than it is: all that will come in rapid order and the barn, already reasonably comfortable, has been updated with a handy new workspace.

New use for old kitchen parts

The boys are both away this weekend, but will return to their old bedrooms, now with fresh coats of paint for them to dirty. On Monday the tiler comes and by the end of the week they will even have a fully functioning bathroom. Floors go in the week after, with further painting, trim, tiles in the back bathroom, and all the rest to follow. By September I expect we will all be living in the house, which should by then be fully functional...barring the kitchen. Originally not in scope, we are now slated to rebuild that most expensive of rooms entirely. The plan is 99% complete, the appliances almost nearly very sure to having been chosen, the cabinet boxes laid out, the carpenter reserved...October?

A small time capsule for future renovators

It is lovely being here, even amidst the on-going construction, and very satisfying to be entering the end phase of this project. We left in December and work has been going on with hardly a pause since then. There have been a few wrong turns, but for the most part we've made our decisions on time, coordinated well, sailed through all the many inspections, and kept our finances in order, strained though they may be. At the same time we have seen more than a couple of similar projects around us get red-tagged, and have heard any number of construction horror stories from our subcontractors and neighbors. Thank you, Talia, for keeping us safe from all that.

Excited to turn this on!

The site today looks very much like this, and the rains will come before too long. New fences and fields are needed, and we're still debating the exterior color scheme and how best to rebuild the back pergola. There's a patio that needs refinishing and some drainage still to be dug. Talia wants a garden and I want a grapefruit tree. There's a small world outside the house and that needs rebuilding, too. Let's hope the money and the energy hold out just a little while longer.

Rebuilding, part 2

The project manager

In part 1 we explained how we came to make the mess shown above. Since then that pile of former foundation has been carted away, and probably half a dozen similar loads as well--there's no getting around the fact that construction generates a huge amount of garbage. Nor that it consumes a lot of material. But to what end?

Brand new back half

Our original plan was to rebuild the back of the house, the front porch, and the roof, leaving the middle of the house (kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, bathroom) largely untouched. Along the way, however, we realized a few things:

• That moving into a new house with an old kitchen (we had planned to upgrade the equipment but not the layout) would make Talia sad.
  
• That having a new bathroom that we continued to share with the two boys (because their bathroom doesn't have a shower) would make both of us sad.
• That having our chimney collapse would make everyone sad especially if it killed someone.
  

So now every room is involved in reconstruction to some degree, if only because we've also decided to replace all the windows, all the siding, all the wiring, and now all the plumbing even in the old part of the house.

Taking down the chimney

I haven't the courage to look at the budgeting spreadsheet so am free to fantasize about the outcome. My fantasies are these:

• That I will not hear the coffee grinder in the morning (though coffee will be waiting for me when I do get up), nor the kids roistering off to school.
• That our bedclothes will now and then be aired on a deck conveniently adjacent to my bedroom.
  
• That my bathroom will be warm and lovely and mostly available when I want it, with my towel where I left it.
  
• That I will not experience a wave of panic when a guest asks if they can use the facilities.
• That when cooking we will not be poisoned by noxious gasses and particulates.
• That when the air outside is full of noxious gasses and particulates we will be safe from them inside. And that regardless of the air outside, the air inside will not be freezing cold nor sweatingly hot.
  
• That should I leave a record on the turntable it will not melt in the hot sun.

That the house will now be unlikely to catch fire (and sprinklered if it does), will stop subsisting into the earth, will run with relatively low operational carbon, and will not offend the neighbors are all good things, too.

Bye bye fireplace, hello big windows

I am also excited for Talia, who will have something more like the kitchen she deserves, a proper office, a luxurious bath, and more closet space to use in that very special way she uses closet space.

In part 3 I hope to share pictures of a largely complete project, and I hope to do so soon.