I’ve been an early bloomer throughout my life. For Christmas in the fifth grade, my dad gave me an electric razor. Naturally, I didn’t know how to use it properly and wound up giving myself the razor burn of my life on the first shave. Technology hasn’t been much different. When friends or family want advice on some new gadget, they ask me. Now, with this whole social networking thing, I’m happy to report that I am the slow guy in town.

In Russian schools, people go through their entire primary schooling experience with one set of classmates, assuming their family doesn’t move. The Russian word for your section of a grade is odnoklassniki. Odnoklassniki.ru was launched in 2006 and has quickly become the de facto social site in the Russian-speaking world. Anastasia has been on it for awhile, but with her mom here visiting us, she has had a little extra time to spend chatting with her girlhood friends. The thought crossed my mind that maybe I should enter the English and Russian social networks at the same time, so I asked my wife what she thought. The answer was a big fat no on both accounts. I decided to go along with her halfway. As of yet, I’m not on odnoklassniki.

Yesterday, I finally joined the masses, according to my brother, and got a Facebook account. Technically, I’ve had one for over a year, but never visited it or anything. Part of the reason I haven’t wanted to get into the MySpace or Facebook phenomena is that it seems like it would waste a lot of time. Besides, I like owning whatever it is that I do. With this site, for example, I can make a backup of everything and be assured it is reasonably safe. With Facebook, Google, or anything else in the cloud, I don’t know for sure. Chances are that things are backed up much more regularly and better than I would, but still there is this nagging deal of ownership in the back of my mind.

My Facebook strategy: one account for work, one for personal stuff. I realize at the outset that it is impossible to segregate one’s life like that, but I’m going to try. (Generally speaking, I’m actually in the majority by having two logins.) When I want to kick back and do some facebook-stalking on my old friends, I don’t necessarily want to see my work associates’ shameless self-promotion of their wares. To (hopefully ) decrease the time investment, I’m not going to ask anybody to be my friend, but wait and see how long it takes for people to notice me.

Twitter. I like the idea, but need to get my personal prose back up to par. For that, I much prefer the blog format. However, a few weeks back I opened up an account for my son and future daughter. I figure once Mommy heads back to work, it will be nice for her to keep tabs on what we’re doing. As Alexei starts talking, it will hopefully become something he looks forward to doing…some form of early literacy, I suppose you could say.

The upper limit of friends I would ever have ten years down the road is what my brother Trevor has now. As of this writing, he has 700. I am not he, and likely have fewer real friends than that, but that’s beside the point. Realistically, I’d guess that by the beginning of summer I’ll have somewhere in the range of 100-200 ‘friends.’

At the end of Day One, I had eight friend requests. In addition to that, I asked the two brothers that hadn’t noticed me yet to grant me friend status to boost my visibility. I’m waiting to see how long it will take my father to notice me; I’ll give him to the end of the week. A few months ago he got Facebook and quickly became a junkie. My mom got a surprise from some friends when they asked her if everything was okay between my father and her. She had no idea what they were talking about…it turns out that my dad listed himself as ‘in a relationship’ because my mother isn’t on Facebook for him to say he’s married to her.

Probably nobody cares (I know I don’t…); here is my friend tally:

• Day 1: +8
• Day 2: +10
• Day 3: +8
• Day 4: +7
• Day 5: +2
• Day 6: +3
• Day 7: +2
• Week 1: 46
• Day 8: +3
• Day 9: +2
• Day 10: +1
• Day 11: +1
• Day 12: +2
• Day 13: +0
• Day 14: +0
• Week 2 = 55
• Month 1 = 60
• Month 2 = 69
• Month 3 = 77
• Month 6 = 96
• Year 1 =137

Note: I’ll be updating this post periodically over the course of the next year.

Edit: It turns out I was wrong about how long it took my dad to notice me. It was one week and one day.

Edit: And there you have it…the final tally is 137. That many people asked me to be their friend over the past year. Although if I count the number of people on my business facebook account, that number jumps to 152.

I just watched this three times in the last ten minutes. It gets funnier with each viewing. Maybe I should go do some work now…

If the three grand price tag was dropped by about two grand, the over ten pound heft was reduced, and the primary screen’s size was halved, I might be in the market. Then again, I don’t think anybody would take their boots off for that.

My Tuesday began much like any other, with the exception being that I was actually semi-productive. After Mommy and Babuskha went to the library with Alexei, I set down at my workstation and was in a little bit of a groove. I kept checking the time every twenty minutes or so. Then, a few minutes before noon, I closed the curtains and flipped on the tube.

Aretha Franklin was midsong. For probably the next two hours, I stood and watched the inauguration. The formalities were really no different than others I’ve seen, but the crowd (or, rather, the size of it) was pretty amazing. For the duration of the inauguration coverage, I flipped between BET and WMPT. The difference in perspective was refreshing. Probably the wife and mother-in-law could have done with a little less channel flipping, but, hey, it is my TV, right?

The slip up during President Obama’s swearing-in was interesting. Commentators later in the day explained that Chief Justice John Roberts was apologizing for rearranging the words. Of course no cameras were trained on him. [Edit: In a rare, over-cautionary move President Obama has retaken the oath.]

In the fifth grade I remember watching the Clinton inauguration precedings. That was probably the last full inauguration I watched. Somewhat etched in my mind from that inauguration was the Inaugural Poem written and delivered by Maya Angelou. Understandably, I was looking forward to the poem portion of the ceremony this time around. I can’t say that I was thoroughly disappointed; I suppose I need to read the poem for myself at some point to make that decision. It may simply be a case where the composer is not the most qualified conductor. Dr. Elizabeth Alexander is the only person who could write her poem, but far from the best to deliver it. (It appears I’m not the only one to come to this conclusion…)

Poor poet performance complete, the benediction was amazing. Where Dr. Alexander was overcareful with her enunciation to the point of really shooting herself in the leg, Reverend Joseph Lowery threw all pronunciation guides in the toilet and preached his prayer. The prayer really had everything, for me. As he approached the “Amen,” the humorous jab at pigmentation differences really cemented the whole ceremony…until I caught some BET commentary a few moments later. In the words of the BET news-anchor, the opening phrase of the benediction was a direct quote from the Negro National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing. The juxtaposition of the guttural plea from this verse against the entire context in which the prayer was delivered was enough to make me mentally step back and say, “whoa.” For what it is worth, many people took offense at this prayer.

After the MPT coverage completed, they reran a late night interview from a day or two ago with Maya Angelou. She, at least in that interview, appeared to be at the stage in life where eyes are no longer important. I’ve met one other person like that in my life — ehead. The person is talking to you, fully engaged, yet their eyes are closed. Every few minutes when they do open for a gaze, it makes you really notice them. Eyes. They do a body good.

I never did get back into the work groove the day opened with. Some things were accomplished, but not with the speed they should have been. The tube stayed on for awhile longer watching the parade and what have you until some friends popped in around 5pm bearing fresh mushroom pie and not-so-fresh Jelly rings. The pie was delicious, especially given that it was supposedly going to show up at 3pm and I was hungry for it at that point. I thought the jelly rings were tasty too; though shortly after our company left Anastasia went ballistic about them. Well, not the rings themselves, but the worms living in them. Now I never saw a worm, but the eggs or whatever they were were pretty visible. Oh well, a bit of protein never hurt much, right?

On to a cocktail party the neighbors were throwing. We were clearly in the minority as most of the people were proceeding on to an inaugural ball of some sort. Alexei enjoyed playing with their balloons, drawing on the whiteboard, and eating bits of a cookie. He even let a few of the kids hug him goodbye.

Back in our little appointment, I felt drained. I had done virtually nothing all day but didn’t feel like doing anything else. Unfortunately, you can’t just go to bed at 7pm. I bathed the boy while the others ate. Then while Babushka did the dishes and Mommy put Alexei to bed, I flipped on the TV. Not sure what I wanted to watch, I flipped around and found a classic just starting on TCM. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner had just begun. To my amazement, Anastasia and her mom both sat down and watched the remainder of it with me.

There are things that, try as I might, I cannot imagine. One of them is being a black man in America. Reading and associating with educators has helped me realize that yes, President Obama’s feat is extraordinary and well worth the deserved attention it has received, but there is still a long road ahead until We Shall Overcome becomes we overcame. What then is my role in realizing this transition? How can I help? In the short term, the best thing I can do is see that my children and wife learn to see not a black man, but a man.

A few days ago a magazine for the neighbors a block up from us was accidentally left in our mailbox. I know nothing about the palette magazine, but the editorial on the back cover had a nice new year’s resolution list for the artist in all of us. Without any permission from columnist Diane Santarella, I give you her list:

1. Learn each month about one artist whom I am not familiar with.
2. Learn each month about one artist that I think I don’t like (opinion subject to change).
3. Listen to a style of music that I am unfamiliar with.
4. Become familiar with people who are “masters” in their field (other than art) and try to understand what qualities set them apart from their peers.
5. Figure out how to take a professional, print-ready digital photo of my artwork. (This may require recruiting some help. Try bribing an expert with food and paintings.)
6. Contact three new galeries about their submission requirements, and send them portfolios.
7. Schedule my studio time into my day planner as a regular appointment.
8. Take a friend to a museum and listen without comment or judgment to their observations.
9. Read a magazine about some sport or hobby that I have absolutely no interest or experience in and try to find the passion in, say, stamp collecting or fly-tying. (I’m not that fanatical and obsessive about art, am I?)
10. Read enough poetry to have a favorite poet (to start: Rilke, Oliver, Neruda, Stand, Angelou, Rumi).
11. Memorize a poem.

It seems to me that with a little bit of modification, these steps to betterment would work for any interest a person might have. The final sentence of the article really ties it all together quite nicely:

Take all this new mojo into the studio and paint like never before!

This afternoon Anastasia and I put a rough budget and calendar outline together for the new year. She has already written down her new years resolutions; now the ball is in my court. Maybe I’ll steal a few of the above in some way, shape, or form. The lovely thing about resolutions is that they are meant to be broken!

Women are amazing creatures, ain’t they?

The first day of this new year found me needing to work a little bit. While Anastasia and some of our friends were playing games in the afternoon, I was clicking away on my console in the room next door. Despite my best effort, I wasn’t ready to go ice skating with everybody at seven.

After much cajoling, I convinced the wifey to go ice skating without Alexei and me. The stipulations were that we show up to watch them skate for a little bit, I could not totally ignore Alexei while working, I could only work for 10 more minutes when we came home, I would not wake up really early the following morning, and, here’s the kicker, that I watch a movie with her after Alexei was in bed. Not too bad, huh?

The ice skating was fun. Now the rink was a bit ghetto, but not too shabby for the $4 price tag including rental. With Alexei nicely nestled down, we started to decide what to watch. She wanted to watch an episode of Mad Men. I was OK with that, but she originally said she wanted a movie. We discovered one we hadn’t seen yet — Definitely, Maybe.

For ten minutes or so I think she was into the movie. Then as the main character started reliving his romantic past life, she tuned out. I think it was more because of all the innuendos and inferences that needed to be made for it to be funny. Background knowledge is an amazing thing in other words.

As we sat there, finally she closed her eyes (after her head had been on a pillow for maybe ten minutes). I asked if she wanted to go to bed, and off we trundled…50 minutes into the movie.

I played the role of good husband and didn’t say a word, but inside I was cracking up. A few hours earlier that evening, I was the tired one who didn’t want to watch a movie. At gunpoint, practically, I had agreed to watch one with my wife. And here we were, stopping early because she fell asleep!