Tech team is family

I have a highly trained technical support team available 24/7. The core team includes three technicians, however in emergency situations temporary technicians can, and often are, recruited as needed.

My staff has prodded me into astounding realms of new technology. It started years ago when I dropped off the CEO of my technical support team, my husband, and he tossed a cell phone through the car window as I pulled away from the curb. It was his expert way of avoiding my argument that I didn’t need a cell phone because I knew where all the pay phones on Meridian were.

A few years later, I convinced a friend to ghost text a message to my son for me. His response was immediate and cautious, “Mom? Is that you? Are you OK?” He thought someone had stolen my phone because the text message was long and readable.

For my birthday, two members of my technical support team, my son and daughter, gave me an I-pod Nano. Getting it to work wasn’t hard, but buying the music from I-tunes, and loading it onto the I-pod required a team effort. They gave me in-depth lessons. I still get stuck sometimes and call them to ask things like, “What does sync mean?”

Most of the time they’re patient and use terms I understand, such as, “it’s the button with the thing that looks like a lightning bolt.” But if they get short with me, I remind them that I was patient when I taught them how to tie their shoes.

For years I teased my daughter asking her about her “My Face.” The first time I called it that was a mistake, but the other hundred times, it was to watch her roll her eyes. Her eyes got really big when I told her that now I have my own Facebook. My son got his around the same time. He encouraged me to play Farmville, supposedly so I’d check my Facebook regularly, but I think he just wanted another neighbor.

This year I ordered our Christmas photo greeting cards online from Costco. My son’s girlfriend was enlisted to help since she took one of the pictures I wanted on the card. The challenge was loading that picture from an email onto my computer and then sending it to Costco along with another photo. The card turned out beautifully.

The latest project my expert team has helped me with involves this column. Since I’ve enjoyed writing it so much, and my year as a guest columnist is ending, a few friends suggested I start a blog. My son volunteered to show me how to set one up. I’m a little worried because it was so easy. It’s still “under construction,” but if you’ve liked reading my columns, there will be more on starklooseends@blogspot.com. I’m a writer not a techie, but I know where to find a techie when I need one.

Laura Keolanui Stark is a freelance writer. She can be reached at lkstark@yahoo.com or her blog.

Christmas Countdown

Am I ready for Christmas? Sort of. I always start out early, buying gifts that I think would be great for people throughout the year. Then suddenly, it’s December and I’m shocked.

This year I bought lots of gifts on our trip to China—so many I had to buy another suitcase to get them home. I stacked them up in my dining room. Then Thanksgiving came, and I had to move them so we could actually eat in the dining room. Now they’re buried somewhere deep within our bedroom.

The gifts I ordered online in November are backordered. We didn’t get the Christmas tree last weekend because I was pushing to get a project with an unmovable deadline done, and my husband was leaving on a business trip. The kids were happy because they want to get the tree together, but they won’t be home for a week. Our Christmas cards are up in the air because we usually send a family picture, but with kids away at college it’s been hard to get us all together. We did get our Christmas decorations up in the yard, and I slapped a wreath on the door, but on this side of the door, it is still fall.

Yet, somehow, between now and Christmas, it will all come together. The tree will be decorated. The packages will be wrapped and sent to family and friends. I’ll write our annual Christmas letter, and tuck it in with our cards. I’ll sort through the presents I’ve bought, and then run out without any idea of what to buy for whoever doesn’t have enough gifts in their pile. I’ll play Christmas songs in the car and sing along while searching for a parking space at the mall. We’ll bake cookies and eat way too many. We’ll watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and the kids will groan when I insist that we watch the Walton family in “The Homecoming: A Christmas Story.” We’ll rip our closets apart to find something to wear to church on Christmas Eve. The essentials will get done. I used to scold myself about not having everything done perfectly, about only being “sort of” ready, but in the end it always worked out just fine.

Mary and Joseph were “sort of” ready for Jesus’ birth. They knew He was coming, but had to make that trip to Bethlehem to be counted in the census. When they got to Bethlehem, there was no room at the inn. They made the best of it, found a quiet place for Mary to give birth. Then they wrapped Jesus in swaddling clothes, and laid Him to sleep in a manger. They had faith. They knew what was ultimately important. Jesus was born into a world “sort of” ready for Him, and in the end it worked out just fine.

Laura Keolanui Stark is a freelance writer. She can be reached at lkstark@yahoo.com. (Originally published in The Herald, www.puyallupherald.com as “Counting down to Christmas,” on 12/23/09.)

Not Your Usual 'New Moon' Fan

I confess: I’m not a teenage girl, but I’ve seen New Moon twice.

I’m not a big movie go-er. I probably see only three movies a year in theaters. Special effects, on the big screen, are usually what pry my husband and me off our couch, but that’s not why I’ve seen New Moon twice.

When Twilight came out last year, I couldn’t wait to see it despite the sneering comments made by movie reviewers and media personalities. They painted Twilight with the same snobbish brush they used for Harry Potter dismissing it as a teenage chick flick. One woman on a talk show disparaged Twilight because “they didn’t even have sex!”

She missed the point. That was Twilight’s strength: the tension created by two teenagers in love trying to restrain their passion. There are plenty of movies and TV shows that glorify shallow teens having casual sex without love or any consequences, so many that it’s become cliché. Twilight is a refreshing exception.

So how did I become a fan? It started with Stephenie Meyer’s books. When my daughter brought Twilight home, it didn’t leave her hands until she’d read the last page. Then she read it again. She and her friends couldn’t put it down, or stop talking about it. Out of curiosity, I opened Twilight, not expecting much. After all, I had no special interest in vampires, and I’m many decades past being a teenager.

One chapter in, I was hooked. Twilight captured the awkwardness of being a teenager thrown into a new school. It also captured the blinding intensity of first love. Meyer sidestepped the usual teen stereotypes, and didn’t go for the predictable new-girl-is-bullied scenario. Twilight’s characters are richly developed. They struggle between instant-gratification and self-sacrifice to do what’s best for the one they love. It’s a battle for self-control. Yet, because Meyers uses vampires and werewolves who are wrestling for restraint, it doesn’t come across as just another preachy, politically correct lesson.

Both movies stayed true to the books. Kristen Stewart’s, Robert Pattinson’s and Taylor Lautner’s acting skills matured in New Moon, and a bigger budget made the special effects surpass my imagination. Of course, the dark grandeur of our Pacific Northwest forests is a special effect by itself.

The men I’ve talked to who’ve seen the movies were pleasantly surprised, and are actually looking forward to the next two installments. Impressed with the fur-flying, marble-crushing fight scenes and supernatural transformations, they appreciated that the male leads weren’t just leering, drunken idiots, or low testosterone buffoons.

I know that the Twilight series doesn’t reach Shakespearean levels despite its Romeo and Juliet theme, but, it’s a compelling, romantic story with complex, conflicted characters dealing with unique circumstances. The plot is tight, and unpredictable, keeping the reader/movie watcher wondering what’s going to happen next.

Stephenie Meyer is one heck of a story teller and judging by record breaking ticket sales and the rapt audience seated around me in theaters, I’d say that a lot more than “just teenage girls” agree.

Laura Keolanui Stark can be reached at lkstark@yahoo.com. (Originally published in The Herald, www.puyallupherald.com on 12/9/09. In the newspaper, the third to the last paragraph that starts, “The men I’ve talked to who’ve seen the movies. . .” was deleted.)

Betting on the Cougs for the Apple Cup

2009 has been another rough, losing season for WSU and UW alike. Now that we’re just days away from the Apple Cup, I suppose this year the jokes flying back and forth will be more along the lines of, “Well, you’re bigger losers than we are!

Nonetheless, I’m involved in a standing Apple Cup bet. My friendship with Carol started when our sons met on their elementary school’s playground in first grade. Over the years they played soccer on the same team, and went through cub scouts and boy scouts together. But when it came time for college, Tyler chose UW, and my son Johnny, chose WSU.

Their freshman year Carol threw her family’s purple gauntlet down for the Apple Cup bet. I accepted the terms. The losing team’s family had to cook something with apples in it for the winner’s family. I think there was supposed to be an apple quilt trophy that the winning family would get to hold until the next apple cup, but I’m not sure what happened to that. You can see just how seriously we take this, not very.

We keep the trash talking down to a minimum, easy to do since neither team’s been that great in the last four years, and since neither Carol nor I are alums of either school. But, I do try to remember to fly our Cougar flags in the back yard as well as out front. Our yards are back to back and I want to make darn sure that if Tyler’s home, he can look out his window and see that Crimson and Gray flag waving.

Last year when my daughter Sarah was applying to colleges, Carol tried to lure her to the dark purple side, to UW. She and Tyler took us on an amazing “insider’s tour” of campus, and Carol negotiated with Sarah telling her that if she went to UW, she could then eat whatever treat I prepared for them if UW won. She tried hard, and I was worried that we might have a split house. My husband also works for WSU. But in the end, Sarah chose WSU.

So far in our Apple Cup challenge, Carol’s had to cook for us twice. It was delicious both times: an apple cake with caramel icing last year, warm out of the oven. Sarah and I made an apple pie for them once.

On the positive side, this year the Apple Cup is on November 28 and in Seattle. Both of my kids will be here “on the Westside” for Thanksgiving break, so win or lose, I’ll have company to help me eat hopefully, or cook.

I’ll confess, I’ve been keeping an eye out for apple recipes, but when there’s such a fierce cross-state rivalry involved, sometimes it comes down to who’s got more heart. So come on Cougs, pull yourself up by your cleat straps, don’t let those Dawgs get you, they’re all bark. Go Cougs!

Laura Keolanui Stark lives with three Cougars. She can be reached at lkstark@yahoo.com. (Originally published in The Herald, www.puyallupherald.com on 11/25/09.)

Postcard from Beijing

Ni hao. My husband, John, and I are just back from a trip to Beijing and suffering from culture and jet lag. Several times I’ve caught myself saying “xie xie,” instead of “thank you,” and I’m still craving noodles.

Before we left, someone commented that an 8-day stay wasn’t worth the 12-hour flight from San Francisco. My first day in China, I stood on top of The Great Wall and saw it snaking its way over hill after hill, going on for thousands of miles beyond my sight. I clambered up steps, some that were almost waist high, and wondered how they got the supplies to build the wall up into that rugged terrain in the 1300s. If I’d had to turn around and catch a plane home after experiencing only that, it would’ve been worth the 12-hour flight.

But, I also got to wander through the Empress Dowager’s Summer Palace, see where the concubines lived in The Forbidden City, and feel the massive drum beats vibrate in my body as they pounded out a warning in The Drum Tower. We tested our chopstick skills on bird nests of noodles. John ate scorpions at the Night Market. We both ate Peking Duck in Peking, twice.

We rode a rickshaw through the alleyways of a hutong, a tightly packed series of courtyard houses. Within that maze we visited a market filled with colorful vegetables, pungent spices, piles of eggs, and hanging poultry. An adorable toddler wrapped his arm around my leg beaming a smile up at me.

We met up with two couples: one from Taiwan, and one from Hawaii. For a few days, we three women shopped at the Pearl and Silk Markets. Julia, who’s from Taiwan, was an expert at bargaining, and it was an education watching her. After almost every transaction, the business person she’d gone up against would say, “You are lucky to have your friend bargain for you. She is VERY good!”

Julia was also very good at ordering delicious food at nearby restaurants. We feasted on noodles, dumplings and rice, and sipped tea to keep our shopping energy up.

Penny was with me when I got kicked out of the miles-long line for Mao’s mausoleum in Tian’an Men Square. My mistake: carrying a now famous brown bag, when bags aren’t allowed. The security guard knew enough English to blare, “Brown bag! Brown bag!” and point at me, out of thousands. Everyone around us laughed, and I joined in as I did the duck of shame (another kind of Peking duck) under the ropes to get out of line.

Penny was also with me at a Beijing Park where I did Tai Chi with a group of regulars who quietly start each day there. Afterwards, we climbed to the top of a hill in the park, and watched dawn spread sunlight over The Forbidden City.

As for the 12-hour plane flights, both ways, they were the bargain of a lifetime.

Laura Keolanui Stark is a freelance writer. You can reach her at lkstark@yahoo.com. (Originally published in The Herald, www.puyallupherald.com as “Journey worth 12-hour flight” on 11/4/09.)