mccullochblog

What will he be?

When I was in my teens, I took a test at school that was designed to help me determine which career I would be most suited to pursue.

I have absolutely no recollection of the name of the test, but its conclusions were that I would find the most satisfaction (or was it success?) by pursuing a career as an actor, a teacher, or something in marketing.

At the time, these options seemed pretty implausible.

Yes, I had been in a few school plays, and had been recommended to attend the London Theater School one summer (I declined), but what the heck was 'marketing'?

And who of a school age actually thinks that a TEACHER is something worth being? Wasn't the whole point to get OUT of school as quickly as possible? Not to spend your whole life there.

Anyway, here I am today...a marketing professional, persuasively educating journalists and bloggers for a living; creating stories, helping 'actors' to recite those stories, and occasionally performing a few lines myself. Wait a minute. That pyscho/socio-profiling stuff doesn't actually work does it?

I caught myself wondering what William will be when he grows up today.

Based on his key driving passions, he will surely be a train driver or a professional food taster (specialising in ice cream), or he will possibly be a sprinter (he enjoys running "fast daddy!").

Based on his personality (his is thoughtful and bookish, and not hugely sociable in large groups) he'll be a historian, a journalist, or maybe a management consultant.

All of that said, I'd like to think that his choice of favorite toys is the best indicator.

On this basis, he will be a civil engineer (LEGO towers are increasingly a forte) or a designer (or perhaps pilot) of aircraft (he doggedly and repeatedly insists that daddy helps him draw 'Concorde' or a 'helicopter').

Parents and friends...Am I watching the right signs? Do you have any other suggestions for  behaviors I should be encouraging that will ensure William makes tons of cash when he's older so that Emma and I can enjoy a disgracefully decadent retirement?

Best Toys Ever

William and I went to see the fantastic Walnut Creek Model Railway today. It was packed with two and three-year-old boys and their dads.

The boys were all stunned, in awe, clinging to the handrails staring at the vast array of tracks, trains, buildings, vehicles, noises (thunder, rain, mood music) and lights (daybreak, night, lightening).

The dads were transfixed too, but you could tell their minds were elsewhere; pondering, as I was, the prospect of converting the garage into a giant re-creation of the Sante Fe Southern Railway, complete with mountain scenery, and a scale replica of the town of Lamy.

Hmmmmm....

When I was William's age, my dad made me something like that. I was too young at the time to remember it exactly now, but there was a large track nailed to a board that lay flat when it was brought down by a hinge on the wall. My brother still has the locomotive that was my dad's pride-and-joy. I remember very clearly that I thought it was awesome.

Then again, I remember my other favorite toys with similar joy. Did you have any of these?

• Scalextric - Electric racing cars, powered by hand-held throttles. It was almost impossible to maintain high speeds and keep the cars on the track, but that became part of the fun. I remember creating 50-lap Grand Prix races wherein I would simply replace any car that had somersaulted across the living room back onto the track and continue as if this sort of thing happened all the time in real racing.

• Subbuteo -The idea of subbuteo (flicking small soccer players attached to hemispherical bases around a green baize soccer field in pursuit of a ball half the size of the entire player) seems ludicrous now...but my dirty secret is that I still have a set in the garage that I bought on eBay a few years ago. Anyone want a game?

• LEGO -When I was a boy, Lego involved real creativity. You couldn't just BUY the Star Wars set...you had to painstakingly build your own Millennium Falcon with only square or rectangular pieces, and the planet Naboo had to be created from scratch with shoes boxes for terrain and a large bed sheet for landscape.

• Marbles -I feel like I should be 65 years-old to admit I played with marbles, but I had hundreds of them, and somehow used to imagine them to be anything from two sets of armies to cars that I would send hurtling around my loop-the-loop track!

• The Hornby Train Set -It was awesome, and as I recall, there was another bigger set that I had in my teens. I'm pretty sure it was really my dad's toy...but that's okay. I can relate now.

That reminds me...must go and decide whether I'm going to put Lamy high up above the bikes, or across the top of the work bench...

 

 

T is for Thomas, H is for Helicopter

OK, so William's ABCs are coming to him courtesy of characters from Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, as well as from a selection of his own family and friends' names...but you know, A isn't aways for Apple!!

 

Ta-daaaa!

William has a new trick. He likes to hide in the laundry basket and emerge with a big shout of "ta-daaa!" 

Okay, so this time around, he skipped the ta-daaa! but it was still a great way to end a weary day on Friday!

 

Marking Time

America is obsessed with numbers. The Oscars were not simply the Oscars last week; they were Oscars #83. The SuperBowl is never just "this year's Superbowl"...it's always SuperBowl XXXIV or some such. (Are the Roman numerals meant to make us believe gridiron was played at the Colluseum?) Even the White House is not immune: the 44th President of the United States, anyone?

The obvious explanation for all this 'adding up' is that modern America is not terribly old and Americans feel strangely compelled to hide the fact.

This seems very strange to Europeans like me, because in Europe, basically everything is old. I recall, for example, being on a walking tour of Boston back in 1992 when the guide pointed out that the State Hall there dated back to 1713. "Wow!" gasped the mainly American crowd, but not I. I grew up in a town that had a castle dating back to 1180.

Anyway, I can sympathize with both the numbers obsession (I studied Maths, after all) AND with the desire to hide the real age of things, although in my case, I'm erring on the side of making things seem younger.

For example, i consider that I am still firmly in my mid-thirties, on the basis of the mid-thirties stretching from 32 to 38. I may decide that 39 is also a mid-thirty number when I hit that landmark in June.

That, actually, is more-or-less the reason I'm writing today. I need an awesome destination-location for my 40th birthday next June. It has to be a family-friendly location some place in between London Heathrow Airport and San Francisco international. Any thoughts?

Come on! I need ideas. Washington DC? The Great Lakes? What should it be, friends? Iceland? Newfoundland? I'm open to suggestions so long as the proposals include (a) something cool to see, (b) somewhere nice to stay for a few days...and (c) well, some sort of proximity to an airport!

RSVP!

 

A ton of Pebbles and a Theory of Relative Busy-ness

As I was shifting a ton of pebbles today from my drive-way to the area around my deck where the grass never grows (see photo!), I came up with a theory.

I theorized that there is good reason why we’re all basically busy and not busy at the same time. The theory is only relatively half-baked, but I’m fairly sure there’s something to it.

Think of all the times you have a conversation that goes something like this:

“God, I’ve had a busy week.”

“Really? Me too.”

“Yeah, it seems like absolutely everyone I talk to is mentally busy at the moment”.

Or don’t there seem to be days when everybody’s status on Facebook says something like this: “Urgh. Working nights again, ” or “Bring on the weekend” (on a Tuesday night).

OK. So you’re still not convinced of my theory? Well, here’s the real evidence:

We all work for companies, right? And we all live within the constraints of the same calendar. Here’s what happens when you put those two things together.

Companies do things: they announce new products, host events, have sales conferences, make acquisitions, and occasionally they’ll even organize some sort of employee event.

Then there’s the calendar: punctuated by all sorts of dates and events that get in the way of all those company things described above.

Obviously anything within 2-3 weeks of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year is out. In late January there’s MLK day, which rules out another perfectly good week on the grounds that Americans get so little vacation, they have to take it around holidays such as this to make the most of them. There are seven more public holidays such as this (and therefore seven other dead weeks).

All of that lot basically rules out about 18 weeks of the year as unproductive. Then there’s summer: the mid-June to late August weeks are write-offs. Bye-bye eleven more weeks.

If you work for a public company , then there are another 8-10 weeks around earnings announcements when you can’t do anything. So, all in all the 52 week year just got cut down to 13 weeks in which you can actually get something done.

Assuming your company does actually have one sales conference, one customer conference, announces a couple of products, and hosts an employee event this year, you’ll have about two-and-a-half weeks to spend on each one.

And there you have it: McCulloch’s Law of Relative Busy-ness, an explanation for why we’re all stressed out (and occasionally calm) at the same time.

And in case you’re wondering, yes, February is one of those manic times, which is exactly why I needed to spend six hours this weekend shifting a ton of pebbles for therapy (and why I haven't blogged in ages).

In case you’re wondering, the next couple of weeks will be fine, but you’ll be incredibly busy at the end of March.

William's First Pets

My dad was an avid fish keeper, which is to say he managed to keep enough fish alive throughout the average year to justify calling his pastime a hobby.

He'd also always manage to lose enough of the creatures in his tank to species mismatches (the fish killed each other), myseterious algae (he didn't change the water often enough) and other mishaps to make picking out a Christmas present for him each year a cinch.

By the time he went to fishkeeper heaven, my dad had acquired a huge tank for his living room, filled with an impressive collection of tiger barbs, siamese flying foxes, catfish, cichlids, gouramis and barbs. Frankly, that gigantic tank and its contents was the single greatest challenge for my brother and I when it came to figuring out what to do with his belongings. (Note: the fish were not 'flushed'! they were returned to Steve's pet shop in Dover).

Anyway, I've been meaning for ages now to buy William a fish tank with which to continue the family tradition and, voila!, last weekend I finally got around to it.

I'm a bit concerned that William keeps pointing to the tank and saying "help!" (he may be plotting a daring assisted escape) but other than that, they're getting on swimmingly. (Get it...swimmingly? Oh, nevermind.)

 

 

Why I Despise Reality TV

We've just had a mightily jet-lagged week after getting back from the UK.

Last night we crashed into bed at around 8pm and flicked on the TV in the hope of relaxing a bit before we slept.

Emma put on Supernanny. She likes to 'relax' by watching reality TV.

I, on the other hand, would prefer to be roasted on a skewer over an open fire while being eaten by alive by rats and snakes, than spend one unnecessary minute watching reality TV.

For those of you who find this odd, I thought I'd go through some public self-therapy and share with you how Reality TV makes me feel:

Real Housewives  - "How can these incredibly stupid and annoying people have more money than me? And how come they don't take me to dinner?"

Bachelor / Bachelorette - "I need to lose weight. Can my wife tell I'm staring at those women? Have I got manboobs?"

Home Makeover TV - "I paid too much for my house. My house is a mess. My life is a mess."

The View - "Life sucks. Please, please, please stop reminding me!"

The Biggest Loser - "Some people are just incredibly fat / stupid / annoying. Why reward them with a TV show?"

America's Got Talent - "No it hasn't."

Supernanny - "Oh my God, I'm ruining my son's life already" or see 'The Biggest Loser'.

Big Brother - See 'The Biggest Loser'

Hell's Kitchen - "Just STOP SHOUTING AT EVERYONE YOU OBNOXIOUS IDIOT!"

I'm a Celebrity, Get me Out Here - "If I frittered all of my money away, would TV producers pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to appear half-naked on a dessert island? I bloody doubt it."

America's Next Top Model - See 'Bachelor / Bachelorette'.

Project Runway - "How is it possible to make so much money and have your own TV show by insisting people wear such hillarious nonsense in the name of fashion?"

Anything with Victoria Beckham - "People? Why can't you see that she is the world's most utterly vacuous and annoying waste of space? What's the matter with you? Are you all stupid? Honey? No...no...no....ARRRGGHHHHHH."

 

2011 New Year's Resolutions

Watching my best friend, Ian, get married at the turn of the decade helped me resolve to try once again to make some big decisions and moderate change s in my own life in 2011.

Why not, eh? New Year’s Resolutions and all that.

Actually, looking back at last year's resolutions, I achieved 56% of my  pledges, so I think there’s plenty of grounds for optimism in crafting a new set.

Admittedly, I did not manage to make as much progress on my book as I would have liked, nor did I visit the Farallon Islands or Washington DC. And didn’t get to a 49ers game.

In my defense, I did secure TICKETS to a 49ers game but had to sell them when I went to Chicago to visit by brother instead. And we went to Seattle as a family, which sort of makes up for missing DC, right?

Yes, not organizing said best friend’s bachelor party BEFORE his wedding was a fairly major miss, but he has been quite open about having it later this year.He did, after all, get married after having three kids, so he’s not exactly a stickler for tradition.

Anyway, here we go then: a fistful of new resolutions for 2011.

1. I really really will finish half of my novel in 2011. Really.
2. I will organize Ian’s stag party before he celebrates his wedding anniversary.
3. I will find a smashing venue for my 40th birthday party (for 2012!)
4. Our little family will ride the Canadian Rockies train and go somewhere cool in France or Italy or (any suggestions?) when we go back to the UK for Emma’s sister’s wedding in October.
5. I will make plans to go to the Olympics in London in 2012.
6. I will get William a fish tank for his bedroom in honor of his fish-keeping granddad
7. I will get my US Citizenship application sorted
8. I will lose 10 lbs. (Only kidding.) 

What about you then? Any pledges for the new decade you’d like to share?

Our Year in Pictures

I'd love to know what William was thinking when I took this picture. Was it "Really, dad? Another flight?" Or "Plaaaaaaane!!!". Or "Was the merger with Continental really the right move for United?"

Feel free to add your own caption to this and 20 other pics that sum up our year visually.