You are your Father's Son

I'm sure many men have heard this as a phrase that basically says "you've grown up to be just like your Dad", which, depending on the family dynamic and your own situations could be a good thing or a bad thing.

As objectively as I can be, I can say that when it comes to passion for work, passion for family and core values, I did grow up to be my "Father's Son".

Where I didn't was in the fact that I don't want to get out of bed on EVERY given morning, I'm a technology geek (which is mostly just generational), I'm relatively A-D-D, my music tastes are radically different, and our political views are quite divergent.  Maybe those last two are related ;-p

But that's where the pay-it-forward generational fun happens.

• Aidan has quickly adopted the "mornings suck" attitude that his Daddy has embraced since, well, as long as I can freaking remember.
• He also has his candy addiction "jones" on very early in life, probably earlier than I did but then again, it's MY addiction he's carrying on so access to it is much easier than it was for me as a child.
• He already loves his technology.  Not only did he know how to swipe his finger on an iPod Touch just shy of two years old to flip through pictures, for Christmas he got his very own first digital camera.  Below are two pictures that he took along with a picture of the camera.  He can frame it well, but he's still moving his hands quite a bit so most of the pictures are Dali-esque.

Blurry Daddy or Daddy's normal look circa 1985	Extreme close-up of Wrigley

So I think we all know this happens but being more aware of it at this point keeps me on my toes.  Some of his mannerisms are very much like mine and he cracks us up with his "overacting" at time when he's trying to make a point.

I love him to bits.

Here's a shot from December of the three generations of LoCicero men.  Damn we're smokin' hot! ;-)

I put Hyderabad into my GPS...

...and my cyber-bitch said "I can only take you to the airport, the rest is on your own".

So at the end of February/beginning of March I will be taking a business trip to Hyderabad, India.  We have some fairly large operations there and our parent company is sponsoring an Operations Conference.

When I first heard, of course, my thoughts go to being away from my family and being really FAR from my family for about a week, especially since we're going to be on personal vacation for just about the two weeks just before this.

Then my thoughts went to the almost 18 hours in the air it's going to take to get there and I wondered if I would go stir crazy on either leg of the trip.

I've long been used to the eight hours to mainland Europe but on the last couple of trips I found myself getting very antsy about five hours in.  What in the world will I do for 18 hours?  You can only watch so many movies, listen to so much iPod, sleep so much.  Truth be told, I'm a horrible worker on a plane.  I can never get comfortable enough to work on my laptop plus I usually don't have an electrical outlet near me and for some reason the work laptop's batteries only last about two hours at max!

But eventually it has sunk in how fortunate I am to work for a company who wanted me at this conference and feel that my presence there is important to our longer term strategy and plans.

I'm also excited to take a day or two for personal excursions.  I'm not sure what all is around Hyderabad or even how close some of the favorite tourist spots are yet.  If you haven't taken a look at it in awhile, it's a massively huge country.  It's the seventh largest country (land area) in the world and the second largest by population.  On the Southern end it looks like there's some prime relaxation near a massive coastline and a short hop, skip and jump over to Sri Lanka.  Of course, to the North, you're heading up near Nepal and Pakistan.  What will NOT be lost on me is how close I'll be to Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq and as an American these are important spots in my lifetime.
Today we got a list of things we need to get done before we even THINK about heading to India.  Need to get a visa (what? MasterCard isn't good enough? I keed!) and so I have to submit my passport, copy of my driver's license, money (of course), 2 more passport-type photos, letters from my employer, our operations in India as well as a legal firm who works with the Indian consulate to get all this stuff done, oh and a short power of attorney-type statement for that firm.

 And if the paperwork don't kill ya', I gots to go and get me a whole bunch of shots (not the Jägermeister kind either!) to ward off whatever ails me or what CAN ail me.

So hey, if anything, there's gonna be some good blogging material over the next couple of months, plus loads of pictures!!  Stay tuned!

Negotiations with a dog

He did it again.

That son of ours had us cracking up right at dinner time last night.

He came over to the table and both of us were in the main part of the kitchen.  He had left a whole bucket worth of toys on the floor in the family room.

We asked him to pick them up because if he left them on the floor, Wrigley, our 85 lb. Golden would go chew them up.  We reminded him that recently she gnawed off the arm of the Little People™ Fireman when he left it out.

To which he responded by looking straight at Wrigley and saying, "Wrigley, you promise not to eat up my toys okay?".  He then answered for her saying yes and then looked at us and said "Wrigley promised not to eat my toys".

How could you not laugh?  Of course, other famous people have heard their dogs talk to them.  The Son of Sam comes to mind.  Okay, KIDDING!!

What a fantastic way to justify not having to pick up toys.  My kid's a hell of a negotiator, but we knew this already the way he upsells each request for candy/cookies/gummies on a regular basis.

POW! BAM! @%&# ZONK!

Well, the joys of Aidan turning three has involved his intense desire to live, breathe and act as Batman.

We really had no idea where this came from other than at school where the other little boys may have gotten into the superhero genre a bit earlier thanks to older brothers.  In fact, Aidan's buddy/nemesis at school is almost always wearing Spiderman clothes and the amount of fake web shooting out of our wrists at home has been at an all-time high for the last 3-4 months.  (This of course took me instantly back to 4th grade at Fairview School and playing with Kyle Bernsten and Stan-can't remember his last name on the playground doing the same exact thing....hmm, the Circle of Life)

But a Batman Cave was top of the list for Aidan when telling Santa what he wanted for this year and lo' and behold, he was just good enough for Ol' St. Nick to come through.

But this has really been a nice throwback for me as not only do we DVR The Batman cartoon on Boomerang (Cartoon Network) which is an updated flashy, but not as dark as Batman Beyond, but we also DVR the original Batman TV series from the 60's.

I remember always making time to catch Batman on either WGN or WFLD when I got home from school.  Now I'm making time for when Aidan gets home from school.  It still amazes me at the big named talent that they would get to play villains on that show given it's campy format.  I usually take a look at what's going to play for the week and then choose which sets of 2 (remember, most of them were always 2 half-hour episodes with the cliff-hanger in between) we're going to record.

I happened to see that early next week they are going to run the ones with Chandell (Liberace) who plays a concert pianist who tries to woo Aunt Harriet to get her fortune.

This likely will not be one for Aidan, it'll move too slow and he won't get it but since there were only 2 episodes, it'll be a great one for me.

At this point, Aidan mostly likes the loud/obnoxious villains who are also more of the "major" ones like Joker, Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman.  He also has recently become aware of Mr. Freeze but mostly because of the cartoon version we see.  Somehow these capture his attention more than the cerebral villains like Bookworm, Mad Hatter, King Tut and Egghead.

In a weird way, I'm wondering how Aidan's countless Sheriff Woody characters are dealing with the arrival of several Batmans?

Lastly, Aidan does a bit of association with lists or items I think mostly for memory but also to prove to us he can remember things.  For example, quite some time ago he got interested in what our favorite colors are and he was very proud that he could always remember each of our colors. 

For Batman, he's assigned each of us one of the Batman characters for role play.  He, of course, is Batman (there was even discussion tonight, 10 months in advance, that he'd be Batman for Halloween next year).  I am the youthful ward/boy wonder Robin, Mary Kay is the Catwoman, my Dad is Joker and my Mom is Penguin.  Quite the crew the lot of us.

Until my next post, stayed tuned, same bat-time, same bat-channel......