If I didn't know better, I could swear you were adopted...

I am constantly amazed at how different our boys are from each other and how different they can be from me.

This is the last week of J's summer camp before school starts. He and I have spent most of the summer together in an extended commute to and from school. In that time he has taken up some new habits.

The first new habit is reading voraciously. He started with Captain Underpants and moved on to Encyclopedia Brown and then jumped straight into the Hardy Boys. While we know that he skips the hard words, he's getting the story and plot and is energized to learn more. He clearly gets the "love of reading" part of reading that it took me YEARS to find. I remember reading Encyclopedia Brown in 4th grade! It wasn't until High School and Robert Heinlein that got me into real reading for pleasure.

J's second new habit is listening to NPR. I was putting NPR on when he started reading because I figured he was busy and I like to listen to NPR to keep up with events. But recently I noticed that he's not reading, he's listening. And this morning I asked him if he wanted to listen to music or the news, he said "news".

This week we got a new shower radio for our bathroom and I put the old one in the kids' bathroom. J and I were talking about how now he and P could listen to music while they were in the bath. "or the News" he added.

Again, many years did it take me to learn to read the paper, watch the news, listen to NPR. "So boring, so mind numbing" was how I thought about it as a kid.

I am sure that Ryan's scary love of reading and news has influenced J's genetic makeup, but I still marvel at what an individual J has turned out to be.

The NPR Effect

I started a new job last week and so far it's great. I enjoy the people, the work is interesting and challenging, and it even looks like I get to suggest some re-organization (my favorite)!

My only complaint is the commute. The office is located at 360 and Bee Caves, about 12 miles from the house. Add in the "for the summer only" dropping off of J at his summer camp and I am driving about 30 miles per day.

So what, you say? So what indeed. Plenty of people drive a lengthy commute to work (although with the cost of gas, that dynamic may change when people begin to choose the "right job" in future) and 15 miles isn't that bad, really. Plus, the benefits of a steady paycheck and fulfilling work vastly outweigh the negatives of too-much-time-in-car.

But then one has to consider the "NPR effect". That is the effect of additional time in the car has brought me into the dreaded window of... hearing the stories I heard in the shower again when I am in the car. Ugh. Since NPR runs their morning programming (lasting 2 hours) twice in the morning, the story you hear at 6:20 am is the same as is broadcast at 8:20 am.

I guess I can work on getting out the door faster, thereby missing the repeat, or getting up and into the shower earlier. Neither of which is easy as it's not just me who has to move faster...

Or I can spend my nights and weekends working on a teleportation device, thereby solving my own problems, the problems of the earth and oil consumption etc. Of course, my teleportation device would run on the whine which emits from 4-6 year olds when you ask them to "hurry it up" in the morning, an inexhaustible resource.