Meggisi

I was just thinking how much I am looking forward to March. It’s actually kind of bizarre. I really don’t remember having such an affinity for March before. When I recall memories of March from the past, here is what I come up with: melting snow, accumulating now, tornadoes, MN State HS Tourneys (Hockey and Basketball), NCAA Basketball Tournament, spring training, Daylight Savings Time, ice starts going out.

But today, as I buckled the kids into their car seats for a trip to Chairman Bob’s establishment in Lakeville, it dawned on me why I am looking so much forward to this March. Everyone always wonders whether March will, “Come in like a lamb and go out like a lion,” or vice-a-versa. March is a month of veritable weather changes. It is a month of sports pandemonium. It is a month full of general uncertainty. The northern hemisphere awakens from winter slumber in March, shakes off the dust of inactivity and gets moving again. Hell, we even set our clocks ahead one whole hour to increase our daily productivity.

March 2010 for me will be the first month in close to 1/4 a year that I have been able to control my own work schedule. December, January, February, my employer determined it for me as I endured “long-term training.” Now that I have completed said training, I was able to bid a schedule for March using the preferential bidding system I worked on for the last few years with my union brothers. Now, the result wasn’t ideal by any means…Sarah still works weekends, and I will be flying over two of them in March. Lucky for the kids they have eager grandparents who look forward to such conflicts in my schedule, as they gladly watch the kids for us.

The truly nice thing about the schedule being back in my hands is this:

This is Sarah and the kids at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. On truly a whim, we decided on the day after Oliver turned 1 year old to just hop on a flight to Chicago and spend the day there. The loads were quite good – very open in and out of Midway Airport. We enjoyed both flights – down on Compass’ E175 and back on Mesaba’s CRJ900 (my plane…making the trip special for the family because Daddy could annoy them with all the play-by-play action of every move the airplane and the crew made.)

This was a day where we all were together. We all were able to be a family having fun…sharing a day of adventure. It was really a special, and given the last couple of years, a unique thing for us. With more personal control over the sked, kids at a decent age to do things like major travel, and the weather getting warmer, March (and the months beyond) look better and better all the time.

So what else is going on. No doubt if you have visited Meggisi recently you saw the video of Oliver’s first steps. Well, especially this weekend, Ollie has become a full-fledged toddler! More video is forthcoming, but in the meantime I want to share some great pics from me’boy’s 1st birthday:

Oh yeah. It was my mom’s birthday this last week too, so the celebration was for her too. As you can see, she was having a blast!

Oliver’s First Steps from Kris Pierson on Vimeo.

I am loving it. Particularly Short Track…and not because of Apollo…because it is cool.

J.R. Celski and Si-Bak Sung skate in Vancouver

I dig the fact that they race not only around the rink, but around each other. I am trying to forget about the drama on the luge track, and the graphic scene of young Nodar Kumaritashvil crashing to his death. But it is hard to forget when network TV decided that it was okay to show the video of the crash over, and over, and over again. (a)

Life moves on, however, and despite the sad start to the games things are relatively back to normal. The triumph of these athletes is evident – even in those who just barely miss the medal they are after. They are all very accomplished and talented. It is a blast to watch. Besides short track, I am also looking forward to snowboarding, alpine skiing, hockey, and even some figure skating. My main goal, though, is to watch, follow closely, and gain complete understanding of curling.

Women's Team USA at Olympic Trials (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

I have to say, I am fascinated. Also, if you are Minnesotan, you need to pay attention: the entire US Men’s team is from MN, out of the Duluth and St. Paul clubs. The Women’s team is 1/2 MN and 1/2 WI, out of the St. Paul, Bemidji, and Madison clubs.

GO TEAM USA!

(a) Obviously a decision mired in controversy. Yahoo! Sports has an argument in it’s blog that NBC made a good journalistic decision. I disagree. If they had to show it as a proper way to cover the story, they could have just kept the video on the internet, or at least wait until the late show to air the footage.

So, I decided to entitle my New Years post with “Happy Twenty-Ten” because of a news story I saw last night. It was on the debate over whether verbally call 2010 “twenty-ten” or “two-thousand ten.” I will be saying “twenty-ten.” Why? Simple: this is how it was done most commonly last century. “Nineteen-ten.” “Nineteen-ninety nine.” Get it?

Anyway, onto the New Years stuff. My wife asked me last night if I had any resolutions. At the time I only had one, and I really had not put a lot of thought into more. I have since kicked around a few ideas, and I figured I might as well get to placing them in the record. Here goes!

1. Start every day with prayer. Ok, I have to give credit to KTIS-FM for inspiring this one. They have been running some ads recently asking people to consider this resolution, and to pray for the community. But they are not the originators of such an idea or practice – they just served to put the idea back in front of me.

2. Keep up on the weight loss/getting back into shape stuff. Everyone seems to have this item on their rez list. I got down to business last spring and lost 40 pounds. I relaxed the diet adherence around Thanksgiving time, and have only gained back about 7. But I can’t tell you how awesome it felt to get back into the old waistline again. I want to go further…perhaps another 40? I would be happy with another 20 for sure, but why not aim for the “ideal” weight for my height? The only trade-off I am willing to make is building back muscle mass and strength. Now that the kids weigh a combined 55-60 pounds, my arms and legs are getting more of a workout. I need to balance out the muscle groups with an actual routine however…which brings me to rez #3.

3. Homework. No, not the kind of homework typically eaten by dogs or copied off your friends. I mean the kind that means that our home needs a lot of work. Our exercise room (which contains a club-quality treadmill, freeweights, and a TV/DVD combo on the wall) has been converted to an all-purpose storage/junk room. All that stuff needs to get out of there and actually eliminated from our possession or actually stored.   Storing more stuff means cleaning and prepping the garage for more storage. After the exercise room is restored to it’s proper state, the home office needs a redo. Concurrently with these projects, the kitchen needs a facelift of sorts. All the while that occurs, we need to keep up on yardwork and landscaping. Meanwhile, we need to plan ahead for the kids needs. Homework. It never ends.

4 a & b. Schedule management. This year I am getting back to the airline pilot life as much as I can. I am finally finishing up training in my actual position as a CRJ900 Captain after a 20-month delay. Full-time union work prevented attending class for the new airplane sooner, and also took a big toll on the logbook. Now that the major project which had me off the flight line is complete, I can resume a more normal schedule. Union duties will still occur, but only on a part-time basis. This also will allow me to better manage time and schedule with the family. So, this is a 2-part resolution:

• 4a. Fly more
  4b. Spend more time with family.

5. Focus on what everyone else needs before I focus on my own needs. My wife is the most selfless person I know. I have a long way to go before I can truly act the way she does towards others – especially towards her. If I fail to make efforts on #1-4b, above, it is because I failed on this resolution. This is really my #1 New Years Resolution for 2010.

I hope and pray that 2010 brings peace and prosperity to all of us!

The holiday season is upon us. Everyone knows what this means for themselves personally, and for their families. For us, I would like to say we have a definite lift in our spirits. “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” right? We hang up decorations, play and listen and sing Christmas music, and focus on getting gifts for friends, relatives, even co-workers. Even more importantly, the impact on the kids is enormous. In fact, I dare say that the response of children to the holiday spirit is the foundation of the whole thing anyway! Think of all the things we do for our kids during this time of year. We take them to Holidazzle, the Dayton’ s 8th floor display (a), visits to see Santa, and a myriad of holiday-themed events and parties. We make special food and treats readily available to them (b). And it all ramps up until either “8 crazy nights” of Hanukkah, Kwanza, or Christmas, and doesn’t really subside until after New Years.

Our family traditions have been implemented piece by piece as both carry-overs from our own childhoods but also as original things we are doing now that we have kids of our own. We have either cut a fresh Christmas tree at a local farm or picked one out at Pahl’s market depending on the weather – and the kids. We have an Advent Wreath and dedicate some time each Sunday evening lighting the candles and praying. A day of baking cookies and other treats will certainly take place soon. We continue to add holiday decorations around the home, including setting up the classic nativity scene, with the tradition of not placing the figurine of baby Jesus in the scene until sundown on Christmas eve.

And so, when we got the Fisher Price “Little People” Nativity Set, Evelyn became very attached with the “Little People” Baby Jesus. She carries him all around the house like teenagers carry around cell phones or iPods. She always has him with her.

Yesterday, she lost track of him. We were picking up toys before bedtime and she was picking up the other characters from the Nativity Set when she asked me, “Where’s my Baby Jesus?” We looked all over the house,  but could not instantly find him. I assured Evie that we would indeed find him eventually and she seemed relatively satisfied that this was a good bet (seeing that several toys go “missing” from time to time and eventually show back up). Later that evening after we had read a book or two, she said it again, “Where is Baby Jesus?” I just repeated the question back to her, “I know! Where is Baby Jesus? We couldn’t find him, could we?”

She paused and smiled at me. “Don’t worry, Daddy. Baby Jesus is here.” And then she went off to find another book.

Now, let me be clear for those folks out there that don’t know already, when I recite the Apostles Creed at church, I believe each and every word spoken – especially regarding the Holy Spirit. This was one of those moments in life that only serves to increase my faith and belief in the Spirit. My two-year-old didn’t throw a tantrum about missing her toy. Instead, she remained calm and reassured her daddy that all will be well, and that baby Jesus was indeed with us. Was she just being her typically-sweet self and repeating what her parents have told her before? Maybe. However, this interaction was marked with a conversational tone – not by a frantic hunt for a missing toy (c). And, this toy has become special to her in a way that demonstrates that she can trust her feelings about things as trivial as missing a toy.

If the occurrence was anything, it made me think about the true meaning of Christmas. It is a time to rediscover where/who Baby Jesus really is. It is a pretty big deal for Christians because, in the words of “O Holy Night,” Long lay the world in sin and error pining, ’til He appeared and the soul felt its worth. Without Baby Jesus, we have no true connection with God. We celebrate Advent because we are thrilled with anticipation of this connection. We celebrate Christmas because we are thrilled with His arrival among us. Gift giving, after the example of the Magi, marks the significance of it all in human terms. We give gifts out of gratitude – not obligation. The gratitude is not only for the divine grace of Christ’s birth, but for the grace we show each other every day.

So, Merry Christmas! Enjoy the season with friends, family, and I hope you too will find your Baby Jesus.

(a) To me, it will always be Dayton’s…and for the record, Macy’s needs to step it up a notch to even come close to being what Dayton’s once was.

(b) We just started trying out having a bowl of mixed nuts in the shell – a Pierson tradition. Evelyn likes the operation of shelling the nuts, the nutcracker, etc, but is taking her time liking the nuts as a snack. Not surprising.

(c) Trust me, frantic hunts for toys occur with regularity at this house, especially for Mickey Mouse.

So, here were are. Yet another attempt at keeping a valid, active, actually used, actually read, weblog on the meggisi.org website. I think this might be the 5th time I have either installed or re-installed, or reformatted, or rebuilt a blog platform for the site since I started the domain about 4.5 years back. The latest chapter in website history was written due to a complete and utter failure of my former web hosting provider, aplus.net, to actually host the website I had constructed. This was true for meggisi.org and it’s sister site lakevilleweather.com. They evidently experienced a change in ownership last spring/summer and thus, also experienced a change in infrastructure. This meant migrating all of their shared hosting clients to a new server platform. Supposedly, everything was to be seamless. All coding changes that were necessary were to be accomplished by their support team, and you wouldn’t have much of a hiccup in service other than being able to do file transfers, content management, etc, for about a week. None of that happened for me.

Without going into too much technical detail, the one very basic, simple thing aplus.net got wrong with my websites was the ability to run CGI scripts. That was it. Pretty simple. When they shut down that ability for me, the content management system I used (Movable Type) was rendered inoperative. Everything ground to a halt. I had to rebuild both websites — from the ground up — without Movable Type, or any CMS for that matter (a).

So, now I am with GoDaddy. On the good word of several people, and a lengthy review of the company, I hooked up with them last week. So far, so good. I am actually very impressed — the user interfaces/control panels, customer support, ease of transition, speed of service, and most importantly the price has lived up to the hype (b).

I have kept a simple homepage up and running for meggisi.org, but am now trying out the Wordpress installation which came free with the GoDaddy package as my new platform for blogging. Let’s see how far this goes.

(a) Aplus.net did have a Joomla! installer in their package and user control panel for hosting services – which I tried to use in lieu of my beloved Movable Type. However, their botched server move rendered this useless as well. You couldn’t even install and run a simple PHP-SQL database function. It was all just plain useless. It was like someone without the first clue on how the internet works did the platform switch for them.

(b) The company is well known for its “racy” advertising and its risk-taking-venture-capitalist founder and CEO Bob Parsons, who does weekly webcasts. It is by many measures, “over the top” in the way of internet marketing. But they are making millions of dollars during this very weak economy, and I say, cheers to them!