Ms. Pat has a wicked sense of humor. In her Netflix Special, she shares her personal matters including being pregnant at thirteen, her crippled uncle, and her gay daughter. If truths were told, she had been through a lot in her life. Comedy is her way out of the darkness. She gives us an invaluable advise: “Learn how to take the darkest shit in your life and turn that shit into laughter. ‘Cause when you can laugh at it, that means you got control of it.” Watch her show with an open mind and you’ll enjoy it like I did.

Last Friday, I had a conversation with another Scout father during our Vietnamese New Year party. He and his wife are dentists with their offices. They are a successful couple in their late 30s. I don’t think he is older than me. He was either born in the U.S. or migrating here at an early age.

Our conversation stemmed from the email exchanges we had on masking, vaccinations, and politics. From his scientific knowledge and personal perspective, he does not support vaccination mandates. I agreed with him. It’s an individual decision. There’s no shame in not getting vaccination. If you are unvaccinated and you contracted Covid, you should accept the fact that you put yourself at risk and you could take up an ICU unit, which could be used for other critical conditions. Your body, your choice. If you choose not to get vaccinated (the majority of Republicans) and you are against abortion (also the majority of Republicans) then you are a hypocrite. You can do whatever to your body, but you don’t give women that choice.

As far as masking, we didn’t dwell much into this issue because it had been debated to death in our email exchanges. What I found intriguing is that the young dentist is more conservative than liberal. He doesn’t support universal healthcare because he believes that would lower the quality of his service as well as the whole health industry. He explained that suddenly people show up to his office for the first time in 20 years with all kinds of issues. To me that’s a good thing. At least they showed up to check up rather than waiting until they got serious issues. That would cost even more. I know someone who had a heart problem, but didn’t get checked up. When he almost died, he showed up at the hospital and stayed for two weeks. His bill was $80,000, but he didn’t have a job and didn’t have any money. We, the taxpayers, had to cover his expenses.

Since he is a dentist, I wanted to get some inside perspective from a medical profession. I asked him if Medicare paid less than insurance. He said yes, but the bigger issue is that it takes time and effort to get reimbursement from the government. He takes his time with his patients to provide quality care. If he has to take on more Medicare patients, his quality would suffer. If he doesn’t then his business would suffer.

I totally understand his situation and it also comes down to money. I have tremendous respect for the medical professionals, which include dentists, doctors, and nurses. They have to have compassion and empathy in order to be in the industry of helping people. They make decent money as well but that shouldn’t be their priority. But then the more I see medical professionals turning into businesses, the more I lose my faith in them.

As I said before, I no longer identify myself as a Democrat. The Republicans are all about looking out for themselves and I am not down with that. The Democrats have more social inclusions. They are morally right, but they simply can’t get things done. They also need to get more young people like the dentist on their side. Then again, we’re still living in a white man’s world.

Happy sixth birthday my brightest Xuânshine!

I am happy with your development as well as your accomplishment. You are doing well in kindergarten. One of your teacher’s comments was that you routinely retell your personal experiences and stories. Seeing you are thriving makes me feel less guilty. I am so sorry that I have not spent time teaching you reading and practicing math. Your older brother still needs more help from me. I will get to you soon. I promise.

Fortunately, you are a quick learner who pays close attention; therefore, you excel in everything you do. You picked up skiing effortlessly just like how you picked up biking and ice skating. I wish you would continue to learn figure skating, but you seem to fall out of love with it just like your older brothers. You have started piano lessons and you seem to have the chops for it. Keep going, my son. I believe that you can do anything when you put your mind to it.

Your mother and I are very proud of you. As we are celebrating your special day today, we want to thank you for bringing energy and Xuânshine to our family. Being a younger brother, you try to catch up with Đạo and Đán from sports to video games. Being an older brother, you treat Vương with care and tenderness. You are a wonderful grandchild and a son. We all love you dearly.

Love,
Dad

After spending half a day at the Liberty Mountain Resort on Saturday, we went to our friend’s house to celebrate Vietnamese New Year in Maryland. We didn’t go home until midnight and the kids were exhausted. On Sunday, I let them sleep in and I was tired myself. When they woke up around 9:30 am, I asked if anyone wanted to go skiing. Đạo, Đán, and Xuân wanted to come.

We arrived at Liberty around noon and met up with my brother-in-law and his son. To my surprise, it was not too crowded. I took my kids and my nephew to the blue and black slopes. Another surprise was that all the slopes had moguls. I was worried that Xuân and Hân (my nephew) couldn’t make it, but they did just fine on the blue slopes. Đạo, Đán, and I went down the double blacks and met up with Xuân and Hân at the bottom where blacks and blues merged. Even with moguls, I managed to navigate my way down the double blacks with no problem. We were done around 4:30 pm.

We love skiing and we’ll miss it when the season comes to an end; therefore, we try to go as much as we can. The Epic pass and having our own equipment saved us time and money. We’ll definitely do it again next year.

Yesterday I did not plan to go skiing because of the heavy rain and warm weather the day before. The weather, however, dropped the night before and the resort was able to make snow. Đạo wanted to go so we went.

Liberty Resort turned out beautiful. The terrains were good. Because we came early in the morning, the lift lines were short. Đạo, Đán, and I hit the blue and double black slopes. I slipped on a double black once, but my skis didn’t pop off. I lifted up my legs above the ground and let myself slide all the way down. To prevent myself from slipping to the point where I faced the mountain and my skis started to go backward, I positioned my body in front of my downhill ski and put some weight on it as well. That seemed to work.

We did some mogul runs, but I only chose the less bumpy paths. On the green slopes I tried carving, but fell and hit my ski when I leaned. I need to start with one leg first.

We skied from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm. It was not crowded and the slopes were well groomed. As we headed up, the rental line was long. We avoided the crowd and four hours were plenty.

Edward Sorel is a satirical cartoonist and an unapologetic leftist. His illustrations appeared on the covers of major publications such as the Esquire, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker. His memoir is both personal and political. His writing is engaging and his works are exceptional. A must-read for designers. I didn’t even know about Mr. Sorel and to my surprise he is 92 years old. He can still write and draw at his age. I have utter respect and admiration for the man. I enjoyed this book throughout and I am glad that I had picked it up to read it.

Welcome to the second iteration of this blog. Warbler, a new text face David Jonathan Ross has sent out to the Font of the Month Club yesterday for February, has prompted the change.

I have been a member of the club from the beginning and I appreciated all the display fonts, but a text face is rare to come by. Even though Warbler Text is still a work in progress, especially with Vietnamese diacritics, I can’t wait to use it and this blog is a perfect place to experiment. Stephen Nixon once quipped, “I like how @visualgui handles this: he updates the fonts on his blog frequently … like once a month, I think?” Whenever I get new fonts, I tend to update this blog to put them to use.

Although the body text has changed to Warbler, I still keep Forma DJR for display and small texts. I also changed the colors to make it easier on the eyes for reading. In addition, I moved the main column to the middle and the sidebar to the left. Thanks to CSS Grid, swapping columns is so easy.

Since we are celebrating Vietnamese New Year this week, this little update is fitting with the holiday spirit. Wishing those who celebrate Lunar New Year with plenty of love, health, and wealth. Stay strong like tigers.

Last Saturday, I went over to a Scout’s parent house to drink for the first time in more than two years. We touched on the controversial topic that had been shaking and dividing our pack. I was told not to waste my time responding to a parent who just wanted to draw attention to himself. At first, I intended to stay quiet like most parents in our pack, but I could not let that man spread right-wing misinformation to other parents. He was making false claims about masking and vaccinations; therefore, I had to speak up. I enjoyed writing and poking fun anyway; therefore, I didn’t think it was a waste of my time.

As much as I hate political discussion, I find it entertaining for drinking and bullshitting. I have figured out that as long as I don’t identify myself as a Democrat or a Republican, I can say whatever I want and I can flip flop my positions just to rouse up the people. I want free healthcare as well as free tax. Why not? When I didn’t have any kid, I supported abortion. In addition, girls who aborted liked to have sex. Now that I have kids, I don’t support abortion so that parents can go through the misery of raising kids too. When I was single, I didn’t support prostitution. Now that I am happily married, I supported prostitution just in case my wife pulls the plug on me and I would need somewhere to plug it in. These are my drunken talking points so that I can still have fun without having to defend my positions.

In reality, I had always voted for Democrats because they seemed to care about society whereas the Republicans seemed to care about themselves and their own party. No matter how hippocratic or ridiculous they would come across in public, Republicans always put their own party first. Trump berated Ted Cruz’s father and called his wife ugly. What did Lil’ Ted do? Not a goddamn thing. What a bitch-ass pussy. Democrats, on the other hand, are so divided that they can’t get shit done. I am so frustrated with the Democrats, but I can’t see myself casting my vote for the self-serving Republicans. For now, I just stay independent and view politics as a form of entertainment, nothing more.

On Saturday, I took Đạo, Đán, and Xuân to Liberty Resort. We arrived around 8:30 am, 30 minutes after the lifts began to operate, and the weather was beautiful. We hit a few runs before the crowd was pouring in. Xuân went on blue terrains as well as a black terrain. Đạo, Đán, and I hit two double black terrains. On one of them, I skidded into an icy area. My turn was a bit deep and I started skiing backward. My skis popped off and I slid all the way down. There was no way I could walk back up to retrieve my skis. Fortunately, another skier saw my skis on his way down and picked them up for me. Skiers and snowboarders often helped out when other skiers popped off their skis.

Around noon, the lifts started to pack. We left around one in the afternoon. Around 3:30 pm, I went over to a Scout leader’s house to grab a drink to celebrate Vietnamese New Year. We drank beer and Scotch and ate plenty of food. By 9:30 pm, I was already buzzing and thinking that the combination would give me a hangover and I couldn’t go skiing the next morning.

I woke up at 6:00 am on Sunday and felt fine. I was just a bit tired from drinking. I woke Đạo and Đán up to join me, but only Đạo wanted to go. Just the two of us hit Whitetail. We arrived around 9:30 am, 30 minutes after the opening time, and the parking lot was already filled up. In addition, there were buses arriving. We hit the blue and black slopes then hit the double black twice. We did six runs and went back home. The lines were simply too long and I wanted Đạo to rest before school on Monday.

Whitetail is definitely not a place to ski on the weekends. It is just too damn crowded, especially the lift for the green slopes. The lift for the black and double black slopes was faster, which made sense because not too many people could ski or snowboard on these terrains.

It was a great weekend. I am trying to ski as much as I can before the season is over. I am getting a ton of workout, I think.

I read the entire novel and still hadn’t understood the plot, but then the plot doesn’t matter. This is the kind of book that you just read a bit at a time. If you know the reference, you will enjoy it. If you don’t know then you just have to keep reading. Lockwood is a brilliant writer and any part of this book can be quoted. Here’s one:

The first boy who had ever called her a bitch was now in jail for possession of child pornography, and this felt like a metaphor for the modern discourse. But the modern discourse, too, was his mother moaning after a single glass of red wine, “I know that he’ll have to go to hell, but still he’s my son” and “What did we do? What did we do? What did we do! What did we do!”