I haven’t been to the skate parks since my last falling off the ramp. The pain in my sacroiliac joint is fading away, but I am feeling a bit intimidated to get back into rollerblading.

My helmet cracked when I fell the previous time and blacked out. If my head were hitting the ground instead, I don’t know if I could have survived. That helmet saved my head, but now I need a replacement.

I need to get back to the park to rebuild my confidence, but I will not get near the high ramps. I need to be more mindful of my age and my health. I am no longer a young man. The pain took way too long to subside.

I have been spending more time ice skating. The ice rink is much safer than the skate park. I don’t want to give up rollerblading though. It is still a fun sport I can do whenever I want and not have to wait for the rink to open. Maybe I just rollerblade on the bike trails instead of the skate parks.

My thanks to Tommy for supporting my blog. I appreciate his generosity and I am glad to hear that he enjoys reading this blog. This is definitely a motivation to keep me going.

As a blogger who blogs my life away, I really miss reading personal blogs. Even people I don’t know, I love to catch a glimpse of their life. They don’t have to be famous and they don’t even have to write about grand topics. I enjoyed something personal about their life that are willing to share to the public.

Whether blogging about their kids, emotions, or passions, they are invited the readers into their mind and I felt like I get to know them a bit. The other day, I saw a group of Vietnamese-American mothers who used to blog met up and posted their photos on Facebook. I was told that they are still blogging, but mostly in private. I wish they were still open to the public, but I am glad to hear that they are still blogging.

I am exciting to see my sons (Tinygui and Lilgui) started blogging. I hope they keep it up to practice their writing.

As a financial worrier, I am concerned about our summer spending spree, particularly on our kids. Xuân is continuing his academic tutoring for three days a week. Đán is taking private tutoring for reading and writing twice a week. Đạo is attending a writing workshop twice a week.

For sports, we already sent Đán and Xuân to a week-long figure skating camp. Đán will start the NHL/NHLPA Learn to Play program this Saturday. Yesterday, I signed up Đạo and Xuân for private ice skating lessons. I also am taking group ice skating lessons myself.

To offset these expenses, I am taking on freelance projects. I am currently working on only one website and the pace is slow as I am waiting for my client to do its part. My advising service for Vietnamese diacritics is going well. I have clients all over the world asking me to review their typefaces. I am really happy about those gigs.

As I am paying for all of these tutoring services and private lessons, I am thinking of offering my own services on web design, typography, and graphic design. Anyone interested?

Although I have more than I can use for my personal projects, I keep acquiring new typefaces. I recently bought a complete web license for Captura Now, designed by Anita Jürgeleit. Captura Now is a friendly, flexible sans-serif family with a variable font and Vietnamese support. I haven’t had a chance to, but I will put it to good use one day.

I invested in Lang Syne, designed by Stephen Nixon, from Future Fonts. Although Lang Syne is still in its early development, I trust that Stephen will complete it with a variable font and Vietnamese support, just like what he is working on for Name Sans.

As much as I have been excited about Future Fonts, I have refrained myself from making purchases. Except for Name Sans, a handful of fonts I have invested in have no future. Some of them aren’t going anywhere. With the exception of Name Sans, none of them supports Vietnamese, which is not too useful for me. As of this writing, only five typefaces on the entire Future Fonts catalog support Vietnamese.

I am still a long-time member of the Font of the Month Club. I am really happy that every font David Jonathan Ross each month comes with the Vietnamese language. I still highly recommend this club for students and font enthusiasts.

Adichie’s Notes on Grief is a beautiful, lyrical tribute to her father who passed away caused by a kidney failure. His sudden death during the global COVID-19 pandemic devastated her. She lived in the U.S. and he died in Nigeria; therefore, she could not be with him. My father passed away in Vietnam during the lockdown as well; therefore, I felt her pain and sorrow. The book is 67 pages and I read it in one sitting.

Today, Đạo and I learned the waltz jump, which is the last technique for my Freestyle 1 lessons. To pass Freestyle 1, I have to complete forward inside pivot, two-foot spin, arabesque, backward edges, half flip, and waltz jump. Now that I have all the technical down, I just need to practice my form for the test, which will be the second week of August.

I like this new learning method. Instead of focusing on nailing down one technique before moving on to the next one, I am learning all the techniques first then taking my time to refine them. Practicing several techniques seems less monotonous than just one at a time.

When I was making the transition from hockey to figure, the toe picks kept getting in my way. I tripped on them. As I am doing more jumps or hops (in my case), I begin to appreciate them. They are my new favorite tool for techniques.

After Freestyle 1, I will be done with group lessons. The pressure is both rewarding and stressful. I am the oldest and the only guy in the group. The girls are much younger and they can do the techniques with ease. I am too old to keep up with them.

I like to learn using Coach Julia’s YouTube videos and some encouragement from Đạo. He is keeping me motivated as we are trying to learn new techniques. The process will be slower, but I can learn at my own pace. I don’t need to take any test and I don’t have to keep up with my skatemates.

Đạo had written about our time together.

Đán, Xuân, and their cousin Khôi just wrapped up their five-day Sky High Skating Development Camp at the MedStar Capitals Iceplex. Based on the program’s description, I signed my boys up to develop their skills based thier levels. For example, I wanted Xuân to work on his backwards and Đán to work on his freestyles. I expected the coaches to test each individual skater and then grouped them together based on their level.

Unfortunately, there was one coach for eight kids in different levels. The coach was a seventeen-year-old girl who could skate, but didn’t have the experience to teach. She showed a few techniques for all the kids regardless of their levels. For example, the waltz jump is for freestyle level; therefore, Đán could do it, but Xuân and Khôi couldn’t. They need to learn the bunny hop first before they could even try to do the waltz jump. They ended up skating just for fun most of the time.

It was not the coach’s fault. She had the tough job of overseeing eight kids for four hour straight each day. In fact, she was very patience and cool with them. The kids had fun, but I was hoping they had developed some solid skills as well. The program was over promised, but under delivered.

I have been blogging for almost 20 years and I haven’t stopped. I find the freedom to write exhilarating. When I immersed myself into reading, I couldn’t stop. I find the pleasure of reading liberating. When I set my ear on jazz, I was hooked. I find the history and the art of improvisation to be hypnotizing.

I must have an issue with addiction or obsession. Once I hooked onto something, I just wanted more or to go all the way. I am not sure if it is good or bad. I don’t take the moderation approach. Go hard or go to hell. Fortunately, I never started smoking or using drugs. I don’t think I can dig myself out of those holes.

I had an issue with alcohol, but my gout, which is a curse and a gift, put my alcoholism under control. If I were with one or two drinking buddies, I could drink until my body couldn’t take anymore, which caused everything to come back out. Fortunately, those friends do not live close by.

I never wanted to go skiing, but my wife wanted me to do it with the kids. On our first skiing trip, I didn’t go because I refused to pay almost two hundred dollars for just one day. On the next trip, I gave it a shot to get my wife off my back. Then I was hooked. Skiing felt like flying even on a bunny slope. I ended up taking my kids on a ski trip every weekend in the winter right before the pandemic hit. I felt guilty because we blew five hundred dollars each day on skiing packages and food just for Đạo, Đán, and me. My wife, however, brushed it off. She encouraged us to go for it.

Then the pandemic hit and we were forced to stay home. We did some biking, but that quickly got boring. My wife suggested rollerblading. I thought she was out of her mind. Falling on concrete and getting hit by the cars on the streets seemed to be too dangerous for rollerblading. Then she bought us rollerblades. We started on the basketball courts when no one was playing. Then we discovered skateparks. I didn’t realize there were skateparks for skateboarding and rollerblading. I got hooked. I fell several times trying to do the drops, but I loved the vibe.

I used to ice skate a few times back in the days. I enjoyed it, but didn’t take it seriously until my kids and I started lessons. Ice skating is all about techniques. The more I learned, the more I wanted to build up my skills. Needless to say, I am also hooked on it. I felt like a little kid discovering a brand new world, except I am not a kid anymore. The learning curve is much steeper for me, but I am not competing against anyone else other than myself. I don’t have a goal, but I refuse to skate recreationally. I wanted to learn as much as I could just to prove to myself that I can do it.

I write because I enjoy expressing myself even if no one else would read it. I read because I enjoy gaining new knowledge and getting into someone else’s head. I listen to jazz because I enjoy the musical expressions the musicians created on the spot. I skate because I enjoy the feeling of being a kid again, something I missed when I was a kid.

Life is too damn short and I will leave this temporary place one day to meet up with my mom and dad. So just live it. YOLO!

I woke up and felt recharged after eight hours of sleep. I had about three hours the night before. I ate a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats, one of my favorite types of cereal. I went straight to work with a WordPress developer at the University to change a domain name for one of our centers. The developer was awesome and we worked together well. I appreciated her talent as well as her honesty. She didn’t shy away from letting me know what she didn’t know and I did the same. Fortunately, we had different skill sets; therefore, we had each other covered. We completed the project right before noon. Everything worked out as expected. Even though we had worked together in the past few years, we had never met. I hope to have a chance to thank her in person one day.

After wrapping up the project, I went to the public library to pick up Đán. He had a private tutor session with his recent teacher to help him with language arts. The wasp removal specialist called to come by to take away a wasp nest that was as huge as a basketball. Then I helped my son Đạo set up his Zoom meeting for his writing workshop. That was only noon time.

I took Đán, Xuân, and their cousin Khôi to the ice-skating development camp at Ballston Quarter. After checking them in, I headed straight down to Copa to have lunch and to watch England versus Germany. I ordered a glass of Sangria, opened up my laptop to do some work, and relaxed for a bit. Around 3:30 pm, I took a break and decided to head to the Powhatan Springs Skatepark to do some drops and to skate around. This park is for serious skateboarding. It had three bowls. A young kid, probably around twelve years old, just dropped into the deepest bowl like nothing. He had no helmet and no guards. He was skating on his board like surfing.

I tried dropping in the shallow end of the lower bowl first and then the shallow end of the higher bowl. Then I peeped into the deep end of the higher bowl. It was not that deep, but the curve was a little deep. I went for it and busted my butt. My whole vision collapsed as the 95-degree Fahrenheit kicked in. I managed to get myself out of the bowl and found a cool grass spot under the shade to crash. I texted my wife to say, “I love you,” and then closed my eyes. I closed my eyes for 15 minutes to pull myself together. When I woke up, my butt was in tremendous pain and I could barely pull myself up. I didn’t receive a reply from my wife.

I managed to pick up the boys from skate camp with tremendous pain in my butt. I feel like an old fool. No wait, I am an old fool. I didn’t let my kids rollerblade because it looked dangerous skating on the streets. Then I got into it myself and now I am the one that takes the risks. It is true what they said, “No pain, no gain” and “Getting injured is part of the game.” As I dragged myself out to my car, I heard the kids say to each other, “Go hard or go home.” In my case, go hard and go to the hospital.

We’re looking for a part-time Web Content Specialist to join our team. The main responsibility for this role is to help us keep our websites up to date. We use MODX for our main site and WordPress Multisite for everything else. Although we’re using content management systems to update our sites, we need someone who can write semantic HTML markups and a bit of CSS. Copywriting and editing skills are not required, but strongly desired.

This position is mostly telework and can be flexible; therefore, it is ideal for novice web and graphic designers who would like to gain web experience. You will get an opportunity to do some graphic work as well as to learn coding for the web. You will definitely learn HTML and CSS, but you can also learn PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, MODX, and WordPress to take your web skills to the next level.

This is a part-time position with decent pay and tuition benefits. If you’re interested, submit your application online and let me know.