Good-bye, 2025, you were a good year. I guess I am in the minority as 25′ seemed to have a bad rapport amongst a lot of my friends and family, but for me it was good.
I’ve seen my girls grow up a little more and become their own not-so-little people.
I’ve started playing music with a new, smaller, group of people with the hopes of doing some open mics next year.
I’ve been happily employed at Poway Unified for the better part of a year now. It was a nice change of pace compared to the last couple of employers I had. The people are great, the workload is manageable, and for the first time in a long time, I believe in the product ( education ).
The Rubber Band was invited to play at Rancho Bernardo’s annual Oktoberfest festival at Webb Park on October 11th. We opened for Par Avion, an instrumental surf music-inspired band from Santa Monica, to a crowd of 900 beer aficionados.
The local paper and ( no joke ) Union Tribune picked up on the event, and ran articles in which we were published. As our lead vocalist announced to the crowd ( jokingly ), “Yeah, we’re kind of a big thing.” We almost laughed him off the stage.
The Chieftain interviewed us. Other local papers, including The San Diego Union Tribune, re-published the article. My co-workers at Twin Peaks Center found out and surprised me with my own copy in the main conference room.
Would we do it again? Absolutely. However, we couldn’t have done it without the help of a lot of people…
Thank you Eric and John from San Diego Event Pros for making us sound so good. You guys are awesome!
On the upside, the smoke kept the mosquitos away. No one complained of a single bite!
William Heise Campground. Seven families. Thirty people. And one bathroom, at least for the first night.
Apparently, at some point in my distant past I was a camper, because I surprised myself and my much more outdoorsy neighbor, Missy, the organizer of the expedition, by the sheer amount of camping equipment I had stuffed into the deepest, darkest corners of garage. It was almost as if I never wanted myself to find it again. Planning ahead I had bought a brand new tent in celebration of Amazon’s Prime Day, only to find two more hidden in my garage during my excavation.
“This new tent will work out better“, I insisted, “It’s bigger and we’ll all be able to sleep together!”
Mistake.
On the first night I realized that our massive 6-person tent was a tighter squeeze than I expected. Worse, I shared an air mattress with Kaylee. Being heavier, I created a depression that she couldn’t help but roll into and subsequently, on top of me. I escaped to the van and spent a sleepless night reclined in the driver’s seat, sleeping for maybe an hour or two in 15-minute spurts. I wasn’t the only one, either. Jodie ended up reading through the night. As for my other daughter, Ashley? She rolled off the air mattress she shared with Jodie and slept, face-planted on the bare vinyl floor of the tent. To each her own.
The toilet and showers gave out early the next day. Suspiciously, the outage coincided with our fearless leader, Missy, contracting a very nasty stomach bug. Being the trooper she was, she insisted on toughing it out, to the extent of trying to follow along on a 3-mile hike in 90+ degree weather. Mercifully, she retreated back to camp only to be voted “off the island” and chaffuered home with a crate of Gatorade and saltine crackers.
A trip to Miner’s Diner in Julian and heaping scoops of ice cream cheered everyone up. Heck, I would have paid good money just to sit in the air conditioned splendor. As luck would have it the diner had an entire basement full of candy which each of the kids took turns exploring.
Some campers truly roughed it, if only by keeping their car’s A/C above 78 degrees.
“Hey, Kay! “Check these out!”, I called to my youngest, Kaylee.
“What are those?”, she asked.
“Sugar candy cigarettes!”, I announced.
“I haven’t seen these in years. Pretty inappropriate for this day and age.”, I reminisced.
She nodded in agreement.
Later that night, back at the campsite, we dined on packaged ramen, canned beans, and store-bought tortillas in an effort to hedge against any more food poisoning stemming from the BBQ’d burgers we had eaten the night before. After getting the campfire started my friend, Mike, strummed guitar while the kids all lined up on a squat fence bordering the campsite.
“Uh, what are they doing?”, Jodie asked.
“Smoking cigarettes.”, I said.
I averted her eyes.
“Don’t worry, they’re sugar. I couldn’t resist.”, I smiled. “It’s nostalgic”.
The second night was quieter. Unsurprisingly, many campers decided to hoof it rather than risk stumbling through the brush in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. My bedroom, the van, was commandeered at least once to make the journey to the remaining operable bathroom a half mile down the road. Sleep was elusive, even more so when Kaylee popped her head in.
“I can’t sleep in the tent”, she moaned, “Can I sleep in here with you?”
“You can try”, I laughed. “I haven’t had any luck.”
She was out cold within minutes in the passenger seat next to me, snoring.
I would say I was up early the next morning, but as I never really went down it’s kind of a misnomer. We managed a pretty good spread of pancakes and scrambled eggs before everyone decided to cut their losses, beat the heat, and head home early.
“Next time? Cabins.”, Jodie suggested.
“Right?”, I agreed absent-mindedly. My exhausted mind theorizing where in the garage I could re-entomb my collection of tents and camping gear so that they would never, ever, be discovered again.
Ever get the feeling that you feed your pets just a little better than you feed your kids? Sometimes I do … and then I see my dog eat a rock and all is right in the world again.
Today my family and I held a bake sale to benefit Prostate Cancer Research and Awareness. My wife, Jodie, and daughters Ashley and Kaylee baked and decorated sugar cookies and cupcakes. They were a hit and brought in over $360 in donations! During the bake sale we even recruited a few new members for our team, “Team Vandervort”, which will be participating in the Prostate ZERO Run/Walk in San Diego on September 18th.
For more information on the Prostate ZERO Walk/Run and how to support “Team Vandervort” click here.
A logo I created to support my cousins’ new endeavor, Daddy’s BBQ Sauce.
My cousin Paul and his wife April just launched a new BBQ Sauce, “Daddy’s BBQ Sauce”. The BBQ Sauce is based upon a family recipe handed down by April’s grandfather. Paul and April have served it for years at family gatherings in their backyard on smoked and grilled meats. Before I eliminated meat from my diet due a prostate cancer diagnosis I looked forward to it’s unique sweet taste and how it caramelized on the meat. Without sounding like a hypocrite, it’s delicious.
I might seem like the last person that should be promoting a BBQ sauce, but I want to be the first to support my cousins’ endeavor because I believe in it. It’s good. So good that I volunteered to create a logo for them to support them. Over the next few months they’ll be promoting “Daddy’s BBQ Sauce” on a road trip across the United States. If you see them, tell them their cousin Scott said, “Hi!”, and pick up a bottle.
“Daddy’s BBQ Sauce” is also available on their online store.
I used Clip Art Studio, Gimp, and ultimately, Inkscape to render the logo. The logo went through several iterations, each focusing on a caricature of April’s grandfather. Some of the other finalists are below, but most people I talked to favored the “laid back” demeanor pictured above.
Take care. Stay healthy. Live life. Try “Daddy’s BBQ Sauce” ( you’ll love it )!
I heard this play out from the comfort ( and relative quiet ) of my upstairs office. Part of me wanted to jump out of my chair, tear down the stairs, run outside, and rescue our daughter, Kaylee, from the dangers of our upper-middle class suburban neighborhood. The other part was chuckling and weighing the consequences of subverting the parenting skills of my wife, Jodie. The later won. Our wayward daughter returned, starving, after a couple of laps around the block, forever validating my wife’s Mom-jitsu skills.
Star Wars introduced me to blue milk. My mom introduced me to blue steak.
When my mom got her kitchen remodeled in the 1980’s she was adamant about placing the microwave as close to the refrigerator as possible for convenience. Most of our food was prepared in an assembly line; from freezer, to microwave, to plate, to table. It wasn’t until I was older I figured out what all the other boxy objects ( the “stove”, for example ) in the kitchen were actually for. My mom sure could rock the ‘wave though. It was the Instant Pot of the day, capable of doing almost everything …
Now that we are all entering the holiday season under COVID restrictions I’ve realized that there is one thing that I miss more than anything, having good friends over to eat.
drawnandcoded.com 