Les Singes: The Life of Monkey Boy

The Virtue

I do, I do, I do. I do love blogging. This much I know is true. I think the community is fascinating, I enjoy reading people's posts, and the open dialogue blogging promotes. Recently a bunch of bloggers banded to together to pay a fellow blogger's unpaid vet bills. Where else do you find that?

While chatting with a blogger about her role in blogging, she states how it's hard to get much attention compared to bloggers who write about their children. (I'm sure I've understated her opinion greatly, but it was something along those lines) Personally, it got me thinking since I'm a parent and feel the opposite.

Initially blogging was a nice outlet as a new parent. I found other parent bloggers who shared similar stories about parenthood. Honestly though, I feel being a parent has stifled my creative juices. In the past I had so many fun and random things running through my head. I couldn't turn off all the craziness. After Baby Singe's arrival, I didn't want to maintain a blog entirely about my child. I told myself that couldn't and wouldn't happen.

Six months after her first cry, upon completion of nearly every post I stuck a checkmark in the Baby Singe category box. Twelve months later, not only were the majority of my posts baby centric, so were my Facebook Updates. My world is my daughter's. I figured I'd get my life back after a year or so. Two and half years have passed and I'm still struggling to regain a foothold of Me Time.

2009 was the perfect storm to kill my blogging activities. Hectic work life for my wife and I, parenting, lots of rain. I kid, but these are the excuses I've created in my head. Excuses, they are abundant these days. They've been very prevalent for the past three years and I'd like to bid them farewell.

I know life will never be the same as it was prior to August 5th, 2007. I'm not that naive guy who impregnated Kourtney Kardashian. I'm learning to be okay with this and adjust my expectations accordingly. Last year I faltered with some of my athletic endeavors and took it personally. I made excuses then and I've made them in this post. I will rid myself of the excuses and move forward. Parenting is a joy. Being a husband is a delcious treat too. Having great friends is also swell. Balancing it all is a challenging mofo.

Neighbours Worth Keeping

I'm moving on. I abruptly published part two of the previous post to get the damn jury duty case out of my mind.

These days I've been glued to the Winter Olympics taking place a couple hours north in Vancouver, Canada. It's fantastic to see Canada in the limelight. In the last twelve years of my life I've worked with Canadians on an almost daily basis. I enjoy seeing a modest country and its citizens embracing its world spotlight. I was truly moved by the opening ceremonies.

In 1986, Vancouver hosted the World's Fair. Remember those things? What happened to World Fairs anyways? They were big deals back in the day and it's what placed my hometown on the map. I'm sure it's a key reason my family left California in 1970, eight years after Seattle hosted its own World Fair in 1962 thus the existence of the swell Space Needle and monorail. 47 years later, Seattle has matured into a cosmopolitan city complete with light rail and a swanky downtown library.

Our family went north of the border to attend Expo 86. It was kind of a big deal since I got my first passport. We seldom did adventures as a family unit since seven kids don't travel well. It was really fun to explore the world in a Canadian city. Personally, it was like being in a dream. We watched fireworks, toured the fairgrounds, Vancouver, and sampled foods from all over the globe. I felt at home in the foreign land many like to mock.

A love affair with foreign languages was cemented and Canada was on my radar. I know I should be more productive during these two weeks, but Vancouver has a grip on me. Job well done Vancouver!

My Private Area (pt. 2)

For two solid weeks, we heard testimony from prosecution witnesses. The key witnesses for the prosecution were the two victims, the family friend who finally alerted the authorities back in October of 2008, and Seattle police officers.

The witnesses were interesting to say the least. One witness actually pointed directly at me when asked to point to the defendant in the courtroom. Yikes. Anyways, I felt awful for those forced to relive the awfulness of what happened. No details were spared for the most part.

After the police were alerted, a search warrant was issued for the defendant's apartment. A couple days after the warrant was obtained, the Seattle police had the defendant in custody.

It goes against human nature to not be able to react. Seated right next to the witnesses was possibly more difficult than watching the horrific videos. I wanted badly to comfort those in pain, especially when they had to sit there in tears during a sidebar.

As I said, we got testimony from the two victims, 3-4 family friends, and all the police involved with this search warrant. The cops were there to document the procedures used to handle evidence during the search of the defendant's apartment.

After a week of testimony, I didn't think the prosecution had swayed me much. The burden of proof was on the prosecution, but after four days of testimony... it was fairly inconclusive in my mind. There were some graphic Polaroid pictures, but they were not definitive proof of first degree rape of a child.

During some of the more difficult testimony of the first week, a high school class filed into the courtroom. The courts are open to the public and therefore many classes visit the court to see how the legal system functions. All the kids were about 15-17 years old, based on my best judgement. At first I thought it might be a prosecution stunt. After a few interruptions, the judge politely asked to either stop leaving the court or sit still. All of the students took that opportunity to leave the courtroom. I wish their teacher stuck their nose in the courtroom prior to them overhearing intimate details about blow jobs. It was most unfortunate.

Week two there were two full days of testimony with only one witness called by defense. After Tuesday's testimony you could feel a strong case was being made by the prosecution. Even though, after that day I was still up in the air about things. The detectives who witnessed opened many key pieces of evidence, but didn't show them to us until the following day.

At the end of Wednesday, my head was spinning. It was that day when we got our first glimpse into videos found by a Seattle Police computer forensics detective. He recovered files from the defendant's computers. The defendant stashed a CPU unit in each of his two cars at the apartment. I've never had a more awkward 15 minutes or so of my life. Sitting in the courtroom with 13 other jurors watching the defendant in the courtroom engaged in sexually explicit conduct with children. His voice was creepy and the things he muttered in the videos haven't escaped my head as fast as I'd like. There was no mistaking the fact that the man in the videos was definitely the man sitting on trial.

My Private Area (pt. 1)

A week ago we wrapped up deliberations on our two week long trial. To this day I still have some nightmares about the trial. If you're squeamish, this may not be the post for you.

Before any opening statements were read, I think it's important to let you know it took three solid days to pick a jury. Roughly 200 potential jurors were called into the courtroom and I ended up being one of the final fourteen, including two unknown alternates. Many jurors were dismissed because they said they'd have biases towards protecting children. The judge was careful to remind all jurors how the burden of proof in this trial is on the prosecution. The defense does not have to prove a single thing.

Prior to the opening statements, the judge read the alleged seven counts accused of the defendant. The defendant, a 44 year old male, entered a plea of "not guilty" on all seven counts listed below.

I. First degree rape of a child
II. Second degree rape of a child
III. Third degree rape of a child (victim #1)
IV. Third degree rape of a child (victim #2)
V. Third degree child molestation
VI. Sexual exploitation of a minor
VII Possessing depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct

Now that the jury was aware of the charges, it was time for the prosecution and defense to give their opening statements.

Prosecution opened by talking about the importance of being a parent and looking after your child. The prosecutor talks extensively about how victim #1, we'll call him RB, had very little family structure. His mom was a stripper and the dad left the house at an early age. Prosecution alleges the victim fell into the wrong crowd and didn't have any valid role models until he met the defendant at the age of 10. The defendant and the victim became instant friends, despite their age difference of nearly 25 years. Shortly after they met, the prosecution alleged an intimate relationship formed between the two males. We were first introduced to RB via a Polaroid photo shown to the jury. He appeared to be about 8-10 years old in the photo with a big toothy grin on his face. The prosecution concludes her opening remarks stating how the prosecution witnesses will corroborate the testimony given by the two victims and that the jury will find the defendant guilty on all seven counts.

Defense's opening arguments centered on police procedures the day the defendant was arrested. Their argument was that the Seattle Police detectives were quick to judge in this case and didn't do an adequate job gathering the evidence. They alleged that friends of the victim planted significant evidence in the defendant's apartment in the immediate days following the defendant's October 2008 arrest.

SIDEBAR: the defendant was arrested by Seattle Police after serving a search warrant on his apartment in late October of 2008. He has been in jail since October 2008 up to the time of the trial.[/SIDEBAR]

Defense alleges the character of the prosecution witnesses is questionable at best. They also allege the detective work to be shoddy and rushed.

The defendant was flanked on both sides by his attorneys. He will wear the same outfit every single day of the trial, a long sleeve button shirt. He's largely emotionless during the two weeks of testimony with a few key exceptions, keeping his hands hidden under the table. The accused appears to be in his 40s and has dark hair with grey streaks. His eyebrows are bushy and dark as well.

I was seated closest to the judge, about ten feet away in the front left row. The witness box was between me and the judge. Without any effort, I bumped feet with a couple of the witnesses. If I looked to my right, there was a Visio screen where we'd see much of the critical evidence and slightly to the right I could see the defendant. I studied his expressions extensively during the trial since I had an unobstructed line of sight. I carefully studied his reactions as we heard testimony, looked at pictures, watched video, etc.

We Have Our Jury

My eleven days of jury duty have been fulfilled. I did my civic duty and I couldn't be more happy to take part in a very important process. I'd love to share my experience and as much of the trial as I can recall, but we weren't allowed to take any notes from the trial with us.

I reported to jury duty on Wednesday January 6th. I got pre-selected for a jury, but I immediately knew specific details about the alleged crime. I asked to be removed from the trial since the case was conservatively expected to take two months. My company covers 15 days of jury duty, but not 40. The case was a murder trial for a restaurant shooting which happened in an adjacent neighborhood.

Thursday morning I filled out a questionnaire after getting assigned to a different criminal trial at the end of Wednesday. The questions were detailed and explicit. The questions asked if you'd be able to view sexually explicit videos of minors. I thought about the question for a bit and answered yes. The trial was expected to last two weeks, so I had the green light. That's a wrap for Thursday, January 7th.

Roughly 60 potential jurors funnel into the judge's courtroom Monday morning to begin the drawn out voir dire process. If you're not familiar with voir dire, it's when the prosecutor and defense attorney(s) ask questions of the jurors in attempt to reveal prejudices that may factor in the trial. It's a fascinating process in action. I will juror #89.

It's during this voir dire process where many potential jurors embellish to get out of serving jury duty. Due to the nature of the trial, we were asked if we had biases towards protecting kids. If a kid has a revelation that was sexual in nature, will we always believe what they say to be the truth? There was a great deal of discussion and about 10-15 jurors were dismissed by the judge based on the jurors admitted biases.

Other questions followed and somehow I was still there. I didn't believe I'd get seated in the jury box, but it happened. Now I was juror #6. The attorneys for both sides have 8 jurors they can remove for whatever reason. I got in the box with a few removals left. I was nervous as hell and amazingly nobody objected to my presence jury so I stayed.

I got on the jury and the following morning (Tuesday January 12th) we'd hear opening statements in the State of Washington vs. Russell Doe*. .... to be continued...

*named changed to protect the presumed innocent

State of the Blog

A couple years ago I received a cool gift. A bunch of people I met online, known as bloggers, banded together to throw me a virtual baby shower. It was a remarkable thing I must admit. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of people I had never technically met.

Anyways, it was well coordinated and culminated in an extra special gift, a Nintendo Wii sent from Canada. During our most recent "mancation", it's a fair to say we played too much Wii. One of my friends asked how I got the Wii. One of my other friends quickly chimed in "Bloggers!".

I spent a couple minutes explaining how this came to fruition and it brought me a great deal of pride. Blogging isn't exactly what it used to be, but it still remains my preferred way to eavesdrop. Sure there are other mediums available now, but those don't share the same advantages blogging does. I really dig the dialogue found on blogs. Sadly my "job" (work and life) has become much busier so I don't have nearly as much time to blog as previously.

I'm not dissing Facebook because I'm on it everyday. However, I just can't learn as much about a person via their profile like I could if I read a blog a Friend authored. There's definitely something to be said for delving into someone's mind via a blog. It's what attracted me to blogging initially and it's what keeps me blogging five years later. I'm not nearly as prolific as I was before Baby Singe arrived on the scene, but blogging still exists.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this post. Maybe I wanted to brag that I have great friends, both in the flesh and those met via blogs. Maybe I wanted to share how incredibly awesome the Wii still is two years later. Perhaps I hope posting twice in a week will get me writing blog entries more often. Afterall the reason I started blogging in 2004 was to improve my writing skills.

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Appendectomy update: Mrs. Lessinges is scheduled to see the doctor tomorrow as a follow-up to her surgery. As of now there haven't been any complications and she's essentially back to full strength. Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and encouragement.

Crib Notes

I have a daughter, she likes things. She enjoys learning and making up stories with her stuffed animals. I'm not so sure she likes napping though. I dread the day when she stops napping because it gives us a chance to nap as well. Yep, I'm a vicarious parent.

Last weekend we had a busy Saturday visiting friends. Baby Singe almost fell asleep in the car on the way home for lunch and her nap. I carried her inside, read her a few books, and then put her in her overpopulated crib. She plays and chats with the stuffed animals as I imagine most girls her age do.

Mrs. Lessinge and I go down to the basement to relax in front of the TV. An hour later our daughter is still awake in her crib. She's not winding down at all. I decide to wander upstairs and take a peek on her. I open the door and started laughing because Baby Singe was completely naked. She removed all her clothes and was just playing in her crib. I was very impressed and highly amused. "Mrs. Lessinges, you need to come up here and see why our daughter isn't sleeping".

Last night I was just about to hit the sack when the little one wakes up. She immediately says "I want to sleep in mommy and daddy's bed". I scurry up the stairs and notice she's fully clothed, meaning her pajamas were still in place. Unfortunately her sheets were wet. We had our first full on bed wetting incident. This would probably happen every night... if every night she took off her diaper in the middle of the night.

Baby Singe took off her pajama bottoms, then took off her dry overnight diaper, and slyly pulled her pajama bottoms back up. Not sure why she did this, but it's not the best way to stay dry overnight. It does get daddy to read a few more Care Bear books though in the middle of the night.

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Since we're talking about plumbing issues, we had to spend $1500 to fix our pipes after a wash cloth slipped down the drain again. We've lost at least two down the drain that I know of. I once snaked our bathtub drain and found lots of hair and a shampoo cap. 80 year old houses aren't known for their equisite plumbing, but they do have fantastic charm.

It Rhymes with Mulva

I'm not stellar with first names. I've been on a mission as of late to improve this skill, especially at our daughter's daycare where parents are understandably linked to their offspring. Such as Colin's mom or Audrey's dad. The kids in my daughter's class see me and immediately say "Anna's daddy". Very cute I must say, yet it does not help me to achieve my Q4 goal.

About six weeks ago we had a daycare picnic. At the weekend gathering, I made it a point to memorize some new names. I learned a few and probably only remember two of them six weeks later. One I do recall is Conrad's mom, Angela. To reinforce her name we shared her name with Baby Singe. I didn't really expect her to learn the name or memorize it a full month later either.

A couple weeks ago I went to pickup of Baby Singe from daycare and Conrad's mom, Angela, surprisingly declares "Anna knows my name. My own son doesn't know my name". Huh, biting my lip trying desperately to recall Angela's name.

"wow, that's remarkable", I state. [still not fully remembering her name... got it Angela]

She proceeds to tell me a quick story about how Anna used her name over and over again in class. Personally, I've tried the entering names in my BlackBerry trick. That does a pretty decent job, but can be challenging when face-to-face with someone. I use the BlackBerry trick most often when I see someone in the distance who I anticipate will want to chat. It works pretty alright, but does have some drawbacks.

There's also the word association trick which can work if the name is fairly unique. (Phoebe, Foebe, Feebe... gave me a freebie... got it. Free coffee folks). I think I know about 27 Jennifers and 6 Meg(h)ans so that makes this trick not as successful.

I have four more Q4 goals to set and accomplish before December 31st. I wonder if using my daughter to accomplish MY goal truly qualifies as accomplishing the task? What's your trick to learning someone's name?

Let's Do This

A week ago today I was hanging out with my buddies for our second annual Mancation. It was an adventure, foreshadowing. Last year my wife coordinated the festivities with my friends as a surprise weekend getaway. It was extremely awesome as I had no idea it was happening and so giddy when my pals showed up at my house to whisk me away.

This year we didn't have the element of surprise going in our favor. We had a desire for five college friends to get out of town and relax. Last year we went mountain biking in Eastern Washington. This year we planned something similar on the Columbia River Gorge.

I took last Thursday and Friday off work and drive down to Portland with my amigo Jason. Thursday night we hung out in The Rose City and watched a soccer game with another friend from college. It was a really fun time and something I plan to do again.

Friday and Saturday we rented a sweet house on the Columbia River Gorge. If you've never been to the Columbia River Gorge, then put it on your list of places to see. It's quite a remarkable area. Our plans once again centered on mountain biking. Although fishing got thrown into the mix. I don't fish though, but I do drive a kickass Subaru so I shuttled the guys back and forth from the fishing hole to the house.

Saturday rolls around and I'm just not feeling the mountain bike thing. Call me a year older or just lazy, but we opted out of the mountain bikes. We sat around our portable electronic devices tagging each other in photos Saturday morning. Then we officially cancelled the bike reservation and had to find a new activity.

Disc Golf

For those not in the know, disc golf is golf with frisbees. This would be your chance to laugh. Five dudes in their mid 30s skip out on mountain biking to play disc golf instead. The course was nine holes, however we didn't play all nine even though it took us a good half an hour to find suitable playing "discs". We arrive at the disc golf park and at hole one there's a warning sign that says something like "see that crap near your feet, that's poison oak. It will be everywhere on the course so I hope you brought Calamine lotion". I may have embellished.

We saw the sign and for some reason decide to play a few holes. We lose one of our five discs on hole two and miraculously none of us contracts poison oak. After hole three we decide enough is enough. The course was overgrown and rather shitty. We thought we'd have a glamorous story to tell at the end of our Mancation 2009, but really... I can sum it up with the following keywords.

Basement ping pong, no fish caught, poison oak, watching kiteboarders, Hood River, portable devices, Leeroy Jenkins, coffee, beer, relationships, good friends, and scary toll bridge.

On the drive home Sunday I got stuck in really bad traffic, adding two hours to the drive. The Mancation wasn't nearly as awesome as the previous year, but it's not about the activities. It truly is about the company. I'm cool with just hanging out doing nothing, which is pretty much what we did for a couple days. It's hard to find time as adults to hang out with my college friends so this is what our annual gathering is all about, friends. Thanks for playing!

I Love Humans

Okay, so maybe I borrowed the title of this post from a Facebook Status Update of mine earlier today. Sue me. This week has been a chaotic work week due to a three day onsite meeting. It was nice and all, but I feel as if I will be playing catch up for the next three weeks.

Anyways, I was sitting at my desk Friday attempting to clear my mountainous Inbox when my cell chirped. I didn't recognize the number, but I decided to answer. The voice on the other end says "Egan" with an inquisitive tone. I confirm it's me and the woman tells me she's got something for me.

Before I continue you need some background information. Rewind a month to an incident after work. I hopped in my car after exiting my brick building and drove down the alley between my office and daycare. I saw a oncoming car swerve to avoid striking something on the ground. Not sure what it was, I slowed down to get a closer look. Whoa, someone's shoulder bag was in the middle of the road. I pulled over, stuck it inside my car, and then went to retrieve Baby Singe from daycare. Once I got home I spent about 20 minutes carefully going through the bag seeking any sort of identification.

Eventually I was able to connect with the owner of the bag on the phone. We agreed to meet the following morning so I could return her shoulder bag. As usual, I was running late that day getting stuck behind a train. The lady met me in front of Starbucks and offered to buy me a beverage for my efforts. I didn't have time though since I still needed to drop off Baby Singe at daycare. I politely declined and didn't think I'd ever hear from the woman again.

That was until today when my cell phone rang. The lady wanted to meet with me to give me a gift. We met in front of the same Starbucks and she kindly presented a gift. It was a pink bag with a cute stuffed animal dog for Baby Singe. Color me impressed. My daughter loved the dog and we all go home happy. The lady said, "I haven't stopped thinking about you since that day". Only if....