Christmas Letter 2009

This was the year for Graham to shine at baseball. He had the first grand slam of the season and of his life in the first game of the season. Bang! Right down the first base line toward the kid in right field who is there because there is no other position to play him. The ball was by “dreaming in right field boy” before he knew Graham hit it. Graham went on to catch lots of pop flies during a stellar season even throwing a kid out at home from center field, a feat previously reserved for big brother. Much baseball later and Graham’s team destroyed the favored league team in a double elimination final. This was his first championship and the first year that he really seemed to enjoy the game.

Meanwhile, in 7-8th grade league play Mint and his mates were not fairing so well. They won two games; one in a rainout and the other in a no show. There were just too many young boys on the team to mount a serious pitching effort. They played close each game until about the half way mark when their few 8th grade pitchers fatigued and had to be replaced with 7th grade arms. Despite this downer season, he had a great time as his coach focused on team play not loss after loss which got old fast with three games a week for six weeks. Not to embarrass him, but “Mr 13 yr old Attitude-Dude am I a boy or a man” walked back to the car in tears after the only game my Dad got to see him play. “What’s wrong I asked? … he couldn’t utter a word as he walked off the field, but finally managed a choked up reply, I really wanted to win that game for Pa.” Thus goes it as boys become men. Unfortunately, Mint suffered the entire season with soreness where his pectoral muscle attaches to his throwing shoulder. This forced him to play second base as his limited throwing motion prevented long throws. Still he once again exhibited the same sort of head’s up play we have become accustom to with ridiculous backhanded catches on the run being the norm.

Graham is now about half way through his first year of 6th grade (www.seattleschools.org/schools/mcclure/) and Mint in his last in 8th grade at McClure. He’ll be going to the monstrous, but new, Ballard high school next year (www.ballardbeavers.org). Whereas McClure is about three miles from home and both boys ride the School bus, next year Mint will need to ride the city bus to Ballard. This will be a non-event as he is an old hand at riding the city bus. Taking it downtown with his buddies to the Seattle center (www.seattlecenter.com) or to the movies, he knows much more about the city bus routes than me.

Graham, once unable to read well at all, has developed into a 6th grader reading on a 10th grade level. Mostly he reads science fiction which goes along with the fact that his favorite xbox game is HALO 3 ODST (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_3:_ODST) which is a futuristic first person shooter game where storm trooper types fight aliens for world domination, etc. These and other games that are interactive online basically taught Graham how to read as he needed to know what words and phrases meant in order to do well in the games. I’d say he is mildly competitive, but exceedingly obsessive compulsive; as they say “the apple does not fall too far from the tree”. Mint also plays this game, but prefers Call of Duty which began as a WWII game, but has been franchised into other American war efforts (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty_4:_Modern_Warfare). Access to these games is our main source of discipline. :)

Both boys still take music lessons at the Seattle Drum School (www.seattledrumschool.com) where Graham just had a recital. For it he played a couple of songs the most interesting of which was a slow blues tune called Slow Freight where he was accompanied by a professional bass player and drummer on stage to an audience of about 30. Mint’s band, City of Eyes (www.myspace.com/cityofeyes), has not played too much this school year after the grounding – almost for life it must seem to them, but actually only about five months – of the lead singer/guitar player for an offense that would have gotten Mint grounded well into the grave. Enough said about that. :( Soon though they will need to get it together to get ready for my 50th birthday part where they are expected play. Where the boy’s differ is in Mint’s number one favorite activity being “hanging out” which more or less means wandering around a ten mile radius of the house by foot and bus until curfew which is typically 6 PM. While his drumming continues to develop and he keeps up with me playing the blues, he has developed a real passion for “Dali-like” graffiti art which is more like murals than the illegal graffiti you may think first of (www.marcofolio.net/photoshop/graffiti_art_to_boost_your_inspiration.html).

By March this year I felt like my rotator cuff was nearly healed and that only 1.5 years after surgery. Healing came after I hired a personal trainer to get me beyond the limited exercises learned at physical therapy. This was a bit expensive but worth it to regain confidence and strength in my right shoulder. By the end of the year another geriatric condition was revealed to me – a partially squashed L5-S1 disc. This is a common affliction of those who sit and type for a living and is the most common location for disc degeneration as it takes the heaviest load at the base of the spine. With physical therapy the intermittent nocturnal numbness in my right thigh has improved, but unlike the rotator cuff there is no surgically acceptable solution. Eventually stem cell therapy will allow the proteinacious “washer” that is the disc between the L5 and S1 vertebrae to be replaced. but for now it only appears to work in rats.

Between travels this Fall twice to Scotland and a few other locales closer to home, I started music lessons again for the first time since college. Just like in college there is very little time to practice, but this time I am studying jazz theory – not classical guitar - with Graham’s Berkley trained piano teacher Ryan Burns, (www.ryanburnsmusic.com). To date it has been intellectually challenging in ways that my job does not provide. The job though is still going well at the UW and I can think my colleagues, collaborators and the lab folk for that. All are extremely professional and genuinely interested in the two-way research efforts in which we often engage. So, with a lab full of great people from senior staff to students and those who want to be students (goodlett.proteomics.washington.edu/group_members), it is difficult to be bored. Several graduate students – Shawna (Medicinal Chemistry), Sunhee (Molecular Cellular Biology), Soyoung (Statistics) and Pragya (Medicinal Chemistry) - should obtain their PhD’s this year and go off to careers in science. My first students will populate the world a year after one of my PhD mentors – Frank B. Armstrong – passed away. I really need to get a page up on our website that says something about Frank’s influence on me that I have tried to emulate with students because it was his soft handed guidance that allowed me to design, and thus be fully vested in, my PhD project as opposed to the dictation of projects that some mentors practice.

Donna’s highlight for the year was Trixie, a two year old Rottweiler-Mastif mix, who arrived this Fall from an animal shelter – seven years after our Australian Shepherd Dapper died. Initially, when I agreed that this particular “medium-sized” dog would be OK, Donna had said that Trixie was only 50 lbs. Any larger I thought and we might have trouble walking her, etc. However, when Trixie got home she was a rib popping, emaciated, svelt 75 lbs. Now at about 85, I reckon she’ll be 100 when filled out. This is the same Donna who keeps saying she has trouble communicating with me! Fortunately, she – Trixie not Donna - is a bit of a baby as opposed to a guard dog and fairly easy to handle. Had the thieves who recently took Donna’s ipod nano and Garmin GPS unit out of her truck parked right in front of our house come up on the front porch for some more goodies, then they might have been afraid of Trixie except that she greets everyone with a tail wagging where have you been? For Donna it was another year of working on homeless issues and political activism which came with yet another successful auction (www.shareauction.org) for the homeless shelters run by SHARE. She also has continued to keep our finances on track and keep up maintenance on the house for which I am grateful, but the boys – who recently started doing their own laundry - oblivious. They have, however, begun to notice some economic injustice around the home as pertains to their Mother, Banker-in-Chief. For example, Mint wondered recently out loud in the car far away from his Mother’s ears “Dad, why does Mom get to buy dozens of pairs shoes with your money when I have only 3 pair? ……… because your shoes cost over $100 each, I replied, and hers only about $20 each, but what I was really thinking was – good question, but I ain’t gonna bring it up!”

We wish you all Happy Holidays from Seattle: Dave, Donna, Mint, Ham and Trixie. As with last year we can be reached at david.goodlett@gmail.com, donnamgoodlett@msn.com, minter.goodlett@gmail.com & graham.goodlett@gmail.com and viewed at picasaweb.google.com/david.goodlett/December2009#. Additionally, we are now all on Facebook.