I’m not a hug beach fan by no means. I hate the sand in my toes. I hate it when sand gets into my sneakers. Overall, you feel like a big salty mess when you’re at the beach. However, since we are there often with the kids, I’ve come to enjoy it really.

We don’t have a vacation planned until October so until then, day trips and jaunts to “Grammy’s Beach” is what we’re doing this summer — and that’s ok with me considering work is nuts and I’m putting in about 16 hours a day between my full time gig and my part-time gig as executive editor with Technorati. When the wife and I decided that yesterday was going to be a beach day, I decided to cut the chord. Yes, I brought my iPad to the beach (though only to read). I had my phone, but I only checked it a couple times (and really used it to take videos of the kids).

Needless to say, I spent more time splashing around in the water and tossing the kids around than I did buried in a device. It was awesome and I need to do more of it.

Sometimes in our hustle and bustle of living, we forget to unplug. We’ve become some dependent on technology and being connected that we forget to “connect” — connect with family, connect with our spouses, connect with friends, etc.

The memories we made yesterday, though small and a spec in the memory back of our eight-year family story, will last forever. Spending the time with the wife and kids didn’t require power chords. It didn’t require checking voice mail. All we needed to do was pack the cooler full of drinks and snacks, throw on the swim trunks and have a blast. That, my friends, is priceless.

When’s the last time you really connected?

Don Martelli is just a dad, moonlighting as a PR exec, photographer and civilian journalist. He’s the executive editor for Technorati, a co-founder of Every Other Thursday and is a contributing writer for Shamable and the PR Finish Line. Connect with him at www.donmartelli.com or @bigguyd via Twitter.

So. Burlington girl killed in tragic bicycle accident

South Burlington, Vermont – May 24, 2010

Amelia Sperry was 5 years old

Two communities are still in shock following a weekend accident that claimed the life of a young girl. Amelia Sperry was a kindergartener in South Burlington– just five days shy of her sixth birthday– when her bike collided with an SUV in a Shelburne neighborhood.

Police were back at the scene of the accident Monday morning, collecting more evidence. Authorities say Dr. John Macy had just driven into the Farmstead Drive neighborhood Saturday, when he noticed Amelia having trouble with her bike. He stopped his car until she was steady, then proceeded on, her parents waving to him as a thank you gesture. But as Macy slowed down approaching his driveway, Amelia sped up on her bike, not realizing the car was turning. Bike and car collided, pinning Amelia underneath.

“There were many people, residents were coming from all over the neighborhood with floor jacks anything they could to help free the little girl,” Shelburne Police Ofc. Dan Eikenberg said.

Amelia was a kindergartner at the Orchard School in South Burlington. Principal Mark Trifilio says it was a tough day but the teachers and students were getting through it together.

“You know these things just don’t happen in schools very often and the parents that come in are just grief stricken and they are also struggling right now, so we are trying to help the adults so they can be there for their kids. Our day is going well; it’s tough, but it has been going very well,” Trifilio said.

Trifilio says Amelia will be remembered as a very caring and sweet child. Her picture is on the school’s website.

At this point, it does not look like any criminal charges will be filed. Police say there is no evidence of excessive speed or negligence; this appears to be just a tragic accident.

———————————–

Shocking, isn’t it? Much has been written about sweating the small stuff. I’m not going to belabor the point here because we all know what it means. What I will say is the other night I got annoyed with my 6 year-old Molly. Why? Because she had the audacity to play Wii Super Mario Bros. quite badly, and she ended up getting my Mario character killed a couple of times. I didn’t yell at her or anything, but the fact I even thought this mattered for one millisecond is enough to embarrass me as I type this.

We all do this from time to time. It’s human nature to be bothered by the silly, inconsequential things our kids say and do. So as trite as this whole “sweating the small stuff” notion sounds, in my opinion we parents need these reminders so we can remember to lighten up and appreciate what we have. This morning I gave my kids extra tight hugs when they woke up. I’d recommend that you do the same.

Update: if you’re interested in reading more about Amelia Sperry’s life, here is her stirring obituary that appeared in the Burlington Free Press.

As a bald man myself, I want a platform from which to sing the praises of the Great Bald Men of Our Times, to point out men that have worn their baldness well and made baldness the sex symbol it is today. For starters we turn to the kind of cueballs himself. No, I’m not talking about Yul Brynner – that’ll be another entry in the series – I’m talking Telly “Who loves ya, baby?” Savalas.

Telly’s contributions to Bald Beautifulness is that he made it, like all great bald men, look natural, an asset rather than a liability. A veteran actor of stage and screen, especially in the much-loved cop show, Kojak, Savalas employed the dome as part of an arsenal of cool that also included a broad chest, a growly, gravelly voice, and enough confidence to stop traffic. Just look at this guy. Look at him! He’s unstoppable.

So Telly, for our first installment of TBatB, we salute you. Who loves ya? We love you, Telly.

Stay bald, my friends.

The USS Abraham Lincoln CVN 72 - 79,000 tons of diplomacy

Being the father of four kids, the time leading up to my much anticipated journey out to the USS Abraham Lincoln was filled with mixed emotions.

On one hand, I was about to experience something not many Americans will ever get the opportunity to do in their lifetime. On the other hand, anytime I leave my kids I get a little sad knowing I won’t see them for the next few days. I love being a Dad and anytime apart from my kids is tough.

My mission on the Lincoln was to learn what I could in three main areas:

1. Talk to folks on the ship with kids. How do they deal with the deployments and extended time away from their families?
2. Learn how the Navy, and their media personnel on the ship, use communications, PR and social media effectively.
3. Just soak in the experience and get a new appreciation for the hard work, dedication and sacrifice our sailors make to keep us safe.

I will save the social media, PR and general giddiness I experienced on my trip for Shamable.com and ScottGulbransen.com blogs; my mission here will be to tell you what I’ve learned about these amazing men and women in our Navy and how they handle being away from their husbands, wives and kids.

I’d be crazy if I didn’t first talk about our flight out to the Lincoln.

We all met (all includes several well-known business, social media folks) at the North Island Naval Air Station early Sunday morning to get our briefing and a brief tour before getting ready for our flight out to the ship.

THe VRC-30 Providers were tasked with flying us out to the ship.

After a safety briefing from a very young, but amazingly smart and courteous Naval aviator from the Fleet Logistical Support VRC-30 “Providers” (pictured left), we were shuffled into a make-shift ready room where we were instructed on how to get ready for our flight out to the USS Lincoln.

We slipped on three items: what the Navy calls a cranial – sort of a half helmet meets half ear protector, goggles, and a water vest. Once you start slipping into this gear, the boy in you that wanted to be a fighter pilot starts to creep toward the surface. After I squashed the little boy back into this man’s body, we were all ready and heard the plane pull up right on the tarmac outside the briefing room.

The plane we’d take out to the Lincoln? Not a jet but an incredibly durable workhorse known as the C2 Greyhound. Also known as a COD (Carrier Onboard Delivery) craft, the turboprop can seat up to about 18 people or be configured to carry just cargo. The COD is what the Navy primarily uses to bring on personnel or supplies when at sea. It’s a bull and you can see the video below as we boarded this craft for our flight and our first “Trap 1″ on the deck of the Lincoln.

The ship had moved offshore pretty far so our flight out was going to be a little longer than expected and last over an hour and 10 minutes from San Diego. The liftoff from the base was uneventful, but the anticipation of our first carrier deck landing was building up in all of us.

We were given a five minute warning as we approached the ship and would be given a wave by the on-board crew members once we were 15 seconds from our landing on the USS Lincoln.

I can tell you without hesitation, those last 15 seconds seemed like an eternity. Not many human beings on the face of the earth get to experience landing via arrested cable on an aircraft carrier and we all kept waiting for the hard, violent and exhilirating jolt as we touched down.

Here is actually video from flight deck cameras of how we landed on the deck on Sunday:

Here’s also a picture of me (lower right) as we landed. Yeah, my heart was pumping like never before. No words can describe what it feels like to go from 100mph to 0 in a few seconds. Amazing feat of engineering and piloting skill.

Shaky photo of the landing on the USS Lincoln

Being able to land like that is something I will tell my grandchildren about. It was everything it was built up to be and the first thing that came to my mind was how safe I felt. Credit the Navy, and it’s men and women, for the years dedicated to making Naval aviation safe enough to fly geeks like us out to a moving aircraft carrier.

As we waited to deplane, the rear hatch of the C2 opened up revealing a strange and highly surreal environment. The smell of jet fuel filled my nostrils. I was on another planet of sorts and I loved it.

Next post…you’ll meet some of the Dads aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Follow Scott on Twitter @sdgully or email him at scott@everyotherthursday.com. His personal blog, where he writes about public relations and social media, is www.scottgulbransen.com. Scott also contributes the the Shamable Blog and is known as the Gluten Free Father and reviews GF food.

Despite divorce taking an emotional toll on the bride and groom, it has a massive rippling effect with children, no matter what their age.

I know this from experience as I’m from a family that has been carpet bombed by divorce. Regardless of the marital issues, there are some pretty simple tips to follow that will help you parent through the paperwork, court appearances, family separations and awkward holiday situations.

Honesty Can Go a Long Way
Regardless of what you say to your kids, they won’t understand why the divorce is happening. However, be honest with them and speak to them in a manner that they’ll understand.

Comfort is Important
It is absolutely critical that both parents comfort their kids through the divorce, ensuring them that regardless of how things shake out, their love for them is unconditional and will never change.

It’s Not Your Fault
Kids will want to blame themselves, thinking of all the times they were “bad” and should have listened. Parents need to tell their kids that in no way shape or form that the divorce is their fault. A feeling of guilt in children can fester and ripple into other aspects of their lives, including school, relationships with friends, etc.

Routines are Important
As much as the parents can, it’s important to maintain routines. Despite mom or dad not living in the same home anymore, life needs to continue. Whether that means dinner at 5pm, school pick up, soccer practice, etc., the routines need to continue. It shows the children that you are moving on with your routines and life and that someday, the raw emotions will level off.

Just Love Them
At the end of the day, kids need the assurance that you are still their parent no matter what. Whether they are toddlers, pre-teens, teenagers or adults, children will always look for that assurance that their parents will be there for them no matter what emotional, physical or material need they may have.

Believe me, divorce is not an easy thing for everyone involved — the parents, the kids and the families. But often times, the emotional impact on kids is overlooked. Most think that kids are resilient and that they will get through it. While this is true, they need a lot of hand holding and assurance. While some might think about who is getting the vacation home in Florida, they should be thinking about their kids.

Stuff is just stuff. But your kids are your kids. It’s much harder to replace their love and emotional stability than it is a piece of property.

I ran into this issue with the earthquake in Haiti.

My oldest peaked over my shoulder as I was looking pictures from the Associated Press. There is just no way to sugar coat imagery like we saw from Haiti.

Kids are so innocent. You want to shelter them from everything. However, we live in a world that is violent and full of tragedies, murders, accidents and just some bad bad stuff like child abuse and kidnappings.

There are times that I worry about my kids at school. What’s to say some nut job is going to pull a Columbine?

It’s these — Haiti, Columbine, kid nappings, school security, terrorism, drugs in schools, etc. — incidents that really freak me out as a parent. How do we shelter our kids from the dangers and horrific events that take place in this world without sheltering them…..if you get my drift.

We can’t….an answer that’s tough to digest and accept. Guess all we can do as parents is educate our kids about the dangers in this world and help them better understand how they can help those in need — like in the case of Haiti.

As I thought about this more, I recalled what it was like when I was a kid. We’d play outside until the street lights were on. Mom would scream for us and we’d coming running home. These days, kids basically need a security force and GPS planted in their butts for parents to feel any real comfort as to the safety of their kids.

Maybe it’s the current state of the media that has created this unnerving feeling of the lack of safety. Turn on the news and if it bleeds, it leads.

Then again, maybe this world is getting progressively worse in all areas that make parents like me want to bubble wrap our kids before they leave the house.

What are your fears as a parent?

You see, we don’t travel much. In fact, a majority of my family (wife’s included) lives on the North Shore and the person living furthest from us is about a 20-minute car ride away (technically, we have relatives in NH and Tennessee but we didn’t see them that much when they lived in MA so they don’t count).

Take this homebody mentality and mix it with a job that often times, requires travel. Then, dash in a wife who is more of a homebody than me as well as two little kids and it makes for high drama any time the words, “Hey, in a couple of weeks I have to go to [fill in the blank place here],” and it’s never a good convo.

Now, being that I’m 6’2″, 220 more like 250 traveling anywhere — even in a car — is not really enjoyable. I hate it. I hate packing. I hate being away from the wife and kids. I hate being taken out of my comfortable routines. Like I said, I hate even traveling in the car to Quincy for that matter (when it’s a 20 min drive through the City of Boston).

I know, that’s pretty very weak. But hey, that’s me being a panzy. Deal with it.

So, now that I’ve brought you up to speed on the mentality for traveling; what goes down on the home front; as well as the the fringe elements that make me cringe stress when I know I need to go somewhere for business, please take a second to digest this:

I’m going to Hawaii.

Yes, Hawaii.

I’m going for roughly a week on business — two days of travel, three days of work sometimes play. Now, this isn’t a trip where I’m jumping on the train and headed to NYC for a day. This is a 15-hour journey one way; a different time zone; unfamiliarity of airports; and, the general uncomfortable feeling when traveling more than 30 minutes away from home.

Yes, I know, it’s Hawaii and my argument is very, very ridiculously, girlie and unmanly weak .

Here’s the kicker kick in the balls though…I’m leaving on my wife’s birthday.

Yea I know, I’m toast sleeping on the couch for a year. I need to come back with something fantastic for her, like, er sunshine pearls, diamonds, a treasure chest full of gold.

Long story short…as a PR professional, you go where the business is where clients tell you to go. I get that. I understand it totally. I’m very excited about the opportunity and discovery, of sorts.

On the other hand, telling my kids that daddy is going to be away for a week land seeing their tears was heartbreaking. The wife understands, but of course, there is anger and jealousy involved. She’ll be at home taking care of the kids, doing her day-to-day routine (which she has down pat like a Jedi master). Then there’s me, gallivanting on the other side of the United States, dipping my toes in the Pacific Ocean, enjoying 80 degree weather and eating dinner sucking back some sort of fruity drink when normally I’d be either sleeping or getting up for work.

Either way, being a homebody is not a travel-friendly trait to have.

I guess when I’m throwing on the flip flops, heading to the beach for a nap, I’ll get over that quick.

These are the evenings where you wish you could pound down a couple of expressos for energy, bang out the work you need to get done, swill down a late dinner and hope to get about five hours of sleep to start it all over again.

There’s one problem though — the kids are beating the piss out of each other, pulling hair, biting, asking for stuff every two seconds, etc.These are the times that test your patience.

My mother would always say to me that patience was a virtue — something I never understood until I had kids.

There are days where I don’t mind when the kids are out of control. In fact, I’ll join them and have fun. Then there are times where I’m steaming and I find myself yelling at them because of every little thing they are doing. That’s not fair to them and not fair to my wife who has to listen to my loud mouth.

Sometimes you just need to take a step back and use a little patience, because, afterall, it is a virture.

This is your brain on Deja Vu.

Everyonce in a while I like to let my brain drift and hypothesize a new scientific theory nobody before me may or may not have thought of. Chances are you probably have thought of something similar while doing acid, but since I haven’t read what you may or may not have written, it’s a moot point.

Anyways, this theory is about deja vu. Don’t act like you don’t know what it is. It’s when you have glimpses of the future, but don’t realize that they are glimpses of the future until the future actually arrives. Usually they come at night during sleep or when you are taking a nap in the bathroom at work while your manager walks around asking everyone where you are, but she’ll never look for you in the bathroom cause… well… she can’t go in there.

So where do these visions come from? Are there those of us that have more visions than others? Perhaps, that is why we have people who call themselves ‘pyschic.’ Although I think those people are just good bullshitters who take advantage of the gulibility of morons. So are these simply visions of the future, randomly chosen by our brains, or is there something else. Well, I think there is something else. I think deja vu is an indicator of how long we have to live. It’s simple really. I believe that our subconsious mind sends out a ping to the end of our existence to check when it is (with the shit we eat and what we do to ourselves, our subconscious has to ping the end of our life constantly as it is variable.) Of course, this is not counting thing like car accidents and shootings, the only thing this ping could take into account is things we do to ourselves like drinking, smoking and fucking dirty whores.

So this subconscious ping goes out to the end of our life, and like a ping – comes back with a full report that we’ll never read. Except, it is trailed by a future memory. That’s right. I said a future memory. That’s why deja vu feels like something we’ve done before but have only remembered doing in the sense that it was never actually done. Like half the women we claim to have slept with. We talked to them, and mave have gotten our hands up their shirts, but we never fucked them. But our brain, over time has told us we have – so we believe it and it becomes a memory. When we see this future memory, for the moment, it becomes something we thought we actually did, when in reality it is something we will someday do.

So, by that line of thinking, the ping returns a future memory. So what does that have to do with the end of your life? Well, the time period to choose a future memory from obviously gets shorter and shorter every passing day, and most of us don’t have deja vu very often. And the thing with deja vu is we can never pinpoint when we had the future memory in the first place, only when we had the deja vu. It would be virtually impossible to pinpoint having a memory, much less a future one since it seems like a memory there is no reason to pinpoint as your brain thinks it’s been done before. Get it?

Essentially then, the more often you have deja vu – the closer you are to death. Because there is less time for the ping to be grabbing future memories, which causes them to be closer together, which would imply that there is a smaller range from which to farm these future memories. Now, is there a way to control these pings? How the hell should I know? You see a PhD on the wall? Didn’t think so.