Happy 90th Birthday Dad – Pellegrini Page

There’s been a lot of cool stuff going on for us lately, and I’ve got a lot to get to, but first I need to wish my Dad a happy birthday. I can’t believe today he would be 90, but I keep doing the math and it keeps checking out. After all, he was 52½ when I was born and I’m 37½ now, so there you have it.

As always, I still think of him every day, but on days like today I can’t help but think of him a little bit more. Obviously it sucks that he never got to meet my wife or any of my kids, but I know he would be very happy with how my life has turned out, and my God would he love his grandchildren and daughter-in-law. Even though he was gone well before any of them came along, he is still very much a part of our lives.

I’ve done my best to not just talk about him, but to associate his memory with good. So, on a special occasion when we’re having birthday cake for breakfast, we call that a Grandpa Elmer breakfast. Or when Ava knows she did something wrong, I’ll ask her “What would Grandpa Elmer tell you to do?” and she always knows immediately. I’ll be pulling that on Elise and Enzo soon as well.

I feel like not only does he deserve that, but the kids deserve it too. They deserve to know who and where they come from, and he was a great man who deserves to have his memory live on. I especially love the way we celebrated his birthday today, which was by me taking Ava and Elise to our first Daddy-Daughter Dance at the local high school. We found out about it through Ava’s school, and as soon as I mentioned it to the girls a couple weeks ago, they got super excited. They had their dresses picked out a week in advance.

I figured if you’re going to a dance then you have to go out to dinner first, and being that it was Grandpa Elmer’s birthday, an Italian restaurant seemed appropriate. We went to a local place called Calabria, and had a delicious meal. The girls both had pasta, while I enjoyed Veal Saltimboca, then we got down on some serious dessert (see photo below). After dinner we headed off to the dance where we enjoyed an evening of games, pictures, snacks, and of course – dancing. It was great fun, as it should be, and was a night I won’t forget.

So before moving on, happy birthday Dad! I find myself telling my kids a lot of the same things you used to tell me, and I love the fact that you are still a part of our lives.

Jessica has been quite busy lately. She worked a few shifts at El Gaucho Bellevue recently, as they always get busy around Valentine’s Day. They love having her there and keep asking her to come in and work more frequently. She got a call from the General Manager this week saying they received the nicest letter from a customer regarding the service Jessica gave them. It’s a true testament to her natural ability not just to do a good job, but to connect with people and make sure they really enjoy their evening. She’s been thinking about picking up a few more shifts so we’ll see if it works out.

She’s been continuing to work hard with the kids on reading, writing, and counting. Ava is getting close to having all her sight words up on the wall, and Elise is soaking it up. I’ve been extremely busy with work lately (more on that in a bit), so Jessica has taken on so much in terms of homework and studying with the kids. On top of this, in addition to our two family trips per week to the gym, she’s been squeezing in a couple extra workout sessions per week, just to keep her sanity I guess.

The kids are all doing great. Yesterday was Ava’s 100th day of Kindergarten, so they had a classroom party where each kid was supposed to wear a shirt with 100 of something on it. Jessica ended up going onto her local Buy Nothing site and found another Mom giving away her daughter’s shirt from last year, which had 100 smiley faces on it. So Ava wore that, and we’re keeping it for Elise to wear next year 😉

Elise is continuing to enjoy dance classes on Wednesdays, but I’ve still only had a chance to see her once, so I really can’t wait for her recital in June. She is also showing a lot of interest in two things: building (like with Legos or Duplos), and music. She also insists on picking out her own clothes each day (even her pajamas), so I love all the creativity we’ve been seeing from her.

Enzo loves playing the Ukulele we got him for his birthday. As I write this, he is sitting next to me watching a movie, while holding (and strumming) his Ukulele. On command he will play you his favorite song “Dumpy Dump Truck”. He has also been really interested in hockey lately. He insists on coming to Ava’s hockey practice every Sunday, and keeps asking if he can put on skates and play. The funny thing is, since his entire exposure (so far) to hockey has been through Ava’s team, he thinks its a girls game, so he said “Daddy I want to play hockey, but not on the girls team.” I had to explain that boys play hockey too and he could get on a boys team if he wanted.

I was talking to some guys at my hockey class on Sunday afternoons, and found out that next Saturday (March 2nd), there will be another “Try Hockey For Free” event in Everett. Basically kids of all ages are invited to come out and play on the ice. All the gear is provided for you, so it’s a nice way to give your kid some exposure to it without making the commitment of buying all the gear up front. In Enzo’s case, he already has his own skates, but we’ll get everything else from them. He’s super excited about it, so I hope he has fun.

Then right after that all 5 of us will be attending the hockey game between the Everett Silvertips and the Seattle Thunderbirds. The following day Ava has hockey in the morning, and I have hockey in the afternoon. So in other words, next weekend is all about hockey. I’ve been watching as much of the Winter Olympics as possible lately, and was super excited to see the US Women’s hockey team win the gold medal for the first time in 20 years (Canada’s first loss in 20 years). I showed Ava some of the highlights, including the post game celebration, and she was so excited. She kept saying she wants to play hockey on TV…

One more little thing about hockey before moving on: I used to play right-handed, but then after breaking my right elbow in July, I switched over to playing left-handed. It was a fairly natural switch for me, and I’ve played that way ever since, even though not that much later I ended up injuring my left elbow as well. Last weekend I was practicing shooting in the garage, and as I was wrapping things up, I saw my old right-handed stick sitting there, so I decided to pull it out and have a go. Well, even though it’s been a while, shooting right-handed still felt a little more natural and comfortable, so when I play tomorrow I’m going to play right-handed and see how it goes. I figure I can always switch back if I want, but I’m excited to give it a try.

After I finish playing hockey tomorrow night, I’m going to quickly clean up, run home to grab Jessica, then we’re heading to the Moore Theater in downtown Seattle to see a Jazz Fusion band from New York called Snarky Puppy. I’ve become a fan of their music over the past year and was stoked to see them coming to Seattle on their Winter tour. Jessica isn’t familiar with their music but is always down to catch a show, so it should be a lot of fun.

Speaking of music, I’ve been getting a decent amount of jam sessions in with friends this year. It’s not a weekly thing, but we tend to get together at a rehearsal studio on Monday nights from 8:00-10:00. Up until this week, it’s just been my friend Sam on bass, myself on guitar, and a drum machine plugged into the P.A. system. However, this week we had a designer I work with come in a play drums.

I’ve been recording all the sessions and have been posting the recordings here on our website for download. I’ll put a link to it here, but with a warning – none of this stuff is rehearsed or practiced. It’s totally improvised on the spot, meaning a lot of it sucks, but there’s also a few little nuggets of sonic goodness in there.

I’ve been going through the recordings, trying not to focus on the abundance of cringe-worthy moments where I played the wrong note, or missed the beat, and instead focus on extracting the good stuff and working on it. I can envision a scenario where eventually we’re writing songs, while still embracing that jam-based influence. It’s all instrumental too, so the focus is entirely on what we can do musically, rather than just holding down a progression and hiding behind a singer. I’ll eventually be putting the recordings up on SoundCloud, but for now it’s all available at https://pellegrinipage.com/music/

I’ll wrap things up with a work project I recently completed. I spent the first 6 weeks of the year working on a brand new website, which we launched on Valentine’s Day, called Microsoft For Startups (https://startups.microsoft.com/). It was a project I had volunteered for, was named lead developer on, and was excited to be a part of. It was a ton of work, but as expected, a great learning experience. There were some 16 hour days, and working on some weekends (all the typical tech industry stuff), but in the end the launch went super smooth, and I ended up finding myself on some email threads with VP’s and other people much more senior than myself who were offering congratulations on a job well done.

It felt great to get that type of recognition, but as always, there’s no time to sit around soaking it up. We’re in the middle of the cloud wars baby, and times are as busy as ever, so you take a quick victory lap, maybe treat yourself to a nice lunch, then jump back into the fire. I’m already working on another cool project in anticipation of next month’s Gaming Developer Conference. The announcement we made with the launch of the site was a really big deal, and within just a few hours of going live, there were already articles about it on some major websites like GeekWire, TechCrunch, and VentureBeat. I couldn’t explain it better than any of them, so if you’re interested in learning more, just check out those articles.

I guess that’s about all for now. As always, things are great, and we’re staying busy. Here’s a few recent photos.

Getting ready for our big night out