Thursday, October 29, 2009
I'm Back
Yes...now that I am quite certain that noone is checking in on this blog anymore, I can actually write in peace! Its nice to have a place that I can just come and share my thoughts with myself and not worry about any pervs peeping in on my deepest, darkest thoughts. mmm hmmm. That's what I'm talking about.
So, it has been a year since I last posted...almost to the day...you think that is a coincidence? I don't. It is 2:54am in Houston and I am still awake. I can't sleep...you want to know why I can't sleep? No? Ok. forget it then. I didn't want to tell you anyway. So there.
So, I have been fighting my need to not sleep by listening to some of my favorite music...unfortunately, all my favorite music reminds me of Cali and thinking of Cali makes me think of Blakely Place and thinking of Blakely Place makes me think of the Browns and thinking of the Browns makes me VERY homesick. :-( Homesick? you say...Cali is not really your home...you were born in Michigan, lived there for 10 years....moved to Texas and lived there for 20 some years and only lived in Cali for a couple years....how in the world could you be homesick about a place that only occupied a couple years of your life??? Well, that is a stupid ass question if you ask me....Haven't you ever heard the saying "home is where the heart is"? Well, my heart is in Los Angeles, CA...specifically in the SCV. So much shit going on in my life right now that would be made much better if I could walk down the street to Greg's garage, grab a cold natty, pick up my sticks and just jam...shoot the shit...throw darts...watch Rolling Stones videos...chip golf balls...whatever. That is the shit that keeps you sane. Keeps you on the up and up. Prevents you from staying up until 3am listening to Neko Case and The Cure and Semisonic...ALL a big mistake...Neko Case, of course, reminds me of the Browns...Semisonic sings the song California that makes me miss home that much more...and listening to the Cure sing Disintegration is just something I do when I am freakin' depressed...yikes!! Well, quite a few things to be depressed about these days...work is challenging...My marriage is on life support...I miss my kids every day I am on the road....and there is no end in sight to the travelling gig. So, gots to keep on keepin on. I'm seriously considering playing the lottery on a weekly basis...sounds reasonable, right? Anything to change my life for the better.
On a positive note, I have finally come to an end in my spiritual journey and have accepted Jesus Christ into my heart. It has been an amazing experience as He has blessed me time and time again over the past few months. For that I am grateful...and He is certainly a rock in these low times for me...So many people came into my life in the past 12 months that led me to Jesus and I am so thankful for all of them. I'm doing my best to live my life in the way I think He would want me to...I trust that he is guiding me and giving me strength. I hope that is enough. Wow...that is really taking the "positive note" down a few octaves, eh? :-) Sorry.
Well, so nice to be back...glad noone is here to listen to my ramblings...it allows me to be even ramblier...which is truly how I roll.
OK...will listen to disintegration one more time...now that I know that I'm breaking to pieces...I'll pull out my heart and I'll feed it to anyone...crying for sympathy, crocodiles cry for the love of the crowd and, three cheers from everyone...dropping through sky through the glass of the roof through the roof of your mouth, through the mouth of your eye, through the eye of the needle, its easier for me to get closer to heaven then ever feel whole again......
Much love to all!
jak
So, it has been a year since I last posted...almost to the day...you think that is a coincidence? I don't. It is 2:54am in Houston and I am still awake. I can't sleep...you want to know why I can't sleep? No? Ok. forget it then. I didn't want to tell you anyway. So there.
So, I have been fighting my need to not sleep by listening to some of my favorite music...unfortunately, all my favorite music reminds me of Cali and thinking of Cali makes me think of Blakely Place and thinking of Blakely Place makes me think of the Browns and thinking of the Browns makes me VERY homesick. :-( Homesick? you say...Cali is not really your home...you were born in Michigan, lived there for 10 years....moved to Texas and lived there for 20 some years and only lived in Cali for a couple years....how in the world could you be homesick about a place that only occupied a couple years of your life??? Well, that is a stupid ass question if you ask me....Haven't you ever heard the saying "home is where the heart is"? Well, my heart is in Los Angeles, CA...specifically in the SCV. So much shit going on in my life right now that would be made much better if I could walk down the street to Greg's garage, grab a cold natty, pick up my sticks and just jam...shoot the shit...throw darts...watch Rolling Stones videos...chip golf balls...whatever. That is the shit that keeps you sane. Keeps you on the up and up. Prevents you from staying up until 3am listening to Neko Case and The Cure and Semisonic...ALL a big mistake...Neko Case, of course, reminds me of the Browns...Semisonic sings the song California that makes me miss home that much more...and listening to the Cure sing Disintegration is just something I do when I am freakin' depressed...yikes!! Well, quite a few things to be depressed about these days...work is challenging...My marriage is on life support...I miss my kids every day I am on the road....and there is no end in sight to the travelling gig. So, gots to keep on keepin on. I'm seriously considering playing the lottery on a weekly basis...sounds reasonable, right? Anything to change my life for the better.
On a positive note, I have finally come to an end in my spiritual journey and have accepted Jesus Christ into my heart. It has been an amazing experience as He has blessed me time and time again over the past few months. For that I am grateful...and He is certainly a rock in these low times for me...So many people came into my life in the past 12 months that led me to Jesus and I am so thankful for all of them. I'm doing my best to live my life in the way I think He would want me to...I trust that he is guiding me and giving me strength. I hope that is enough. Wow...that is really taking the "positive note" down a few octaves, eh? :-) Sorry.
Well, so nice to be back...glad noone is here to listen to my ramblings...it allows me to be even ramblier...which is truly how I roll.
OK...will listen to disintegration one more time...now that I know that I'm breaking to pieces...I'll pull out my heart and I'll feed it to anyone...crying for sympathy, crocodiles cry for the love of the crowd and, three cheers from everyone...dropping through sky through the glass of the roof through the roof of your mouth, through the mouth of your eye, through the eye of the needle, its easier for me to get closer to heaven then ever feel whole again......
Much love to all!
jak
Friday, October 24, 2008
Saturdays in the Fall
Kat chillin' in the RV the night before the RV game. Yes, we spent the night there two straight nights...what a trooper!
Hagen caught with his hand in the cookie jar at our tailgate for the Mizzou game
Liska and Kat flashing their pearly whites at the Texas Exes center during halftime of the game
Hagen showing off his hookem horns during the Arkansas gamehello all! sorry I haven't written much lately, but our fall schedule has been quite hectic. As many of you know, I started a new project in Toronto on October 6. I will be heading up there on a weekly basis through the end of January. I am told that these are the warmest months to be in Canada, so am happy about that. :-) It actually snowed there on Wednesday. Can't imagine what December and January are going to bring.
Anywho, since it is college football season, we have also been doing quite a bit of traveling on the weekends...so, to give you an idea of what that means, let me tell you about last weekend's schedule.
Thursday, 9pm -- arrive home from Toronto
Friday, 1am -- finally get to sleep after getting packed and ready for trip to Austin
Friday 6am -- get kids up and loaded into car...load up bags and cooler and start 8 hour car trip down to Austin.
Friday 3pm -- arrive in Austin and tour around campus with friends and buy some new Longhorn gear for kids
Saturday 11am -- start tailgate
Saturday 7pm -- game starts and UT promptly kicks Mizzous ass
Saturday midnight -- arrive back to my mom's house
Sunday 4am -- wake up to start packing up the car for departure
Sunday 5:30am -- leave mom's house and head north to Oklahoma with sleeping kids
Sunday 1:30pm -- arrive in Tulsa and crash for a quick nap
Sunday 3:30pm -- head to airport for flight to Toronto
Sunday 11pm -- arrive in Toronto
SO, while not the most typical weekend, it is pretty close. We usually get a couple hours of extra sleep on Sundays because i don't normally leave until Monday morning for my trips. But, it is hectic.
What was the point of telling you all that? I think it started out as an excuse for why I haven't blogged more often. But, maybe, just maybe, it will give those of you starving for a peek into my world, a little satisfaction. :-)
So, games have been a blast...Liska and Hagen attended their first football game together and they had a blast. As you can tell from the pics, they are enjoying themselves and becoming very adept at showing their horns. I've also thrown in some pics of the RV so you can see how we tailgate these days...it has been outstanding and we are all glad we finally made the investment.
Hope everyone is doing well...Enjoy the pics!
much love to all!
jak
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
"You're Chinese!"
So, we were at Liska's parents last Monday having dinner. I was supposed to be in Chicago on business, but my trip there was cancelled last second on Sunday night...Liska had already called Kat's mom and made her dinner order for Monday, so here we are...having dinner with Kat's parents on Monday night.
Monday also happens to be the day at Liska's preschool where they have spanish class. Every Monday, Liska comes home and "teaches" Kat and I some new spanish words. This week, it was "Buenos dia, me llamo 'say your name'" So, we repeat after her and say our names and she has taught us spanish and she is happy...as are we.
SO, we get to Kat's parents and are having a great dinner and I say to Liska "did you teach goong goong and pau pau how to speak spanish yet?" Liska looks at me like I have three heads...I say it again "did you teach goong goong and pau pau spanish yet?" Now Liska laughs...thinks I am kidding and says it..."Daddy...you are teasing me." I convince her that I am not teasing her and why would she think so? "Daddy...I can't teach them spanish...they're Chinese!"
I say "Liska, so you are, you goofball!". She says "No I am not, I am English." I say "no, you are half welsh/finnish/irish/choctaw/scottish and half chinese." "No I am not...I am English!" with more gusto. I say "Your mommy is Chinese, which makes you half Chinese." "Mommy is not Chinese...you and mommy are English!"
aye de mi. We are going to have to work on this one and her lack of cultural awareness. She even changed her Wii from darker toned skin to pure white tonight. What the heck is she dealing with in her pre-school class that is causing this??? I knew it was going to be trouble coming to Oklahoma!
Anywho...it was funny when it happened, but kind of disturbing. Is there any room back in Cali?
Much love to all!
jak
Monday also happens to be the day at Liska's preschool where they have spanish class. Every Monday, Liska comes home and "teaches" Kat and I some new spanish words. This week, it was "Buenos dia, me llamo 'say your name'" So, we repeat after her and say our names and she has taught us spanish and she is happy...as are we.
SO, we get to Kat's parents and are having a great dinner and I say to Liska "did you teach goong goong and pau pau how to speak spanish yet?" Liska looks at me like I have three heads...I say it again "did you teach goong goong and pau pau spanish yet?" Now Liska laughs...thinks I am kidding and says it..."Daddy...you are teasing me." I convince her that I am not teasing her and why would she think so? "Daddy...I can't teach them spanish...they're Chinese!"
I say "Liska, so you are, you goofball!". She says "No I am not, I am English." I say "no, you are half welsh/finnish/irish/choctaw/scottish and half chinese." "No I am not...I am English!" with more gusto. I say "Your mommy is Chinese, which makes you half Chinese." "Mommy is not Chinese...you and mommy are English!"
aye de mi. We are going to have to work on this one and her lack of cultural awareness. She even changed her Wii from darker toned skin to pure white tonight. What the heck is she dealing with in her pre-school class that is causing this??? I knew it was going to be trouble coming to Oklahoma!
Anywho...it was funny when it happened, but kind of disturbing. Is there any room back in Cali?
Much love to all!
jak
Monday, September 15, 2008
Puff the Magic Hagen
I don't think we have shared this video before...it is from Kat's dad's birthday in June. Hagen decides to get out ahead of the curve and beat Liska to the punch...very funny.
Enjoy!
Much love to all!
jak
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Are you ready for some football??
With the Hurricane looming over the state of Texas like a giant C. Montgomery Burns to Texas' Homer Simpson, the Texas Longhorn's game vs. their archrival (at least from the days of the Southwest Conference) was postponed until 9/27. Quite a bummer since the weather ended up being nice in Austin on Saturday, but it provided the Knights an opportunity to have our first football watching party of the young season.
See, on the rare occassions we are home during the college football season (we are normally in Austin, Dallas or (at least last year) in LA), we like to make Saturday an all day sporting event. With the first kick-off at 11am and the last whistle blowing at around midnight, there is plenty of action to keep even the novice football enthusiast on the edge of their respective seats.
So, as it was yesterday, we sent out the word that we would be on our patukisis all day watching the games, come one, come all and join us. It would turn out that we would have a series of guests showing up and staying for a grand total of 12 hours of football watching and friend hosting. 11am through 11pm baby. Now, THAT is what I call a good day (unlike the VERY relaxing sounding day of the Brown matriarchy)! Lots of beer drinking (later, Screwdriver drinking) and good food. Kat made her famous pulled pork sandwiches with her homemade bbq sauce. Tasty as always. She also made some white bean dip and guacamole for everyone to nosh on throughout the day. Tres magnifique!
For those of you not fortunate enough to join us, I will share some pics of the event. Some of these were taken by Liska and some by me...she is turning into quite the young shutter bug.
What a great shot! Kat and Liska chilling a bit before the guests started to arrive.
Liska and her good friend Savannah. Savannah's parents just bought a house close by and these two will be going to Kindergarten together next year! They are going to really be tough to handle. Or, as Chris Robinson would say, Hard to handle.
Our fellow Cali-transplants, the Tindilliers. Grace was Hagen's teacher last year. Chris is a big USC fan (as an alum). He appears to be glowing from the domination of his team vs. OSU.
Kat and Grace. They've been mistaken as sisters before. Here they are showing that sisterly love.
I hope everyone out there had themselves a fine weekend. For my fans in Houston, I hope you are staying high and dry. If your power is not back on, you are welcome to come about 500 miles inland to Tulsa where we have power and are expecting a week of perfect weather. I found out today that I do NOT have to go to Chicago this week, so I will be Mr. Mom this week. :-)
Thanks to all for keeping this the number one blog in the key "knight family" demographic. I couldn't do it without you! Well, I could...but what fun would that be?
Much love to all! Have a great week!
jak
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
My Bill Lumberg
Surely you have seen Office Space. That classic movie from the 90s that was shot in Dallas and followed the life of a typical cubicle farm desk jockey. Well, as a refresher, the boss in the movie was named Bill Lumberg. "Did ya get the memo about the TPS reports?" He was known for his failed attempts at being diplomatic as his tone belied the words that were coming out of his mouth. Quite humorous.
As you all know, I travel quite a bit. My job takes me on the road Monday through Thursday about 9 months out of the year. As Liska is getting older and smarter and starting to read and write, I thought I would start leaving her notes on Monday mornings so she could read them with her mommy. She loves notes. She is writing them all the time. "Dear Daddy, thank you for the big hug. I love you so much. Love (actually a heart) Liska" Very sweet and very impressive. So, I thought she would love to get them from me as well. More on that later.
In June, we bought a Wii for Kat's birthday. Neither one of us are big video game people, but her brother had brought one over one time and the kids loved it and it seemed to be something we could do as a family and it was a more active game (i.e. not sitting on your butt doing it). Well, Liska has turned into an amazing bowler on Wii. Her high score is 280. Quite remarkable. In addition to the real bowling game, there is a training game that is called Power Bowling, but Liska refers to as "Crazy Bowling". Basically, there are increasing number of pins that you try to knock down. First 10, then 16, then 24, etc etc. up to 91 pins. Its quite humorous to watch and play. When you get a strike, they put a checkmark up by the number of pins and the high score wins.
So, last weekend, Liska had her paper and markers out and was sitting on the stairs doing her thing and I walked over to her and she said "look daddy, how many check marks did I get?" I looked at the sheet and could not believe it...she had written down each of the pin counts in order and put check marks by the ones she had gotten strikes on before...but that wasn't the amazing part...next to it, she had written "craze bolen". I couldn't believe it! She had sat there and sounded out the words without asking us for any help! I mean, I don't know much about childhood progression with reading and writing, but this daddy was impressed as hell!! So, I of course told her that and she asked what impressed was and I told her it meant I was mad at her for misspelling two commonly used words and I told her to go to her room. Well, actually I told her I thought she did great with her spelling and I was very proud of her. She beamed with joy.
The following Monday, I wroter her a note telling her I was going to Chicago and was going to miss her and I told her again how proud I was and how brave she was for spelling words on her own without asking for help. Such great confidence. I put the note on the counter and left for the week. Her mother read her the note and reported back to me that Liska loved it and appreciated it.
Fast forward to this past Sunday evening. As I was tucking Liska in and talking to her about my week and how much I was going to miss her, I said "Would you like me to write you another note?" And her response was "Daddy, I write the best notes. Why don't you just let me write all the notes ok?" I couldn't help laughing as her sincerity was that of Bill Lumberg saying "Yeah...right...how about I write the notes from now on...mmmkay? Great" She is a hoot.
So, here are a couple pics from Labor Day weekend in Austin (first Longhorn game) and this past weekend. Hope you enjoy them. I know you are used to me not posting much, but get your asses back on track with reading this thing and commenting or you might just lose me again. :-)
what a good looking family!!
Hope everyone is doing well.
much love to all!
jak
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Chillin on a Sunday
Hello,
Got back to Tulsa yesterday after our short trip to Austin. I'm not saying it was nice to have a couple nights away from the kids with my wife, but my hair lost its gray, I lost 20 lbs and the lady at the airport said "I bet you two kids are newlyweds." When we informed her we had been married for 5 years she said "well, you obviously don't have kids yet". True story! We laughed and said we actually had two kids. Upon mention of this, my weight and gray returned instantaneously and the lady ran away screaming in spanish. Which was weird, because she was obviously japanese. Interesting.
So, back in Tulsa and spent the vast majority of Saturday watching college football and drinking beer and eating things that some of the so-called experts would label as "bad for you". Chips, queso, carrots. Those sorts of things. Good times. So happy that the college football season has started!
Lots of work to do today prior to my trip back to Chicago, but I got video of the kids this morning, so I thought I would share that witcha. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4CgJlSYCo
Hope everyone is doing well.
Much love to all!
jak
Got back to Tulsa yesterday after our short trip to Austin. I'm not saying it was nice to have a couple nights away from the kids with my wife, but my hair lost its gray, I lost 20 lbs and the lady at the airport said "I bet you two kids are newlyweds." When we informed her we had been married for 5 years she said "well, you obviously don't have kids yet". True story! We laughed and said we actually had two kids. Upon mention of this, my weight and gray returned instantaneously and the lady ran away screaming in spanish. Which was weird, because she was obviously japanese. Interesting.
So, back in Tulsa and spent the vast majority of Saturday watching college football and drinking beer and eating things that some of the so-called experts would label as "bad for you". Chips, queso, carrots. Those sorts of things. Good times. So happy that the college football season has started!
Lots of work to do today prior to my trip back to Chicago, but I got video of the kids this morning, so I thought I would share that witcha. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4CgJlSYCo
Hope everyone is doing well.
Much love to all!
jak
