Longhorn in Paradise

Hello to all our adoring Blog Fans. The response to this blog has been so overwhelming, that we may need to pay for extra server space. Keep those comments coming! We so love to hear what is going on in everyone's lives.

This past Saturday, we had our first and, quite likely, our last Yard Sale. It was a street-wide event and was supposed to run from 7am to 11am. We got the first knock on our door on Friday at 6ish. We went ahead and opened the garage and sold all our baby clothes and our Ikea entertainment center. Not bad for a pre-Grand Opening sale! We had been warned to wake up the next morning at 5am as peeps would start showing up at 6am. Well, I woke my lazy butt up at 5:30 and could have probably slept an extra hour!! What a waste. Oh well...we ended up selling all the big things, apart from our electrice dryer. We should have sold that in Texas prior to moving out here. I guess noone uses electric here...it is all gas. So, if anyone needs a brand new Maytag Atlantis dryer, let us know. :-/

So, for four hours of work, we made a couple hundred bucks...not awful, but we could have probably donated it all and gotten a tax break that was larger than what we made. So, that is probably what we will do in the future.

Kat is doing well...still a trooper. I washed both cars today and she foamed the tires. :-) Liska was a great help as well. She soaped up Kat's car and sprayed daddy right in the back on spray mode. Quite refreshing. Her parents are coming out this Saturday and will be staying for a little over a month.

I think we have determined the play list for our gig this weekend:

1. Pipeline (Dick Dale)
2. Rock Lobster (B52s)
3. Twist and Shout
4. Doesn't Remind Me (Audioslave)
5. Unknown Song (we don't know the title, but we can play it)
6. Ethereal Cereal (Natty Five 9 Original)

I got a new drum set last week, so we should really be ready to jam!

Hope everyone is doing well. If you picked up on the sarcasm in the first line of this post, please go ahead and comment. :-)

Yet another cute picture of Liska. This hat was a gift from our neighbors and Liska refers to it as her "yo yo" hat.

Happy Birthday to my Pops! Here he is last Thanksgiving in Cancun with his favorite grand daughter.

In our continuing efforts to get ready for the arrival of our incredibly intelligent son, we painted the nursery this weekend. Liska was anxious to help paint the room and get it ready for her baby brother. As you can see, she is a little more expressive with her painting style than Daddy was on the upper portion of the wall. We chose Cancun Blue for the walls and are going with a surfing theme. He already has the PB Kids surfing bumpers for the crib and we are trying to convince our neighbor to do some sort of mural on the wall. Should be very cool.

We have already had three baby showers for Galt; trust us - we feel extremely fortunate to have made enough friends here in the short amount of time we have lived in CA to where they would actually be willing to throw these events for us. Of course, this means Kat is going to get carpal-tunnel from writing so many thank you notes. Eh, she's young...she can become ambidexterous. With all that said, Galt will have a plethora of toys, clothes and whatever else a newborn needs thanks to the generosity of our friends.

Many of you have asked whether or not Liska understands what is going to happen. Truth is that we aren't sure if she actually comprehends, but she does know that her Baby Brother Galt is in Mommy's tummy. We are confident she will be a great big sister; she touches Kat's stomach and kisses it. She is very gentle with him. When we got the picture from the ultrasound, she walked around the Dr.'s office saying to the nurses "this is my baby brother Galt" as she showed them the picture. It was very cute. We can't wait to see the two of them together.

OK. It was only a matter of time before I turned to a bit of politics...I actually just want to take a survey of the peeps that read this blog. I got an e-mail sent to me yesterday that was purportedly from a Major General Vernon Chong. Snopes has indicated that this is not true, but the e-mail was interesting nonetheless. Basically, the gist of the e-mail was that this war was very serious and that losing was not an option...if we lose, we lose face, we begin answering to the Muslim community, yadda yadda yadda. Here are some excerpts:

Our country is
now facing the most serious threat to its existence, as we know it, that we
have faced in your lifetime and mine (which includes WWII)......
It would appear that a great many of us think that losing the war means
hanging our heads, bringing the troops home and going on about our business,
like post Vietnam. This is as far from the truth as one can get. What losing
really means is:
We would no longer be the premier country in the world. The attacks will not
subside, but rather will steadily increase. Remember, they want us dead, not
just quiet. If they had just wanted us quiet, they would not have produced
an increasing series of attacks against us, over the past 18 years. The plan
was clearly for terrorists to attack us, until we were neutered and
submissive to them.
We would of course have no future support from other nations, for fear of
reprisals and for the reason that they would see we are impotent and cannot
help them.
They will pick off the other non-Muslim nations, one at a time. It will be
increasingly easier for them. They already hold Spain hostage. It doesn't
matter whether it was right or wrong for Spain to withdraw its troops from
Iraq. Spain did it because the Muslim terrorists bombed their train and told
them to withdraw the troops. Anything else they want Spain to do will be
done. Spain is finished.

While I believe that most of this is failry assinine, I am quite certain that a number of people will read this and believe it.

My main question though, is this...how in the world will we know if we have won or lost this war? Will Osama and Bush meet at the Appomattox Court House for Osama to cede victory to the West? Will Zarqawi, Blair and Bush meet in Paris to discuss how to split up the Middle East among the Western Powers? I really don't know how we will ever know if we won this...like I told a friend, we can't expect to just kill them all...they recruit like Mack Brown and they are capable of reproducing. It is not like it is just going to end. Someone suggested we "win their hearts and minds." How do we know if this is accomplished? And is it too late for that? I'm fearful that there are people out there who think we can somehow just convert all Muslims to Christianity and our troubles will be solved. Force them to be like us and they won't hate us anymore. Just like we did with those meddlesome Indians....sorry, Native Americans.

So, if anyone wants to chime in on how we can gauge if we win the war, please do.

I know that some of you have not seen Liska in quite some time, so here is a fairly recent pic of her chillin' in her car seat on the way to Santa Monica. She has totally bought into the SoCal lifestyle. :-)

As many of you know, the arrival of Jak Jr. is imminent. I cancelled a trip to NYC this week and to Canada next week because I am quite certain that he will show himself the minute I leave town...as to illustrate that, last night Kat began having contractions...I was supposed to be on a flight at 9:55pm, but cancelled it at the last minute...so, she starts having contractions, 10 minutes apart and then THE LIGHTS GO OUT!! Around 10:30ish, all the lights in our hood went out. Apparently, someone ran into a power line or something. So, I can just imagine what my neck would look like if I had been out of town as these contractions were happening and Kat is making her way around the house by candlelight. Thank goodness for my omniscience! :-)

So, the big controversy on the birth of this wonderful little boy continues to be the name. Kat and I had chosen Galt as the name. For those of you who do not know, Galt is the last name of one of the main characters in the book Atlas Shrugged. Who is John Galt? was the question raised whenever something happened that could not be explained. He was basically a genius who dropped out of a society that was moving more towards collectivism and less toward rewarding excellence. He then recruited other moral, super-intelligent captains of industry to drop out too and "strike" against the way the world was shifting. He stated that "The world will change when you are ready to pronouce this oath: I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine." Far from selfishness, he meant to state that you should be proud of all your achievements and your potential should never be stifled because of the short comings of others.

Anyway, off my soapbox...basically, it IS a weird name. There will probably not be any other Galts in his grade or in his life. I don't think this is a bad thing...I think his big sister is in the same boat. But, there are others who will remain nameless who think it is a BAD idea to name our son this. So, here is your chance to suggest other names. My strong hope is that Kat will join me in ignoring your suggestions :-), but it could be fun anyway. Here are some of the others that we have considered/are considering:

Landon
Langston
Dane

Don't get a big head Rocky...so you have a cool middle name ok? haha

Enough of this long-winded post. A bit of a rant, but I just wanted to make sure everyone knew, as Paul Harvey used to say, the REST of the story....

For those of you who don't know, I have been jamming with some neighbors and friends and we have put together a world-class garage band. Here is the lineup:

Greg Brown - Lead Guitar
Jak Knight - Drums
Charlie Gertner - Rhythm Guitar
Rene Zambrano - Rhythm Guitar
Mark Gorman - Lead/Rhythm Guitar
Keith Zivalich - Bass (rarely)
Denise Brown - Bass (hopefully more frequently) and songstress
Kat Knight - Keyboard and songstress
Liska Knight - Drums and dancer

An eclectic group to be sure, but doubters beware...we have our first gig on Seis de Mayo!!! Yes, Cinco de Mayo was reserved for the headliners, but we will settle for Seis de Mayo. We are playing at the Crocker Amphitheatre on Blakely Place. Invitation only, but if you know a band member....well, you know. BTW, we don't take requests. We are artists after all.

For the uninitiated, the name of the band is derived from the barley and hops concoction that we most enjoy...Natural Ice, 5.9% abv.

Peace out dawgs!

Hello all...welcome to my new blog...decided to try to enter the digital age and start posting a blog with random stories, pics of my beautiful family and updates of what is going on in our lives. Of course, I could have chosen a more neutral name for the blog considering where my wife matriculated, but such is life. Sooner in Paradise just doesn't sound nearly as good...AND, with the recent National Championship, College World Series and Great Eight appearance, to the winner goes the spoils right? That is what I thought.

I hope everyone is doing well..please post anything you would like here...it is far easier than sending e-mails or picking up the phone. I mean, how passe is that? sheesh. :-)

Take care,

Jason/Jak