Kirk blAug

Yesterday we took the boys and met Antijen and Tom down at Mangia which was a prime place for us to enjoy brunch and the Pride Parade on Grand. I had never seen such a tight knight community of people at a festival before this. Of all the fests, parades and other events that we have been to so far since moving here, this one was my favorite. St. Louis is most certainly a party town with a lot of party opportunities for binge drinkers and sober fun lovers alike. It is Chris's work week so we did not get to spend a lot of time there, but it is important to us that we expose our kids to a variety of people and lifestyles, and the St. Louis Pride Fest was no better way to do it. The parade was a great fun time for everyone. Jupiter enjoyed every moment. While at Mangia he found a friend named Lily Mae and helped her with her beads. We hung around Mangia for a little while and ate our brunch. I had a couple of delicious Bloody Marys and a Belgian Waffle. Do not ever go to Mangia ...

Life and death are strange sometimes. The life's end I mourn today is one I never personally met. It is not someone famous or in any other conventional sense any more significant than anyone else. But it is someone who helped make some of the days of the lives of others a little better. If that does not warrant a mourn, I do not know what does.

I have had a fascination with tuxedo T-shirts since I got married. Okay, I will admit, it is more of an obsession, but let me explain. When Chris and I got married , we decided that some marriage traditions were just stupid and we were going to do it our way. Somehow we came up with a lesser toured island called Water Island on the Virgin Islands as the place to do it. My brother-in-law, Tom, officiated the ceremony. We paid him in drinks. He did a pretty good job, and he got his reward in full. I told Chris that I always thought it would be neat to get married in a tuxedo T-shirt. Without a blink or bat of the eye, she agreed. I was pretty sure that I picked the right one, but her reaction showed me that I would have no regrets. That was to be my attire. Up to this point I had never gotten around to owning a tuxedo T-shirt, but had always admired those who had them. I guess the reason they appeal to me is because of what they represent. You can be classy all the time and rea...

Today I finally broke down and did it. I cooked a frozen pizza on the grill. I put it on a piece of aluminum foil so that the ingredients would not fall through the rack. Since it is pretty close to the flame, I went with 100º less than the oven instructions. I would say that one could safely go maybe 150º below since I had a slight amount of burnt crust. Nothing inedible though. I also went with the low end on the time. It turned out pretty good. I will experiment further to find the sweet spot, but I am pretty impressed with my guesswork this time around.

Sometimes when my mom sees how involved I am with taking care of my kids, she will say something to my dad about how he did not change the diapers, or something along those lines, when my brother and I were babies. My dad was the breadwinner of our family, so naturally he did not do as much of the dirty work with parenting as my mother did. Sometimes though, I think she does not give him enough credit. I have no memory and no idea about who changed all the diapers, but I do have photographic evidence that my dad was an active and involved dad. In this picture, my dad, Patrick James Augustine, is feeding me. I am, according to the back of the picture, nine months old here. Not too far from the age that Tsunami is currently. I have plenty of other photographic evidence that my dad was involved in my brother and my childhood as well, but not even this picture is needed in reality. There is no way that I would be near the dad I am today without him. He showed me a lot of things...

I snapped this photo of Jupiter the other day at Suson Park . It was a fun day. Chris had told me about a "Farm Fun Friday" which was going on that day and included a hayrack ride. Jupiter loves hayrack rides, or "tractor rides" as he calls them. It was a great idea. We both enjoyed it. There were also a lot of farm animals to see, which are featured there every day, so we will likely go back. In this photo, he is bored and waiting for the tractor to come back so that we could get on the hayrack. I was not thinking about it when I took it, but later something about it reminded me of the Smashing Pumpkins music video for their song 1979 . After looking at the Wikipedia article on the song, I realized it must be the look of boredom and loneliness. From Wikipedia : The video follows a day in the life of disaffected suburban teenagers driving around in a Dodge Charger. It is based on a concept Corgan created, featuring an idealized version of teenage life, w...

One of the many things that I admire about Chris is that she does a better job keeping a balance of things in her life than me. Despite everyone in her life always pressing her buttons until the letters are worn off and its all sticky, she can really power through and make things work to a point that I cannot seem to sacrifice myself to. It is because she cares a whole hell of a lot about people. She has given St. Louis a little more light at the end of it's tunnel since moving here and the city should be happy to have her. I wish I was able to hold it together under pressure like she can. But I am nowhere near as strong as she is in this area. A lot of times I am too aggressive when I should be more calm, or too calm when I should be more aggressive. Or too authoritarian when I need to relax and vice versa. This is especially important in parenting. Sometimes I get too overwhelmed and I feel like I am just barking commands instead of getting input from our boys. When they do ...

Hang on folks, this is going to be a long one. It is story time: Today was just one of those days. At least the pre-nap part of the day was. It started out okay. I woke up just a little bit before the boys. Therefore, I had a bit of time to tinker around on the computer and relax a little before getting into the frenzy of the day. It is always nice to have that, although I could have used the extra sleep as well. I typically do not get much sleep during what I am increasingly calling, "The Transition". The Transition is a period of time that occurs once every two weeks in our family. Perhaps I have mentioned before, Chris works a ten hour overnight shift for seven days in a row, then has a whole seven days off in a row. More specifically, The Transition is the first couple of days when she is back at work. For me, it is the hardest part. The reason that this transitional time period is so hard for me is as follows: I have my best friend next to me going to sleep and ...