Kirk blAug

We live on a fairly busy street. Lots of cars drive by our house in the morning commute. There is a 'T' intersection that stops just outside the picture window to our living room. There are also a lot of people running or walking their dogs down the street as well. We have shades for the picture window. We keep them up all the time because they are broken due to our dogs inability to contain their excitement for new mail, new packages, and the sexy dogs of the neighborhood who are walking their humans. This despite the fact that they do not get any mail and the neighbor dogs are seemingly not interested. We could replace them, but the excitement of the dogs would not end there. I know that the commuters, particularly the ones who stop at the 'T', can see me sitting here most mornings in my boxers if they are lucky (less if they are not) reading books on my book reading technology while waiting for others in my family to wake up. Then I have to wonder what the reacti

This afternoon Chris and I were spending some time in the backyard with Tsunami. He seemed to be in an independent mood and was wandering about the yard in full discovery mode. I personally love watching him when he is doing this. A few days ago we put plastic eggs all over the yard and let Tsunami and Jupiter hunt for them. It was all part of some sort of Spring holiday tradition wherein folk celebrate everything from simple sugar overdose to sex and fertility to even walking dead deities. Tsunami really enjoyed this egg hunting part of the holiday because, to him, the eggs look a lot like balls. At this stage in his life, he is very obsessed with balls. With the 'ball' hunt in mind, he was out to find some again today. His ability to find balls in just about anything is pretty amazing to me. Today he was not off the mark by any means. He found some plants in the yard that were growing purple balls at the flower and started picking the balls off of them. As I watched h

We decided to enroll Jupiter into preschool. He is developing fine all on his own, but we want to see if he strives in an institutional environment. Chris and I have discussed and agree that we should not leave any options off the table as to how he will be educated going forward, so this will be a good indicator to help us decide how to proceed when the time for kindergarten comes. It is a two hour and forty-five minute class three times a week. It has already shown to be disruptive to his exploratory time. This morning he was telling me that he wanted to go to the Science Center. I told him that we would try to fit it in, but we had other priorities that needed to be complete before we could go. Well, time was short and Jupiter dragged along this morning, so we did not go to the Science Center. Today is his second day of preschool. He seemed to like it yesterday. I barely got a goodbye from him as he was already deep into playing with the other kids. I think it will be good to sp

Do you know someone who does not mind giving away free music? According to the music industry that idea is just stupid. Someone should always be squeezing profit out of music. I know my cousin Jon does not mind giving out some music from time to time. He gave me a whole tape's worth of MP3 music from his band Bus Gas. I loved it. A good chap, that cousin of mine is. Another group that likes to give out free music is the birds. The ones in the trees. The ones that sing as you are walking through the woods. Sometimes I pay the birds for their music though. I pay them a convenience fee for coming to my house to sing by putting bird seed out. Sometimes I feed the ducks at a pond too. The genre they play is called waddle-hop. I like the idea of pay it forward or sideward or upward or whatever-ward-you-want-ward. The way I do not like payment is through IOUs that come with restrictions and allow for hording and inflating and holding fees and expenditures. Those sorts of payment are

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

A couple of weekends ago, Chris, the boys, and I, met up with her cousin and his family at Six Flags . I had never met this cousin of Chris's before and it had been years since she last saw him, but both of our families had recently moved to Missouri. He had mentioned on Facebook that he and his family sometimes sought refuge from the small town they live in at Six Flags near St. Louis. I commented that perhaps I need to take Chris and my boys there sometime soon, to which he suggested we meet his family there. It turned out to be a great idea. We took turns with watching kids and going on rides that Tsunami and their littlest were too young to ride. Chris and I even took the chance to get one rollercoaster's worth of alone time while we rode the American Thunder and we returned the favor for them. It was a Sunday so the park was not too busy. Most lines were less than fifteen minutes to get on. By mid afternoon, however, a storm was starting to roll in so those of us in line

Yesterday Jupiter did a little of what I was talking about in my last post. He changed it up a little. I did not tell him about my post and he does not read very much yet, but to be honest he was the inspiration for that post. I have shown him how to put his underwear on about a thousand times, by my count. Sure enough though, he came out of his room with his underwear on backwards as usual. At that point I said something along the lines of, "Dude! You got your underwear on backwards again. Is it a special holiday or something?" Only this time instead of going back to his room to try it again again, he said, "Yep!" There I was delirious and confused about what just happened. So I did the only thing a person can do. I took off my shorts and my underwear. I placed my underwear in their full and backright position. I then zipped back up, informed my friends and followers of the rule of the day, and went about my business as usual. I have come to determine one pro and

I spent the weekend in Nebraska City with the family. Chris said that she always wanted to stay at the Lied Lodge there so we took this opportunity to do it. We arrived Thursday night and had to try out the pool and we did. It was a big underground pool 4.5 ft deep in the center. There was also a "hot pool" as Jupiter and his cousin, Ryland, referred to it and a child pool that was 1.5 ft deep. There was a sauna in a connecting room which my brother and I tried out for a few minutes on one of the following days. I might also add that there was a very nice dining hall connected to the spacious lobby of the lodge. To sum it up, all of the features of a fancy hotel were in place, which is hardly surprising for place that was awarded the “Best of MidAmerica” award in 2009, 2010 and 2011. On Friday we went to Arbor Day Farm. We started off with some wine tasting in the gift shop. Arbor Day Farm produces a variety of wines that are all quite satisfying. I would have to say that my

A month or so ago, I saw that there would be a multiple sclerosis benefit run near our house. I thought that since there was a 1/4 mile kids dash, maybe Jupiter would be interested in trying out a race. Upon asking him, he said that he would like to run. I signed myself up for the four mile run (an effort in self-motivation toward getting back in shape) and signed him up for the kids dash. We did a little bit of training leading up to the dash since he had never run one previously. I took him for a run to the high school and back about a week ago, which is a bit over 1/4 mile. A few nights ago, I was trying to encourage him to go for a run with me again. He told me it was too dark out. I told him we have a treadmill. He was excited about the treadmill before he tried it, but I think he realized that it can be hard work too. He did go a whole 1/4 mile though. The dash started at the local aquatic center and went around the building which was about like running around a typical residenti

Girl Scout Samoa/Caramel Delights verses Keebler Cocoanut Cremes [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah0bNlMGlz8&w=640&h=360]

Perhaps one of the most important and fun holidays that our family celebrates during the year is Pi Day. Pi , as most educated folks know, is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. It is one of the the most used and thus important constants in mathematics, science, and engineering. The transcendental number π rounded to two decimal places is 3.14 and so on March 14 we celebrate Pi Day! Over the past couple of years, we have developed a routine way to celebrate Pi Day. Namely, we eat various forms of pie for all our meals. Since breakfast is commonly some form of energizing food, or basically a glorified morning dessert, I thought that it would be fitting to eat dessert pie for breakfast on March 14. Sometimes we get a variety of dessert pie from the frozen food section and sometimes we go to a bakery or pie shop. Perhaps this year I will bake one myself. For lunch we enjoy some form of pot pie. Chicken pot pie, beef pot pie, and veget

A few days ago Chris, Jupiter, Tsunami, and I took a quick trip back to Nebraska to see our newborn niece. We decided to fly since we really did not have a lot of time to drive, visit, and then drive again. It was Tsunami's first time on a plane and Jupiter had not remembered being on a airplane when he was about Tsunami's age, so we did not know for sure what to expect. Jupiter had been excited about getting on the airplane since we told him about the trip. He wanted to sit by the window so he could look out and so we told him that he could. He loved almost every minute of it. From the time we got on the airplane, he was very thrilled by the whole experience. As soon as we were in the air, he was fascinated by everything outside the window getting smaller, the clouds as we started to fly through and above them, and even the novelty of the tray table kept him busy for much of the hour that we were in flight. The only time there was any problem was when he developed pressure in

Another religious tradition that our family likes to celebrate in secular way truly has roots in my former religion, Catholicism. I previously mentioned the celebrating we did for Mardi Gras last weekend, in Soulard, but I felt that going to the Grand Parade today with the kids was a little too crazy from what I had been hearing. At least, I would feel more comfortable with another adult escort, like Chris, with us. This is Chris's on week though, so she is not available. I had heard that Soulard on Mardi Gras was no place for kids, lest they get an early anatomy lesson. I disagree with that idea. I can not think of a better real world example to teach human anatomy to my kids. Learning through experience has always been a better way of educating than an institutionalized method, I argued. Either way, my excuse for skipping it had more to do with the sheer volume of people and traffic in the area. Instead of going down to Soulard to watch the parade, we decided to get a king cake

I had told Jupiter that we needed to wait until it snows enough before we can make a snowman. He had been itching to build one since seeing Frosty The Snowman earlier this fall. Up until last night, we had not gotten a significant enough amount of snow to make a "Frosty", as he likes to call it, here in St. Louis. Well, either that or we got the wrong kind of snow or did not have time to make one for some other reason. This is strange to us after moving from Nebraska where there is ample opportunity to build snowmen throughout the season. Today the high is forecasted at 41° F, which meant we probably had just enough time to make a Frosty before the snow mostly melts down later today. It also meant that the snow would be good and soggy which is always best for packing snow in spheres. The next step was obvious. I put Tsunami in his swing near the big window looking out in front of the house. This allowed Jupiter and I set out to build the snowman while I could still keep an e

I am sure that most of my readers have at least heard something of Mardi Gras. Perhaps you might know of the celebration that takes place every year in the United States most popularly in New Orleans. But it is not exclusively celebrated in New Orleans. In fact, it was not even celebrated originally in New Orleans. In 1702, when French Catholic settlers founded the original capital of Louisiana which is now Mobile, Alabama , they began the first tradition of Mardi Gras in the United States a tradition that they brought over from Europe where it had been celebrated long before. Once the capital of Louisiana was moved to New Orleans in 1723, the major celebration was moved there and was then celebrated by most citizens of the city beyond the French Catholics. The celebration has been spread to many communities in the neighboring states of Alabama and Mississippi, as well as along the Mississippi river going as far as here in St. Louis. Soulard is historically a French neighborhood in St

One thing I like to do, for several reasons, is run. For the past couple months, because Chris started working overnights, I have found the treadmill to be more convenient. It works well because I can go running late at night after the children have gone to sleep and after she goes to work during her on week and, assuming I can actually get everyone napping at the same time, during everyone's naps during her off week. (She works seven ten hour days on then seven days off, taking naps on the off weeks in attempt to catch up on the lack of sleep during on weeks.) Even though I have chosen to take my running on the treadmill, there have been plenty of really good running opportunities outside during these relatively mild past couple of month. It was ideal for most runners. The type of weather that many runners could not pass up under any circumstances. For the past two months though, I did. Tuesday night I was itching for a run. I checked the weather to find that it was a brisk 34° F.

We spent last weekend back in Nebraska. We went to visit because it was close to Jupiter's cousin, Ryland's, third birthday and we thought it would be nice celebrate with him. While we were there I started paying attention to smells. Particularly, in this case, the smell of the laundry detergent caught my attention. I never noticed the difference between scented and unscented laundry detergent growing up, but since we use scent free laundry detergent at home, I am now noticing it. My mother happened to wash some of our clothes while we were staying at her and my father's house for the weekend. Our packing job was somewhat sporadic due to some unexpected health issues, so we needed to do some washing. My mother, being the extremely gracious host she is, would not let us spend our limited time doing laundry, so she offered to wash a few things. She washed my son's pajamas because we did not pack more than one set. Then, while I was out doing something else, Chris gave her