Stickin' It to the Man!

For the past few weeks I've been fighting the Man. Luckily I've had some backup from my homies and familia. Needless to say, we won.

Now stickin' it to the Man is not the same thing as stickin' it to "Da Man". I'm "Da Man," so that wouldn't be cool. Anyway, it feels so good to fight for my right to party all over his face. Oh,

BTW, this post is all about those scoundrels who tried to take our sweet mula when our car broke down in CC. A special shout-out to Rick Smith for confirming some of our suspicions with those lame-Os.

P.S. We got a refund from them today thanks to my letter writing skills and the killer nunchuck skills from a close friend who will remain nameless.

P.S.S. This is what happens when I post really late at night.

Fall Fun

I had to post these pics before they got too outdated. I spent the evening about three weeks ago with the girls just playing in the leaves. Aubrey was the free labor and Ella lent her services as the leave redistributor.

Zoo Pals

We went to the zoo this weekend and I had to post some of my favs. Holly posted the family ones, so I decided to post pics of the other animals. Holly took the one of the white tiger (I had to force her to do so) and I think it turned out AWESOME!

Famous Buildings

Here are some more photos I took on my NYC trip back in 1999. They are a bit grainy and contrasty, but I kind of like that sometimes. I have so many great memories from that trip and I love sharing them with others...

Empire: This is a nice view of The Empire State Building.

The Gug: This is one of NYCs best museums...
certainly the best museum that I've been to.

WTC: Here is World Trade. I still can't believe they are gone.

Kalaina Surprise for Aubrey

Holly was really frustrated this weekend because she couldn't find these shoes for Aubrey. But today on my lunch break, I found a size 12 1/2 Cherokee Kalaina Mary Janes!!!!! I hope this brightens your day honey.

The New Rig

After our scare of nearly losing our pictures, I decided to build a new system. I wanted to make sure that our data was mirrored (via RAID1) at all times. This will eliminate my bad habit of only backing up a few times a month. This is something that I've been wanting to do for a long time now.

I purchased everything at Frys, also know as the best store EVER! They always have killer deals, especially on the weekends. I chose an ASUS M2N-E motherboard with an NVIDA chipset because it has on-board RAID controllers. I've also heard a lot of good things about ASUS. I can support up to a six disk RAID array (0, 1, 0+1, 5, and JBOD) . I also purchased two 500GB SATA hard drives which were insanely cheap. I don't have a true terabyte of storage because of my RAID1 setup, but still 500GB is a lot of storage space.

I went with an AMD Athlon X2 5600+ dual-core processor along with 2GB of RAM. I can support up to 8GB of RAM (DDR2 800) but with only 2GB this thing is still smokin' ! I'm sure most everyone doesn't care or is asleep by now, but I know Rick can appreciate this tech talk. :)

Needless to say, I'm very happy with my new rig!

Who's da man??!!

Well, after about a week, I've finally done it. I've rescued our pictures from the pit of despair along with our hearts for that matter. I was so crushed to think that we may have lost nearly a month's worth of pictures...and some really good ones too! Anyway, I want to tell you honey, and everyone else, I'M SO HAPPY! :) Blog away baby!!!!

Here is how I felt this past week:

Here is how I feel now:

Subway Series

I've been going through my old photography portfolio and thought it would be fun to post a few of my favorites. I did a lot of fine art photography back in the day and that's what I enjoyed the most. My wedding photography portfolio is a little scarce, since I usually sold all my prints to the client.

F-Train. This is the F-Train that Crissie (my big sis) and I rode from Brooklyn to Coney Island. We were nearly mugged while I was taking this picture. Not a good idea to whip out expensive camera gear around a couple of hoodlums.

Missed It. This is a train that we just missed. I hate it when that happens...

Subway Sally. Some of you may have seen this one. It won a GoDaddy photo contest about six years ago. This grumpy old lady didn't appreciate me taking her photo.

Dads...er...Kids Workshop

The girls and I attended our 8th Kids Workshop at the Home Depot. We love to do this every month and we have made this our little tradition since we've moved here. We're always bummed out when we can't make it. I'm usually the one who has the saddest face when that happens.

Ella and Aubrey have both become quite handy with their little hammers. They are also racking up the project pins for their aprons. They only need two more for the badge! This also qualifies them to operate the in-store forklift, which I'm REALLY excited about! They were especially stoked this last time because they received an additional pin. The additional pin was to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the Kids Workshops.

Holly's Gunna Kill Me

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!This site is a bit racy, but I couldn't resist!

Freeze Tag

Holly "tagged" me a LONG time ago and here are my extremely late and lame responses....

4 things about me you may not have known:

1. I've flown a stunt kite out of the back of a moving truck.
2. I was in a wetsuit catalog.
3. I was severely burned when I was about 11 and was hospitalized for a week.
4. I almost drowned while surfing one of the biggest swells of my life. I was only a few feet from shore in a crazy huge rip tide...very scary.

4 Jobs I've Had:

1. Pet Store
2. Warehouse guy/forklift operator
3. Busboy
4. Engineer

4 Movies I can watch over and over again:

1. Star Wars (1-6)
2. Nacho Libre
3. Napoleon Dynamite
4. Home Alone

4 Favorite TV shows:

1. The Office
2. Anything Discovery Channel (Mythbusters, Survivorman, etc.)
3. Seinfeld
4. AFV

4 Favorite Hobbies:

1. Surfing
2. Ukulele
3. Photography
4. Fixing stuff

4 Places I have lived:

1. The LBC
2. The OC
3. The Phil
4. The Lone Star State...Tejas

4 Favorite Foods:

1. Gisa(sp)
2. My Dad's Ribs
3. Lobster
4. Sushi

4 Places I would rather be right now:

1. Surfing in Hawaii
2. Surfing in California
3. Snowboarding in Utah
4. Snowboarding in Washington

4 Websites I check daily:

1. D Fam
2. Google
3. Frys
4. Hotmail

4 People I tag:

1. I've taken so long to respond to this that I think it has reached it's expiration point...

I Love Lucy

As many of you know, we have had some very sad news in our family. In my sister's own words, here is what transpired as they anticipated the arrival of their new baby:

"We returned to the hospital next morning at 6:30 am and at that time they were no longer able to find a heart beat. More and more Doctors tried to find it and soon our room was filled with so many that we knew that things had gone very wrong. We were told that at some time during the night our precious angel's heart had stopped beating. There is no explanation that could be found at that time. "

"At 3:38pm Monday, August 27, 2007 our perfect angel arrived:

Olive Lucy Kawecki

Aug 27, 2007 3:38 PM7 lbs, 8 oz.

22 1/2 inches long

And she has great big clown feet."

I flew out Wednesday to be with my family and to attend the services for Lucy. Everything about the service was a lovely tribute to her and the impact she has in our lives. At a moment when the strings could have come loose within our family, she pulled them tight. She helped me to understand that I should call a little more, stay longer on my knees, dance and not care, and not be afraid to share my talents. As we (Me, My Dad, Noodle, and Jeff) played "You are My Sunshine" on the ukulele for her, Lucy taught me that it's okay to let her memory and laughter occupy the same space.

Thank you so much Watson and Christine for letting me be a part of the services. I truly became acquainted with Lucy as I had the honor of creating her slide show. I feel like I was able to experience "Lucy's Journey", as Watson titled it.

I know that we'll see her again and that her memory will never fade from our hearts. As Christine mentioned during the service, Lucy will continue to giggle at the fact that we can't help but say, "I Love Lucy."

Pink Ladies

A few Sundays ago I had to take a picture of my Pink Ladies. They all had on cute skirts and were color coordinated with pink and white. I'm sure this wasn't planned, right honey? ;o)

I feel so honored walking into church each Sunday with this string of pearls.

I Hate Risk

Ok, Holly just worked me at Risk tonight. She has reclaimed her spot at the top. That game is an emotional roller coaster for us. It has been two years since we played last, so that is an indicator of how much we get into it. Holly lost the last two times, so she vowed to never play again. I think it is actually good that she won because the game probably would have ended up in the trash.

The record is now Holly: 4, Joey: 2.

Cali Girl

As promised, here is Cali's spotlight. Isn't she just adorable? I think all my girls are. I feel so blessed to have these little angels in my life.

Adobe Fun

We took some pictures of the girls yesterday. It was fun, even though I'm a little rusty and I'm getting acquainted with my new toy....a Canon 30D. I love it. I was a Minolta guy for many years, but they've sold their camera division to Sony, so that ended that....sorry, I digress.

So, here are my sepia toned girls...OK only two of them, but I can't find one yet of Cali with the same orientation. She'll be spotlighted later on for sure! Anyway, enjoy the cute pics...

"Daddy Day"

I spent the day with two of my little girls, Aubrey and Ella. We had breakfast together (Barbie Pop Tarts) to start the day off. We then took a trip to Home Depot for our traditional monthly workshop. We build all sorts of cool stuff on the first Saturday of every month. Today we built an "Art Caddy". I have to say, it was one of the more difficult projects. The girls did great though and didn't smash any fingers, so that was good.

After Home Depot, we drove back home rockin' out to Barbie Magic of the Rainbow (can you tell I love my girls). I have to admit, that dang CD is pretty catchy. We then ate some lunch and hung around for a bit. Later on we went to the pool. When we were at the door waiting to leave Aubrey was really cute and said, "This is a fun day...it's a Daddy Day!" That made me feel loved :o) . When we were at the pool the girls were both swimming the best ever! I was so proud.

First Day on the Blog

Well, I've decided to finally claim my own little bit of cyberspace and join the blogging community. I'm sure it will not draw near as much attention as the bloggin babes, but it will give me something to do from time to time. Anyway, I hope this brings someone a bit of joy now and again...