A historic night

When I die, I hope there's a heaven, and I hope I'm let in. Inside, I hope one of the luxuries offered will be a DVD collection (or Blu-Ray Disc, whatever is popular in Heaven) of your entire life. So I can go back and watch any day of my life.

Forget the diary, the journal notes, even home movies. I want the boxed set of my life.

This evening would be one that I'd go back and watch. Consider:

-- the evening started off in a panic, when we couldn't find Evey nor Grandma Judy (she had lost her cell phone, and took Evey with her to get her flat tire fixed)

-- Because of that stress, and some work stress, once we all convened at our hose, we started enjoying Boulevard Wheat to settle us all down

-- Frozen pizzas, cheese and crackers were the menu for the evening

-- the sky turned a crazy shade of yellow/orange, a mix of storm clouds and sunset

-- Adro and Judy finished putting together the Laugh Olympics gift bags while Evelyn did her best to undo said gift bags

-- The soundtrack to the entire evening was that of the Democratic National Convention, where our next president eloquently spoke

OK, it may not seem like much written up like that, but, trust me -- it was an amazing evening. Something about my daughter being this age, and all these things going on -- an election season, Sunday's Laugh Olympics, great weather... throw in the finest beer in the world, on tap (more on that later), and you have just a great slice-of-life evening. One that I'd happily watch again and then let out a pleasant sigh when the movie ended (with me typing away this report on my blog).

Anyway, I must just be in a nostalgic mood. Or maybe I can sense a positive change in the air for our country. While I also can sense how special this time is in my daughter's life, as well as in the lives of the people who take care of her and love her so much.

(I promise, I'm not drunk while writing this. How can I prove this? Observe: "ZYXWVU"... ah, screw it. You'll just have to trust me.)

Tomorrow, TGIF. This weekend? Get ready for KU football as well as for the 7th Annual John Wake Laugh Olympics (http://www.laugholympics.net/)! Should be a great time. I just need to remember to take the time to enjoy it. In case those DVDs don't exist when you die...

"Noni," Evey and Marina, plus bad BBQ

"Noni" is what the girls call my mom. I have no idea where that name comes from. But my mom took care of Evey today, and they had a great time! They watched Shrek so many times, they decided to watch it in French, too.

So, we went to the old Bucky's for dinner tonight. It's a barbecue place... the name? Something B... like, Beasley or Biden or Butros Butros? And then "BBQ."

The food? Couldn't really tell you... they were out of EVERYTHING. No pulled pork, no ribs, no turkey. They were down to just brisket and sausage when we walked in the door. By the time we got done ordering, they had only enough for one brisket sandwich.

So, to clarify, they're out of food... I should have realized at that point that my portion -- which cost something like $6.45, mind you -- would be small. My brisket sandwich was tiny, hardly had any meat, and cost over $6!!! And it didn't even come with anything else!!! TOTAL RIPOFF!!!! And it wasn't that great, either, though Judy said the sausage was good.

When we drove off at 7:30 p.m., they had a sign up on the drive-thru that read, "SOLD OUT!"

They need to take that one down and replace it with one that reads "RIP OFF."

Shrek... an ogre.

So, the other day me and Adrianne are in the office, working on something. We notice that Evey is being especially quiet, so we turn to see what she's doing. We had "Shrek" on for her. We see her, she's sitting there in her little chair, watching the movie... and she's practically in tears!

We're like, "Honey, what's wrong??" Then we look at the TV. Shrek was being mean to Donkey, and it was really upsetting Evey! Poor girl; she hadn't seen Shrek 1 yet, she was only used to Shrek 3, so seeing Shrek act like an asshole really upset her! So cute.

This is a photo of Evey at the time. You can see the anguish on her face. Pobre sita (poor little girl)!

A mish-mash of photos

A few random photos for you today.

Me and the missus at Jetlag the other day. I look at a photo like this and I wonder why Adrianne puts up with my stuff.... she's so way, way better looking than my goofy ass. (I mean, my eyes are asymmetrical, for Christ's sake!) Apparently my sense of humor finally paid off.

Next photo is Evey looking out to the backyard via the laundry room. I put her on top of the washer and she has the perfect view.

Last photo is Adro and Evey at uh... the library, I think. Or maybe at the art museum. Or quite possibly at Rick's Place. I can't remember.

I had a fantasy draft tonight, it went really well. I'm co-managing a team with Danny P. The draft went so much better than the night before, in my comic book league, which was a total nightmare, again.

Anyway, here's to LT having a great year! (And let's go Jayhawks!!!)

where did the weekend go?

It went too fast.

I'm going to bed early tonight. I'm wore out. It was an eventful weekend. We had some guests over on Saturday, then visited my family in Kansas City today.

More later... I've got a good book, so I'm going to go relax NOW.

Judy made dinner tonight

Chicken fried rice. Or, as I like to call it, "Frickin AWESOME fried rice!!!"

Photos of Evey with her Grandma Judy taken last Friday at Celito Lindo ('pretty sky,' right?).

Family photo

It's not often we get a family photo up here -- usually me or Adro, sometimes Evey (ahem)... are taking the photos that we post up here, so it's hard to get all three of us together in the same picture. But Adrianne's Dad mailed us a CD of all the photos he took while in southern Missouri with us, and this was on the disc... nice little moment in time for the Jones family here.

Dammit, I love my family.

I'm gonna go watch the 2008 National Championship game now.

Meet Annika!

The Jones family stopped in to see Jocilyn, David, Isabella and BABY ANNIKA today!

Annika is a sweet little thing... so light! Hard to believe our own Evey was ever so tiny. We also got a grand tour of their awesome new house right off campus -- what a place!

Photos are of Isabella, Joc, Evey, Adro, Annika; Annika catching some Zs; Bella and Evey getting in some good play time.

Haircut No. 3 (or 4?)

Yup, she's getting big fast. She needs a haircut every-other-week it seems these days, just like her dad.

You can converse with her now. This morning I asked her, from one bedroom to the other, if she was really ready to get up. "Yeah," she said. "Why don't we sleep 5 more minutes?" I asked. "...OK," she said, clearly annoyed.

She says basketball, yellow, blue, Jayhawk, eat, gracias, please, Shrek (pronounced 'f*ck'), banana, mom, dad, truck, TV, book, among others. In sign language she says eat, cat, dog, bath, art, mom, dad, grandma, read, among others.

Twenty months old now. I feel like I missed most of months 18 and 19, and truthfully, I pretty much did. Chatting on the phone isn't the same as being there; Seeing how easily she can climb stairs, or telling you she wants raisins.

But I'm back home now. It feels great. It's nice to be at my home PC instead of on a wireless connection in Detroit. I have to wear a suit to the office tomorrow, but I don't really care. Five consecutive days in the office -- the most I've been in the office since, what, mid-June? It's gone by fast. Even my office feels pretty good these days.

The only problem is I got back on caffeine a little bit while I was travelling. I was knocking back Coke and Pepsi pretty regularly. I'm back off it now, but I do get sleepy mid-day without it.

Looking forward to this weekend. Hanging with the family. Maybe seeing a movie (is there anything out?). Fantasy football draft Saturday night.

It's great to be home, back with my girls. Even if I don't know how to speak sign language like my daughter does.

At least I don't make Grandma blush when I say "Shrek."

Story time!

I had back-to-back trips recently. To Chicago for Lollapalooza for a few days, then straight to Detroit for the PGA Championship.

Since I was going to be gone for a long trip, I wanted to get in a good "daddy/daughter" day. So I took a day of vacation to chill out with my little Evey. The photos from the county fair was a part of this day, as were these photos -- story time at the Lawrence public library.

I think Evey enjoyed story time. She was one of the younger kids, but she sat there and watched like she was interested. And then, after a while, she got up and ran around. And then she took a giant dump, as toddlers tend to do. After the diaper change we started our journey home...

(That's Victor in the background, hanging with Evey. Victor's mom takes care of Evey during the days, so I invited him along for our adventure.)

My "room" at San Diego Comic-Con

OK, as some of you know, I was in San Diego for Comic-Con International recently -- my first "CCI" ever. CCI is a pretty big deal to the comic collectors of the world, so I was really thrilled to finally attend after hearing about how great it is all these years.

And guess what? I did my first CCI in style. No hotel room for me. For five days I lived on the Comic Book Resources 45-foot yacht. Check out the photos! It lived up to expectations. Fully catered, fully stocked bar. Met Method Man, John Romita Jr., Stan Lee on the yacht. Enjoyed a Cuban from the deck as fireworks were shot off. In short, it was the real deal.

Here in a few weeks I'll post the link up of me doing an interview with the Aquabats on the yacht. That should be pretty funny.

Oh, btw, that photo of the sunset? I was on the phone with my Mom, telling her how cool this trip was, and I was describing the scene around me. "Take a photo of the sunset for me," she said. So this is that exact moment you told me to take a photo of the sunset, Mom! Enjoy, this one's for you -- thanks for being the one that introduced me to comic books all those years ago!!!

@ the county fair

A visit to Weibel-world

Well, I'm done. No more trips scheduled. My 7-trips-in-7-weeks odyssey is complete.

Time to catch-up on Evey's blog!

These photos are from our visit to Roaring River State Park in southern Missouri. That's Alex (Adro's brother), Adro, Evey, Diana and Alan (Adro's dad).

While Mom sleeps, Evey and Dad start the party

Yeah, the thing they never tell you about being a parent? You can drink with your kids! They drink milk, you drink whatever the heck you want. Evey will even give me a cheers, and it can be to something totally ridiculous, like Bastille Day. "Evelyn, here's to the 99 cent junior bacon cheeseburger!" "Cheers!"

The only bad thing: She's TERRIBLE at beer pong.

Evey: Teaching your kids to read since 2008

Evey and Grey hanging out at Old Chicago on Monday.