Today, We Celebrate Our Independence Day!

Well . . . yesterday we did. Today we celebrate celebrating Independence Day! Yeah! Anyway, 4th of July is all about images, not words. Like fireworks -- over and over again. And I'm not feeling particularly clever (are you ever clever wise ass? Shut up Richard!), so let's just review the images of our 4th of July and enjoy shall we? Yes indeed, let's.






And then, just for good measure, let's check out some miscellaneous pics that we took recently. Cute, funny, whatever. Entertaining stuff and scenes of our life in Austin.


And there you have it. Grace! Kelly! Jason! Obama! America! @#&% Yeah!

Summer's Bounty

I am so excited, I just had to brag. We just bought a CSA (community-supported agriculture) share, and we got our first basket straight from the farm today. Check out the loot! Plus six farm-fresh eggs I forgot to include in the photo.

Here's the list:
green beans
okra
cucumbers
zucchini
yellow squash
pattypan squash
eggplant
onions
garlic
slicing tomatoes
roma tomatoes
grape tomatoes
hot pepper/sweet pepper/bell pepper
basil
melon

Mmm... here's some ideas... BLT's, ratatouille, pasta sauce, green bean & tomato salad, melon & prosciutto, fried squash, fried okra, pesto, frittata, okra & tomatoes. Any other ideas???

Uno, Dos, Tres...Catorce!

Well, not catorce. Cuatro! Gracie is 4 months old and she's officially as skilled as Jasper at 4 months. She's got all the dog tricks down now so I suppose it's on to stupid human tricks :) She can definitely "sit" (although she's still working on the whole unassisted "sitting up"), as shown here in her Memorial Day outfit care of her great grandma in Sacramento.


We've know for a while now that she can "speak" (although it's not intelligible by any means). And recently she's discovered how to "rollover" like Jasper can barely do. Witness :

But did you know she could "fly" too? Like Underdog, I guess. Although she prefers a different theme song. Turn the volume on for this video.

So she's got the basics down! And she's taken her second foray into swimming on a fabulous father's day. I called it "organized relaxing" as we scheduled up a full day ... to just chill. It was fabulous. We got all the dad varieties together for a picture (and apparently managed to all wear light blue).
Then we chowed down on some fine meat and hung around the pool on a not-so-miserable summer afternoon in Texas.


Later, Gracie took a rather huge dump in a rather small diaper that we were trying to get rid of because they were too small now. Bad combo. The outfit she was wearing was approaching too small too and while we don't usually just toss those out (save them for baby #2? or give to other expecting moms), I decided the process of pulling her heavily soiled outfit over her head was too fraught with problems and visions of her own poop on her face. So I did the dumb man thing -- just grabbed some scissors and cut off the lower part of the outfit that was soiled and trashed it. Again, I do not condone wasting clothing. But in a moment of panic and poop overload, you do what you have to do. She was sporting a nice cut-off the rest of the day. Perfect for these hot days.

The Little Mermaid

Our friend's parents were out of town last weekend. No, this is not the start of my screenplay about high school frivolity set in football-loving, brush-clearing, God-fearing Texas. This is actually the story of Grace's first swimming lesson. Our friend's parents have a sweet pad with a pool and so said friend was having a pool party. Family-friendly pool party without the parents-are-away-shenanigans . . . so we thought we'd toss Grace in and, you know, sink or swim. No, no. Of course not. But, we did strap on a baby swim diaper and let her wade around with mom for a while. I think she took to it:






As part of our all-American weekend of pool party BBQs and such, we had some corn-on-the-cob. Which reminded us of a compliment I paid Kelly long ago. Well, not so much that as a dig she made at me for my poor corn-on-the-cob eating style and her expertise at it. Look at how clean her cob is after a thorough, typewrite-style devourage:


Beautiful. While mine looks much more like our friend MK's:


Terrible. We'll see how well Gracie eats her corn. She's drooling enough now to convince us she's close to teething so it may not be long :)

Expanding our horizons (with Grace)

Well, we did it! Last weekend we took Grace on her first plane ride and we're still here to talk about it. We had a 4-day (ish) weekend in Kansas City to introduce Grace to two of her great grandmothers, her aunties and her cousins. And of course to see Yaya and Papa again for the first time in months.

But first we had to pack, and we knew it was nearly as hot & sunny in KC as it was in Austin. So, we had to find Grace an appropriate hat from our stash of hand-me-downs. Montage!

Oh yes, this is the one!

Adequately packed, we embarked on Southwest Airlines. It's a Texas-based airline that specializes in low-cost fares and you choose your own seat. You may have heard of them. Anyway, families board after the "A" group and when business travelers are the bulk of the passengers (which they were both trips), then you have a real time finding 2 seats together since all the busy-busy's pick all the aisle and window seats ahead of you. No matter -- Grace was dynamite on the plane and there were no long looks, eye rolls or laptop-closures-in-a-huff directed toward her. Here she is somewhere over . . . oh, sorry, just a second -- I just puked up a little . . . Oklahoma:

Kudos to all the folks whom I polled beforehand for their stellar advice. Perhaps you're reading this now and can pat yourselves on the back. Or does anyone even read this blog? Is this post still going? Huh huh . . . BOOB! Sorry, sorry. Back on track.

Upon arrival we were briefed on our breakneck schedule. Grannys, coach-pitch baseball, BBQ with friends and of course many, many meals both in and out of the house. We visited Granny Stew first. Afterward we had a big meal. Granny really enjoyed seeing her great granddaughter:


Then back to hang with Grace's Aunt Claire and her cousins Josh & Caleb. We horsed around the house, played with Grace and took her for a walk. Afterward we had a big meal.


Saturday was just another day at the park for Caleb as it was slow-pitch baseball gameday! Aunt Margaret joined the gang . . .


. . . while Mom & Grace cheered Caleb on as he went 2-for-2 with a single and a double.

Afterward we had a big meal. At the latest craze in Blue Springs, MO: Legend of Asia! A potpourri of Asian cuisine awaited us and our too-cool-for-school family hammed it up beforehand and at the restaurant.


We bookended the weekend with another visit to a great granny. This time great Granny K in Kansas City, KS. That's 3 states for Gracie if you're keeping track. At both facilities, Gracie was a huge hit with the residents. Including, of course, the great grannies.


Afterward we had a big meal (at a legit Mexican restaurant that I'm sure has no yelp page but if it did it would just be a link to the Pepto Bismol site . . . mercy!). Finally, we headed over to see our friends Katie & Bryan. They had their second kid 3 days after Gracie was born. The separated-at-birth pair made their introductions . . .

. . . and then we had a feast from the grill and enjoyed a much cooler and beautiful evening in their rad screened-in porch.

Then it was back on the plane Monday, which was cramped but we returned without incident. Huzzah!

Expanding our horizons

We have a lot to report on the Gracie front very soon. Her first airplane ride to Kansas City to meet the extended family. Big events. But while we gather the pictures and all that good fun, let us take a sports aside to consider this looming college conference expansion. The conference landscape (and its quirks) has long interested me. I guess I just love to organize things.

So, the rumors now that revolve around the Big 10 and Pac 10 expanding and targeting Big 12 schools have me ready to redo the entire lineup. Apparently the Pac 10 wants half the Big 12 and they are going to be the first of many "super" conferences to come. I also want to rework the other conferences before it's official including the ACC and SEC since they have some quirks that have long bothered me as a Big 12 homer. So let's go with the BIG assumption this transpires when the Pac 10 kicks off the chain reaction by taking 6 Big 12 schools making 16-team conferences the benchmark. Fine. Here's what I think, in my worldview, should happen. Also assuming that everything is driven by football, which of course it is.

PS - I really think they should stop using numbers in the conference names. Pac 10, Big 12, Big 10 -- we've seen those counts change so much; let's try names that do not have to change every time people want more money and want to grow, grow, grow. Pac 10? How about just the Pacific Conference? Big 10? How about the Midwest Conference? Big 12? How about going away altogether? Anyway, still using the old naming conventions here's the Jason Conference Armageddon Scenario (JCAS - known as "JaCkASs" because I don't know what I'm talking about anyway but this is what I want) ...

Pac 16
Takes the original Pac 10 plus adds Texas, the Aggies, TxTech, OU, OKState and Colorado. That's the reported desire in the media, and that's what we'll go with to start everything else off.

Big 16 (from Big 10)
So now this becomes the original 11 teams (again, this is why you do NOT name your conferences with numbers and then add Penn State later), plus Mizzou, Nebraska, Notre Dame (they're going to have to do it now because power conferences this big have no room for wimpy independents sneaking into big bowl games), Pitt and ... I guess Syracuse.

ACC & SEC
They each have 12 schools now, but will they keep pace? Sure, especially since the Big East is now being eaten alive by the Big 16. And these 2 conferences need to rework some geography issues they have going on. It irks me that the states of Florida, Georgia & South Carolina split up their big schools between conferences. Especially Florida having 3 schools in 3 different conferences for many years in the past. If that was the case in the Big 12, Texas could have lost to OU or A&M so many times throughout the years and still won the conference instead of losing their division within the conference after one damn game. So time to realign yourselves folks.

Through swaps and additions, the ACC comes out as:
- Boston College, Rutgers, Cincy, UConn, MD, West Va, UVA, Va Tech in a north division
- UNC, Duke, Wake Forest, NC State, Memphis, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, South Florida in a southern division
** yeah, you don't get to do "Coastal" and whatever the other division name is now; that is totally gerrymandered. North, South -- that's it!

Yes that means we've done some SEC swapping (stolen Kentucky & Vandy who are out of place in the SEC) and raided more of the Big East. But we've given a lot to the SEC too. Let's see the new SEC:
- Clemson, South Carolina, Florida, Florida State, Miami, Tennessee, Georgia, Georgia Tech in the east division
- Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Miss St, LSU, Arkansas, Louisville and TCU in the west division

That's a big reach with Louisville & TCU coming in, but the expansion drums are beating and you need teams. You may have noticed the Big East is now gone and Conference USA has lost some teams by now. TCU leaves the Mountain West for football glory in the SEC and we know the SEC cash cow would love the DFW TV market.

Mountain West (MWC)

This is my favorite remaining conference. They have 9 teams now and are probably the most powerful one left standing after you basically realigned the big guns into west (Pac16), middle (Big16), east (new ACC) and south (new SEC) power conferences. They may not get to be a super conference yet, but might as well pick up some left-behinds and get to 12 schools. First, add Boise State which makes way too much sense. They pick up a pair of Big 12 leftovers and teams that want to stay joined together in Kansas and Kansas State. The Kansans can still have their basketball prowess coming out of the Mountain West. If you want TCU replaced, just get their little brother Baylor who was jilted in the Big 12 South.

I would bet the powers that be like 4 power conferences that naturally make up a kind of "final four" of college athletics. Then you have 4 power and 4 second-tier conferences with MWC, C-USA, MAC and the WAC which will all have some second-hand realignments that will work themselves out and probably leave you with 12 teams in each.

This leaves only Iowa St. left hanging from the Big 12. Look, they suck. And they're not trending the right way. This is why I moved Baylor to the pretty nice MWC. They are up and coming in hoops for sure and football-wise they were an injured QB away from being .500+ last year in the Big 12. Iowa St. meanwhile has declined and shows no sign of being good again. They could head to Conf USA (which always seems to adapt and survive and they've lost a couple teams in this shakeup anyway) or try to weasel into the MAC.

See, isn't that fun? We've redistricted the country's colleges into fun little worlds of their own. Why? So that college presidents at major universities can continue to grow these steroided entities that have auditoriums of "classes" and get really into minor-league sports battles. And bear in mind, there can still be no playoff in football because the schedule does not gel with academics. Which as we've seen by the extraordinary time every president seems to be spending traveling to conference meetings, etc. is THE most important thing -- academics. Right?

Of course also bear in mind that despite all this hypocrisy that I'm stoked to watch the Horns regularly battle the Ducks or Bears or Trojans. It's just too much fun! And Matthew McConaughey will be on the sidelines with the student-athletes!

15 Minutes of Fun

Simply put: 15 minutes of entertainment brought to you by the Grape Jelly. First, someone delightfully details all the holes in LOST that have confounded me. This officially puts my wrestling with the show to rest.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

AND! If I only had 10 minutes left to live, I would probably watch videos of my child and wife. What kind of person do you think I am? But I would be tempted to watch this too.



Just beware -- not all of Arnold's lines nor the sarcastic college humorists are work safe.