Happy1st--Sunday was Anna's first birthday. She had an awesome time at her pool party at Lietime Fitness. It was a red white and blue, All-America theme. We floated hundreds of beachballs in the pool, and served Popeye's chicken and apple pie for dinner. The best part of it all was watching my Anna take the right of passage into the chocolate cake addiction that is a Rzepkowski birthday. Nice job honey! And yes...you can have a brown chocolate cake at your wedding.

DiscrimiNAMEtion--I find this 20/20 report to be really fascinating on name discrimination. I already have my own name complex but this is truly startling. The report had African-Americans with black sounding names like Shenequa put their exact same resume on Monster under a white sounding name like Jennifer. The report found 17% more response to the resumes with white sounding names. Furthermore, the anecdotes from the survey participants tell of multiple callbacks to the white sounding name vs. next to none for their own. The story goes on to discuss whether African-Americans should begin to name their children more often with white sounding names.

Personally I'm very torn. Growing up with my own unique name I wore it as a badge of courage. It caused me to have fortitude where others just didn't have to worry about it. However, that didn't stop me from naming my kids MUCH more simply - Mason and Anna. For all parents that go with unique names consider that you are giving your child another challenge that they wouldn't have had. Make sure to use that to educate your child on how to overcome adversity, because there are harder things in life than your name.

WasteBasketTimeWaste--When not procrastinating on my latest web architecture I can chuck paperwads into a fakebasket online. I just can't seem to catch the paper airplane.

GoDaddyGo--After putting the Honda to sleep, I'm sure everyone is wondering how Tricia and I are getting about town. Well let me show you...






A Midnight Blue 2002 Chrysler Sebring Convertible. And, as you can see, the first thing I put into it was my 2 babies - car seats and all. I can hardly contain the excitement of driving a convertible. When people around Chicago see this freak in 20 degree weather driving with the top down, you'll know it's me. Yes, this is our second car, and yes it will spend most of its life sitting at the train station. I just couldn't get myself to buy some ghetto Neon, or Civic coupe, when what I really wanted was something fun that I could haul the kids around in. This past weekend I needed an excuse to drive it around, so we went up to Jellystone (the campground with Yogi) . We packed all the gear in the trunk and drove 2 hours to Milwaukee. No Problemo.

Of course the only problem is that the first time we showed it to our friends with a 12 year old daughter she says "Wow you bought a Daddy Car!" That wasn't exactly the reaction I was going for, but apparently the shoe fits. See you on the open road.

FeedMe--After goofing around in Blogger a bit I successfully syndicated the content of this glorious web effort. To make it work with my newsreader (NewsGator), I took the Atom feed created by Blogger and entered it into FeedBurner. Now I have this nice little XML Chicklet on my site for all of you who want to stay abreast of my infrequent Blog entries. This website is now a strung together set of cheap ASP solutions to that which is provided natively by MoveableType. I'm running on Blogger (Free), with commenting by Haloscan(Free), with feed by FeedBurner(Free), with website hosted by Catalog.com($35 per year...close enough to Free).

The one thing I may pay for is a small donation to Haloscan so that comments on my blog are actaully emailed to me. That way I won't miss out when Walt says he can make my site do RSS, or when Mark says Happy Fathers Day.

HowToBeCreative-- It's always good to read other people's work about the angst involved in the creative process. It saves me from having to spend time being creative in expressing the angst involved in my creative process.

127,119--It's finally over...We put our 1989 Honda Accord to rest yesterday. After 15 glorious years of service, she has gone to the wholesaler in the sky. It wouldn't be fitting to put her down without a tribute. She has, afterall been through the formidable years of 2 people that appreciate her dearly. And so the story begins...

The Honda was Tricia's first car - taken to University of Buffalo in Fall 1994. At that time it had 40,000 miles and not a blemish. You see, the car had been bought new and babied by Tricia's mom. Through one means of begging or another, Tricia pryed the car away from its reluctant birthmom and promised to wash it every day. With a hefty parental loan and a gleam in her eye Tricia proudly began her Junior year of college with a car that was the envy of all her friends. In comparison to my 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit, this car was showroom fresh.

Through the streets of Buffalo and Rochester it rode - to late night grocery runs and all night keg parties, from Niagara Falls to Buffalo Bills games. From a remedial job at K-Mart to servant's pay at the local Tavern. It unpacked the bedroom and packed the dormroom. The Honda was a steady friend amongst the turmoil of Tricia's transition into womanhood. No hotwiring, no jumpstarting, no swearing.

Little did she know that those early years of carefree fun would set the stage for its eventual demise. After 2 years of driving the salty winter roads, and frigid nights spent without a roof over its head, the Honda contracted car cancer. It started as only a small rustanoma over its right rear wheel. A little sandpaper and some touch up paint and we had it licked - so we thought. Over the years we would watch as other small areas of the paint bubbled. Yet, we didn't hear a whimper as it slowly began to eat away at the very essence of the steel.

After college, I took to mocking Tricia's gold and brown beast. I ridiculed it as ugly and practical. My brand new 1997 Ford Ranger was far higher on the cool-o-meter. When we got married, what was mine became hers, and what was hers became hers. So I swallowed every bit of my pride as we finished out her car loan and kept the Honda as one of our 2 family cars. While living in Rochester, we watched in awe as the odometer turned over 100,000 miles. Still strong, still dependable, but the rust began to ravage her body.

When we moved to Chicago in 2000 we crammed a house full of crap into a 2 bedroom apartment, and along with us came the Honda and my truck. As our marriage grew and we had our first child, the day of reckoning came. It was 2001 and we had just finished paying on my truck. For the first time we now had no car payments. What we did have was a 2-seat pickup truck that was useless, and a rusty old Honda with 115,000 miles to cart around our bouncing baby. Instead of doing the orthodox and trading in the rusty Honda for something new, we did the unthinkable. We traded the pickup for a 2001 Dodge Durango kid-mobile and kept the Honda as the wingman. Sure, it was getting up there in years, but we heard legends of Hondas lasting to 200,000 or more. All we had to do was last through the payment cycle on the Durango, and our bold move would pay off.

And so, it did. The Honda went on to sweet retirement duty as I used it primarily to drive 2 miles to the train station every day and left it for dead in the sun and cold. It was the first time that the Honda became MY primary car. Lo and behold I actually fell in love with it. For a car that was that old, it still was as solid as the day I first rode in it. No rattles, no clunks. Was it hard to start on a cold day? Yes. Did the wheel nearly fall off one day when I pulled into a parking spot? Yes. But, overall it was the perfect get-around car. Especially now that we have 2 kids.

On July 31, 2004 we made it to the last payment on the Durango. It was a happy day in our family. We smiled at our good fortune. We laughed as we cranked up the Honda's 6 disc changer in delight. She had made it. 10 years after saying our first hellos it basked in having accomplished all that her Japanese makers had built her to do.

It was only 5 days later, almost as if it were a terminal patient waiting for the last family member to say its goodbyes, that the Honda gave up her fight. I drove her at 60 miles an hour on the highway and she started to "shimmy". Not convulse, cough, or sputter, just shimmy annoyingly as I hit cruising speed. It concerned me enough for a visit to the auto doctor, and the prognosis wasn't pretty. $1200 in repairs were needed for her gimpy front ball-joints. Her belts were severely cracked, her tires needed to be replaced, even the horn wasn't working anymore.

I was in denial. I called up Tricia and told her the bad news. I said "Can I have the checkbook?" and explained the charges. I began spewing my usual list of repairs and discounts that I had negotiated. Tricia listened intently, then cleared her throat and said in an deep low voice, "Kris, I think it's time." In disbelief I went on justifying how this car was going to last 20 maybe even 25 years - that we could easily make it to 150,000. But, she had already made up her mind. "Start looking for a new car." And that was it. Tricia had already come to peace with a major chapter of her life. The time had come to let the Honda go.

In the grueling search for a new vehicle, always in the back of my mind I was thinking that we would donate the car to a charity and let some other lucky person get some service out of her twilight years. In the end, it didn't even come to that. We used her as a $500 discount on our new car. It was easier than trying to sell her outright or even do her the honor of donation. But, for us it was just better this way. We put her down, took our last pictures,then drove away in the new car. It seems a fitting tribute to show the Honda what her years of hard work allowed us to buy as her legacy. Our first convertible. Thank you 1989 Honda Accord LX. We'll miss you. Goodbye.

ThisLandIsYourLand--This is an awesome piece of political satire.

PoolPickin--It's amazing how quickly the second child grows up when there's a bigger kid around to motivate her. Anna is 11 months, and if she doesn't start walking in the next 2 weeks I would be surprised. In the meantime, she has definitely figured out how to crawl, climb up on her brother and get in his grill. The boy needed a challenge..now he's got one. With a beautiful 90 degree Sunday we went to the Lifetime Fitness pool. I just need to burn that day into my memory for safekeeping on those 20 degree days in February. Summer is too short.