Author: Josh

I’ve been busy as of late and haven’t had time to document life. Last Friday, I don’t think we did anything. I woke up on Saturday and cleaned the Jeep. I loaded up the old factory tires and wheels that I sold on eBay and headed to Brenham to 1) deliver the wheels to the winning bidder and 2) attend our first Bellville High School Class of 1994 reunion committee meeting.

After what turned out to be a fruitful meeting (damn, I just remembered I’m supposed to be putting together the invitations [task for this weekend]) I drove back to Austin and Elise and I went to John and Christine’s for Cindy’s birthday party.

On Sunday Elise and I went out for dim sum (blech – a waitress sold me on curried squid — “Is it chewy?” “Oh Nooooo”) and furniture shopping. We weren’t out to buy, but we wound up buying a sofa and chair for a price that we didn’t want to pass up.

Mickey just reminded me that today is my one year anniversary at Wellness Works. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been back in Austin for over a year now.

What’s really funny is this time last year, I was having excrutiating back pains. The same is true as I write this. I was putting the back seat back into our Jeep on Sunday and didn’t do the whole “bend at the knees when lifting”. I’m in pain.

Elise and I watched a rerun of The Tonight Show last night. Madonna was the main attraction. She spoke about her religion, Kabbalah. I don’t look to celebrities for spiritual guidance, but what she said of Kabbalah was interesting. I know nothing about Kabbalah but from what I gathered, it’s a religion based on spirituality and science. I’m not a religious person. I’m not Baptized. I am, however, a spiritual person and have a lot of questions about life, death and the afterlife.

I’ve never been sold on conventional religions. One reason is because I’m not educated. The other reason is because of the judgment that I feel is involved. I am interested in human history, science, astrology as well as other things.

I told Elise about when I played football in junior high. Before each game, the entire team would take a knee to the side of the field and say the Lord’s Prayer. I was never taught the Lord’s Prayer as I didn’t go to church. I eventually learned the Lord’s Prayer but I never spoke it. I lip synced. I conformed. I think the Bellville Independent School district is (or was) immune to any form of separation of church and state. I knelt and bowed my head because that is what was expected. I didn’t want to kneel and lip sync the Lord’s Prayer – it didn’t feel right to me, but if I didn’t, who knows what would have been said of me.

Now it doesn’t bother me. I am an adult and can stand up for my agnostic* view. My family and my in-laws are religious people. I respect their religions and beliefs. I go to church voluntarily every Christmas eve with my wife. I do this because I know it is something that is important to her. Well, that and you get a pretty good workout at a Catholic Mass.

So anyway, Kabbalah seems interesting. Maybe I’ll research it.

* I prefer the “reserving judgment” definition of agnostic.

This afternoon I was contemplating life, liberty and the pursuit of a regular intake of fiber when I was somehow reminded of a feeling that I haven’t had in a long time. No, not the one associated with a lack of fiber. I remembered a feeling that I used to get when I was younger. That feeling that you get right before you know you’re about to do something bad or wrong. I honestly can’t tell you what spurred this thought, it just popped into my head.

I know there’s a lot of people out there who get that feeling on a daily basis. The feeling or thought is “act now and worry about the consequences later.” There’s that rush of adrenaline just as the little devil on your shoulder convinces you to do it. I haven’t done anything too terribly bad in my lifetime. I remembered a time when I was in high school and snuck out of my parents’ house to drive to Houston in the middle of the night. Houston was sixty miles from our house. I knew it was wrong. Come to think of it, I’m sure I was already grounded at the time.

Ahhh, what a rush. Being bad. Defying authority. Doing what I wanted to do – acting all grown up. Hours later, as I was walking back up to my house in the pitch black country night, I was greeted by a flashlight shining in my eyes and shotgun pointed at my head. My dad had heard the racket of my reentry and thought I was a burglar.

Another time that I remember getting that ’bout to be bad adrenaline rush was when decided to walk out on a job, also while in high school. I knew it was wrong because I had loyalties to my employer and more importantly, I had a car note. I was a short order cook at the local tavern. We were slammed that night and I had plans to go out with friends after work. I knew I wasn’t going to get to leave anytime soon, so I just walked out. I snuck out the back door where no one could see me. I think about that now and I laugh. I laugh at the stupidity of my logic.

I guess I was reminded of that feeling because I realize that I’m growing up. The risks I take now are refined and for my own betterment.

Deborah Nolan was her name. She was my boss at the Tap Room. That was the local tavern at which I worked as a short order cook. I actually saw Deborah in the Des Moines airport on Christmas Eve of 2002. It’d been around 10 years since last I saw her, the night I walked out on the job. And here we both were, thousands of miles from where we once had a working relationship. I was waiting in luggage claim for Elise and her dad to pick me up. I saw Deborah, her husband and their grandchildren waiting for their luggage. I watched her and her family. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t recognize me because the last time she saw me I had long hair, wore a hat turned backwards, combat boots, shorts and a flannel shirt tied around my waist.

I thought about walking up to her and saying hello. In hindsight, I should have. I think the only thing that kept me from approaching her was the fact that I would have had to say “Hi Deborah!” There would’ve been an awkward pause and she would have thought: “How does a stranger with no luggage in an airport know my name?” “I doubt you remember me. My name is Josh Janicek. I used to work for you at the Tap Room. Well, I actually walked out on my shift and never came back.”

Maybe I wouldn’t have had to say that. If I didn’t, what if she remembered it and it just wasn’t brought up. Either way, I decided to grab my bag and make my way to find Elise and Steve.

So Deborah, I’m sorry for walking out that night. I’m sorry for not saying hello in the airport.

Mom and Dad, I wouldn’t know where to begin, but I’m sorry.

I wonder if I’ll ever see shoulder devil again. I’m sure I have and subconsciously made the right decisions because I knew that I would have to pay the consequence. Maybe I’m losing my edge – my spontaneity. Maybe I should just sit closer to the TV and drink a Coke before bed. Oooh yeah. I’m still bad. I still got it.

My Mr. Picassohead

I HATE cold weather. It’s 31 degrees outside right now. To some of you, that’s nothing. To me, that’s the desire to quit my job, crawl into bed and hibernate until late March. You can’t do anything when it’s cold except sit inside. You bundle up to go outside only to go inside somewhere else where the heaters are cranked up so you then have to disrobe and lug around your cap, jacket, scarf, gloves, etc. Your nose drips, eyes water, fingers become numb, skin dries out and lips chap. Most people, myself included, tend to put on weight during the cold months. It’s not fun.

My wife is from Des Moines. Her parents, grandma and brother still live there. I don’t see how they survive the winter months.

During lunch I watched a part of a live video stream of Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco. We’re so getting an iBook. New Macs are shipping with iLife ’04. He also introduced GarageBand. He had John Mayer there playing guitar right into the computer and he recorded it. It was SOOO cool. iLife is pretty much what I’ve tried to attain with our computer. I use a hacked version of Picasa for our digital photo album, which is mediocre in my opinion, iTunes (which is made by Apple and is the only recreational 3rd party software that works decently on the computer), Pinnacle Studio 8 (capture card) that I still can’t get to work right. We don’t have a DVD ROM so I haven’t had to endure the pains of dealing with 3rd party software for that.

Jobs also introduced the iPod mini. Apple wants to get their hands on the upper-end flash mp3 player market by selling a smaller player that will hold 4GB of music at a comparable price. Except the iPod mini is a hard drive player (vs. compact flash). It comes in 5 different colors and is the size of a business card. No, I don’t want one – I just think they’re cool.

Scotch from a plastic jug, Jack Daniels, Skyy cosmos, champagne, shorts, t-shirts and a Celtic version of Auld Lang Syne piping from the JoshPod. That was New Years 2004. Happy New Year, by the way.

Elise and I went to John and Christine’s to ring in

Posted on 1/5/2004

Bather at Petsmart

Della called Elise this morning to tell us that the final addendum has been signed by the sellers. That means that it’s 99% official – we are bona fide first-time homeowners. Our closing date is on or before January 29th. I say 99% official because the loan is yet to be funded. We’ve been pre-approved so we just have to wait to have our broker fund the loan at closing.

Elise and I had a nice, relaxing, extended holiday week. We got to my parents’ house at almost midnight on Tuesday. Elise had to finish wrapping presents. I hit the nog.

I woke up late on Christmas eve. Elise got up early, had breakfast and talked to my parents for a couple hours. Shortly after I crept out of bed, we wormed my parents’ cows. A very Texas Christmas. After an enchilada dinner, we looked at the photo albums.

On Christmas morning, we all got up, ate breakfast and opened presents. Mom and Dad really liked the picture that Elise and I took in New Orleans… My parents spent their honeymoon in New Orleans as did we in 2001. We went to Pat O’Briens and a recreated a picture that was taken of my parents 30+ years ago.

After all the box tossing and paper shredding, we all went to work in the kitchen to prepare Christmas lunch/dinner. My uncle Bill and cousin Shantel came over just after noon. We ate, took pictures, ate, took more pictures and rode Bill’s 4-wheeler. Elise says she doesn’t want her own motorcycle… I guess having two extra wheels makes for a safer ride.

We woke up on Friday morning and drove into Houston to find our washer and dryer set. The drive in was fun. Even though Christmas had passed and Elise was suffering from her cold, we were able to maintain our holiday spirit. After waiting in traffic and passing the fatal accident on I-10, we made our way up I-45 north to what we thought was the Sears scratch and dent outlet. It turned out we had made our way to the parts and service store. We turned around and drove down I-45 south to the actual scratch and dent outlet. We looked around for an hour or so and decided to move on. We didn’t buy anything because 1) we didn’t have a truck 2) I wanted to make sure that we slept on it before spending $1,000+ and 3) Elise the Laundry Monger wanted to go back to my parents’ house a research the units we looked at.

We drove over to the Galleria area. We first stopped at FAO Shwarz. That was kind of depressing because they were having a going out of business sale. I then took Elise into the Galleria. It was a mad house. I really just took her there so she could see the ice skating rink and 3-story Christmas tree. After seeing both, we decided to pretend we were swanky and dipped into a few stores. Fendi, Louis Vuitton and Cartier were about as much as my $18 sweater and I could take. Elise and I found a $180 long sleeve t-shirt and a pair of $480 blue jeans. Nothing fancy about either. Those were the two items that we decided were worth a price tag flip. Most items didn’t have price tags. “If you have to ask…” We laughed heartily and left. We drove back to Mom and Dad’s, had dinner, watched TV and went to bed.

On Saturday we drove back into Houston in Dad’s truck and decided on a washer we wanted to purchase at the Sears outlet. We saved $250 on a new Maytag washing machine because of a couple barely noticeable scratches. Our options for dryers were a limited because our house has a gas line for the dryer. We drove over to the Sears store in Memorial City Mall. I told the sales guy that I had a truck and I wanted to take a dryer home with me that night. Elise found the dryer we needed but they didn’t have the gas model, nor the “bisque” color that matched our washer. The sales guy upgraded the dryer for free and is having it shipped to Austin just in time for us to move into the house. We saved $400 on new appliances. We realized that we are married, soon-to-be homeowners because we were shopping for household appliances on a Saturday night. Memorial City Mall received quite the facelift, by the way.

We got up Sunday, ate, read the newspaper, packed and started watching the Texans Vs. Colts game. Elise and I headed back to Austin around 1 p.m. and fought the rain and traffic all the way in. Our normal 1.5 hour drive took us over 3 hours. We unpacked the Jeep and rushed over to Burlington Coat Factory to exchange both of our new jackets. I think we’re both much happier with the jackets that we picked out for ourselves.

Life is started to get back to normal, which stinks. While riding my bicycle to work yesterday morning, I tried to listen to Christmas music on the JoshPod so I could maintain some form of holiday spirit. Battery was dead. Bah humbug! Apparently 98.4% of Austin isn’t working this week because it sure seemed like I was the ONLY warm-blooded animal traversing the land yesterday morning.

We met with Della and Clyde at Springhill last night to initial another addendum on our house contract and to consume fried food. I had a chicken fried steak sandwich that could have fed a team of starving Sumo wrestlers. We’re hoping that the paperwork we initialed last night will be the last until closing at the end of January. This addendum stated that the buyers are paying a certain amount in closing costs in lieu of repairs because we had to go with an FHA loan. With an FHA loan, the buyers have to pay part of closing. We wish we had known that earlier. Things could have been worse though. All-in-all, buying a house has been relatively pain free thus far.

Elise and I drove into Houston yesterday afternoon to shop for washer and dryers at the Sears scratch and dent warehouse. On I-10, just before Sheppard we saw the aftermath of a horrific car crash.

If I had to guess, I’d say we missed the wreck by an hour or so. Elise saw that the car was cut in half. Even though I was driving, I could also see the remains of the car and what looked like a body covered by a sheet.

Seeing things like that really put things into perspective.

In other news – Elise and I have been at my parents’ house since Tuesday night. We been having a nice, relaxed visit. Christmas was a lot of fun. Elise and I both surprised each other by giving each other new leather jackets. We’re both going to have to return them. Luckily we both bought them from the same store so we can go returning/shopping together.

My parents are helping us buy a washer and dryer as our Christmas/housewarming gift. We’re about to go to Houston (again) and hopefully knock this purchase out of the way. I know nothing about washer and dryers. I think the ones with all of the buttons and lights are cool, though I have no idea what they all do.

It’s pushing 8:30 p.m. and we’re about to load the sleigh and head to Mom and Dad’s house in Cat Spring to celebrate Christmas.

Elise has come down with her annual cedar fever/allergies. So now yours truly has to look forward to a 3 hour Jeep ride with a snot funneling, teary-eyed wife, contemporary pop Christmas tunes on the soft rock radio station, no rear view visablity due to a vehicle full of presents and dirty laundry and an imminent headache from my own cussing at last minute shoppers and other travellers on the highway.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope Santa brings you all everything that was on your list.