I get dragged to see the Nutcracker ballet...

Two Saturdays ago, I was dragged... check that... was escorting my wife and Julia to the Nutcracker ballet performance at the Orpheum. It was supposed to be a daughter-mother-grandmother show, but Grandma couldn't make it to Omaha. Her excuse was something about an ice storm that supposedly caused Interstate 80 to be closed down for a while. I guess some people just can't handle driving on black ice...

Obviously, I'm kidding. I was, however, looking forward to my several hours of solitude at home while the ladies went to the ballet. When I was informed by my wife that her Mom couldn't make it, I assumed that the show would go on without her and not include me.

"So I'm assuming that you're still going to the show, right?" I asked.

"Well, yeah." Laura said. "I already paid for the tickets."

"So who's going with you instead of your Mom?"

"You are!" Laura exclaimed.

"Oh, I'M going?" I asked.

"Yes, you are." Laura said matter-of-factly.

"I guess I assumed that you were going to go without me."

"Why would you assume that?" Laura asked.

"Because it's the ballet," I said.

"So?" Laura asked. "You'd think that a liberal like yourself would appreciate the ballet."

Laura always contends that I'm a liberal. I contend that I'm a moderate with liberal leanings. I also contend that Laura only thinks that I'm liberal because we don't always see eye to eye on certain topics, like health care. I'm in favor of universal health care. Laura, on the other hand, seems to hold that conservative line that those people can just go screw themselves if they're stupid enough to not have health insurance. Besides, they should be pulling themselves up by the bootstraps and getting a better job. At least, I think that's the way the conservative line goes.

“I'm a moderate and not a woman,” I said.

I had only seen an actual ballet only one other time, and I knew a little of what to expect. When I was in college, I worked for the catering department of the university. We would cover the intermissions for the performances at the Lied Center. During the Acts, we would either sit around and talking while we waited for intermission, or we could go into a private room and watch the performances behind a glass.

One such performance was for a ballet. I had never seen one before, so I sat down to watch. It was a Western ballet. The dancers were dressed as cowboys, farmers, farmer's wives, fair maidens or ranch hands. I watched with initial interest and then confusion as I couldn't figure out what was going on. There was a lot of prancing and gesturing, but I couldn't figure out the storyline. Someone would attack. Someone would cower. There seemed to be something about a bad guy coming into town.

I muttered, “I have no idea what's going on.”

One of my co-workers, a dance major, informed me of the plot. Something about the loss of innocence, something about passion and something about heroism, among other themes. One little gesture meant something completely different at any time. Maybe I'm not made for this because I was not getting it.

In the end, I had to go see the Nutcracker.

I had never seen the Nutcracker. I do know some of the songs, though. For example, when I was in grade school. One year for the Christmas pageant, we all had paper flowers around our necks and sang a song called, “Song of the Flowers.” Of course, this was actually the instrumental from the Nutcracker called “The Waltz of the Flowers.” It's very recognizable to me because it was featured in the movie “Caddyshack” during the swimming pool scene shortly before someone mistakes a Baby Ruth candy bar for a piece of poop.

Saturday came and as we went through entrance, the lady that took our tickets looked at me and the frowning expression that was on my face and commented, “Well you look like you're thrilled to be here.”

She laughed and I laughed.

Before we entered the auditorium, we showed our tickets to the lady at the door. She pointed out where the seats were. As we walked by her, I asked her a question.

“How long is this the show?” I asked, trying not to give off a hint that I was asking so I would know how bored I was going to be. It's not just the ballet. I have a hard time staying attentive for anything for very long. Years ago when I was a student, I went to see Les Miserables, and while I liked it, the last hour of the bloated musical was very hard for me to sit still for. Even Spamalot, as much as I liked it, had me looking at my watch during the last 30 minutes.

“90 minutes for Act 1, a 20-minute intermission and 90 minutes for Act 2,” the lady replied.

I thanked her for her time and mentally noted that it wasn't as long as I thought, so I had a chance to get through without squirming. As it turned out, I had a hard time staying awake during Act 1. I had taken a muscle relaxer prior to leaving for the show, and it was starting to kick in. Several times I caught myself nodding off near the end of Act 1. Laura said after the fact that she had heard me snorting a couple of times. She looked over at me to see my eyes half-closed and my head nodding up.

We found our seats in the sixth row. I opened the program and read the synopsis for the Nutcracker. If you've never seen it, the story goes that a big Christmas party is being prepared. The guests arrive and watch some entertainment from dancers. Then presents are given out. The main character, Clara, is given a nutcracker toy. Later that night, she sneaks downstairs to check on her nutcracker. Getting spooked by the dark, she grabs the Nutcracker and falls asleep with him. Then something about a mouse king that for some reason invades the house. The Nutcracker comes to life and leads a small army to fight the mouse king and his mouse soldiers. Just when it looks like the Nutcracker is going to lose, Clara hits the mouse king when her slipper.

Then it gets even weirder as Clara is taken to the Sugar Plum Fairy, who hears how she saved the Nutcracker prince. She is rewarded with a dance celebration. After a series of dance segments, she is taken back home. She wakes up with the Nutcracker back to toy form in her arms.

Ballet isn't my cup of tea but I was mildly impressed by the first act, the Party Scene. The plot was easy to follow, the dances were neat and the scenery was impressive. For me, it started to go downhill when the party ended and the dream sequence started. Some of the performances were interesting, but it seemed like variations of the same thing. Seeing how there is no dialog, but just a lot of facial expressions and lots of gesturing, I was quickly bored.

As much as I was bored, there were several things that distracted me about the second half of the show.

For one, Clara is given a bench to sit on near the back of the stage to take in the show that's being presented for her. Because she is sitting back there for the most part of the second act, all she has to do is to smile, nod, clap after each dance and then smile some more. I was constantly looking back at her to see if she would lapse into a yawn. She didn't, but that didn't stop me for constantly checking to see if she would break character.

Another thing were the men. I was trying to decide which guys were on my team and which guys played for the other team. I thought I had one pegged, the one playing the Nutcracker Prince, but Laura informed me that the guy was married to the lady playing the Sugar Plum Fairy.

I was also distracted by the outfits the guys wore. More specifically, the area below the belt that seemed to show every detail. Now I like seeing a guy's package as much as the next guy, which is very little, but I think if I was ever a ballet dancer that I'd either show some modesty and cover that area a little or stuff it with a sock to enhance that feature. Even Laura admitted that she was distracted by it. I was reminded of the ballet scene in the spy movie parody called “Top Secret” in which Val Kilmer is watching a performance and all of the male dancers have gigantic packages. They are so big that the female dancers can walk across them.

On a tangent, I've noticed that high school wrestling suffers from nearly the same problem. I've seen a few matches and it's pretty obvious that many guys go commando, if you catch my drift. For me, it's hard to take a supposed masculine sport seriously when it involves two guys going commando that take turns hugging and straddling each other. Maybe I notice because I've almost never met a person that wrestles that wasn't a total asshole so I'm looking for excuses to hate them. I've had a few issues with them in the past, but that's another story. But I digress...

I ended up concentrating on the technique of the dancers. For the most part, the dancers were fine, but a few times, I noticed a couple of the men's arms shaking as they were holding and spinning their partner. I also noticed a few flaws in the costuming. One dancer had a small hole in her black leggings, which I noticed every time she appeared on stage.

All in all it was a decent performance, but not my cup of tea.

Our new cat Boris is quite lazy...

A while ago, I wrote about our cat, Moe, who passed away. Moe was Laura's baby, so she was understandably devastated when he died.

We had three cats at that point, two of whom favored me a lot more than they favored Laura. Until a little over a year ago, we had just two cats, Moe and Murphy, who were the same age. Then Laura and Julia wanted a new kitten. I was against it because I didn't think it was necessary. If fact, when Laura and Julia went to pick up the kitten at the Humane Society, the HS people called me to get my permission. I felt very tempted to say that I didn't want a cat, but I relented.

Laura and Julia picked out a female they named, Suzie. Now it's been a good track record that female cats tend to gravitate themselves to me. I told Laura that she should get a male cat because I didn't want her jealous when a female kitten started to favor me. She felt that was ridiculous, so in the end, they got a female kitten.

I had requested that Laura and Julia would be responsible for the kitten so I wouldn't corrupt it. This worked for a few days, but then they got tired of always tending to the kitten, so I got brought into the mix despite my warnings. Sure enough, after a few months, Suzie started to gravitate towards me. Straight out of a cliche'd movie, Laura would be in one chair tapping her leg while exclaiming, "Suzie!". I waited and tapped my lap while also exclaiming Suzie's name. Sure enough, Suzie took off for me. Before long, Suzie was completely corrupted by me and followed me around wherever I went.

So when Moe died, Laura was sad for a bit, but then she was really pissed off because then she had no cats that favored her. It was only heightened when we'd be watching TV in the living room and Suzie would stroll into the room. She bypassed Laura's pleas and jumped into my lap.

Laura seethed, "It's not fair! At least you have two cats that still love you!"

So it was decided that we would get another cat. After several weeks, we went to the Humane Society to pick out our cat. We had been there a few times prior scouting out some cats. Laura had even had a private room session with one of the cats a week prior, an orange tabby they named, Cheddar, but she wasn't sure if he was right. She didn't have her heart set on Cheddar, but she just wanted a cat that liked to cuddle.

We picked one orange tabby cat to look at, but when he was brought into the room, he spent the entire time just wandering and paying no attention to us at all. After a few minutes, I said, "Well, I don't think he's very interested in us."

Laura agreed and they brought in Cheddar. We didn't pick him first because he was a rather scrawny cat. He was eight-months old and had a skinny body and skinny legs.

The Humane Society worker pulled Cheddar out of his cage and he immediately bounded for our private room. Once inside, he jumped up on the bench we were sitting on, put his head on Laura's leg and started purring loudly. She pet him and he responded with even more purring. Over the next 10 minutes, it was obvious that Cheddar was the cat we were taking home. He seemed to love all of us. Laura had a name picked for him: Boris, after Boris Yeltzen (don't ask).

We packed Boris into the cardboard carrier and placed him in my car. Laura had to go back to work. Julia and I started driving home. Boris started to meow loudly. He started to claw frantically at the holes inside the box.

Julia started to yell, "Dad! He's trying to get out!"

I tried reassuring Boris, but he was bound and determined to get out of the cardboard carrier.

"Oh my gosh!" Julia exclaimed, "He's dug a hole in the box! He's going to get out!"

I reached into the backseat and felt the box. Sure enough, there was a hold in the box. I reached a finger into the box to try and stroke Boris' head, but was scratched instead by the whining cat that frantically started resuming his prison break.

I looked around the front of my car and grabbed a CD case from the console. I reached back and said, "Here. Hold this over the hole."

Julia did as instructed. She held the CD over the hole, but Boris kept clawing away at the box. Julia squealed a few times and exclaimed, "This is the weirdest day of my entire life!"

She protested that she couldn't keep Boris out any longer, so I took the CD case and held it over the hole with my right arm stretched to the back seat and my left arm still on the steering wheel. I felt like stopping to calm him down, but I figured that getting him home as fast as possible was the wisest strategy.

Once home, we shut him into our room and shut Murphy and Suzie out. After a few days, we opened the door and let Boris meet the rest of the cats. There was a lot of hissing and chasing for a while, but he quickly won over Suzie since they are around the same age and they became buddies. Murphy still hasn't befriended him. Not that Boris cares.

There are a few things about Boris that we have noticed. While Moe ruled the house like a tyranical king in which he did everything himself and attacked all threats, Boris rules like a lazy emperor.

Boris likes to eat.

He was practically skin and bones when we first brought him home, but he quickly got into a routine of eating. If he doesn't have food, he whines and cries. If he does have food, he whines and cries as if there isn't enough. If I add food to the bowl, you'll often hear a cat sprint downstairs to get to the food and it's always Boris.

Boris is a little demanding.

Besides the food demands, Boris will whine and complain if he doesn't have enough fresh water. He'll sit there and meow in protest of his lack of water. If that doesn't work, he dips his paw into the bowl and starts sloshing the water out of it and all over the floor. Lately, he's just taken to dumping the whole thing over to get me to fill it up with some fresh water. I thought briefly about getting a filtered pet water fountain, but I figured he'd then start complaining if the filter wasn't fresh, so I dropped that idea.

Boris also is demanding of Suzie on getting cleaned. Our old cat, Moe, cleaned his hard-to-reach areas like any other cat by twisting his head around or putting saliva on his paw and rubbing it on his out-of-reach areas. Boris just walks up to Suzie when she's cleaning herself and drops down in front of her. This is her cue to start bathing him. One gets the picture of an old emporer lounging while a bather cleans him.

Boris is an attention whore.

Moe liked his attention, but usually just from us. Boris, on the other hand, prefers his attention givers like doctor's prefer their patients, with a pulse. There hasn't been a person that Boris hasn't prompted for attention.

He's climbed onto the laps of door-to-door salespeople, a water softener representative, a gas company tech and various kids that have come over. He even rolled onto his back when he was chained up outside on Halloween so
the parade of kids could all pet him. He's like the town doorknob: everyone gets a turn.

Now that I have a laptop computer, Boris jets for my lap when I have it on. He must love the warmth that comes off of it because I can't keep him off my lap for too long.

The up side is that he's a friendly cat to everyone, which is also a downside. I've mentioned before that Moe could be very aggressive and attacked people he didn't know (or acted like he was going to). While I counted on Moe to scare away any burglar that might break in, I get the feeling that Boris will just follow the burglar around purring and rubbing against the burglar's leg while the burglar robs us blind.

Boris is incredibly lazy.

I know cats sleep a lot, but Boris has taken it up a notch. He just seems to sleep all the time. Oh sure, he gets up to eat and drink, but then he lies down to do it. As you can see in the pictures here, he lies down down on his side to drink or eat. Granted, he could stand up and stoop over his bowl like any other animal, but that would be asking too much of him. once, I saw him get up from a long nap in his favorite chair, lie down to drink and then fall asleep in mid-drink because it was so much effort to move over from his nap chair to take that drink. He also lies
down to eat.




I'm exaggerating a little. Boris doesn't sleep all the time, but he does spend a large amount of time eating, drinking and getting attention when he isn't asleep.

What I am happy about is that Laura got her wish. Boris is more than willing to lie there and cuddle. To that end, he's a great cat.

Hiding the evidence...

The other night, Julia had one of those 'Oh crap!' moments that every kid goes through. If you've ever accidentally

broke, scratched, ripped, burned, doused, crumbled, or chipped something that you shouldn't have, then you know what

I'm talking about.

For me, there were instances like this when I was a kid when I accidentally knocked the sink off the wall in our basement, which I was playing on at the time. Or it could have been the time I accidentally set fire to the kitchen cabinets when I was 2. There was the time when Bill and I were having a water fight, and I accidentally threw a glass of water all over my Mom's sewing fabrics when Bill got out of the way of the water I had just tossed at him. Pick a year in my life and I'll have an example of an 'Oh crap!' moment.

I was out in the garage cleaning trash out my car. I walked inside and I heard Julia shuffling quickly around the

kitchen. I walked into the kitchen to see the whole floor between the refrigerator and the island covered in water.

Plus, there were shards of glass on the floor.

I asked, "What in the heck happened here!" in a loud voice as I looked over at Julia. She was standing next to the

our deck door with her back to the wall. She was standing in front of something.

"Nothing!" Julia exclaimed nervously.

"Did you break a glass?" I asked.

Julia groaned a little and nervously said, "It was an accident, Dad!"

I looked on the ground. There were a couple of shards of glass on the ground. It looked like glass from the

McDonald's Shrek 3 glass that we had bought this summer. I glanced around. "Where is the rest of the glass?"

Julia hesitated and said, "Umm... It's right here."

She stepped out from in front of a blue storage tub. I walked over to it. Sure enough, there were lots of shards of

glass in the tub.

She said, "I'm really sorry."

I laughed. "Don't worry. I'm not mad. I'm just glad you didn't cut yourself."

She helped me pick up the rest of the glass on the floor and to mop up the water. My phone rang. I answered it. It's

Laura.

"Hello?"

"Uh... What was that?!" Laura asked with a surprise.

"Oh, you heard that, huh?" I asked. I had forgotten that I had called Laura at work and handed Julia the phone

before I went outside.

"Yeah!" Laura said like Elaine would on Seinfeld. "I was talking to her when I heard this loud crash. Julia said,

'MOMMY! I'VE GOT TO GO! I'VE GOT A BIG PROBLEM HERE!' Then she hung up.

I told her what had happened. Julia dropped the glass while she was talking to Laura, hung up, ran to find something to dispose of the glass and started putting the glass in the storage tub. She would have probably attempted to mop up the water herself had I not come in.

It's an almost unavoidable fact of life that your kids are going to break and spill stuff. now I'm just afraid that

she's going to spill onto more expensive things that can't be fixed like a TV or a computer.

More joys of commuting with your spouse...

Driving Adventures Part 2

I mentioned in a previous entry the highs and lows of commuting with my wife, Laura.

One of our favorite shows is one called 'The Amazing Race', which pits teams of 2 against each other in a race around the world. It involves a lot of transportation with cab rides, train rides, plane rides and a lot of personal driving in which one member navigates while the other drives. I often joke with Laura that if we were ever on that show we'd be yelling at each other constantly.

This is often true of us when we have to leave town. Invariably, Laura gets stressed out when we don't leave the house at a certain time. I think she has a problem with my packing at the last possible minute and then throwing everything that I think I might need. This usually means I bring a lot more than I would ever need, but at least I've covered my bases. One of my biggest fears is that I will be driving out of town and a sudden pang will hit me that I've forgotten something important.

Because of this, when we have to leave the house, I usually have to make a few trips inside before we leave. I'll get in the car and then suddenly realize that I don't have my keys, so I run back inside to get them. I'll get back in the car, put the key in the ignition, but then I'll have to run inside because I've forgotten my sunglasses. So I run inside to get them. We're about to leave again. I've started the car and am about to back out, when I realize that I've forgotten my cell phone, so I run back inside to get it. This either ends there or I'll remember that I need to blow out candles, turn off lights, get a drink, go to the bathroom, lock the doors, grab a book I want to read, grab some CDs, grab my music player and other assorted trips inside for something. For some reason... Laura gets annoyed by this. I have no idea why...

So when we're off to work or driving home together, Laura has a few pet peeves in relation to my driving. She suggested a lot of these, so she had some input into this story. Lest you think I am complaining out of spite, my view is that if you can't laugh at these things, then you're on the verge of splitting up with your significant other.

Laura insists that if I am driving and there is a big gap between me and the car in front of me, that I need to close that gap. She'll start to intone, "Why aren't you going faster?", "Can't you go any faster?", "Why are you driving so slow?", "Why are you in this lane?", "Why are people passing us?" or "Jesus, you drive like a grandma!".

In my defense, if the traffic isn't that busy, I'll be sure to close that gap because I can get around the cars. However, if the traffic is wall to wall and the cars in front of me are both neck in neck with no hope of moving to allow more cars to pass, I find it idiotic to accelerate only 50 feet to the car in front of me, only to slow down to the same speed.

I joke that if we ever get into an accident that involves me hitting a car from behind because of her urging to 'get on his ass', that I'm going to blame the whole thing on her.

"Officer, I was obeying the speed limit, but my wife kept yelling at me to go faster and to 'get on' the car in front of me's 'ass'." That's me doing air quotes by the way.

The officer will probably shrug and mutter something like, "Hey buddy, I hear you..."

The ordering of directions doesn't end with on the road danger. If we're in a parking lot, Laura will bark out parking directions, even if it's obvious as hell which spot to take. I'll be driving up a row of cars and spot an empty spot. Laura will yell, "Ooh! There's a spot right there. Right there! (points)."

"Thanks," I'll say. "I couldn't have spotted that on my own."

"No problem," Laura will smugly say.

As if this wasn't bad enough, Julia has gotten into that habit, too. I'll be driving through a parking lot without Laura and Julia will exclaim, "Oooh! Daddy! Right there's a spot!"

So while I'm getting plenty of direction on the road, I am getting no help trying to decide what to eat.

I'll be driving home by myself on a Friday (Laura has that day off) and I'll call her up to see what she wants to eat. The segue here is a little awkward I'll admit, but it does tie into driving as you can see.

Usually, she wants to eat pizza. On a side note, I've never seen a person enjoy pizza more. If she could have her way, she'd eat it 3 or 4 times a week. It's as if she has a pizza maker's blood running through her blood, except she only got the part where the pizza maker just eats them.

Unfortunately for me (and her), I worked at Pizza Hut for about 10 years. During that time, I had every type of pizza imaginable and tasted every ingredient we ever had, which includes anchovies. I worked there part time to supplement my income five days a week. To save money, I would take home a personal pan pizza almost every single day that I worked there. As a result, I've not only had about every combination of pizza that you could imagine, but I've become so unbelievable sick of pizza that I could just about throw up.

Yet on almost every Friday, Laura will want pizza. So then I'll ask, "What do you want?"

She'll answer, "I don't care. Whatever you want."

Then I'll say, "No, it's not what I want. It's what you want."

She'll retort, "You know what I like. Whatever's fine."

To which I'll start to get a little testy, "Just pick something. I don't know what you want."

She'll start to get testy with, "What do you want on the pizza? Just pick something!"

I'll come back with, "You're asking the wrong person! That'd be like me wanting some Chinese food, but then asking you to pick it out for me when I know that you don't like it that much."

"Fine," she'll sigh, "Give me a ham and pineapple."

"Now was that so hard?" I'll ask.

If only Laura would concentrate on what we're going to eat instead of the driving, then maybe I wouldn't be so stressed when I drive home on Fridays.

But I think I realized why Laura and I clash when we drive together. It came to me when we were driving through our neighborhood to pick up Julia after work. Laura turned to me and said, "Jesus, you drive like the slowest f*#$ing grandma driver I've ever seen."

Of course, I pointed out that I was driving through an area heavily populated with kids. I sped up a little and then made noises and gestures as if kids were getting bounced off my car as it plowed through the neighborhood. She laughed.

We clash because when I get up in the morning, I'm pretty wide awake. I'm not one of those people that take two full hours to wake up, like Laura. As a result of this, our morning drives are pretty uneventful. Laura is too busy waking up to notice how I'm driving. But when I pick her up at work in the late afternoon, I'm running on a half-full tank, while Laura seems to be running at full speed. I'm the one that's zoning out while she's the one thinking of the best and fastest way to get home.

Once this past week, we took Laura's new car. She decided to drive on the way there and the way back. Now I think that I've mentioned that having Laura drive is analogous to riding a roller coaster. You're pretty sure you're going to die, but you hope to God that you don't. I said in a previous story that she tails people like she's trying to dry hump the back end of their car. Last week did not disappoint. There were several times when the cars would break and I could have sworn that we were going to hit the car in front of us. I winced and grabbed the little hang down arm on the ceiling. Once or twice, I signed the sign of the cross just to be safe. After a while, I just stared at the ground or out the side. It wasn't as scary that way.

I'm all for her driving. I just need to bring something to distract me from the excitement in front of me.

Julia goes to bed at 1...

Since Julia started Kindergarten, we've sent Julia to bed at 9 pm. For the past several years, it's been at 10 pm, so it's been a bit of an adjustment for her and us.

The other day, I woke Julia up at her usual time, 7:20 am, to get ready for school. I shook her a little bit and she said, "Daddy... I'm tired. I was up until one in the morning."

"You were?" I asked. "What happened? Did you wake up and couldn't get back to sleep?"

"No," she yawned. "I was just up until one in the morning."

I was a little confused about this. She had gone to be a little later than normal, about 9:15 pm, but it wasn't that late that she would be yawning all day.

I don't think too much about it, but then when I picked up Julia from her after-school sitter, the sitter came up to us and said, "Julia's resting on the couch. She said that she was up until one in the morning, and she's very tired."

We walked over to where Julia is resting on the couch. She wasn't asleep, but she was watching TV with a sleepy look on her face.

We told her to get a move on. She got up and I told her, "Julia, you did not go to bed at one in the morning."

Julia said, "Yes, I did. That's why I'm tired."

"What makes you think that you went to be so late?" I asked her.

"That's what it said on the cable box, Dad!" she retorted. "Last night, when I went to bed, it said '1' on the box."

I laughed because now it made sense. Our cable box has a problem every now and then that instead of showing what time it is, it shows the last channel the box was on before it becomes stuck and needs to be rebooted. I've had to do it about 4 times in the last two months. It was stuck on channel 1, so Julia thought the '1' was how late she stayed up.

We smiled at the thought of her yawning and complaining all day long about how tired she was for staying up way too late. Must have learned it from me when I complain about how tired I am on Sunday mornings. (Sniff... They grow up so fast...)

Memo to self: Don't drink an energy drink as 8 pm at night...

I'm not a regular fan of energy drinks, but since they tend to be the big fade in our ever increasingly sleep deprived society, I will grab one on impulse if I've been up writing stupid comments about my football team, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, which I have been doing a lot lately. Normally, I just watch on the sidelines, but the team is struggling big time this year and I think it's because of two problems: the AD and the coach. Both, in my opinion, have got to go. I think I've been more than patient, but when you see your team embarrassed again and again on national television, it starts to get a little old.

This season, we've already been embarrassed at the likes of USC, who blew holes so wide into our defense that my Dad, who is on oxygen said that he could have run through them, and he could have two. Granted, he might not have gotten the big runs, but it would have been a nice five-yard gain and that's saying something considering how slow my Dad is now.

On Saturday, we were at the store buying some stuff to munch on for the Nebraska game against Missouri, which wasn't until 8:15 on ESPN that night. I was already kind of feeling tired since I have mowed the lawn earlier that day. Also, I had stayed up a little late the night before, so I was a little tired. I saw an energy drink called Full Throttle at the checkout in a small fridge for that night.

That night, we turned on the TV, grabbed our snacks, and sat down to watch TV. I grabbed my Full Throttle, popped the top and chugged it.

To say that the game was a bit of a disappointment would be saying it lightly. My team got humiliated again as the defense surrended 606 yards to an average team at best. Nebraska tends to make a lot of teams look better than they are lately, which is why I'm pretty freaking sick of the coach.

I, of course, stayed up a little too late venting on the message boards about the pitiful play of the team coupled with the poor planning of the coaches. Finally, a little before 2 am, I settled down to sleep... or so I thought.

Usually, my head will hit the pillow and I'm out like a light. This time, I had a little trouble falling asleep. I waited and waited, but nothing happened. I couldn't sleep. Plus, I'm sweating a lot, even though I had a fan on me. I got up, went to the bathroom again and noticed that my heart seemed to be racing. I put my fingers up to my neck and checked my pulse. It was beating at 120 beats per minute. No wonder I couldn't fall asleep!

I did the only thing that I could think of. I took two generic pink allergy pills, the kind that make you drowsy. Sure enough, at about 3:30 am, I started to get really drowsy. Finally, I headed to bed.

Right on cue, Julia woke me up a little before 8 am, which gave me about 4 hours of sleep. All right...

My huge head or when they say three days, they mean three days...

I recently sent for some sunglasses through the mail because I lost my last pair. And when I say 'lost', I mean that someone stole them from my front porch. Either that, or I mistakenly threw them away or put them in a place I would never see them again.

Buying sunglasses is always a risky proposition for me because of my large noggin. My head is a bit larger than the normal-sized head, which has caused some problems for me.

When I went out for football in high school, they had to special order a football helmet for me because they couldn't find a helmet that was big enough for my huge melon. They had me try on everything they had, but nothing fit. Then, the coaches called around and got a helmet for me from a neighboring school that had gold on their helmets rather than our usual white color. It fit, but I asked, "What about the gold?"

The head coach, a fairly surly man, said, "Maybe if you turn into a player, we'll get you one." Ouch. I was on the scout team, so it didn't look good. Despite that setback, they did find one. I guess they didn't want me to attract too much attention standing on the sidelines with my gold helmet.

When I was in Army basic training, I ran into this problem again when they tried sizing me for a hat. We split into lines, and we walked down to a guy at the end, who looked you up, tied a tape measure around your head, picked up a hat, and placed it on your head. I walked up and he did just that, except when he pulled the tape measure around my head, it didn't line up with his hat sizes listed on the measuring tape.

The man grunted a surprise like, "Oh my goodness!" Then he grabbed the largest hat that he had, a 7 and 3/4 hat, and put it on my head. He tried to pull down, but it wouldn't come down to my forehead. He tugged and tugged and it wouldn't move. Of course, this led to a stoppage of the process as everyone within earshot got to come by and look at my enormous head. They then sent me to a seamstress and she measured my head. She said she would have some modified hats for me later that day.

So for the rest of that day, while the rest of the guys around me had their new uniforms and hats on, I had no hat on to compliment my new uniform. This led to several calls for me to put my hat on when a sergeant would pass by. This was followed by a laughing explanation from the sergeant watching us that my head was too big and that hats were coming. My how they all laughed...

Even in my last years of the Army National Guard, the largest kevlar helmet didn't fit right. The leather liner that you placed inside the head webbing, which then could be adjusted, didn't fit my head at all. Frustrated at the tight squeeze after a while, I resorted to wearing the helmet with no liner whatsoever. Instead, the helmet just sat there on my head amongst the webbing. I placed hankerchiefs and foam on top of my head for padding, which probably would have been dangerous had I gone to war at the time.

So when I try to buy sunglasses, (see the nice segue?) I often have to try on pair after pair until I find a pair that's just right for my huge head. One of two problems can occur. Either the head width isn't wide enough or the length of the sunglass arms aren't long enough. Sometimes, it's both.

So I was searching for some sunglasses to replace my stolen sunglasses with. I opted for some Gargoyles sunglasses, which was a brand that I had worn before with some moderate fit success. I paid for it online and selected 3-day UPS select for my delivery time. The package was due to arrive on September 28th.

I waited for my sunglasses to arrive and followed the progress online. I noticed the following progress:

Sept 25th - 4:50 PM - The package is picked up
Sept 25th - 9:08 PM - The package leaves Fort Meyers, Florida
Sept 26th - 12:03 AM - The package arrives in Hialeah, Florida
Sept 26th - 3:24 AM - The package leaves Hialeah, Florida
Sept 26th - 5:00 AM - The package arrives in Miami, Florida
Sept 26th - 8:21 AM - The package leaves Miami, Florida
Sept 26th - 9:56 AM - The package arrives in West Columbia, South Carolina
Sept 26th - 10:56 AM - The package leaves West Columbia, South Carolina
Sept 26th - 12:11 PM - The package arrives in Louisville, Kentucky
Sept 26th - 3:48 PM - The package leaves Louisville, Kentucky

Then I logged in that night to the UPS site and noticed this next entry
Sept 26th - 4:31 PM - The package arrives in Omaha, Nebraska

I'm then thinking, "Nice! I'll get my package a day early."

Then I noticed the next entry.
Sept 26th - 9:52 PM - The package leaves Omaha, Nebraska

I then started to wonder what that could mean. Was it on its way to my address? Maybe it's on its way to the delivery center in Omaha. Sadly, neither were true.

The next day, this entry appeared.
Sept 26th - 10:25 PM - The package arrives in Des Moines, Iowa.

That's right. My package hadn't arrived a day early after arriving in Omaha, where it was supposed to go. Instead, it arrived in Omaha and then proceeded to take a detour to Des Moines, Iowa. I thought for a second that maybe something was wrong with my address, but my check on my order form showed the correct address in Omaha.

That night, I checked the delivery progress again. There was a new trip for the package.
Sept 27 - 3:36 PM - The package leaves Des Moines, Iowa for the destination city.
Sept 27 - 6:22 Pm - The package arrives in Omaha, Nebraska.

Finally, my package had been shipped to the proper address. While the delivery process went to 7 different cities and 9 separate trips, I did indeed get my package on the third day. I guess they didn't want me to think that if I got it a day early, that all 3-day packages were like that.

I can picture the scene at the dock when it arrived in Omaha the first time.

"Hey, we got a small package that's supposed to be delivered on Friday, but it's Wednesday night. Should we let it go on so he gets it on Thursday?"

The dock supervisor is stunned. "No, we can't let him get it on Thursday! We need to have it go to another city so that he gets it on time. What if everyone expected all 3-day deliveries to get there a day early, too? It would causes unreasonable expectations! Send it on to Des Moines. They'll send it back when they see the shipping address."

I have nothing against the fine people at UPS, but even they might admit that a customer might consider it odd that their package took a detour from its arrival in the destination city, its departure to another city and then its arrival again in the destination city.

So I finally get my sunglasses on time on Friday, which is when they should have come anyway. I look at the package. It's a huge, long box about 11 by 14 in size. The sunglasses box is only two inches by 5 inches. It's a little overkill, but I open the box and put on the sunglasses. The sunglasses fit, but just barely. In fact, the arms of the sunglasses are cutting into my temples and cutting off blood flow. I went outside when them on to see what they were like, but after three minutes of wearing them, I could tell that I was going to get a massive headache if I were to wear them all day.

I reluctantly submitted a return request to the site I got them from with a small explanation about why. They responded later that day with a return number and address. I was instructed to return the sunglasses in a high quality box, preferably the one that they came in.

After I got off work, I went to a local package mailing store and said that I needed to ship a package by UPS Ground to Florida, where the sunglasses were shipped from. The lady took one look at the box and said, "I'm sorry, we can't ship Ground in this box."

I had noticed that the box was an Express Box. Although I ordered 3-day Select, the box clearly stated not to use it for anything but air delivery. I figured they just ran out of boxes and shipped mine in whatever they had.

I said, "This is what they shipped me when I had it shipped 3-day Select."

The lady said, "Well, they must have a deal with their shipper then."

"Can I just cover up the box and ship it that way?"

"No," she replied. "If I ship it in this box it must go by one of these shipping options (pointing to the options on the box)".

"Well, how much are we talking for shipping costs?"

She muttered to herself while typing in the address of the package and then responded, "Fifty six dollars."

I had only paid 5 dollars for the original shipping.

I laugh, "Fifty six dollars to ship this?! Umm... That's okay. I'll just find another box and ship it later."

Not an overly gripping story, but a little amusing...

Here's an image to show that I'm not crazy. It did happen.

I get Laura's car dirty...

Yesterday, I committed a cardinal sin against my wife, Laura.

There are a few sins that a man must never try to do. That list includes: never comment about her weight, never oggle another woman in her presence, never declare your admiration for a hot actress in a movie, never wake her up with your snoring, never leave the seat up, never scratch her car, and there are many others.

I can add a new one to my never list: never get your wife’s car dirty with her in the car. This is not as severe as the 'never scratch your wife's car with a key while she's watching, which I've done, but it's still high up there.

I mentioned that Laura got a newer used car, a Mazda 3, which also has a stick shift. Because of her lack of prowess with the stick shift, she has been having me drive on the days that we commute together. This has led to some interesting car rides to say the least. Now Laura can barely shift without lurching the car, but when I drive, she seems to expect total control of the stick shift on my part. I lurch the car just a tad and she’s exclaiming “Jeez!” or “Easy!”.

Also, when I’m driving her car, which I do when we commute together two or three times a week, she’s the world’s worst back-seat driver, except she’s in the passenger seat.

I’ll be cruising along at a comfortable speed and invariably, I’ll hear things like, “Why are you going so slow?”, “Why are people passing you?” or “Shouldn’t you be driving faster?”

If I’m in a lane that looks a slightly more congested than the one next to us, she’ll recommend, “Get in the other lane.” or “Why are you in the slow lane?”

There has yet to be a car ride yet with both of us in her car where she doesn’t critique some aspect of my driving skills.

The other day, I was driving her car when she mentioned something about my driving. We were almost home and I swear I had heard at least a dozen suggestions on how to drive better, which is pretty ironic coming from someone that drives like they want to dry hump the car in front of them. Having Laura drive is akin to being in a roller coaster. You know the ride will end soon and you pray to God that you get there in one piece. I find it’s just better if I not look up when she drives because it’s only bound to scare the living shit out of me when a line a cars start to slow down and Laura doesn’t slow down until the last second. I make frantic stomps with my foot to signal a stop. Finally she does and she looks over at me and asks, “What?”

But anyway, I was driving the other day with this model citizen of driving (just kidding honey) when I got another tip on driving. I turned to her and said in an exhausted tone, “Will you shut the f*&k up?!” My meaning was to get her to stop with the suggestions and for her to laugh. Amazingly, I nailed the right tone and she did laugh.

So yesterday morning, I’m driving again and I stop at the local gas station to get a roll of Little Debbie donuts as I had forgotten in my haste to get Julia out the door, to eat breakfast. I run in, grab the donuts and get back in the car. I pull around the back of the gas station to a side rode, which happens to have some construction. Unbeknown to me, I am heading for a rather large dirty water puddle (it had been raining all night so everything was wet). I didn’t see it because I was in the process of shifting and opening my pack of donuts at the same time, which is possible but distracting.

Laura exclaimed, “Watch it!”

We hit the puddle at a slow speed, but it was enough to send a cascade of dirty water over the entire car. She still has a nice wax job on the Mazda, so it rolled off quickly down the entire wind shield and passenger window. It rolled off the car, but many small beads of brown water clung to every part of the car.

Laura said something like, “Ungh… Ungh… You idiot!”

I laugh and exclaim, “Sorry!”

She glared at me, “Look at my car! Does it look like I’m laughing?”

I suppress a smile and say nothing. She exclaimed, “What did you think was going to happen when you hit a dirty puddle, sunshine and roses to fall on my car?”

“No,” I retort with a smile.

“It’s not funny,” Laura said defiantly. “And you know what? You are going to take my car to the car wash and get it cleaned today. And it’s coming out of your pocket!”

I laugh a little and we continue. The entire trip to work, she periodically pointed to various dirty spots on the outside and muttered, “Look at that.!” I nodded. Later, I did get her car washed. I’m not that much of an idiot to leave her car dirty when I picked her up that afternoon.

Redundency fun with the DMV

I think I mentioned that we just got a newer used car for Laura. Since we had to shell out money to license it, I checked the DMV website to check how much we'll need.

For a living, I am a QA Tester of software programs. I am paid to notice things that most people ignore. Looking at this page, I was struck by this field:



Notice anything wrong with it?

The field is named "Vehicle VIN Number". VIN stands for Vehicle Identification Number. So basically, the field is called "Vehicle Vehicle Identification Number Number".

If you don't enter the right VIN, the following error appears: "Vehicle VIN Number is required."

Again, you are prompted to enter the Vehicle Vehicle Identification Number Number. To be fair, the VIN evolved into being called the Vehicle VIN Number due to its popular usage, but that still doesn't make it right.

It's a lot like when a person asks for an ATM machine. You are basically asking for an Automated Teller Machine Machine in which you will enter your PIN number, or Personal Identification Number Number if you prefer...

Laura drives a stick shift... sort of...

We recently got a used car for Laura. It was decided that we could no longer put off getting a different car for her. I guess the fact that it leaked oil like a stuck pig, has had no air conditioning for the last two years, shuddered at stop lights, shaked a little when accelerating and had over 240,000 miles on it had something to do with it losing it's appeal in Laura's eyes. I guess she didn't like the drenching car rides home in 100 degree weather. I tried to tell her that sweating is a cleansing process and to enjoy it, but she didn't buy it.

Laura spotted her dream car one day when we dropped her old car off to get a seal fixed in the engine block. We had to rent a car and the car they gave us was a Mazda 3. Laura fell in love with it. The fact that it seemed to be able to go from 0 to 60 in way under 10 seconds might have had something to do with it. Laura tends to be a speed demon and is constantly urging me to speed or questioning why I'm not speeding.

We looked at used Mazda 3s, but were disappointed to see that most were out of our price range that we felt comfortable paying. I suggested that she look at getting one with a manual transmission, which seemed to knock 1500 dollars off the blue book value.

Laura agreed that this was an option, but the only problem was that Laura couldn't drive a stick shift.

I had learned how to drive one when I was working bridge construction and had to drive the huge dump truck. The two cars after that had a manual transmission, so I have plenty of experience driving one. I had tried to teach Laura on two occasions when I coincidentally had a manual transmission car when we were dating. Those occasions were a disaster as Laura couldn't seem to get the car out of first gear.

I would smoothly say, "Eaaase out the clutch."

She would pull the clutch off very suddenly while punching the gas. The car lurched and lurched.

After many instances of this, I was no longer smoothly saying anything. Instead, I was screaming, "Stop! Stop! Stop!" as the car lurched and buckled forward. I was envisioning permanent transmission damage.

So it was with a big of apprehension when Laura decided that she was going to compromise and get the stick shift Mazda 3 that we had seen at a local car dealership.

Agreed, not everyone needs to know how to drive a manual transmission before buying one, although it helps.

I always think of the show The Amazing Race when I think of manual transmissions. The show has been on the air for years now, so you would assume that every contestant has seen the show by now. Every season, the contestants will get to a country and have to grab a car to drive that has a manual transmission. Most teams jump in and drive off. There is at least one team that will get in the car and go, "It's a stick! I don't know how to drive a stick!"

Now if you've ever seen the show, they always go to at least country where the dominant transmission is a manual one. Why on Earth would you not practice before you start filming the show? But I digress...

Laura has been out practicing on her own and is getting pretty decent at shifting. At first, she was cheating in that she'd come up to a Stop sign and then come to rolling stop and then go again, which totally defeats the purpose. I ordered her to come to a complete stop in preparation of the first time that she had to stop at a stop light.

We have been commuting together three days a week to save on gas and so far, it's been me that's driven her car to work. There are three reasons for this. One, she isn't confident enough to drive herself. Two, she claims that I tend to yell at her when she's suddenly forgetting how to shift into first gear, which is more or less true, but I disagree on the tone and severity of the yelling. Three, she likes to be dropped off at her building by the front door as it saves her the extra time that she'd normally be parking and walking back to the building.

She has taken the car to work by herself, but she's still nervous. Whenever Laura kills it at a stoplight, she seems to take a step back in progress. Then, she's more tentative, which makes it worse.

We saw the Simpsons Movie with Julia...

I'm starting to feel the need to get back into the swing of things and put out sordid details of my personal life for all of the world to read. Heaven knows, I don't spend nearly enough time dishing with my fellow employees to get all of this out of my system. My wife clearly is tired of hearing me talk about them as she recently admitted to me that she usually only pays attention to the first and last thing that I've told her, which is really quite touching.

On Saturday, we decided to go see a movie as a family. Usually, we're stuck with the family fare of movies like Ice Age, the Shrek movies, and such, but recently we did get to see A Night at the Museum with Ben Stiller, so we're hopefully starting to swing towards some movies we can all enjoy. Laura suggested that we go to see Underdog, but then I suggested that we go see The Simpsons Movie. Laura shrugged and said, "Sure". Julia seemed to be just as excited to see either movie, so it was settled on The Simpsons Movie.

I had heard from a co-worker who took his son to see The Simpsons Movie that it was very inappropriate for children. I heard it, but completely forgot that he told me this until he reminded me on Monday that he told me not to see it.

I guess I kind of knew what I was in for by taking out daughter Julia to see the movie. She had just turned 6 about two weeks ago. I remembered back that when I was her age I was often seeing movies that I probably shouldn't have like Jaws or Smokey and the Bandit. We also had HBO in our house so seeing those movies wasn't too hard because my parents couldn't sit down and watch everything with us. I think they were trusting the judgment of my older brothers, but they tended to gravitate towards the movies that my twin brother, Bill, and I shouldn't have been watching, so I'll just blame them (read with sarcasm guys...).

The Simpsons Movie is rated PG-13 and for good reason. While the series often features mature humor with their violence and sexual innuendo, it's still a little tame by movie standards. Free of the shackles of TV censors, The Simpsons Movie amps up the jokes to a more vulgar degree.

The movie centers around the pollution in the lake in Springfield and how Homer's love of a pig ultimately dooms the town. It seems hard to believe that the two are related, but they are.

One part of the movie really stood out for us...

Homer and Bart are fighting early in the movie. Homer then starts daring Bart to do things. Ultimately, he dares Bart to skateboard naked to the Krusty Burger and back or he'll call Bart cowardly for the rest of his life. Bart takes off naked. For a while, you only see his bottom. Then he switches to the front view and his lower is body blocked by a series of sight gags. Then, he moves behind a fence and you get a nice view of his... umm... noodle... before he trips and plasters his naked body in front of a glass window with only Ned Flander's french fry covering up that part.

Laura and I roared with laughter, but also cringed. At the same time, we both looked over at each other and winceed. Julia was roaring with laughter.

All in all the movie is really funny with only a few parts that made us wince: A character flips a crowd off, two guys kiss and a few references to sex. Otherwise, it's a real family pleaser!

The next day, we are at the YMCA to go swimming. Julia is getting dressed in the family locker room when she tells me, "Daddy, do you know what my favorite part of The Simpsons Movie was?"

I ask, "What?"

Now I'm not a genius by any stretch of the imagination, but I did gather some subtle hints that peaked my interest and gave me a good guess.

Earlier that day, I was getting dressed and three times during that process of getting dressed in my bedroom, Julia burst in. I finally had to yell at her to stop walking in as I was trying to get dressed.

So later that day at the YMCA when Julia said, "When you get to see Bart's WEINER!!", I really wasn't that surprised for some reason. I had a hunch you could say...

"You did, huh?" I asked sheepishly.

"YEAH! It was so FUNNY!!!" she laughed.

I laughed, but then reminded her that this probably isn't a very good topic to discuss at school because it was inappropriate. She agreed.

I think I remember bragging all the time in grade school that I got to see a lot of movies that I probably shouldn't have like Animal House and Caddyshack, but that was in the 70s when such actions were deemed cool. Nowadays, it could probably get you into some hot water with other nosy parents.

I would like to point out that we in no way let Julia watch stuff that's inappropriate for her. You would think that me with my liberal dose of unhealthy movies when I was younger wouldn't mind if Julia got exposed to movies for older viewers. Well, you would be wrong. While I cherish every memory of that time, it also made me a paranoid mess when I was growing up. You try to relax swimming in a lake during the summer when you think that there's a slight possibility that a shark like Jaws or piranhas like the movie Piranha are going to attack you. You try to sleep when you think that some demon in your house is going to possess you, like in the Amityville Horror. You try not to be afraid of spiders after watching Kingdom of the Spiders when you're a little kid. For good measure, show a little kid Earthquake and then ask him if he's afraid of the Earth moving beneath him.

This was a lesson, though. There are several sites out there, like Parent Preview, that screen movies and rate them based on family friendliness. They even list the objectionable parts. Next time, I'm going to check out that site before going to see a questionable movie.

Harry Potter and my criticisms...

I've been procrastinating in my writing for the past several weeks as I've been working on several book ideas, all of which will probably never see the light of day. Here's a small story about my liking of the Harry Potter books and my critiques of them.

...

I was going to write that I was sad to admit that I'm a Harry Potter book fan. Then I realized that this wasn't true. I am not sad at all to say that I like the Harry Potter books made famous by J.K. Rowling. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit it sometimes, but not sad.

I was first introduced to the Harry Potter books before the first movie came out. I was all set to do my rankings for the movie pool that some guys I know and I do, in which we rank the box office success of movies in the summer and winter. The first movie was set to come out and I was going to rank it low. I made the comment to my twin brother, Bill, that I didn't think that it was going to do that well. He assured me that there were legions of Harry Potter fans out there dying to see the movies. I had never read the books before. I had seen them in stores and I'd sometimes seen stories in the newspaper about the books, but I had never thought to read them.

Bill suggested that I read them because they were good, in his opinion.

The fourth book in the series, "The Goblet of Fire", was already out in stores. I borrowed a friend's copy of the first book, "The Sorcerer's Stone" and set to work reading it. I started when I was going on a software installation trip, which was a 3-hour drive each way. This was the perfect time to start. I didn't think I would gain much interest in the book, or care what happens in the book, but before I knew it, I had zoomed through 200 of the pages over the trip. Finishing that book, I checked out the next two books and devoured those in a timely fashion. Then, I borrowed the fourth book from Bill and tore through that, too.

It was nice to have the gift of being able to read the books without having to wait, but then I was like other fans and having to wait for the next three books to come out.

I read the sixth book, "The Half-Blood Prince", when it came out about two years ago when I started my new job. I had heard that someone was going to die in the book, which was hinted at as a beloved character. So of course, I sped through the book to find out who it was. I finished in record time and then became disappointed that I was going to have to wait a long time for the last book.

The final book came out Saturday, July 21st. I was one of those geeks out there clamoring for the book. I bought it and immediately tried to get through it in record time again.

While I was waiting this year, I had thought it would be best that I should re-read all the books in order because I remember that when I was reading the last book, I had to clamor my memory in vain for details about who some of the characters were.

I knew I'd never had the time or patience to read all six books, so I did the next best thing, I listened to the audio books. This was not easy. The first book is a manageable 8 hours long. The second is about 9 hours long. The third books clocks in at a little under 12 hours long. Then the fourth book cranks it up a notch and comes galloping it at 20 hours long! Just when I thought that was intense, the fifth book lumbers in like an elephant at over 26 hours long!! The sixth book takes a step back at under 19 hours in length. All in all, I had over 90 hours of audio to listen to in a month's time.

I managed to do it, and I was glad that I did. Because I couldn't skim, I was forced to listen to every detail of the story so I was reminded of things I that I didn't quite remember, like who some of the minor characters were, some of the odd side story details and things like that. What was really eye opening was that I felt like I was reading the sixth book, "The Half-Blood Prince", for the very first time. I was riveted as each chapter ended because not only had I not remembered what each chapter was about, but I didn't know what was going to happen next. I vividly remembered the last part of the book, but that was it.

"Had I even read the book?" I asked myself in disbelief.

So I finally got through every book with 10 days to kill until the last book came out. I purchased my book at midnight with the other fanatics (reading the first chapter while I was in line to buy it) and spent the next two days reading the whole thing. I literally couldn't sleep while I was reading it because I was thinking about the plot when I laid down and then my head wouldn't quiet to let me sleep. I tried going to sleep at 1 am on Saturday night, but seeing as I couldn't sleep, I kept tossing and turning. I decided to get up and read. Before I knew it, it was 3 am. Normally 5 hours of sleep would make me a zombie for that day, but I was as wide awake as I could remember on Sunday when I got up at 8 am. I started reading again. Finally, I finished the book at 9 pm Sunday night without getting it spoiled for me.

All in all, it was a great end to a great series. While I realize that it's a series meant for kids, it's definitely written so that any age can enjoy it, kind of like reading the Davinci Code.

Now that I'm done, there are a few things that bother me about the Harry Potter universe. I realize it's a fantasy world, but the world depicted in the Harry Potter books has a few flaws.

For instance, the books are set in the early 1990s, but the wizards in the Potter world still live as if it's the middle ages. They use quills and ink wells. The students at Hogwarts turn in their papers handwritten with the quills on rolled up pieces of parchment. The library is as medieval as possible with every book published in hard cover. There seem to be no copying machines or computers to help the students along. I would think that with all the advances that wizards have in their world, they would have something better to come along to make their lives easier when it comes to writing. The only thing that is shown like this is a Quick Quotes Quill used by a reporter for the newspaper, but that's about it.

Oh sure, they'll use magic to clean up a mess or repair something that's broke, but they still feel the need to be like the book copiers of the past.

The pictures in the Potter world are like three-dimensional composites of people with the subjects looking around, smiling, waving, etc. Sometimes, the subjects leave the photos because they have something better to do. This is a great idea, so why doesn't it apply to other technology?

I mentioned computers above. Why don't they use a lexus nexus-like super computer that is inhabited by a fairy spirit that can dish out whatever information that they want? It could have the same 3D pictures.

I also noticed that in the Potter world, that no one ever watches television or even has a television. In one book, some of the characters are huddled around a radio and listening to a song. Why don't they watch television? For a group of people that seem to love visual things, as evidenced by their advanced photos that move, paintings that talk, books that have personalities, etc. they seem not to care about missing television. What with their favorite game, Quidditch, being a very intense, visual sport, it would seem that television would have been a natural. While we're just adopting HGTV, they should be on 3D television by now.

This brings me to another oddity of the wizarding world, the use of owls. The wizards of the Potter world send owls for their letters and packages. While effective, it's hardly efficient. Sometimes, the owls have no idea where a person is and it takes them days to find that person. You would think that an instant message would be a lot quicker than having to wait for a message from an owl. In book 5, the students start a secret group and use gold coins to communicate with each other, but no one has invented the piece of wizard equipment that'd let you communicate like a cellphone instead of the clumsy method of owls.

When it comes time for wizards to use the Muggle (non-wizard) post office system, the wizarding world is perplexed. Harry got a letter from his friends in one book and the whole envelope was encased with stamps because they didn't know how many to use. Seeing as how they had to buy them, I'm sure they could have asked, but that would have been too obvious I guess.

Speaking of clumsy methods, I'm not a big fan of the wizards using a fire to communicate. In the books, they'll throw magic powder on a fire and stick their head in the fire to communicate with another person at the other end of the fire. While certainly clever, it's hardly convenient as the person must crouch down in front of the fire to talk. There is the added problem with what if the person doesn't have a fire going on the other end, but that's never a problem in the Potter world.

Like with other Muggle inventions, the telephone is beyond the grasp of wizard intelligence. Past attempts with Harry's friend, Ron, to try and use the telephone resulted in Ron shouting over and over because he didn't realize that he could be heard clearly. I can see why they prefer the fire method. Who among us doesn't want to get on our hands and knees on a hard marble floor and then thrust our face in a fire. Granted, forgetting to throw the magic powder into the fire first wouldn't be wise, but it's the price you pay for that kind of convenience.

Memories are another thing that I really don't understand in the Harry Potter universe. Wizards are able to extract silver strands of their memories and put them in vials. Then they can dump them in a stone basin called a pensieve. Then anyone can be plunged into the memory to see events that happened many years ago.

The pensieve is indeed a good story telling device as J.K. Rowling can go into flashback mode to show events that happened years ago for background purposes. Unfortunately, there are some loopholes in this. There have been a few times when Harry and his friends have seen something that no one believes, like when Lord Voldermort comes back in book 4. A few believe Harry, but most of the wizardly world don't. Couldn't they have extracted his memory of the event to show the truth? In the same book, another witness is killed (sort of) prior to the government officials hearing his confession, so the story isn't believe. Again, a pensieve could have saved them the trouble of having to wait a year to finally believe that Lord Voldermort had returned.

While I realize that this type of criticizing is pointless and on the geeky side, it's one of those things that I think about. J.K Rowling is supposedly going to be working on an encyclopedia of her Harry Potter world. Maybe she can enlighten me to my questions...

The Brownie Emporium

Here's a short story about having to lie to your kids, which as a parent, you tend to have to do from time to time. Looking back, I now wonder how many times my parents had to lie to us to do things...

...

A while back, it was my birthday. Normally on my birthday we celebrate it like usual with a dinner at Red Lobster. We started this habit because one of my favorite things to eat is Snow Crab legs.

On this day, Laura wasn't interested in going to Red Lobster because she just wasn't in the mood for seafood, so she hinted that I think of another suggestion. I always pass the Cheesecake Factory on the way to work. I had never been there, but since one arrived in the city, I had seen people at work with take out cheesecakes from there.

Seeing as I also love cheesecake, I suggested that we go there. Laura also loves cheesecake, so she was on board. The problem came when it was time to tell Julia where we were going.

She already has some favorite places to go. She's been to Applebee's a few times, so she likes that place. She also loves to go to Red Lobster because she likes to look at the live lobsters in the tank near the front. Getting Julia on board for the Cheesecake Factory took some convincing and when that didn't work, a little manipulation.

I came home from work that day and announced to Julia that we were going out to eat.

"Yay!" Julia shouted. "Where are we going?"

"We going to go to the Cheesecake Factory!" I said.

Julia wrinkled her nose and said, "No! I don't want to go to the Cheesecake Factory!"

"Julia," I said. "You've never even been to the Cheesecake Factory. How do you know that you don't want to go?"

"I don't like the Cheesecake Factory!" Julia said matter of factly.

"Julia," I pleaded. "The Cheesecake Factory doesn't just have cheesecakes. It has chicken strips with fries that you like."

"I don't want to go to the Cheesecake Factory!" Julia exclaimed and did a little hurumph move with by folding her arms with a downward gesture.

I think the problem was that Julia didn't understand what a cheesecake was. I remember when I was a kid, I thought that cheesecakes were made with actual cheese. That surely didn't sound like a pleasant mixture. Little did I know that there was such a thing as cream cheese that was different than the usual cheese. I'm sure that's what she thought, too. We were were getting more and more frustrated with getting her to understand that there were other things than a cheesecake at the restaurant. But looking at it from her side, I suppose if my parents wanted to take me to a place called The Liver and Onions Warehouse, I would have stomped my foot, too.

So I came up with a bit of deception to get the trip moving. It was getting a little late and we didn't want to have to wait for a table. Arguing with Julia had already wasted 10 minutes.

I said, "Okay Julia. We're not going to the Cheesecake Factory."

Laura looked puzzled, "We're not?"

"No," I said, "we're going to the Brownie Emporium."

Julia perked up a little. "The Brownie Em... Em...," she was starting to ask.

"Emporium," I said. "It's a restaurant that specializes in brownies."

"That's right," Laura said catching on. "We're going to a different restaurant."

"Brownies?" Julia asked to herself and somewhat to us. You could see her mulling it over in her 5-year-old mind. She liked brownies for sure.

"Okay!" Julia said. "Let's go!"

So off we went to the "Brownie Emporium". On the way there, I muttered to Laura, "What if they announce 'Welcome to the Cheesecake Factory' to us? Julia will know for sure that she's been tricked."

Laura winced, "We'll just have to see what happens."

As we pulled up to the Cheesecake Factory, Julia asked, "What does the sign say?"

Seeing as she's still learning to read, I said, "The Brownie Emporium" with a flair of my hands.

We got out of the car and walked towards the restaurant. Surprisingly, we were not given a "Welcome to The Cheesecake Factory" greeting at the door. Once we're seated, however, we did get the greeting.

The waiter arrived and said, "Welcome to the Cheesecake Factory! My name is (whatever it was) and I'll be your waiter tonight."

We winced and lookd over at Julia, who gave a little blemish of recognition that the name that was just announced didn't quite jive with what we told her. She gave a brief confused look, but didn't say anything.

Any doubts about the restaurant were dashed when she found out about the chicken fingers and fries, her favorite meal. At desert time, she tried some of our cheesecakes and enjoyed them.

Finally, when we're minutes away from leaving, I asked, "Guess where we just ate, Julia?"

"Where?" Julia asked.

"The Cheesecake Factory!" I exclaimed with a smile.

Julia gave a look of surprise and said, "Ohh!" If she was mad for being deceived, she sure didn't show it. I hated having to lie, but sometimes you need to lie to get this kid to go somewhere she doesn't want to go.

Murphy to go to the vet. Julia assumes death is coming...

Murphy has to go to the vet on Friday. She has a few problems. Rather than go into the details, let's just say that it may be that her diet isn't agreeing with her. I'll have to bring in a stool sample for the vet to check out. Yay for me! We're also going to get her checked out with some blood work to see if she's at risk for chronic kidney failure, which is what killed Moe. They were brother and sister, so it stands to reason that this may be genetic.

I'll be working that day, so Laura and Julia will have to take her in. Laura said that she told Julia that they were going to be taking Julia to the vet.

Julia smiled and asked without skipping a beat, "So she can go and die?"

Laura had been waiting for a response like that ever since we took Moe to the vet and didn't come home with him.

Laura told Julia, "No, she's not going to die! She's just a little sick, so the vet's going to check her out."

Julia thought for a second and asked with the same smile on her face, "And then she'll die?"

Laura laughed and said, "No! She's not going to die!"

Julia asked, "If she dies, can we get a kitty?"

"No! Julia, if Murphy dies, Daddy will be sad."

Maybe it's a little morbid that Julia is taking death to Murphy so loosely, but Murphy hasn't exactly been endearing herself to Julia. Julia will attempt to pet Murphy and Murphy will invariably take a swipe at her while protesting with an annoyed cat chirp.

Suzy and Boris, the two newest cats, let Julia do all sorts of things to them without protest. Even Moe, who I wrote about before, had no problem getting hassled by Julia. In his last week with us prior to getting sick, Julia could pick all twenty pounds of him up and hold him without any protest from Moe.

This isn't the first time that Julia has mentioned Murphy dying. Last year, she asked when we were going to get a new kitty.

I replied, "When one of the cats dies."

Julia though a minute and said, "Okay. I guess Murphy is going to have to die."

I was dumbfounded.

"Hey! That's my cat!"

I would worry, but I seem to recall me not being too shook up by a pet dying when I was kid. I remember my Mom telling Bill and I that she had to put our old dog, Tina, to sleep at the vet. I don't remember Tina much, but I remember her not liking Bill and I much. It's probably because we were young and prone to hassling her. She was old and probably not in the mood to be hassled.

I don't remember the response, but I'm sure it was along the lines of "Oh drag. Can we have some lunch?"

Julia gets an allowance

We're trying to instill some responsibility into Julia by requiring her to clean up after herself every now and then. As any parent knows, this is a tough task because kids have a hard time listening anyway. For example, recently I picked up a candy wrapper that Julia had left on the floor and I said, "Do something with this."

Now an average person of average intelligence would have walked over to the trash can nearby and deposited it in the can to forever forget about its previous blight on our carpet. Unfortunately, that's not how a child's mind works. Julia proceeded to walk across the living room and then dropped it on the edge of the carpet, thereby moving the wrapper from one end of the room to the other end.

I exclaimed, "What are you doing? Pick it up and put it in the garbage can!"

Julie sighed, but did go back and grabbed the candy wrapper. The wrapper did make it finally to the garbage can, much to the chagrin of my daughter who doesn't seem to grasp the concept of trash yet. I'll often find band aid wrappers that are sitting on her bathroom counter, which is literally right above where the trash can is. I guess it just didn't occur to her to throw them there. She must have been saving them for some other purpose...

Trying to get her to eat cleanly is another exercise in futility. Every night, Julia gets a small, snack-sized bowl of popcorn. This has been the routine for years in our house. As hard as we try to make this a clean routine, it just doesn't work out that way. I'm often dismayed at how much mess one child can make while eating popcorn. Most people will grab one or two kernels at a time and pop them in their mouth. Not Julia. She grabs a small handful, which then is kind of dragged across her lips into her mouth. It's like watching the Cookie Monster eat. Invariably, the floor becomes littered with broken popped kernels.

I have a fairly new Hyundai Sante Fe. I try to keep it clean, but any effort I put forth in the front seat is always negated by the mess in the back seat, where Julia sits. Since we travel about 25 minutes to work, we usually give her some sort of snack like fruit snacks crackers. Then we'll occasionally get McDonalds or Burger King when we have to travel to another city. Then there are the occasional trips to the mall complete with a cookie. And let's not forget her pre-school, which seems to have ample activities planned that end with a big baggie of treats being sent home with the kids.

These and other chances for snacks leads to a back seat that's almost always in a state of disarray. I'll open the door for her one morning and seemingly overnight, the floor is strewn with fruit snack wrappers, bits of snacks and other pieces of paper.

Speaking of bits of paper, I swear that her pre-school has an agenda to unload a truckload of art supplies...

Last year, when Julia was in her first pre-school class (she went again this year because we didn't want her to start Kindergarten yet), I would come to her locker and almost every day there was some sort of drawing, painting or sculpture. The drawings and paintings were okay, but good God were there a lot of them. We ended up throwing a bunch away, but I swear you can stack up what we saved from that class and it would be 5 feet high. I have several tubs devoted just to the drawings and paintings that Julia brought home. The sculptures were worse because they were always covered with tons of glitter or flakes or glitter flakes or something that glittered while it flaked off when you picked it up. I once joked to her teacher that for Julia's last day I was going to have Julia give her a sculpture that had every conceivable type of glitter or flakes on it, so that when she tried to pick up, a ton would fall off it.

So I digress, but the art projects build up on the seat if I don't remember to take them out and they flake...

Cleaning up with Julia is an exercise in patience in and of itself. Laura always insists that Julia needs to learn to pick up after herself, or she'll end up like a slob. Now I'm sure she didn't quite mean me, even though I was and sometimes still am horrible at picking things up after myself (When not kept in check, I get an array of trash around me that Laura calls a 'sphere of influence.' Just check my desk sometime and you'll see.), but I got the message.

The routine usually goes like this. I tell Julia, "We are going to clean up today before we go anywhere."

Julia will groan and say, "I hate cleaning up. It's so boring!"

I'll tell her something easy like putting her toys away and she'll hem and haw and groan and put it off. Then she'll ask if we can go somewhere or if she can go out and play. Again, I'll remind her to clean. This goes on several times, until I literally have to pull her along with me and I'll have to get her started.

So I was talking the other day to a co-worker about this and she mentioned that her and her husband started to give a weekly allowance to their son, who is six-years-old. He's expected to do his chores and in exchange, he gets an allowance, which he gets to spend on anything that he wants.

I had heard of this 'allowance' ritual, but I was never familiar with it. We never got an allowance from our parents. Our allowance consisted of us getting money sporadically from our parents when we'd beg to go see a movie or go to the school skate night. Most of the time, they'd give us the money, so Mom I'm not complaining. However, I was a little envious of kids that had an allowance. They were usually the kids that had the latest toy that they'd bring to school to show off.

I had also read about allowances in books. Usually, the books that I read were about the misadventures of some school-aged kid (like Henry Huggins), who had to come up with some money fast to either buy a new football or because he had to pay for damages because he accidentally broke something. So he had to pay for it or his parents would find out. The character would beg his parents for an advance on his 'allowance', but was usually shot down.

I tried to come up with an allowance one day when I tallied up a list of things I did around the house (taking out the trash, mowing the lawn) and came up with a reasonable amount, which was 5 dollars a week.

I showed this to my parents who immediately shot it down with no negotiation.

"You don't need an allowance," one of them said. "You already do all of those chores for us for free."

Crap. I learned a valuable lesson that day. Don't give up the candy store and then expect payment. They had a point.

It's just a little frustrating sometimes when you're a kid and you want money. Our parents made the mistake of giving Bill and I our own little cash register banks. They looked like the old style cash registers and worked similarly. You had a slot for each type of coin. You put the money into the slot, pulled the lever and the total changed. At first it was cool because I saw that I had about 4 dollars and some odd cents in change. Then it was a little depressing because I had no outlet for more money. I worried how I was going to get that total up past ten dollars until I struck on a solution: raid the lunch money basket.

Our parents had a lunch money basket above the sink that my Dad would put dollars and change into. It was for us kids to buy a lunch ticket or a daily lunch at school. I ran upstairs and silently as I could retrieved the basket. I fished out some change and snuck back downstairs. Growing bolder, I went back for more and more change. Pretty soon, my total had doubled. Then I got even bolder and snagged some dollars (the machine had a slot for dollars, too). Ka-ching! I was in double digit land...for a few hours.

It was a Sunday and my Dad usually filled up the basket that day. He opened the cupboard and started to retrieve his wallet when he exclaimed, "Who's been taking money out of this basket?"

My Mom asked what was wrong.

My Dad said, "There was a lot more money in here today and now it's almost gone!"

He looked over at us eating and asked, "Which one of you kids took money out of this basket?!"

We all looked at each other and said nothing.

"Which one?" my Dad asked again.

I believe it was my brother, Bill, who gave me up as he saw me put all the money into my cash machine. I was ordered to get the cash machine and empty it. Sadly, I sad goodbye to my short-lived windfall.

(Note: Bill disputes that it was him, although he does remember the incident. My point is, regardless of who turned me in, I was turned in because I don't think I'd be that stupid to turn myself in. Granted, I have incriminated myself before and after but not this time.)

So as I was saying, we thought it would be a good time to offer Julia her allowance. A few Sundays ago, we brought up the topic to her. We explained that we expected her to clean up after her toys and in her room. If she did that, every week she would get an allowance. I had originally thought 5 dollars was pretty decent considering inflation. Laura, on the other hand, lobbied for 3 dollars, which is what we offered her.

The thought of money of her own slowly sunk in and she enthusiastically said, "OK!"

That day, it was like a dream. Julia picked up the floor of the living room upstairs. Downstairs, she worked for over an hour on picking up her toys off the floor and into their proper place. She would keep asking me if she was done, but when I pointed out new things for her to pick up, she didn't complain once! She kept on cleaning and cleaning and at one point even helped me move things to give the basement a good vacuuming. Finally, at the end of the day, Julia asked for her money.

"Can I have my two dollars now for my allowance?" she asked.

There was a wrinkle. Julia had met my allowance offer and counter offered with a lower price. I thought about reminding her that I had offered three dollars, but instead I said, "Okay. You can have your two dollars."

That's what the allowance has stood at.

The next week, things didn't go so smoothly. I mentioned that it was allowance day and that Julia needed to clean up before getting her allowance.

She thought a minute and said, "That's okay, I don't think I want my allowance."

Oh she's good! She re-countered her own counter offer by saying that now she didn't need my money! I'm assuming she thought that this would get her out of her chores, but I had to disagree with her. I reminded her that with our without an allowance, that she would still have to do her chores.

She thought again and finally said, "Okay. I'll take my allowance." With that, she helped clean although with some of the old complaining of "Am I done yet?" and "This is boring."

I guess one week of bliss was all that I was going to get...

Saw the movies 'The Queen', 'Children of Men' and 'Grindhouse'

I used to be up on all the movies that came out, but then something happened in my life that put a snag into that hobby, which is having a baby (not me, my wife... although I obviously helped kick start the process...)

After the baby came, the semi-regular trips to the movie theater stopped. Also, it seemed that I didn't have as much time to watch movies that I rented, either because of many reasons (our schedules and other factors).

Now I'm trying to make an effort to stay on top of my movie viewing, which is so important on the grand scheme of things, I realize. I would stockpile them and wait until I retire to catch up on them, but I'm sure by then my tastes would have changed drastically.

Last night, we watched the movie, "The Queen", starring Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II. The movie takes place mostly during the days after Lady Diana died in a car crash. Having been stripped of her title as 'Her Royal Highness' (a few references to former HRH), the royal family did what they thought was proper when Diana passed... nothing. Their reaction, especially Queen Elizabeth's, are what move the story along.

Tony Blair had just started as the new prime minister a few months before the tragedy and it's really interesting to see the interplay between the elected officials and the monarchy. They claim that they know what the British people want even though they are sheltered miles away in a vast estate. They continue to claim that the British people will come to their senses, but as the days build between the death and the funeral, the lack of anything from the royal family causes tension between the public and the royal family until they are finally forced to action to make it look like they actually cared for a person they despised.

While I'm sure dramatized a lot, it is still a fascinating and sometimes funny movie about the Queen Elizabeth II and how she handled the death of Lady Diana. I'd recommend it.

...

Keeping with our British theme, Laura and I watched "Children of Men", a movie about a future world in which women are barren and the last birth was 18 years ago. The world is now a place where terrorism runs rampant, immigration is a crime and refugees are caged like animals. The movies protagonist, Theo (Clive Owen) is dragged into a fight to deliver a woman, Kee, who is about to deliver the first baby into the world in years.

The movie starts out a little slow, but the action gets moving fast. The action scenes are amazing in that they were often shot with just one camera following the action, which gives the movie a very tense feel to it as you follow Theo through some very harrowing situations. The action is also very unique. One scene in particular has Theo trying to jump start a car down a hill while people are running after him.

I'm sure some people might scoff at the statements made in the movie. There are many comparisons to how Jesus was born. Also, the themes of immigration I'm sure will turn some people off (as we're going through some pains with this ourselves in this country), but anyone that isn't very easily offended by that should be fine with it.

I really liked this movie. It's exciting and makes you think.

...

I drove to Lincoln a few weeks ago to see the movie, "Grindhouse", with my brother, Bill. We hadn't seen a movie together in a while. After all, with both of us with kid(s), it's hard to coordinate time for a movie, let alone in another city.

Bill secured a sitter for his kids and my kid and we were off to see the movie.

For those of you (all 5) that don't know about the movie, "Grindhouse", I'll explain. "Grindhouse" is a double feature film from directors Robert Rodriguez of Spy Kids and Desperado fame and Quentin Tarantino of Pulp Ficton and Kill Bill fame. The movie is basically split into two parts. The first is "Planet Terror", a movie about a toxic gas that turns those unlucky enough to be infected by it into skin-lesioned, flesh-eating zombies. The second movie, directed by Tarantino, is called "Death Proof", about a guy that kills people with his death-proof car, a car reinforced for stunt work in Hollywood pictures.

Now you might be wondering why we'd want to go see these pictures? Because we were weened on horror and action films, we tend to like unwinding with films that we can turn your stomach or frighten you. Remember, we're the generation with the low work ethic because of our numbness to television, so our fondness for violent pictures shouldn't surprise anyone.

When we got to the theater, Bill got in one line and I got into the next line. We continued talking about whatever it was we were talking about when a woman in front of me asked, "Are you both twins?"

We paused and replied "Yes" at about the same time.

The woman asked, "How old are you?"

We said, "36."

The woman said, "Oh, I have twin boys who are 26."

"Ooohh." We replied politely.

This happens a sometimes when we're together. People are amazed that grown men are twins and have to ask us about it. I don't mind, but Bill sometimes gets a little annoyed by it.

Bill pays for his ticket and I'm still waiting behind the woman with twin boys.

The lady with twins pays for her movie. I move forward to pay and a lady starts to step in front of me.

I say abruptly, "I was next."

The lady that stepped in front of me says, "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were with her." indicating the lady with twins.

I buy my ticket and start to think. Did she mean that I look young enough to be that woman's son or old enough to be dating her? I wasn't sure if I should be offended or complimented.

The first part of Grindhouse is a zombie flick called, "Planet Terror". "Planet Terror"'s plot revolves around a deadly biological warfare virus that's unleashed over the population of a small Texas town. It turns most of the inhabitants into puss-filled, boil-covered, flesh-eating zombies. The rest of the town has to survive.

It's pretty mindless, but pokes fun at all sorts of action movie cliques. It's a bit gross and over-the-top in it's zombie special effects, but if you can stomach that, it's a pretty fun ride.

One interesting twist to movie is that a go-go dancer named Cherry Darling, played by Rose McGowan, gets her leg amputated early on in the movie. She spends the next part limping around on a makeshift leg made of wood until she's fitted for a gun for the leg. Now if you've seen the trailer or commercials, then you've basically seen every part of this sequence with her leg-gun contraption. So prepare to be disappointed...

Of course, by the time I'm writing this, Grindhouse is now out of the theaters, but oh well...

The next part of Grindhouse is a Quentin Tarantino movie called, "Death Proof". While I'm a big fan of his most well known movie, "Pulp Fiction", I would have to say I was a little disappointed in "Death Proof".

"Death Proof" follows the story of Stuntman Mike played by Kurt Russell, who has a car that's death proof. He uses that car to kill women by slamming into his first victim's car head on.

Now "Death Proof" would be an exciting movie if it wasn't for all the inane dialog that you have to sit through. The movie starts with a bunch of women talking shit with each other about men and relationships and stuff. This goes on literally for about 25 minutes before something interesting happens. You'll literally look at your watch wondering when the action is going to start. I realize that dialog is meant to get you invested in the characters, but this dialog is all loud and ultra-witty to the point where I almost didn't care who theses characters were. Also, I can't remember much about who the different women were supposed to be. By the time, some action happens, it's much too short and I stopped caring long ago.

Thankfully, "Death Proof" has two parts. The second part follows Stuntman Mike as he targets four other women, two of which are stuntwomen and one is a makeup artist (played by Rosario Dawson). The second part starts like the first part with a lot of ultra-loud and ultra-witty dialog. Mercifully, it's a lot shorter and the action starts a lot faster. The movie ends with an extended car chase that's pretty cool and it's a nice payoff that saves the movie from its horrid beginning.