Saw A Christmas Carol in 3D with Julia with both of us bored with stomach aches...

Now where was I? I haven't had much time to write this blog lately. I've had a pretty brutal release coming up and have been working late a lot.

Laura had to work today, which she normally doesn't do, so I decided that Julia and I should see a movie.

I had seen the trailers for the new movie, A Christmas Carol, and it looked decent. I was even thinking that I would see it when it came out since I love 3D movies, but decided against it once I read the tepid reviews. It's getting a 58 percent positive average rating on the website rottentomatoes.com, but some of the bad reviews highlight what I didn't like about it.

I had read words like 'lifeless' in the reviews and was scared about that so I decided not to see it. A Christmas Carol was never my favorite Christmas story. I only really liked the comedy versions of it like the movie "Scrooged". Also, I still fondly remember the HBO production of it with Rich Little playing almost all the parts. I'm sure it's awfully dated now, but it was pretty funny. In that version, Rich Little, the comedian, plays as W.C. Fields as Scrooge, Richard Nixon as Jacob Marley, Humphrey Bogart as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Peter Falk as Columbo as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Peter Sellers as Inspector Cluseau as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. What I remember most about it was his choice to play Tiny Tim as Truman Capote.

That special was in my mind as I was watching this movie today because I was wishing that I was seeing that one. I almost felt sorry to drag Julia to see it, but I thought she should at least see it to have a background in the play since it's a classic and often referenced in shows and pop culture.

The previews and even the movie trailer seemed to suggest that this is a modern retelling of A Christmas Carol with more comedy seeing as how Jim Carey plays the role of Scrooge, but that's not the case.

I could not believe how dark this movie was. It was so dark and quiet in the parts leading to Scrooge's ghostly visits that I was worried that they didn't have the projector bright enough. But then when things started to happen, it was all bright and noisy, which I guess was the point.

Robert Zemeckis wrote and directed this adaptation. Maybe Robert is manic depressive because that's how this movie feels. At some points, it's dark, gloomy, quiet and humorless. At other points, it's so loud and silly that you wonder if you're watching two movies. The movie also faithfully uses a lot of the lines of dialogue from the book, which made it hard to follow. I had to explain to Julia what some of the things meant as they really weren't explained well. Some parts felt rushed. Others took forever.

I was so disappointed that they didn't make a more humorous adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Since they didn't, I'm wondering why they even bothered making an animated movie about the story of Scrooge.

I asked Julia what she thought of the movie was and her response was that she liked it somewhere in the middle. It was okay for her, which is my sentiments, too.

One last thing, Robert Zemeckis committed what I think it his greatest sin from The Polar Express in that rather than have several talented people voice the different characters, he had Jim Carey and others voice several characters. Not only is Carey Scrooge, but he's all three ghosts of Christmas. It's pretty obvious during the ghost of Christmas Present sequence because he laughs a lot, which sounds exactly like Scrooge's laugh. It's distracting for me to hear that, just like it was to have Tom Hanks voice multiple characters in The Polar Express. It's a minor gripe, but that's just me.

My daughter is so much like my wife, it's scary...

They say that the mother's curse is that you will have a child that will act just like you did when you were a child. In my case, there are a few things that Julia does that it totally me. Like my inability to get out of the door without a prolonged getting dressed process that involves me taking an insanely long amount of time to get ready.

Julia seems to have that ability in spades. The speed that this kid moves is scary in that now I know how my Mom and Dad must have felt to watch me move so slow. You don't know how often I have to restrain myself from vocally urging her to move faster. I end up taking a deep breath more often than not and then, after a few more moments of inaction, I'll vocally urge her to move it or lose it.

Laura goes nuts trying to get her ready because Julia is the exact opposite of her getting ready. She'll moan at Julia to hurry up and then point at me as if to say, "This is all your fault. She got this from you!"

Julia also has my love of all things electronic. She's a gamer. She started by just watching me play video games. She would sit there and watch me play the same game, Rayman 2, over and over. I got so good at the game that I could play it while watching TV.

Unlike me, she's a girl, but besides that she seems to be a mirror image of Laura not only for facial features, but with her attitude as well.

I think, if you've ever read my notes here, that I've mentioned that my wife, Laura, is rather direct and strong willed. She's not afraid to stand up for herself or vocalize her true feelings, which sometimes gets her in trouble. That happened a lot more in the past when she was all young and spirited. Now that she's older, she's mellowed a bit. Thank God... Just kidding, honey!

Laura say that Julia is learning bad road rage habits from me as I'll voice my displeasure at the various stupid people that cut me off or are being slow. I counter back to Laura that there have been many times when we'll be behind a slow person in a parking lot. I'll mutter, "Come on!" Julia will add, "Honk at him!"

Now I'll complain, but I never honk. "She didn't learn that from me!" I retort.

Laura smirks at this.

Recently, Julia went to play with a friend at the park. I told her to be back by sundown, but she walked through the door about 15 minutes later. She looked upset. I asked her what was wrong. Apparently, when they had gotten to the park, Julia's friend decided that she wanted to play another game with some other friends. Julia didn't like this. She's very much an alpha female when it comes to playing. She generally likes telling kids what she wants to do.

Julia vented about not wanting to play the game by adding, "I came over to the park to play with her. I didn't come to the park so she can play that stupid game with other kids. She needs to understand that!"

Suddenly, Julia had an idea, "I'm going to take Mommy with me to the park and we're going to tell her what's what!"

I had to work hard to not laugh. That reminded me a lot of Laura.

Saturday, we were at the mall. We at at the food court. Julia went to Burger King. I went to a Japanese grill. Laura got Taco Del Mar.

Julia and Laura had to wait a long time for Julia's dinner of chicken nuggets and fries. I was already starting to eat when they showed up. Laura left to go get her dinner while Julia ate hers.

Julia grabbed the bags and opened the kid's meal.

She looked inside and muttered, "Thanks a LOT lady! She dumped my fries all over the bottom of my bag!"

She sighed, shook her head and added, "That is NOT very nice."

I have heard many horror stories about Laura's teenage years. We feel that we are in for an entertaining teenager.

My daughter doesn't take checks...

Julia gets paid on Sundays. We decided to give her an allowance a few years ago at an huge two dollars a week. I thought she'd scoff. She was thrilled! Then she was even more thrilled when I upped it last year to four dollars a week.

Her allowance is dependent on her doing chores and cleaning up after herself. On the weeks where she makes no attempt to clean, I tend to forget to pay her. If she remembers, I'll make her clean.

Yesterday, she had cleaned up a lot of toys and had even gone through some old ones to put into storage or to give away. Laura told me to pay her.

I looked in my wallet. All I had was a twenty dollar bill.

I said, "I can't pay you."

Julia's face sank.

"Unless you have change for a twenty?"

She shook her head.

"I could write you a check?" I asked.

I was kidding, of course. Being eight, she doesn't have a bank account. I'd have to cash it for her anyway, so it would be redundant to cash a check that I wrote in my credit union when I could just withdraw the money when I'm there.

Julia wrinkled her nose and said in a very serious voice, "I don't take checks."

"Oh, you don't?" I laughed.

"No. It's cash only. Or I'll take change, too."

She's young, but she has her priorities.

Laura was the main character in my crazy dream...

The comedian Daniel Tosh said in his stand up CD "True Stories I Made", which by the way is highly recommended by me if you are not easily offended and can stand jokes that go on a stream of consciousness where you're not sure how you got to his end point.

Wait... I forgot to mention what he said. He said something like on whether or not it's possible to describe a dream without sounding mentally challenged.

I had one about Laura the other night that was so vivid that I actually remembered most of it. Usually, a lot of my dreams involve crazy action that never resolves itself. They seem so real and disturbing, but when I wake up, I realize that I can't remember what was so disturbing in the first place.

My dreams usually run through several incarnations.

- The 'tornado' dream - This type of dream happens a few times a month. In this dream, I or my family and I are stuck out in the middle of nowhere while tornadoes on every side of us/me are closing in. I/we take shelter, but usually in some place inappropriate like a basement with nothing but windows. The dream never resolves itself and I usually wake up anxious to get out of weather that isn't there. This particular dream started when I was a kid when my family and I would stay every summer weekend in a small trailer that was centered perfectly on both sides between the Platte river and the small lake in front of us. There was no tornado shelter, so if the weather hit the fan, there was no place to go. My dreams then usually ended with our dinky trailer getting picked up and chucked in either the river or the lake.

- The 'new location' dream - In this dream, I am in a mystery city living in a mystery house. In this dream, I'm usually by myself without my immediate family, although some people I know inhabit the dream.

- The 'I'm Rich!' dream - In this dream, I hit the jackpot! This is always followed by the crushing realization that I am not rich when I wake up. That sucks.

- The 'I'm getting fired!' dream - In this dream, I do something really stupid like steal from my employer, surf porn at work, or piss everyone off.

- The 'I'm naked' dream - Good God is this one frequent. It's not that I'm totally naked, just usually naked from the waist down. It's either at school or at work.

- The 'what the frak?' dream - A dream that defies all description and logic.

This dream I had the other night seemed like a 'what the frak?' dream, but it actually made a little sense.

So here's what happened. My wife, Laura, was planning a heist on a department store. For some reason, she chose to rob the Scheels sporting goods store. I'm not sure why she chose this, but it seemed to make sense to her. My brother, Bill, was also in on the heist.

Each day, we'd drive down to Scheels to stake it out. On the way, we'd pass a stretch of road where we'd see a cougar just walking along the road. Each time we saw the cougar, Laura would have me take the wheel and she'd get out her rifle (which she doesn't own, by the way) and start shooting rounds at the cougar. Each time, the cougar would scatter and so would all the people in the neighborhood.

I'd chastise Laura for this reckless behavior because 1. I'm pretty sure shooting a rifle in a crowded neighborhood is against the law and 2. it's not exactly being on the down low for staking out a robbery target if you're firing rifle shots on the way there.

Because of the constant firing of Laura's rifle, Bill and I decided that we needed to go in disguise. So of course, we decided that we would dress up as Jedis from Star Wars. I was dressed up as the Liam Neeson character from the God-awful Phantom Menace film.

One day, Laura hit the jackpot while on the way to our stake out. She saw the cougar again and decided to act. She pulled out the rifle and fired at the cougar, which was just about to pounce on a man and his child. The cougar dropped dead and the man thanked Laura profusely.

Because I had been worried about being caught, Laura had to rub it in.

"See?" she sneered. "I didn't get caught. The guy even thanked me for shooting it!"

It was right about this point in the dream where I decided that I couldn't go through with the heist. For one thing, I was worried about getting caught. If both of us went on this heist and we both got caught, who would watch Julia? Besides, why Scheels? Did they have a massive amount of cash on hand?

Laura was sure of the target because they didn't have security guards. I was thinking more of the security cameras and silent alarms.

I backed out. I told Laura that I couldn't do it.

She asked me, "What are you, a pussy?!"

That's about when I woke up.

Laura loved the dream by the way.

Hot Rod and Space Chimps...

I just finished the movie starring Andy Sandberg called "Hot Rod". In the movie, a guy named, Rod, has always been trying to do stunts to emulate his deceased Dad, who used to set up stunts for Evel Kenieval. He rides around on his moped in a stunt suit wearing a fake mustache and generally fails at every jump he tries.

All that changes when his step-Dad, Frank, who Rod longs to beat the crap out of, is stricken with a heart defect diagnosis and needs a transplant, which the family can't afford. Rod resolves to do a big jump that even Evel couldn't do to raise money for the operation so he can get Frank better so he can kick his ass.

The premise is funnier than the movie. To be fair, it has some hilarious sequences that make little sense in a logical movie, but feel at home here. Like when he finds out that Frank is dying before he can kick his ass, he goes to his 'happy place' in the forest and proceeds to dance verbatim the Kevin Bacon construction site solo dance from Footloose. Things like that are sprinkled through this movie.

The movie stars Sissy Spasek as Rod's mother. Bill Hader and Danny McBride appear as his two buddies. Will Arnett plays a rich jerk that is dating Rod's secret crush, played by Isla Fisher of Wedding Crashers.

I was asking my brother, Bill, if he had seen this movie, but he had not.

"But I've seen Space Chimps!" he said, which also starred Andy Sandberg as the voice of the lead chimp whose grandfather had been the first chimp in space.



I laughed because Space Chimps is not awful, but it's really kind of embarrassing to watch. It had some definite potential, but it's as if they stopped trying halfway through and just tried to shove it out in time for Summer. Want proof? Rent the movie. You'll notice that the first part of the movie, which takes place in the space training camp for the chimps is fairly detailed and had some good jokes. Then there is the second part, which is set on a distant planet. It's one of the ugliest planets that I've ever seen. It's as if the programmers showed the pre-rendered version of the planet's surface and when told how long it would take to render with effects like textures, shading and what not, the producers on the film balked and told them to cut some corners. That is how ugly the planet looks.



The "villain", and I'm using that term very loosely here, is voiced by Jeff Daniels. Yes, that Jeff Daniels. He's hardly recognizable playing the incredibly annoying, effeminate and high-pitched alien, Zartog, who finds a piece of space equipment that made it to his planet and is using it to torture and terrorize the residents of the planet. All of whom look like squishy, shiny aliens crossed with gummy bears. The chimps make it through space and apparently the last bit of rendered graphics and make it to the ugly planet. Once there, they encounter a helpful glowing creature that screams a lot and looks like a running boob. And when I say a boob, I mean it looks like just that.

I saw this the first time at our really crappy dollar theater on West Center. I took Julia to it and was treated to a constant buzzing from the arcane speaker system. The movie looked like absolute crap because it was grainy and scratched from the constant showings. Turns out, DVD does it no justice. It looks bad...

Top Story: Chinese food befuddles old couple. News at 11.

A new chain restaurant just opened in our neighborhood, Panda Express. When we first saw it being build, Laura thought that it would be a Wendy's because it had a Wendy's color and shape. Soon it had a sign up announcing the new Panda Express restaurant.

I had been meaning to try Panda Express, but I just hadn't had the right opportunity because Laura generally doesn't go for Chinese food and Julia has never tried it. So if I want it, I have to go and get it alone.

The other night provided a perfect opportunity for me to get it. Julia and I had been coming home from a school function, and Laura was at work, which provided me the opening I was waiting for.

I told Julia we'd get her meal at Burger King after I got mine, so we stopped at Panda Express first. The drive in wasn't working yet, so we had to run in. Immediately, it was as if I hit a brick wall decorated with indecisive old people.

There was a couple there that appeared to be in their early 60s or late 50s. Either way, it was clear from the start that they had never ever set foot in a Chinese restaurant before. The woman behind the glass was explaining the process which is simple enough. If you order a 2 dish entree, you choose one of four "sides", which include fried rice, steamed rice, noodles and something else. Then you choose two of the main dishes to go with it.

They were startled by the myriad of choices in that they had never seen any of these dishes before. The next several minutes consisted of one or both asking, "What is this?" or "What does this taste like?" Pretty much any and all dishes had to be explained to the couple. I tried not to look at them. Instead, I was just looking slightly up and sometimes back at the menu board.

I looked down at Julia, who was clinging to my leg and placing her head on my stomach in utter boredom. She said, "Let's go!" in a whisper.

I explained that I still hadn't ordered and that she was just going to have to be patient.

It was at this moment that the wife turned and said to me, "I'm sorry that you have to wait for us."

I smiled and lied, "Oh, it's no bother."

Finally, they had decided that they were going to get started, but soon enough, there was a snag. The wife had just told the woman behind the glass that she wanted rice for her side. Just as she was scooping up steamed rice and placing it on her plate, the husband asked incredulously, "Since when is rice considered a side?"

Now I can understand maybe why he was confused. To be fair, their use of the term 'side' is more like calling it the bed of the dish. It's generally what the Chinese food rests on in most restaurants.

Finally, they started to get going, but when I finally got my say in my first side, I had hit another snag. The couple was stuck in the second half of the food tables. They again started to ask what every dish was like, what crab rangoon was, and what egg rolls were.

Julia at this point was about to exit this world from boredom that was fatal. Again she asked to leave and again I had to remind her that I had not yet gotten my food. She sighed and moaned, "I'm so hungry!"

"Well, if you only ate Chinese food, we'd be in the right place."

I got to go around the couple since they were holding up the whole line. I paid and motioned for Julia to come.

"Finally!" Julia exclaimed.

Watched 'Zach and Miri Make a..."

I just watched the newest Kevin Smith film called Zach and Miri Make a Prono. I'm purposely misspelling the title so it doesn't get stopped by internet filters. A lot of chain stores stocked it with just the title of 'Zach and Miri', which is shown above.

Kevin Smith is the guy who directed Clerks, Mallrats (loved it), Chasing Amy (meh), Dogma (loved), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (loved) and Clerks II (very good).

His movies are generally dialogue driven with a lot of character back and forth. Usually, there's a lot of cursing and a lot of vulgar discussions. In Zach and Miri, Zach, played by Seth Rogan, and Miri, played by Elizabeth Banks, are two friends who, on the eve of their high school reunion (in the middle of winter for some reason), find their utilities turned off. In danger of getting thrown in the poor house and realizing that they haven't done anything of value, Zach gets the bright idea to shoot an adult movie to pay off their debts due to the fact that all the people they went to high school would probably buy it.

They scrap together a coffee shop co-worker as the producer, a hockey goalie as the camera man, and get some enthusiastic locals to be in the picture with them. The original idea is a Star Wars rip-off, but bad luck occurs the night before shooting and they are forced to shoot in the coffee shop.

The main conflict in the movie is 'Are Zach and Miri going to follow through on their love scene?' and 'Will it ruin their friendship?'

It has some big laughs here and there, but I would only recommend it to people that are not offended by some very raunchy humor in places.

Water world

Water World in Denver was pretty fun. It's the largest water park in the country and features many speed slides and raft rides.

On the web site for Water World, you could rent a cabana for the day. The cabana has a table and chairs, free wi-fi internet if you have a laptop, a cooler with ice and two sun chairs.

Laura insisted, for her sanity since she hates crowds, that we rent one. For an extra 99 dollars, you could also get the deluxe cabana purchase, which included 5 rental tubes, a fan, some meals, 10 drinks and various other things. I crunched the numbers and opted not to get the deluxe cabana since you are allowed to bring your own drinks in as long as they are sealed, so that was covered. I then checked the prices of the food stands next to the cabanas and they weren't that expensive either.

When we got there, we were met at our cabana by 'Bill' and 'Ted', our cabana boys. 'Bill' was our main cabana boy, but 'Ted' was tagging along until 2 in the afternoon. It was immediately funny to us that they both looked like unshaven stoners, which was quite the contrast from the rest of the staff, which were shaven at least.

'Bill' told us the basics of the cabana, which wasn't much, and handed us a "menu" of five items.

He said in a stoner droll, "You can order these off the menu, and I'll bring them to you. Or... you can just walk over there (points at the food stands across the way) and get it yourself for a lot cheaper."

We opted to walk across and get it ourselves.

Laura spent some time sunning herself and reading while Julia and I did some rides and reported that she was quite entertained by 'Bill' and 'Ted' walking by periodically to check on the cabanas.

The first slide we went on was just up the hill from us. It was a pretty conventional slide that was fairly tall with several hills. I went down first. I was moving so fast by the time I hit the home stretch toward the bottom that I was literally afraid I wasn't going to slow down in time before I ran out of room at the end. Thankfully, it did.

I got up to watch Julia's plummet and kind of laughing to myself about it. She was NOT going to like this.



She slid down. I could tell that she was trying to slow down because she had her legs spread wide. She got to the bottom, got up and said, "I am never going on that again! It's so scary!"

So for the rest of the day, Julia, Laura and I settled for rides that were fairly benign. Usually, they involved getting a small inner tube and going down a fairly speedy twisting and turning water track. We went on those quite a few times.

The first time we went on a tube ride like that, we didn't know which way to start from. We thought we saw where to go, but when we got to where the ride started, we saw no inner tubes. Instead, we saw a kid standing under a sun shade guarding some red inner tubes. We didn't see any other people walking toward the ride with red tubes. They were carrying tan inner tubes.

I asked the girl there, "What are these tubes for?"

"These are our valet inner tubes. You get a wrist band when you buy the valet service and you don't have to carry a tube up the hill."

"How much does that cost?" I asked.

"22 dollars."

Ouch.

Most people looked like they opted to save the money and just carry up the inner tubes.

This wasn't as easy as it looked.

We walked back down to the start of the line, if there was one, and picked up an inner tube. It was fairly heavy. I consider myself decently strong, and yet I was having a hard time carrying these things up the hills. A lot of the time, it was just me and Julia. Considering Julia is only 8 years old, I didn't get a lot of help out of her. I started to sing slavery songs as I was carrying the tubes up the hills to get to the top of the ride.

I started to think that they were wasting some good free labor at Water World. They could stop people who were walking up the hill anyway and make they carry something else up to the top.

By the end of the day, I thought my calves were going to fall off. For days, the very act of walking became an ordeal. I thought I was going to scream every time I stood up.

Julia really enjoyed Water World. She especially liked a ride called "Lost River of the Pharoahs", which was a multi-person raft ride in the dark with all sorts of ancient Egyptian-like effects and decorations. We also liked one called "Voyage to the Center of the Earth" which has the story of a construction crew accidentally poking a hole in a big warp in the Earth's crust that leads to dinosaurs. It had some decent thrills, especially when the strobe lights hit and I couldn't tell which way we were sliding.

One of the things we tried was "The Wave" which was a dual 30 mile per hour wave pool that simulated surfing on a body board. I saw some people trying it and it didn't look that hard to me.

You take one of the body boards and you kind of fall into the wave from the top. You can either enter on your stomach or you can enter on your knees. I chose to enter on my knees. The next thing I knew, I had flipped over and was thrown around the wave to the end. I felt like my body had been twisted in several different directions.

I got up, pulled the wedgie out of my bottom and looked up to see Laura laughing her head off at me. Even Julia was laughing at me.



I decided though, that I wanted to try it again. I walked back with the body board to the top of the wave and the life guard said to me, "This time, I think you're going to want to lay on your stomach."

"Thanks," I muttered.

I managed to get through this try without wiping out.



Later, Julia said that she wanted to try it. She was pretty nervous trying it out. A few of the surfers who had basically camped out there all day were giving her tips. One man was telling her to hold onto the sides tight. Some teenage girls near the ride were yelling encouragements of "You go girl!" and "You can do it!"

Julia fell into the wave on her stomach and managed to get ride the wave without wiping out.

The teenage girls cheered for her. Julia was excited that not only had she made it without wiping out, but she also loved that the girls cheered for her.

Before we left that day, we all applied sun screen. I had urged everyone to put it on every 90 minutes or so, which Julia and I did. Laura, on the other hand, refused because she wanted to get some sun.

I tried to reason with her because we go through this all the time. Laura has very fair skin, and it doesn't take much sun for her to turn from shiny whiteness to shiny redness befitting a boiled lobster.

When she refused to put on the sunscreen, I said, "Here's how this is going to end. 'I hurrrrt! Owww! Rub some Aloe on me!'"

I mimicked Laura every time she gets too burned. It looks bad when she finally gets out of the sun and then it starts to get worse and worse as it reddens even more and then gets blisters on part of the skin, which I'm sure is very healthy for her.

When we left Water World, it was with this same problem. We got back to the hotel and Laura felt sick. It was as if she had a fever. She had the chills, but at the same time felt hot and begged me not to turn off the air conditioner.

I kept saying to her, "Gee, who was it that was predicting this was going to happen? Oh yeah, it was me!"

"Shut up!" she moaned.

I didn't escape unscathed, either. I had some mysterious rashes in several private places. There were the two long red rash streaks on my inner thighs from all the walking. Also, there were squared shaped scabs from where my mesh-lined shorts had constricted. It looked like I had been punched in the trunk by someone I was so bruised. To top it off, my back was burned. I didn't think I was burned because of my front, but when I took a shower, I felt the burn.

The day ended on kind of sad note, though. A man drowned in the large wave pool that Julia and I had swam in several times that day, which was right in front of the cabana area.

I had walked over to the locker room at 5:30 to change close before the park closed at 6 pm. As I walked out of the locker room, there were medical personnel running around and lifeguards were ushering people away from the wave pool area. I walked around the area to get back to the cabana and noticed that there were people huddled around the other side of the pool from our cabana. Laura informed me that while I was in the locker room, the lifeguards had pulled a man out of the water. She said the man's face was gray and when they turned him on his side, water and foam oozed out of his mouth. They performed CPR on him for a long while before the ambulance took him away. We found out a few days later in the paper and on several Colorado news web sites that the man had died.

Watched the Ruins....

Maybe I'm just jaded. Maybe I'm just so desensitized with horror films that I just can't get scared anymore. There are exceptions to that rule, of course. I remember seeing the Ring and getting freaked out. The first Grudge picture had some moments. I do remember getting so freaked out by the movie Witchboard when I was in college that I had to turn on every light in the house until someone finally came home. The Exorcist really freaked me out because it gave me the impression that I could fall asleep one night and wake up possessed. The Amityville Horror kind of freaked me out because I kept expecting to see lights go on by themselves and voices yelling at me to get out. The getting-shot-in-your-sleep way of dying shown in the movie freaked me out. I think I have a phobia about things happening to you while you sleep.

I'm not really sure what The Ruins had in mind in terms of scares, though. The film starts with some pretty people (Note to Hollywood. Enough with the pretty people in these films! I find myself hoping they die after enduring their spoiled-kid acting. Also, let's not make them so spoiled.) There are two women, the pretty blond and the kind of complaining, slightly nerdy brunette. The two guys can be narrowed down to the guy who wants to be a doctor and the guy with the beard. They meet a German guy, who suggests they all go on this hike to meet up with his brother, who was checking out some Mayan ruins. He hadn't heard from him in a few days. Spoilers are ahead, but you probably won't care.

So of course, they go to the Ruins. This is part of the problem. It's supposed to look like it's in the middle of a remote part of the jungle, but instead, it looks like it's right behind a well-traveled road. They get to the ruins, which looks like a small pyramid covered with vegetation. The brunette starts snapping pictures while everyone starts arguing with a local that's yelling at them. Anybody with a brain would be able to tell that he's trying to get them away from the ruins, but they get closer until the brunette steps on some vines. Then guns are drawn, their guide is shot and they are forced up the ruins.

Up top, they find the camping gear of the German guy's brother and his friends, but no one is there. They hear what sounds like a cell phone that sounds like the German guy's brother's cell phone. They hoist the German guy down a rope, but it snaps half-way down. The blond is sent down to get him since the rope crank takes two strong guys to turn. She has to jump the last 8 feet, but ends up hurting her knee. They get the German guy up on a makeshift gurney with the help of the brunette. The two women look for the cell phone sound. To their surprise, it's not a cell phone at all! It's the flowers mimicking the cell phone! The vines start to lash at them. They run out and get hoisted up to the top while killer vines try to grab them.

Long story short, they all die one by one as the killer vines prey on open wounds and panicky actions. The blond gets vines in her body from her leg wound, which drives her crazy to the point where she's cutting herself to get them out. The German guy gets his legs cut off by the would-be doctor in the only shocking scene in order to save his life since the legs were infected. All for naught though as the vines drag him away soon after, the guy with the beard pipes up, "Good thing we cut off his legs."

That's just what I was thinking.

All the while, they are held at bay by the locals that won't let them leave because they are keeping them quarantined since they've touched the vines. But as I was watching this go on, I kept thinking, "Well, I only see them guarding the one side. Why don't they try to leave on another side?"

I had to stop watching when Julia walked in after playing outside (didn't want to freak her out). Even though the movie up to this point was lame, I had to see how it ended. I saw the ending and thought, "Well, that was stupid."

This brings me to some quick rules of thumb for college kids/young couples in movies.

1. If you are in a foreign country or strange city, odds are pretty good that you will die.
2. If someone offers to take you or suggests you visit some exotic locale that's off the beaten path, turn it down because you will die.
3. If you're at this locale and people start disappearing, don't wait. Freaking run!

There is a new movie out this past weekend called "A Perfect Getaway" about a young couple that's on their honeymoon. They, of course, are hiking in a remote part of Hawaii. The movie description says this: "But when the pair comes across a group of frightened hikers discussing the horrifying murder of another newlywed couple on the islands, they begin to question whether they should turn back."

You think? They need to study my rules above.

The Denver Trip - Part 2 - Casa Bonita

I just realized I need to finish by recollections on my trip to Denver.

When we got into Denver two weeks ago, we stayed at a Marriott hotel that specialized in 'suites'. That is, every room had a "kitchen" nook and a couch with a pull-out bed. It was relatively inexpensive considering the other options.

When we got there, we noticed that there were quite a few Nebraska license plates in the parking lot. Turns out, there were a bunch of 14/15 year-old kids there playing baseball. They were all from Millard, which is where we live.

The first night there, we went to the Casa Bonita, a themed restaurant that takes all the charm of cafeteria food and combines it with a theme that can only be described as Mexico if it were in an underground cave.

I went there when I was a kid and didn't remember much about it except for a few things.

1. A long line to get our food. It wasn't exactly super long, but when you're a kid, every thing is magnified. When we got there, we got in a long line and were handed paper menus. When we finally turned a corner, it was to tell the cashier our order and then we followed another line. We get cafeteria trays and are handed random plates by workers from the "kitchen". We then took them to our table.

2. Black Bart's Cave. They have an attraction that's a haunted cave. It's not really scary, but it's filled with lights, buzzers and other things that cause a commotion. Casa Bonita was featured in an episode of South Park and when Cartman, the fat kid, walked through Black Bart's Cave, he went, "Ooooh! Scary!" This is what Laura and I said before we went into the cave. Right away, after we had passed a skull on the wall, a loud scream erupted and the skull lit up. Julia wanted to leave right now, but we couldn't as there were people behind us. She clung to me as we walked through the cave. When we got out, Julia said, "That was really scary!"

3. Hot salsa and refried beans. I think Casa Bonita was where I first tried refried beans. It was not unpleasant. I had never had them before and I liked them. The salsa, on the other hand, was a wake up call. I had never tried it before and it was like a volcano erupted in my mouth. I was in pain and I think it scared me off salsa for years. Julia stuck to her tried and true chicken strips and fries. We did get her to try a sopapia. though.

4. Cliff divers. I vaguely remember this from my visit. Every 15 minutes, they have a mini show where someone or some people will dive off the man-made cliff, have a gunfight, juggle fire torches and various other scenarios. This visit involved elaborate scenarios of pirates kidnapping damsels or a good guy/bad buy shootout. All non-cliff diving segments seemed to end in someone diving off the cliff. Even the fire juggling had diving in it. When I was there, all I remember was some guy in a speedo diving in the water. That was it. This visit had a lot of audience participation. Julia loved the shows.

5. Posing for a wanted poster. They have a mini jail where you can pose for photos in which you are part of a wanted gang from the old west. All of us kids had posed for this picture when we visited, but the photo is lost to the ages. We had fully intended to do this with Julia, but the photo was $12.50. We didn't think it was worth it. The jail wasn't big at all and it didn't look as impressive as I remembered it.

The problem with going to Casa Bonita on the first night was that Julia was so enamored by the restaurant, which she called, 'The coolest restaurant ever!' was that she wanted to go back every night. We insisted to her dismay that it was going to be the same thing every night and that it was too expensive to go again. She grumbled at this, but she lived.

http://www.casabonitadenver.com/index.htm

Julia gets a job and wants to quit it...

For Julia's birthday, we gave her a Nintendo DS. It was either buy her a few presents like we always do that total up to that amount or buy her a DS.

I noticed that she always seemed to be playing the neighbor kid's DS when we'd pick her up after school. We borrowed one for on the way to Denver and it kept Julia engrossed for the most part.

We gave her a pink DS with two used games and one new one, which is called Animal Crossing. There is an Animal Crossing game on the Nintendo Gamecube that she really liked. In that game, you create a character who moves to a new town. You choose gender, too. In Julia's game, she moved into a house and set out to live. In the original game, you could dig holes in the ground to find items, get a job to earn money, pay off a mortgage, send letters, design clothes, catch insects for a museum, catch fish to earn money and many other activities.

The DS Animal Crossing is a bigger game with more to do. Julia moved into a house and then had to get a job to pay off her mortgage when she decided to build a second floor.

She took a job at the local store run by an animal named, Tom Nook.

Julia asked me a few times how to quit the job, but I wasn't sure.

Then she suddenly burst out a while later, "Now he wants me to TALK to the customers?! Augh! I'm going to quit this job!"

Laura and I had to laugh at that. She's learning a good life lesson. Work can certainly suck.

I want to go home...

Julia likes to sit up at my work cubicle and play on my computer (my personal laptop) while I work. She's always wanted to do this. I think that she thinks that she's working like me because by the casual observer, it looks like I'm just surfing web pages when I'm actually running QA tests.

I've brought her up for the last several years every now and then. Thursday, I brought her up after lunch because I had some work to do and Thursday isn't her usual day at the summer day camp.

After about two hours of working, Julia taps me and asks me to read the board.

I turn around to read on my white board: "I want to go HOME! RIGHT NOW! I'm bored."

Steven King gets a new neighbor...

The Denver Trip - Part one, The ride out there

We weren't really going to take a vacation this year, but we had an opportunity to take a short vacation relatively cheaply. So we decided to drive out to Denver for a few days to do several things: go to Casa Banitas, go to the Water World amusement park, go to the Rocky Mountain National Park and go to the Denver Natural History Museum.

Laura was afraid that Julia would be impatient in the car, so it was decided to split up the trip into three legs.

Leg one was to drive from Omaha to Kearney and stay the night, which we did.

Leg two was setting out for Imperial, Nebraska.

Imperial is where Laura grew up from second grade on. She has said on many occasions that she really loved growing up in a small town and misses it a lot. She has also said that she would move back there in a heartbeat if she thought we'd both be able to live there with jobs. I, on the other hand, am very ambivalent about moving to the middle of BFE.

I grew up in Grand Island, which isn't exactly the mecca of awesomeness, but it did have a lot to do. It had seven screens of movies. There were two malls, a roller skating rink, many parks, an arcade, bowling alleys, and many more things to do.

I've been to Imperial before and not to knock it, there wasn't much to do. I'm sure if I had grown up there I'd be fine with that. But I didn't, so I'm biased.

Laura had me take pictures of the fields as we were approaching Imperial. She said she missed the scenery.

As we got closer to Imperial, I mentioned to Julia that her Mom said that she'd love to move back to Imperial.

Julia looked a little dubious at this.

"Does it have a Burger King?"

"No," Laura said.

"Does it have a Target?"

"No," Laura said.

"Does it have a Walgreens?"

"No," Laura said.

"Does it have a Walmart?"

"No," Laura said.

"Does it have anything?!" Julia exclaimed.

Laura laughed, "Yes! It has a Subway and a Pizza Hut."

Julia still looked a little dubious. I thought about giving her the impression that we were going to move there, but didn't want to scar her.

We stopped and ate at a local eatery that was pretty good.

Laura warned me not to post this on Facebook because a lot of Imperial people are on Facebook. My feeling on this is that it's not my fault that she and others lived in a town that was so soul-crushing boring that they're that sensitive about it. Just kidding!

As I mentioned before, Grand Island isn't exactly good time central. It's all based on what you're used to and what you missed. I regularly mock my home town.

I wouldn't exactly be against moving there if we had that rare opportunity to do so, but I've said only on the condition that we have a big acreage with plenty of room to do stuff on. Not sure how realistic that would be.

The third leg was to drive from Imperial to Denver, which wasn't as easy as it sounded. Julia and I finally had to prod Laura away from Imperial. We were very impatient to get back on the road and get to Denver.

Paper Chase - What Should We Do With Your Body? (The Lightning)

New song by one of my favorite bands, The Paper Chase, who make music so weird that you'll either love them or hate them beyond belief. The album is supposedly about natural disasters, so keep that in mind when listening to this song with is subtitled, the Lightning.



http://www.thepaperchaseband.com/WhatShouldWeDoWithYourBody_TheLightning.mp3

Harold Ramos talks about Ghostbusters 3...

http://makingof.com/filming_now/media/ghostbusters-3/harold-ramis-on-ghostbusters-3/63/231

Recent movies I saw...

Last week, I watched a movie called The Room. If you've never seen it, you're really missing out. It's one of those movies that is so bad that it's good. It's kind of gained a cult following for the midnight movie crowds. Kind of like the Rocky Horror movie set, people talk to the screen, throw things and dress up like characters from the movie.

The Room centers around a man named Johnny who seems to have everything. He's a "banker", which he mentions a lot. He has a "beautiful" girlfriend, which is mentioned a lot. He has a pseudo-son that he's putting through school. Everyone seems to like him. Then without warning, his girlfriend Lisa decides that he's too boring, even though she never seems to leave the apartment they live in, and starts sleeping with his best friend, Mark. You know Mark is his best friend because he says it all the time. Lisa's in the "computer" business because that's what she says even though she doesn't seem to own one. People come and go at odd times and some characters are never introduced. The football is tossed several times and not in the 'go deep' kind of way, but in a 'let's-stand-five-feet-from-each-other' way.

I recently got the Riff Trax audio for The Room. Riff Trax is a commentary joke track you can add to DVDs to watch alongside the actual movie. It's pretty funny.

I also watched, Choke, a movie based on a Chuck Palaniuk book. He's the author of Fight Club, which is one of my favorite movies. It stars Sam Rockwell, who you might have seen as Guy, the extra crew member in Galaxy Quest. Choke concerns a man who is a sex addict and funds his psychotic mother's nursing home stay with money from people who have saved his life. He deliberately shoves food down his throat so a kind-hearted stranger will save him. They in turn give him money every now and then because it makes them feel good. He also works at a real-life colonial villager that's like a living museum.

I really wanted to like this movie more, but it's not that funny. I wouldn't recommend it unless you really really liked Fight Club.

Lastly, we saw the movie Public Enemies last week. It's directed by Michael Mann, who directed, Heat, Hancock, the Aviator and other bigger than life films.

Johnny Depp stars as John Dillinger, the notorious bank robber. Depp plays him very well as a low-key, muted gangster with a swagger. From what I've read, this is like how Dillinger was as he'd blend into crowds due to his not-so-unique features. Christian Bale plays the man that's tasked with bringing down Dillinger. Bale does a decent job with what he's given.

The movie was pretty good. It had good action scenes, but the movie gets run down by the slow scenes in between. Near the end, I forgot who one major character was supposed to be, so I had to ask Laura to remind me. That's not a good sign. It's a fine picture if you like seeing films about the Great Depression era. Otherwise, I'd probably stay away.

Metric - Sick Muse

Good song by the band, Metric. Kind of Garbage-like, which is obvious, but I think they have their own style.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEz8N8AT-yo

2012: It's a Disaster!

This is someone's response to the 2012 movie trailer that I posted a while ago. It's as if it's a 70's disaster movie!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW2qxFkcLM0&feature=player_embedded

My secret shame...

When I worked at my last job, which was a suit-and-tie place that had really strict rules, I had an incident that I always refer to as 'My Secret Shame'.

When I got laid off from my dot com job, I basically had to take any job that I could get. The SATP (suit-and-tie place) was my only option. I went from a place where you could not only wear what you wanted, but you could pretty do much anything as long as your job was getting done. We would even play touch football in the courtyard every day.

At SATP, I had to deal with a litany of rules that would make any military academy proud. You were supposed to be at your desk by 8 am and you couldn't leave any time before 5 pm. You couldn't have food or drink at your desk. You had to keep chit chat to a minimum. You couldn't walk on the grass. You couldn't lean against any walls. There were no microwaves or refrigerators, so you had to either bring a cold lunch or leave for lunch.

My friend from the dot com place, let's call him Hank, also got a job at SATP.

Lunch was a problem for us. Eating your lunch at your desk was not doable at all. The closest I had ever gotten to eating lunch at my desk was casually reaching into my bag to pull a chip out of my ziplock bag full of chips. Then I would try to silently as possible munch on the chip.

Because we were bored and because we had nothing better to do during lunch, we started eating lunch at Hank's house. Hank lived fairly close by, so it was pretty convenient.

Sometimes we'd sit and eat and talk. Other times, we'd surf the Internet for something we both were interested in. We even had a short-lived attempt at playing a collectible card game of a famous cult television show. After several boring attempts at trying to play a game, we decided that it just wasn't our thing.

One day, Hank mentioned that he had a game that we could play. It was a game that he and his friends used to play years ago, but they all kind of stopped playing it and they gave him all of the cards. He said that he would divide the cards up into 'packs' and we could all start building decks to play.

The game was the collectible card game, Shadowfist. Just to brief you, collectible card games are games in which you have a basic deck of cards, but then you are encouraged to buy booster packs to fill you deck with better cards. Think of it was boosting up a regular deck of cards with super jokers and wild kings.

Now my only exposure to collectible card games was the game of Magic: The Gathering. During the summer when I was in college, I would hang out at some friend's house and him and his roommates would play it. I attempted to play a game with them with one of their decks, but all I knew was that I didn't understand it and I got my ass kicked.

Magic was played with an array of cards that allowed players to generate magic, or mana, and then attack their enemies with a variety of magic creatures.

Shadowfist is of a similar nature. Let me try to explain it simply. In Shadowfist, you lay out sites to generate power. Think of it as a power plant that generates a piece of power every turn. From there you bring out characters and attack your enemy's site to take control of it. After you take control of 5 sites you win the game.

That's basically it... Well, you can bring out many characters to attack other characters. Or you can defend your sites with your characters. Or you can join in attacks when someone else attacks. When a site is taken it is burned for victory... Or burned in general... Or burned for power... You can also put out non-character cards like Edges, which grant special powers. Or you can play events, which can perform a certain one-time action like removing a player from play. Or you can put weapons on characters.

So once a player starts attacking you can defend with your character, or someone else can defend you... or you can play an event card to stop the attack... or you can use your sites to send the attack to another target... Did I mention that sites do more than just generate power? Well, they can...

Sites can generate power, cause damage, absorb damage, cancel events, cancel characters... basically anything!

So the game was difficult to learn. The instruction booklet was over 100 pages long in and of itself.

We started collecting cards and playing the games at Hank's house from that day on. There in lay a problem: Hank's house.

Hank's house was not exactly a mess, but it was not immaculate. It looked like a house lived in by people that do a lot of activities. The whole family had a lot of activities which left them little time to clean. Because of this, it was Hank's job to make sure that the trash was taken out and the dining room/living room/kitchen area was clean. Seeing as how Hank was a guy who did not dress that neat (neither did I), the house was usually in a state of disarray.

When we'd come to play, we all took turns microwaving our dinners in Hank's kitchen. Usually, there were dirty dishes in the sink and on the counter. To combat cleaning a lot, Hank had resorted to buying a lot of bulk plastic silverware. The household seemed to have no formal silverware of any kind and if it did, it was hidden.

Also seeing as how the trash can was usually overflowing, us stuffing our dinners into it left an even larger heap that I'm sure didn't look too good when his wife came home.

So every day, we'd hang out at Hank's house playing Shadowfist. Most games took several days, so we resorted to putting our cards on pieces of cardboard so we could just pick them up and put them out of the way so we could start where we left off from the last game.

This system seemed to work out just fine until someone, that person being me, ruined it all.

One day, Hank's wife was home during lunch. One of the guys said something like, "Don't mind us. We won't make a mess."

Then I said something that was meant as a slam on Hank, but it didn't come out that way.

"Yeah, if we really wanted to shock you, we'd clean up the place."

As soon as I said it, I knew it was the wrong thing to say.

"Whoa!" someone piped up.

"I'm sorry," I said quickly. "I meant it as a slam on Hank, who is supposed to clean. Sorry."

The damage was done. The next day, Hank informed us that we could not play at his house anymore. So we resorted to playing in the break room at SATP, which wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing.

Things were going along fine until I got busted for playing the game by Laura.

Now Laura is certainly prone to geek tendencies. She loved the X-Files and even watches Heroes and Fringe, but she also seems to think that she's above geeky things.

After the incident below happened, Laura said almost sadly, "I didn't know you were such a geek. What happened?"

When I got busted for playing Shadowfist, there was no talking my way out of it. I was busted worse than the VCR Bill and I bought in junior high for an ungodly $330 back in the mid-80s. We had just bought this VCR and was fiddling with it on the shelf when it flipped over and smashed to the ground. Oh sure, the VCR still worked, but the front was now cracked and the auto-eject window didn't flip up when a tape tried to eject. You'd have to put your finger into the slot, flip the window up and grab the tape in one sweeping motion. It still played, but you never looked at it the same way again.

That must be how my wife saw me that day...

This incident occurred when Julia was just a toddler. Like most toddlers, Julia was into everything. She'd pull stuff off of tables, counters, couches, you name it. It was annoying, but you just got used to putting everything away. I guess I didn't realize that my work bag would be a target to incriminate me, but it did.

Julia was playing on the floor and was pulling things out of the side pockets. She had reached into one of them and had pulled out a metal Band-aid container. Julia opened the lid and pulled a card out of the container.

My wife strolled over and asked, "What do you have here, Julia?"

Laura took a look at it and her eyes got wide. She screamed at me, "OH MY GOD! ARE YOU PLAYING MAGIC!?"

I was busted, but it wasn't Magic the Gathering card game that I was playing. Just as geeky, but not Magic.

So as if I was having to explain to my wife that I was living a secret life as a con artist. I tried to explain why we played the game, but apparently, 'We were bored' wasn't a convincing argument.

I also tried to explain that I've always had these geeky tendencies, but when she started dating me, I was full on into my trying to be cool phase. I was trying to grow my hair out, trying to work out and just in general trying to be a cooler guy than I actually am. I also pointed out to her that when I first met her, she loved alternative music. I thought I was starting to date a full on alterna-chick. Of course, now she listens to country music a lot, a music for which I have a huge disdain for.

She couldn't let it go.

"This is really worrying me. I mean, you really are freaking me out right now," Laura calmly said.

"Would it help if I started to put up pictures of women in bikinis on my wall and computer desktop?" I retorted.

"It might," Laura said.

In the end, we compromised. Laura demanded that I get rid of the Shadowfist cards, and I agreed to keep them out of her sight and pretend that I had gotten rid of them. I put them all in a box that was hidden in our crawl space, which she'd find if she only would open the crawl space, which she never did, and reached for a box just to the side of the door, which I knew she wouldn't.

That night my secret was discovered, however, we had company coming over. My friend, Jeff, and his wife were coming over.

"You're not going to tell Jeff about this are you?" I asked.

"Hell, yes I'm going to tell him about this," Laura exclaimed.

"You better not! I'll never hear the end of it!"

"Oh, all right. I won't tell him," Laura said.

Cut to later that night when Jeff and his wife were over. Barely 30 minutes went by when Laura said, "Oh. Wait until you hear what I caught Bob doing?!"

"You promised!" I exclaimed.

She proceeded to tell them the whole sordid story. I guess promises aren't easily kept.

So to end this story, I promised Laura that I would give the cards back to my friend, which I didn't, and stop playing the game, which I didn't.

What's funny is that I may end up playing another collectible card game because now Julia is into Pokemon cards, which baffled me at first because I couldn't believe they were still around. Julia and her friends don't play the game, though. They just look at them. Weird...

Minesweeper: The Movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs&feature=player_embedded

My devious Harry Potter plan

I'm a fan of the Harry Potter books. I was a late comer to the book series when I started reading them after the fourth one was already out. I was skeptical at first, but got drawn in to the world. I finished the first book in a day. Then I devoured the next 3 books in just a few weeks.

They're for children, of course, but considering their length, they have some definite appeal to adults. The plots in some of the books are very involved. Sure the author, J K Rowling, tends to fall back on the familiar outline of Harry is unhappy before school starts, school starts and something weird happens, and then the plot is resolved right about the end of the school year. You can be sure that certain characters will be mean and some will be his friends. By the end of the series, J K Rowling had introduced a mountain of characters, most of which she manages to carry through to the final book. While the books are for kids, there are deaths in pretty much every book. There is suspense and some scares.

In addition to reading all the books, I've also listened to all the audio books, which includes the UK versions. The US versions are narrated by Jim Dale, who has done a lot of voice over work for TV and movies here. Most recently, he was the narrator for Pushing Daisies. He does a pretty good job. While he's good at varying his voice, some of his character voices are rather grating. Voldemort sounds too whiny and hissy. Hagrid sounds like he's a rejected pirate. Draco Malfo is supposed to talk in a drawl, but he's too drawly (if that's a word). Stephen Fry does the narration for the UK versions and he's very good. Pretty much every character sounds like you'd think they should. It's a personal preference for the most part and I prefer the UK versions.

Harry Potter world is going to be opening next year in Orlando and in anticipation of that, I've decided that I'm going to read the books to Julia. I think she thought they were too old for her, but then I pointed to the sign at the bookstore. They were in a section that said "Ages 7-12".

My devious plan is to get her hooked on the books, so that she and I will be begging Laura to go to Orlando. I'm not saying I need to go there the first year it opens, which might be packed, but sometime after that.

I started reading the other night the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (aka Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in the UK). I'm doing my best to vary my voice when characters speak. It's not as easy as it sounds.

After four days, I'm through 50+ pages. I keep asking Julia if she likes it and she enthusiastically nods her head. At times, I wonder if she's paying attention since she lays her head on a pillow by my lap, but each night when I've attempted to stop at a certain point, she'll urge me to go on. Tonight, she asked if we could rent the movie. I said that we would after we read the book.

I guess I don't mind reading the books, but it's going to be a haul to get through the last four books in the seven book series since they are rather long.

Fourth of July weekend - restless sleep, an okay movie and in-laws...

This weekend, we went to spend time with Laura's Mom and Dad, who were watching Julia for the week. The week was filled with all sorts of fun and activities for Julia, but it was starting to take a toll on her when we got there on Friday.

Maybe it's because she doesn't like sleeping in a strange house by herself or because she was off her usual schedule, but she insisted that someone sleep with her. Grandma slept with her for a few days, but because she wasn't sleeping well with Julia's squirming and how hot Julia is to lay next to, the duty went to Laura.

Laura thought that Julia had fallen asleep, but soon after she left the room, Julia came bounding down the steps wondering why Laura had left.

So I was tagged and told to lay down with Julia. I grabbed my Zune and resolved to listen to one of my audiobooks while she fell asleep. About 40 minutes later of tossing, turning, requests for water, complaints of being hot and all around not sleeping, I resolved to just act like I was falling asleep so she'd fall asleep. I closed my eyes.

The next thing I knew, it was 4:30 in the morning. I had to go the bathroom bad. I got up and went, but I decided to go to where Laura was sleeping, which is a much comfier bed. I laid down and tried to sleep, but Laura was breathing heavy and had this soft snore going on. I couldn't sleep. I went back to Julia's bed, but still couldn't sleep. It was 5 am and my stomach was growling, which was part of the problem why I couldn't get back to sleep. I left the house and drove to McDonalds. I got there just as they were unlocking the doors and ordered a Bacon, Egg and Cheese McGriddles meal.

I got back and chatted with Laura's Dad for literally 3 hours until finally Julia got up. I then went back to bed and slept for 3 hours. When I got up, Laura announced to me that she was going out with her Mom and I was to get some cake pans out of the oven. I was warned not to forget. I didn't.

She also said that she was going to go see A Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian with some family members. I suggested that I could go see The Hangover while they were at the movie. I had no desire to see the second A Night at the Museum movie. It looked rather unnecessary to have a sequel.

Well on the way to the theater, Laura strongly urged me to see her movie. I refused. Then she said that I was being selfish. I said I wasn't. She accused me of isolating myself from her family. I reminded her that I've talked to her Dad more than she had this weekend. She said that I was being an asshole. I protested that I was not. With rising vocals, Laura said that I would be viewed as a rather selfish bastard (not in those words) if I went to see a movie by myself while She, Julia, Her grandma, her Grandma's sister, her Aunt, her Aunt's husband, her cousin, her uncle, and her nephew went to see A Night at the Museum 2.

I sighed and relented. Jeez, it's as if you can't make a selfish choice during a family weekend without crap coming down on you!

So we saw the movie. It was okay. It had some funny moments, but for the most part, it's what I thought it was going to be. The movie centers around Ben Stiller's character from the first film no longer a security guard, but an infomercial pitchman. He's successful, but his absence leads to the exhibits being shut down and sent to the Smithsonian for storage. They call him for help (not sure how they managed to get a hold of a phone, let alone his number). He shows up and steals a security badge from a guard, dresses up as a guard and attempts to save the living exhibits and the Egyptian artifact that keeps them alive.

Along the way, he encounters some new exhibits like General Custer and Amelia Airheart, played by Amy Adams.

I guess what got me through this mediocre movie was wondering about the plot loopholes. He manages to infiltrate the Smithsonian and no one notices that all the exhibits have come to life. I kept thinking, "Where are the guards? Shouldn't there at least be video surveillance?" At several points in the movie, giant windows are busted through. No one thought to turn on the security alarms, I guess. After all, it's only the most important museum in America with lots of priceless artifacts and memorabilia.

After the film, it was time for people to come over. With that many republicans in the room, I was treated to a lot of Obama conspiracy theories and general complaining about the state of America and those idiots that voted for Obama. I am always under strict orders not to argue with Laura's family. Seeing how I value my life, I never get in arguments with her relatives. It's amazing how much you can tune out when you fear reprisal from your wife.

It wasn't bad, though. It never is. I like my in-laws and look past their views. I'm sure they know mine and look past them as well as I'm quite the catch.

The fourth ended with me lighting off a mountain of fireworks bought by Laura's uncle.

Julia was ordered to take a quick bath, while I was ordered to get some benedryl to try and knock Julia out. I gave her two of the chewable kind.

At 9 am the next morning, Julia was still not up. Laura's Mom asked us, "Jeez. How much did you give her?"

Finally, Julia walked out groggily at 9:30 in the morning.

"I'm up!" she announced.

Music: Phoenix - 1901

Good song...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBR_FVBED4w

This looks like an interesting movie...

Since 2012 is coming fast upon us, it's only natural that movies about the latest end of the world date would be coming out.

For those of you that don't know, the end of the Mayan calendar is December 21, 2012. It's believed that the world will either end, change drastically followed by a rebirth or machines will turn against their masters.

Here's a trailer for a new film starring John Cuzack coming out in November that explores the second idea.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mktuxQLWrSs&annotation_id=annotation_279660&feature=iv

Julia masters the art of picking locks...

Thursday, I was home with Julia. I was working from home downstairs while Julia was upstairs reading, playing and watching television. I locked the pantry door because if I don't, Julia will take that opportunity to just mindlessly eat whatever is in the pantry.

I came upstairs at one point to check out what she was doing.

There she was trying to jimmy open the door lock with a bobby pin.

She saw me and tried to hide the bobby pin behind her back.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Nothing..." she said.

"Are you trying to pick that lock? I'd like to see you try."

I was sure she wouldn't be able to do it. The lock seemed a little more complicated than the ones we had on our doors as children. Those were easy to jimmy open. All it took was a nail and you were in.

These doors in my new house take a special key.

She rooted around some more and not 10 seconds later, she had it open.

"Aha!" Julia exclaimed. "They don't call me Julia Lockpants for nothing!"

I thought, "People call her Julia Lockpants?"

Had to ground Julia tonight...

So Julia was out with BFF tonight. We had told her that she was supposed to be home at 8:30. We had her put on a watch to make sure she was aware of the time. She did show up a little late, about 8 minutes, but at least she showed up pretty much on time.

When she got here, she asked me if BFF could stay and play. I did say she could stay for a bit, but then about 30 minutes later, I told her that BFF had to go home.

BFF asked Julia if she wanted to go to the park with her.

"Sure!" Julia said and started to head upstairs.

"Whoa!" I protested.

"What?" Julia asked.

"Get back here! I didn't say you could go to the park."

Julia gave me a sad face.

Then proceeded a few minutes of pleading (on Julia's part) and lots of "No"s (on my part).

Finally, Julia asked if she could just ride with her home.

I said okay as long as she was back in 10 minutes.

...

40 minutes later, I hopped in my car and went around the neighborhood to see where she was. I checked the park she usually hangs out at (about 4 blocks away). She wasn't there.

So I went down to the other park (4 blocks from the first park). This time, I spotted her. She was with BFF.

I rolled down the window and declared, "You're in trouble."

When she got home, I told her that she was grounded because this wasn't the first time that she told me one time and then proceeded to come back at another time. Each time, she says she's sorry, but this time, I felt I needed to make a statement.

The punishment was one of two choices: no TV or video games all day tomorrow or no BFF tomorrow.

Surprisingly, Julia chose no BFF.

Laura and I are no strangers to getting grounded. I've even gotten the no TV grounding. I'll have to save a grounding story for another day, though...

Audiobook - I listened to the New Testament...

I didn't actually listen to the whole New Testament, but just the first four books, which chronicle the story of Jesus. The reason why I did this is because I'm preparing to read a book called, Lamb, which satirizes the years between when Jesus was 12 and when he reappears at 30. There is no record in the New Testament about that.

The book's full title is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. It's by one of my favorite authors, Christopher Moore. He's done many a satirical book. There was Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, which centered around a newly minted vampire and her human love interest. A Dirty Job centered around a second-hand shop dealer who finds out that he's been chosen to be a death merchant, a person that collects souls, on the same day that his wife dies after giving birth to his daughter, who may or may not the Illuminati. Those are just two of his books. All are funny.

Like I said above, I was listening to get myself better acquainted with the life of Jesus before I listened to Lamb. I had, of course, heard a lot of the stories before like the walking on water, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the tempting by Satan, the miracles, the last supper, the betrayal, the crucifixion and the rising from the dead after 3 days. But as I listened closely to his teachings, there were a few things that struck me about Jesus.

For one thing, divorce is viewed rather harshly by him. He says that divorce should only be allowed if it's because of infidelity and that if you marry a woman who is divorced then you are committing adultery. This means that a whole lot of people, especially those family values politicians on the right are directly going against the word of Jesus.

For another thing, Jesus' followers seemed to be pretty dense sometimes. Time and time again, he would perform great miracles, but then when a challenge came along that was similar, they were amazed as if he had never done it before. At several points, Jesus gets frustrated with them by asking how they can't believe. If that was me, I'd be like, "Dude! You've seen me do this before! Stop being a dunderhead!"

In terms of plot, several parts of the New Testament are rather stilted. It's as if it was patched together from tales told many years apart (kidding). For example, after one miracle, he tells his disciples to go on ahead in their boat while he prays, but then has to walk across the water to get to the boat when the water gets too rough. Better time management might have helped or they could have just waited for him.

As for the crucifixion, I am reminded of the beating Jesus took in the Passion of the Christ. I kept waiting for the prolonged whippings and beatings in the New Testament, but there were few mentions of it. At one point, he's given a crown of thorns and it then dressed in purple after they've mocked him. I guess I'm confused as to where the prolonged beatings were added.

The version I listened to was very good to listen to. Each character was voice by a different person and there were sound effects of crowds and weather to add to the story. If you were going to read the New Testament by just listening to it, I think I would highly recommend it. It definitely seems to save some time and enhances what's going on.

Single Frame - Exact Copy

Another song I like. The rest of this band's album? Not so much...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNGQYwXN0H8

I get a physical and am reminded how much I hate needles...

I went to a new doctor on Friday morning because I had been meaning to find a new doctor and a health fair we had on Thursday got me into high gear. Since my Dad died, I've had this cough that won't go away. We all got colds when we all got together for my Dad's passing. At the health fair I mentioned, a breathing test confirmed that I may need to see a doctor. The lung function was a little low.

I kind of skimmed my health insurance's web site for doctor and health clinics close to my house and chose one that didn't look too expensive. The one I chose is right next to the local hospital.

I went to this doctor and got a physical, which I hadn't had in about 18 months. My new doctor did the usual checking eyes, ears and listening to my breathing. I was then instructed to go down to their lab to get my blood drawn.

I joked, "Hopefully, they can find a vein in these."

I held out my arms to the doctor elbows down to show my lack of visible veins.

The doctor said, "Oh, they do this all day long. They're experts at drawing blood."

I wasn't very confident about that. I've had a lot of bad luck when it comes to my veins.

There was the time when I was in college that we all went downtown to the plasma center that gave you 20 or so dollars for giving your plasma. The workers there would stick a needle into your arm, which was attached to a machine that sucked out your blood, spun it around various tubes, removed the plasma and inserted it back into your body.

Most people just relaxed and did homework while they sat there with the robotic Dracula sucking out their life. I tried to do that, but noticed something wrong. My arm started to hurt. It felt like a giant vacuum was trying to suck at the bend in my arm. I asked for assurance from the assistant that this was normal. She looked at the machine and tried some settings or whatever, but it continued this way. She left and returned with a doctor. Pretty soon, I had three doctors around me rubbing their chins thoughtfully and nodding. They would take turns twisting the needle in my arm to see if it would get the machine to go. They explained that the machine was starting and stopping because it didn't have enough blood to keep going, so it would shut down and start up again until it had a steady flow of blood.

One of them explained after a while that it appeared that my vein was constricting to a needle being placed in it.

I asked if I could quit, but was told that 'No', I had to grin and bear it because the machine would quit when it was done.

Three and an half hours later, I walked out with my sore arm and my cash.

Everyone at the dorm asked what had happened to me because they had all left hours ago. Apparently, the procedure is only supposed to last 30 minutes. My brother, Bill, told me that he had noticed that there were doctors huddled around someone, and he was wondering what was going on with the poor guy over there. Then one of the doctors moved, and he saw that the poor guy was me!

I swore I'd never give plasma again, which I didn't.

However, I did attempt to make some cash later in college when I tried for the latest medical experiment from the local lab that used college students as test subjects. I was a little distressed when I went in to the test to see if I was eligible when the lab assistant informed me if I got into the experiment that they'd have to draw my blood every hour on the hour for over 3 days!

Then to make matters even worse, they had to draw two large vials of blood to test against to see if I qualified. The assistant managed to get one vial of blood drawn, but then found a lot of trouble with the second vial. The vein just seemed to shut off, so no matter how much the assistant gently pulled, twisted and prodded, no more blood was coming into the vial.

The assistant tried the other arm, but could only get about one fourth of the vial filled with blood. Finally, they took a small needle and pulled the rest out of a bulging vein in my hand, which tickled let me tell you.

I didn't make the experiment, which I secretly thanked God for.

Back to Friday, though...

When I got to the lab, I was ushered to a seat with large arm rests for when the technician draws blood.

The lady asked me which arm I wanted to have blood drawn out of.

I chose my left arm.

She tied that elastic band around my arm and looked for a vein.

I again joked, "Good luck finding a vein."

She smirked a little because I'm sure she hears that all day.

I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable prick. Finally, I felt her swab my arm, which was followed by pain.

I winced.

There were a few pricks of pain. Then it stopped. Relieved, I sighed and opened my eyes. Much to my horror, the technician had not drawn any blood at all! She was moving the needle around in my arm.

"Hmm... Having a problem?" I asked.

"Oh, I can't seem to get into this vein. It's there, but it's not cooperating."

I closed my eyes again and braced for it to end. Suddenly, pain shot through my arm as if she had stabbed me there.

I yelped and screamed a little.

I looked at my arm. She had not drawn any blood at all!

"All of that pain for nothing!" I exclaimed while laughingly nervously.

The technician didn't seem to think it was funny. She switched arms and got it done pretty quick.

I told Laura this story, but instead of sympathy, I got mockery.

"God, you're a wuss," she snorted.

Yes, I am.

If All Movies Had Cell Phones...

This is a good video that explores the concept of if all your favorite movies had cell phones in them. I noticed that as we've advanced in this immediate technology that movies have either compensated by allowing the characters to go beyond today's technology (CSI with their 'enhancing' of video as an example) or they go out of their way to explain that something is blocking the transmission.

This video explores something that I think about from time to time when I read a book. One of my favorite books, Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp by C.D. Payne, was written in the early 90s and set during that time. As a result, a lot of the book revolves around outdated technology road blocks. The main character, Nick, a horny teen looking to woo a girl he meets during summer vacation, is constantly has roadblocks. His girlfriend sends him letters, which are torn up by his Mom. He accepts a lot of collect calls that run up several phone bills. He and his friends have to speak in code to avoid prying parental ears.

If the book was set today, there are cell phones, which he might not have automatically. He does have a computer in the book, so instant messaging would be a natural work-around.

The movie based on the book is coming out this fall staring Michael Cera, so it'll be interesting if they set it in the present, which might actually speed the story up because a lot of it is Nick anxiously waiting for a letter or a phone call.

Dad's Eulogy...

As many of you know, my father passed away on Wednesday, May 20th. It seems like yesterday that I was talking to him. Now he's gone, but his memory remains. I think about him all the time.

Here's the eulogy that I wrote. We gave copies to people when they came to his celebration of life.


MEMORIES OF A MAN, MY DAD

My Dad was born Richard Joseph Homan. He was the youngest of four siblings. He is survived by a wife, five children, 12 grandchildren and one great grand child. He is also survived by four refrigerators; one deep freezer; seven televisions; eight phones; an old ice maker; 4 rain gauges; hundreds of drill bits; 1 machete; 1 plastic Michelin man; 11 peanut jars of odds and ends; over 100 jars and cans of nuts, bolts, nails, screws, washers, hinges, latches, brackets, wires, and other metal pieces; 9 9/16 wrenches; 7 7/16 wrenches; 3 cowbells; 2 iron horses; over 50 bottle openers and 39 lag bolts.

My Dad was well-rounded man. He liked to bake cookies, to make salsa, to grow tomatoes, to watch birds and to watch football (especially Nebraska football).

There didn't seem to be a Sunday that would go by where my Dad wasn't baking his chocolate chip cookies. The best times to get them were before they were baked and right after they came out of the oven. He'd scowl if he'd see you sneak some of the cookie dough, but I don't think that he minded that much.

He started dabbling in salsa when I was in college. He'd make tons of batches of the stuff. He thought it was pretty good, and I knew that a lot of people liked it. He'd give away jars of the stuff whether you wanted it or not. He ran into some snags with it early one, like the batch that wasn't red enough for him, so he used red food coloring, which turned the salsa pink.

He started his bird watching later in life. He had several bird feeders and a bird bath. I gave him a couple of bird watching guides to help him out.

This leads into a short story of mine about Dad trying to protect his birds.

A year or two ago, my Dad had it up to here with the squirrels. Apparently, the squirrels in his backyard were eating the bird seed that he used in his bird feeders (naturally) and he was doing something about it.

A previous bird feeder problem occurred when black birds moved in and were eating all his food and scaring the smaller birds away. Undaunted and a little aggravated, my Dad did what any reasonable bird lover would do, he bought a pellet gun and started shooting them.

Now before you think my Dad was cruel to animals, you have to understand that he wasn't intending to kill these birds. He was merely trying to scare them off... and scare them off he did. He'd sit in the garage watching the bird bath. A black bird would fly down to the feeding area, my Dad would cock and pump the pellet gun, and he'd fire off a pellet. Usually, it'd whistle by the bird, who would then be so startled that it would fly away. A few times, I think it hit a small part of the wing, but then was still able to fully fly away.

My Mom kept telling my Dad that "one of these times, the animal control people are going to see you!", but he kept on at it. After a while, the black birds got the message and stopped coming.

The squirrels were another matter. We were over at my brother Bill's place for his daughter's birthday. My brothers and I started talking to my Mom. One of us asked, "How is Dad doing?" It was a common question because you never knew what was happening with my Dad. Seeing as how my Dad was retired, he had plenty of time to spend as he put it 'watching the world go by', which also meant that he had plenty of time coming up with new things to obsess about.

For example, my Mom told us that my Dad had jars upon jars of nuts and bolts that he took from my Grandpa's barn before it was torn down. My Dad had been sitting outside and sorting through the nuts and bolts. We guess that he was sifting out the 'good' from the 'bad.' To my Mom, they are all bad and she admitted that she'd been systematically throwing a jar away every now and then. "But he'll never notice," she had said.

Knowing my Dad like I did, I thought, "He probably does notice." Sure enough, barely a day after she told me that, my Dad suddenly complained, "Well, your mother keeps throwing away things I'm trying to save! She's throwing out my jars of bolts!"

I suppressed a smile and said nothing.

The squirrels had him at his wit's end, I guess. He'd seen the squirrels out there eating all the bird seed that he had left for the birds. At first, he had tried to hide the food from the squirrels. While that was semi-successful, they really ticked him off by biting through his sun room's screen door and pillaging the food from the bucket it was stored in.

Seeing what his options were, my Dad decided to do the most reasonably humane thing he could think of, which was to capture and relocate all the squirrels.

He set out to do this by getting an animal trap, one of those cages that allowed the animal to walk in, but closed before they could walk out. He finally got his first victim and instructed my Mom to dispose of the critter by the ball field by her work. She took it out there, opened the cage, and set it free. The squirrel shot out of the cage, turned around to look at her once as if to say 'thanks' and took off for the nearest tree.

Dad managed to trap yet another one, but my Mom started to put her foot down on this behavior.

"People are going to think that I'm weird!" she scolded.

The success of trapping tapered off rather quickly, though. When my Dad had still only caught only two squirrels several weeks later, he threatened to take even more drastic measures.

My Mom said, "You're going to be fined for cruelty to animals, you know!"

Dad snapped, "It's a small price to pay for my happiness!"

My Dad wasn't necessarily a cruel man. He just wanted the thoughtless animals from eating his food that he left for other animals.

Our Dad was also one of the toughest men that we knew. My brother, Joe, remembers being at the old family farm doing some work in the barn, when a large beam fell and hit Dad squarely in the chest. Joe said that he shrugged it off and continued working all day as if nothing happened.

I had heard stories about fights that Dad had gotten into. One that we talked about was when Dad went to the liquor store and encountered two guys giving a guy he knew a hard time. Dad took both of them on. His excuse to Mom was, "They were messing with my friend. I had two fists. What was I supposed to do?"

I can verify that Dad hit hard. As one of five kids that frequently got into trouble, Dad would have to spank us once to make his point every now and then. You did not want to be on the receiving end of one of those open-palmed spanks. If memory serves, it felt like his hands were made of solid rock. You still saw the brute force of those hands from time to time. One day when my brother, Bill and I were around 12, we heard some yelling upstairs, followed by a commotion of chairs, followed by a stomping of feet downstairs. My brother, Paul, zoomed past us with a whimper followed closely by Dad. Paul slammed the door to his room in time for my Dad to punch a hole through the first layer. Apparently, Paul was smarting off to Dad, which was not an uncommon occurrence in our house and Dad had had enough that day. I thought to myself, "There is no way I'm going to mess with Dad when I get as old as Paul."

I had no idea what set my Dad off that night, but my brother, Paul, and my Dad laughed about it years later like it was a planned prank.

Growing up with my Dad was like growing up with Tim Allen's character on Home Improvement if instead of rewiring things, he built things. My Dad always seemed to have some solution to a problem by merely using nails, wood (paneling, plywood or real wood) and some elbow grease. At our old house on First street, Dad built a bar with a sink, a kind of sitting booth, an insert into the wall for a TV and inserts for fish tanks. The summer when I was in kindergarten, we moved to the current house on Anna street. It's a three-bedroom house. When we moved in, Dad constructed walls downstairs to make three more bedrooms, a laundry room and a bathroom. When one of the rooms wasn't big enough, Dad moved two of the walls a few feet over to make more room.

He was always trying to improve his set up. He'd build a shelf within a desk and then he'd build mini shelves that would go on the bigger shelves. On his shelves were every type of container either store bought or re-used from its previous life as a cigar box or a wine container.

Dad was also a scavenger. If he saw something while driving that was being thrown out, he'd come back later to claim it. One of our mini-closets for our downstairs was a rolling rack that was being thrown out by a store. Dad saw it and came back for it later.

It was often that we'd be riding with our Dad on the highway when he'd spot something on the side of the road. He'd hit the brakes, pull over to the side and drive backwards all the way to the item he spotted, which might be something like a bungee that someone had dropped. If it still looked like it worked, he'd pick it up.

You could always count on my Dad to help out. He was always willing to help us move in and out of our homes and apartments.

When Bill and I moved into our first apartment off campus while we were in college, we opted for one that was a fairly large two bedroom apartment. My Dad showed up with our stuff that we had packed into a horse trailer. He showed up at the apartment in a fowl mood. For starters, it was far from campus. Then he had issues with the apartment itself in that it was on the second floor.

"Couldn't have gotten one on the ground floor?" Dad asked.

"We didn't really have a choice, Dad" one of us tried to explain.

Dad scowled. That was late summer of 1991. Even then, Dad was starting to show the signs of his years of smoking. He huffed and puffed up the stairs with our stuff. It was a hot August day and he was pouring with sweat.

When all the furniture was off loaded. Dad brought up a fan for us to use. It was a metal shop fan that was round like it was some sort of stool. He turned it on and showed us the various speeds that it had. It started to rattle a little.

Dad said, "Oh that's normal. If it starts to rattle like that you just give it a little kick like this."

Dad kicked the fan. The rattle stopped.

"See? Just kick it."

Sure enough, we started kicking it whenever it rattled.

As Dad was leaving, he turned to us and said, "You guys are never going to be able to afford this."

Thanks for the vote of confidence Dad!

Dad was a Nebraska Cornhusker fan. He didn't go to many games, but he'd gladly buy tickets for us kids. He was just glad to do it because we were fans.

He was a big optimist about the Huskers. The year that the Huskers went 7-7, he boldly proclaimed that they'd win the national championship. I don't think he ever missed a game that was on television.

My Dad was a Bud man through and through. That is, until he switched to Busch Light, but for decades, he could be counted on for being a loyal Budweiser customer. My Dad didn't drink pop, so it was only natural that we'd see him with a Bud in his hand. That is not to say that he had a problem though. If he was somewhere and was offered a beer and they didn't have Budweiser, he'd just go without. Now that's loyal!

He was also prepared. Whenever the weather report called for some severe weather, he'd go out and buy a few more cases.

One time, I was visiting from college. My Dad met me in the garage and asked me to take his beer out of the cooler and put them on the shelf in the garage. I complied, but noted that he had six cases in the trunk.

I mentioned this to my Mom, whose reply was, "Six? He usually buys nine!"

He drank out of a Bud koozy. Our various dwellings were scattered with various Budweiser coasters, commemorative bottles, clocks, beer signs, fridge magnets, and other Budweiser memorabilia.

His other drink of choice was coffee, which he drank a lot.

I'd see commercials for those Mister Coffee machines and think that Dad would enjoy that, but he was an old-style percolator man through and through. There wasn't a day that didn't start with coffee. Sometimes, he'd forget to buy coffee filters so he'd have to compromise by using toilet paper or Kleenex. He'd really let Mom hear it if the only thing available was colored, scented tissue paper.

He never took sugar or cream. Even with the popularity of gourmet flavored coffees, iced coffees and cappuccinos, he never once tried them. It was black or nothing.

For food, Dad was just as simple. He was a meat and potatoes man, that is until he discovered that he was allergic to starches, then it changed to just meat. He loved chicken, especially gizzards and livers. He enjoyed eating his home-caught catfish when we had a summer trailer.

Dad was a very well-liked man. He got that way by being himself. He was always generous to other people. Even in his last days, he would have us stock his snack stash with cookies and snack cakes, which he'd often give to the nurses.

Dad very rarely was out in public in a fowl mood. He'd always have a kind word to say to people when they walked in when he was at his usual place, at the end of the bar: behind it. He'd stand behind the bar so he could see who was coming in and to say 'Hi' to people. If the people working behind the bar minded, they didn't say so. That's just where he stood.

I guess you could say that he was an optimist... for the most part. He never talked about being 'Stressed”. Speaking of the word, 'Stress'. My Dad hated that word. One time, I made the mistake of saying to my Dad that I was 'stressed out' because of college. He immediately scoffed by saying, "I don't believe in stress. It's a made up word. What do you have to be stressed about anyway? I bid on multi-million contracts every day. If anyone can say that they're stressed, it's me!"

From then on, I made sure to use the word, "pressure". He didn't mind that one.

But as much as he was personable towards people he knew, he was very much against giving out your personal information.

For example, one day my Dad and I went to Radio Shack to get some batteries. Normally he didn't go to Radio Shack, but we were at the mall for some reason and he said he needed batteries, so I pointed to Radio Shack, which was the nearest store.

We walked in and sure enough, there were batteries. He grabbed a pack and set it on the counter. He pulled out his wallet.

The man behind the counter asked, "Can I get your name and address, sir?"

Dad asked, "Why do you need my name and address?"

"I just need it to complete the sale, sir."

"But I don't want to give you my name and address."

"I'm sorry, but I need it."

"But I just want to buy these batteries."

"Well I'm sorry sir," the man persisted. "But I can't open the register unless I have your name and address."

Dad eyed the kid a little.

"So you're telling me that you can't just let me pay cash for these batteries?"

"That's right."

"What do you need my name and address for anyway?" Dad asked.

"They use it to send out a mailer to you." the clerk explained.

"But what if I don't want a mailer?" Dad asked.

"I'm sorry. But like I said, I can't open the register without your name and address."

Without a word, Dad put his wallet back in his pocket and left the store without buying any batteries. For the rest of the day, everyone he talked to was treated to that story which ended with the phrase: "And I picked my money up and walked out the door!"

Being a teenager, I was like "You sure told them, Dad!" Well not to his face. I thought it. I may have been young, but I wasn't crazy.

Because he didn't like giving out any more personal information than he had to, he had a card by his phone that had written on it every magazine subscription he had with the expiration date and every donation that he gave and the day he gave it. That way, if he got a call from a telemarketer telling him that his magazine subscription was about to expire or he last gave a donation at a certain date, he'd whip out the card, check it and tell the telemarketer that his subscription still had so many months left or that he gave at a date different than they had told him.

I don't know what grand plans Dad had about how he'd live his life, but I know he probably didn't want to spend the last several months of it in hospitals or stuck at home. Even so, I'm so glad that he lived long enough to enjoy several years of retirement.

He said to me on several occasions that he was just sitting watching the world go by, which is what he was reduced to for the past year or so. He lamented about that once. He said, “We thought we were all invincible.”

If he were here today, well he'd probably be cursing us out for throwing away a lot of perfectly good tools, wire, bolts, nuts, nails, screws and various things he needed that were in his garage and study. But he wanted me to make sure and tell everyone, “Enjoy and have fun.”

So Dad, here's to you: “Enjoy and have fun.”