Weekend Movies

I didn't really care for it that much. I thought the actors playing Heff and Wilfred were not very realistic. They couldn't really pull off the squirrel's butt on the back of Heff's head. I guess modern SFX technology is not really up to that level yet.

Weekend Update

Ah, Memorial Day weekend. Traditionally the start of summer, although we have almost a month until the solstice. The smell of BBQ and Blog Wars are in the air. I'll be anxiously awaiting the prosaic responses as they start rolling in from places further north and south of here.

In other news, Marissa, Jack and I have spent a wonderful weekend together. Yesterday we went to the zoo, and despite the crowds we had a lot of fun. We're working on Jack learning all of his colors right now, so the zoo is a great place to do that. He still tends to call everything blue or purple right now, but he's getting better every week.

This afternoon we went to my friend Hal and Lisa's house for a cookout with a lot of my caving friends. Hal's last name is Love, and yes he has a PhD in Biology, so we get to call him Dr. Love. How awesome is that? It's almost as good at the guy named Dr. Strange that we met last year when Jack was getting tubes put in his ears.

Thursday's Thoughts from Friday Night

Well, let's see.... American Idol is done with - and I have no idea who won since I am also not henpecked and I also don't burn brain cells on useless reality shows or puttering around a rundown piece of crap hotel on the crap side of a major American city wishing one of the pimps outside would finally bust a cap in my ass and put an end to it all. No sir! Also, there's nothing like getting up in the morning knowing you still have all of your hair. This can't be stressed enough. I like to just stand in front of the mirror and admire my lack of a bald spot, often for minutes at a time. Even better, I can walk out of my home without having to instinctively move in an erratic pattern to avoid the gunfire from the various gangs fighting over their turf.

Fried Hatch

You know that part of the lawnmower that gets really hot? You know, the part that has a big symbol of a hand that is crossed out? Yeah, that one. It's not a good idea to put your palm up against it. Trust me on this one.

Weekend Walking

Jack and I hit the greenway twice over the weekend. On Saturday we parked at Two Rivers Park and walked across the Cumberland River on the new greenway bridge to Shelby Bottoms Park that just opened a few weeks ago. It's a nice bridge. It's really high over the river, probably 200 or 300 feet maybe. It's hard for me to judge. It was high enough that I had a little bit of acrophobia when we first started across it.

According to my new Omron pedometer, we did a little over 3 miles total. It's about half a mile from the parking area to the other side of the bridge, and then we went about another mile before we turned around. Jack rode in the stroller for most of it, but he got out and walked for probably a half mile total. For some reason he prefers to walk on the grass at the edge of the pavement, although he will take off running down the middle of the greenway for several minutes at a time.

On Sunday after church and lunch, Marissa and Victoria wanted to shop for clothes so Jack and I did about a mile on the Stones River Greenway next to Kohl's in Hermitage. We didn't have the stroller, so he walked some of it and rode on my shoulders for some of it. The river was running pretty fast, and at one point we saw a mallard duck sailing down the middle of the river, moving at a pretty good clip. He tried to swim upstream at one point, but didn't make any progress at it and eventually just took off and flew up the river, much to Jack's delight.

Since I got a replacement pedometer last week, I've been trying to walk a lot more, but I'm having some real issues with tendonitis in my right Achilles tendon. I'm supposed to go to a specialist about it, but I probably won't be able to until after our Florida trip in June.

The Reading Hatch

Unofficially, I have a goal of trying to read 52 books this year, so I'll be averaging one per week. I've also turned into a total cheapskate, so I've only actually purchased one book so far this year, and that was this past week when I ordered a new pedometer from Amazon and needed to add a few dollars to my order to get free shipping. Every other book has either been the free PDFs that Tor books is sending out this year if you sign up for their newsletter, or from the library.

I've also been reading several books over a span of weeks and months any time I need to kill a few minutes in the bookstore or even at Kroger. Yes, I know this is horribly cheap, but I do actually purchase a cup of coffee almost every time I'm in there, so I'm not completely ripping them off. I don't actually mean to do this most of the time, but I read pretty quickly, so just starting a book to see if I like it can mean I read 20 or 30 pages of it.

So far I've finished 16 books, which puts me a little behind the pace I need to be since we're in the 19th week of the year so far. Since I'm usually reading several books at once, I'm not too far off though, and should be able to catch up fairly easily, especially since a week at the beach is coming up in June. Ah, thong season approaches, eh Bill?

Happy Birthday Bro!

My brother Brian turned 35 today. Hard to believe. I was five when he was born, and I still remember my Granddaddy and MawMaw Strother taking me up to Brookwood Hospital to try to sneak me up to see him. Back then they didn't let five year olds visit the maternity wards. Of course, I was mostly disappointed since I had made my Mother's OB/GYN promise me for months that I was going to have a little sister. I used to grab the doctor's hand and refuse to let go of it until he promised. Obviously this was before ultrasounds were common place as well.

Movie Review: Iron Man

Ok, I'm a comic book geek. I don't buy comics anymore, but when I was a kid I read Marvel comics constantly. One of my favorites was Iron Man and the Avengers, though I tended to lean more towards Captain America and Thor in those days.

I was pretty happy with the first Spiderman and X-Men movies, but then they got pretty far off kilter and the last two showings from those two franchises were pretty disappointing. So I was worried about how they would do with Iron Man, and when I first heard they had picked Robert Downey Jr. to play Tony Stark, I thought they had ruined it right off the bat.

I guess I was picturing him from his brat pack days though. I still don't think of myself being middle-aged, and so I guess I can't picture Downey being middle-aged either. As it turns out, I was completely wrong. He was the perfect choice to play Stark. The movie was just about perfect as well. My only quibble was the huge hole in his chest where his implant goes. The implant itself is something I would have been fine with if they had just left it out completely. There's nothing wrong with retconning something if it really just doesn't make much sense.

Still, that's a very minor thing. I have to say that this is the best movie I've ever seen that's based on a comic book character. I'm sure some of the Batman fanboys will disagree with me, but I was never a huge fan of DC books anyway.

Now I am still really worried about how they're going to pull off the upcoming Thor movie. I was a huge fan of this comic, especially in the days when Walt Simonson was writing it. What I'm really worried about is if the CGI is up to making someone look like Thor should look like. I guess time will tell.

Rebate

Well, the rebate check from the IRS came in Friday morning, just in time for us to drop about $500 to get brakes put on both cars. The Civic was down to metal on metal on the front left, and needed pads on all 4 brakes, so the new rotor and pads and labor were $260 at Budget Brakes.

A few hours earlier, the Montero was in the same shop and needed a new rotor and pads on the back brakes, plus they don't make cheap pads for it, so it was $235. The rest is going for our vacation in Florida next month. I think it's going to cost us at least $250 to $300 just to pay for the gasoline going down there and back.

Speaking of gas, the price actually started going down a little around here the last few days. I was actually grateful to only pay $3.38 a gallon today when I filled up Marissa's car. I still remember being pissed when it took $25.00 to fill the Montero up a few years ago. Now I'm just glad it's back under fifty bucks at least for a little while.