Parent's Night

Today Catherine stayed home again because she was still showing a slight fever last night. She seems better tonight, but she has managed to infect Ginger with whatever it was she had. So Ginger's feeling pretty miserable tonight. Then to top things off, Ginger went and laid down on the couch, so that's pretty much off limits to me now as it's totally infected. No way I'm going near that thing without spraying it down with Lysol first (I only say that because I know it's going to annoy her that I said it).

Tonight was parent's night at school. This is where you get to the school and the kids do the work they normally do, but the parent's are there so you can see what they're doing. With kids and parents, it's pretty crowded, even though they divide the class up into two separate one hour segments. Quinn seems to be working really hard on trying to read and improving his spelling skills. So kudos to him. He can kick butt at three letter words. He starts having a bit of trouble when you get to five or more letter words. I think he can do it, but because he can't do it within 5 seconds he gets frustrated and gives up. Catherine and Ginger stayed home since Ginger is definitely contagious and Catherine might be. Not sure what's going to happen tomorrow if Ginger's still not feeling well. I may end up having to come home, but unfortunately I have a ton of stuff at work that needs attention also. If push comes to shove though, work will just have to wait. Hopefully she'll be feeling a little bit better tomorrow, but since her Mom was sick for several days and Catherine was under the weather for several days, I can't say I'm too optimistic about tomorrow (maybe I'll get it too, then things will really be fun).

So I've noticed my router is getting hit pretty hard. Ports 1026 and 1027 are constantly under attack it seems. The router is handling it so far, but I must be getting hit at least four times within two seconds (one attack on each port each second) every minute. And they all seem to be from similar, but different IP addresses. IP Addresses which, I might add, I don't seem to be able to ping. After doing some research it seems those ports are used by Windows Messenger. So I don't know if someone's randomly targeting people with specific IP ranges (I would imagine walking through all of COX's IP addresses can't be that difficult) or if there's someone within my assigned zone on the network that's infected. Either way it starts really slowing things down between 9 and 10 from what I've seen (and possibly earlier, but I can't say for sure since I haven't been on during those times). It's either that or they've assigned too many people to our zone and we're bumping up against the limits during peak usage times.

Morning Fog

It twas a bit foggy this morning. I don't know why, but I really like foggy days. They just make everything seem surreal or something. If you look closely in the pictures where you can see the ground, you can see where the creek flooded because there aren't any leaves on the ground in those spots.







If I didn't have to take the kids to school, I could have gotten some more pictures of the fog. As it was I only got some shots off the deck. And I didn't take both kids to school today, only Quinn. Catherine was running a mild fever so we kept her home today (okay, Ginger kept her since I was at work). As you can see though, she was feeling better tonight when I got home (although her forehead still felt a little hot to me tonight, so I don't think she's completely over whatever it was).

Tonight I tried taking some pictures that are a bit of a departure from my normal picture taking method. Just little experiments. One is the shadow of our ornament tree. The other, while it may look like it, is not just me using MS Paint to make colored dots, but it is the lights that we put up outside taken out of focus. I like the results of each, but the shadow picture seems to need something else. I might try that again at some point with a different light source and maybe moving the ornament tree somewhere else.

Heeeeeere's Johnny

Our buddy John is in town and came over tonight to mooch some chicken strips and hang out for a bit. We talked movies, television, and various other stuff (although I think the real reason he came over was to watch Boston Legal in HD on our new TV). During the conversation he pointed out that I apparently love ripping movies a new one and that I, for the most part, hate movies. Ginger chimed in and said that I evidently hate "The Lake House" based on my comments about it yesterday, even though what I said was:

Basically if you just turn your brain off and go with all the paradoxes, it's not a bad movie.

And while I didn't go on and on about how good the movie is, getting me to say it's not a bad movie is pretty high praise (since I apparently hate all movies). Then when John asked what the last movie I gave five stars to it took me a second to realize that the last one I saw that I liked that much was Serenity. Imagine my surprise when he said he had never seen it nor had any real desire to see it. Blasphemy! It's only one of the best movies ever. Sure the movie works better if you know something about the characters from the TV show going in, but I think they did a pretty good job giving you a feel for the characters so it's accessible to people that never saw the TV show. I tried to enlighten his world and make him watch some of the opening, but I don't think he really got into it (and him and Ginger were basically ignoring it and not listening to the dialog by the time the bank heist scene started). Hmmm, I think I just thought of a Christmas gift for John. Shhh, don't tell him.

So I really like the new television, but the thing I don't like is that we don't have an HD recorder. So if I want to watch TV shows in HD I end up having to watch the show in real time as it plays. This is painful beyond words as I've become addicted to my TiVo and having ultimate control over what, when and how I watch TV. Going back to real time and having to sit through commercials is really annoying now that I know there's a better way. Guess this means we're going to be investing in an HD recorder soon.

And Ginger's been busy decorating the inside of the house with Christmas stuff. And what I've discovered is it's actually hard to take some decent pictures of decorations. The other possibility that's very likely is that I'm just not that good at photography, and while I can't say I like that theory, Occam's razor certainly implies that's probably the case.

People Are Crazy

It seems I forgot to include a picture yesterday of the finished product once the Christmas decorations were up. And after looking at the picture I took earlier without using the remote, I apparently still don't have a non fuzzy picture, but I have the above. It'll do for now I suppose.

And for today's crazier story, this has been all across several news organizations that I've seen. A woman in Colorado has been served notice by her Home Owners Association that she'll be fined $25 a day for a Christmas wreath she has up in the shape of a peace symbol. Can't say I'm a big Home Owners Association fan, even though where we live we're in two of them (maybe that fact is the reason I don't like them). And my favorite thing in the article is the claim that some of the woman's neighbors believe the peace symbol is satanic. All this fuss because the president claims three or four people out of 200+ homes complained. That's under two percent. If you read the story, there has to be something else going on, because who would really get this worked up over a peace symbol wreath. The president of the association fired everyone on the architectural control committee because they wouldn't vote to fine the woman. The woman being fined used to be president of the association. I get the feeling there's some bad blood between these two that isn't being reported (at least I hope that's what it is, because if they're getting that worked up just over a wreath, someone really needs to look at their priorities).

So the other night we watched a movie from Ginger's Netflix queue. We saw the Lake House. All I can saw after watching it is, but he... And she... Wait... How did... Then who... Why... But... Brain... Hurts... Basically if you just turn your brain off and go with all the paradoxes, it's not a bad movie. As far as chick flicks go, I've seen much worse. The only real complaint I had was the dialog seemed to move at too quick of a pace considering the method of communication. But at the same time, had they done it realistically the movie would have been like eight hours, so I can understand why they took some shortcuts.

The Erection Of The Snowman

Ginger had nursery duty at church this morning, so afterwards we hit Baja Fresh for lunch so she wouldn't have to fix anything when she got home.




Once we did get home we had the kids 'help' put up our paltry outdoor Christmas decorations, which consists of some lights and an inflatable snowman. The blow up snowman required some creativity to erect since some of the connectors had bent out of shape or flat out broken off (ok, ok, they broke off when I was trying to bend them back into shape). I McGuyver'ed it by using pieces of a coat hanger in lieu of the missing connectors and it seems to be working for now. I may have to revisit that once our first strong wind comes through.

Billy Buttons

Quinn attended a birthday party today. I was unaware of the etiquette and stuck around. Evidently once kids reach Quinn's age parents just drop them off and bail. So I was one of only three parents that actually hung out for the whole thing.


Back home the decorating of the house has continued today as Ginger put up the Department 56 Billy Buttons on the mantle. I love these guys and wish they still made them. KennyG owns a couple of these guys as well, and I've tried with no success in the past to buy the ones he has that we don't. Not much else to report today as Ginger and I took the time to catch up on all the TV we missed throughout the week with the family here. I think we only have two more shows to finish off (Studio 60 and CSI, and I have two more Colbert Reports from a couple weeks ago to knock off also) and then we'll be caught up.

Kid's Christmas Tree Goes Up

Ginger's parents had planned on leaving early today. Best laid plans and all that. They took the kids out with them this morning as they took the dog for a walk. It was good that the kids were able to get out some, the weather was really nice today. One thing led to another and suddenly all the women folk went out shopping. I know, I know, today of all days too, but Ginger needed to buy a birthday present for a party Quinn is going to tomorrow.

The reason we all didn't go shopping was because someone needed to be at the house in case the new TV showed up. We got the call this morning at 7 AM (and a big thank you for that, I needed the wake up call) that told us they would be delivering it today between twelve and four. Turns out it didn't show up before Ginger and the rest of them got back from shopping though. Soon as they got back Ginger's parents left for Richmond. They were concerned about hitting rush hour traffic if they waited too long. I explained that today was going to be one of the lighter traffic days as most people in the area have the day off, but they wanted to leave early anyway.


The new TV eventually showed up around three. And I can say this about it so far: "Me likey." The only thing bad about the television is that if you watch the HD channels then go back to the regular analog channels, it's a huge and very noticeable drop in quality. What's even worse is trying to watch TV shows from the TiVo that were recorded in analog at only medium quality (talk about your poor resolution). All in all though, the TV is pretty nice. I even found my self watching some nature show on WETA just because it was in HD and looked so nice. It may be that this actually causes the amount of TV I watch to increase (which to be honest, I'm not sure I thought was actually possible). The pessimist in me wonders how long until me or one of the kids does something that ends up breaking the new television. Anyone want to start a pool?








And since it's the day after Thanksgiving, we did our traditional putting up the kid's Christmas tree. The kids had lots of fun helping decorate it. And it turned out looking, well, like the kids had decorated it.



Finally, I got to see the new Bond movie Casino Royale last night with Ben and Ginger's brother JJ. The movie was really good. It was very much what I think a Bond movie should be. And much better than any other Bond movie I've seen (although I don't think I even bothered watching the last couple ones they made, and I haven't seen all of them). The intro sequence deviates from what I think had become standard Bond openings in that there's no silhouettes of naked women dancing while the open credits are playing. And while that has become associated with Bond movies, I always found it gratuitous and predictable since they all seemed to have to work it in somehow. One of the action / chase sequences in the beginning is a bit over the top and reminded me a lot of that crazy Russian climbing viral video that made the rounds a while back. The only real bad thing about the movie was the theater I had to see it in. For the time we wanted, they only had seats in the director's hall, a room where all the seats are leather (and specific seats are reserved), but other than that, I didn't notice a lot of difference between that theater and one of the normal theater rooms (except for the fact that the director hall room cost $3 more for a total of $12.50 a person, ouch!). All in all though, there's nothing in the movie that screams camp like there had been in so many of the recent Bond movies. And there's a ton of hat tips to older Bond movies. This seemed to be a serious take on the franchise (and I for one agree with the direction they've decided to take it) with a nod to what came before, but not feeling obligated to rehash it.

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving here in the states. Ginger and Grammy worked and slaved all day preparing a wonderful meal for us. And by all day I mean except for the time around lunch where Ginger and her parents made a run out to Starbucks. Because you wouldn't want to go a whole day without going to Starbucks. And who knew Starbucks was going to be open on Thanksgiving. That's a loyal customer base, let me tell you.

Hope everyone had a good day. And since this is when we're suppose to reflect on things we're thankful for, I'm especially thankful for my family. Finally, in case you're wondering, we didn't watch football here at our house, but we did watch part of last Sunday's NASCAR race on the TiVo. NASCAR: A Thanksgiving tradition since 2006.

New TV

Woo hoo! We got a new TV. It's Mitsubishi 57 inch HD projection. They didn't actually have it in the store, so we don't have it yet. But it's suppose to be delivered Friday. And because we were there and they didn't have it, they're going to waive the delivery fee and deliver it for free. Double Woo! I'm really glad we waited on buying one from earlier in the year since the price for the HD televisions seems to have dropped significantly in the past six months. In other news, we need to find something to do with the Sony 60 inch projection television we currently have (for the record, it doesn't smell anymore that I can notice). I tried giving it away to my cousin, but he said it wouldn't fit in his apartment.

I only put in a half day at work. Didn't really feel motivated and almost no one was at work anyway. Instead of working, I went and got my car's emission inspection done since my tags expire at the end of this month and they say you need two weeks after you pay online to get your tags. It'll be close. I'm hoping if they don't show up the receipt that says I paid is sufficient to not get a ticket. On the positive side, since everyone was either traveling of going to the grocery store, there was no line at all for the emissions.

Tech Support

I had the pleasure (loose definition of the word in use) this past weekend of having to use Cox's telephone technical support . Which I decided must have the name Automated Synthetic Support (you can figure out the initials). All I wanted to do was find out if there was an outage in my area since my internet connection went belly up. I inspected the modem, but it didn't appear to be sync'ed, and even after restarting it the modem didn't appear to be connecting.

So I called Cox just to try and to find out if there was an outage in my area. First I had to navigate Dante's 9th level, otherwise known as automated telephone menu navigation. I'll bet the navigation to reach a real person for initiating service is much cleaner and faster than trying to navigate to someone for tech support. After navigating to the internet service and requesting a tech person, I got waylaid. An automated help line came on telling me that no support staff was currently available and she wanted to help me by trying some things first.

I'll give them this, the woman that did the voice for this is intentionally very calm and soothing and at the same time sickeningly passive.

Her: "I'm just going to ask you some questions and I'll need you to answer the questions. If you want me to continue in English, say 'English', <spanish>If you..</spanish>

Me: "English"

Her: "Great. I'm going to need you to be able to access your computer and your cable modem, will you be able to do that?"

Me: "Yes"

Her: "Great. Now I'm going to list some things that might be wrong, and I need you to tell me which one best describes your problem. If the problem you're having is you're unable to access email, say 'Email'. If the problem is your connection seems to be slow, say 'slow'. If the problem is you don't seem to be connected to the internet, say 'No internet connection.' If the problem you're..."

Me: "No internet connection"

Her: "Ok, just to verify, the problem you're having is you're unable to access the internet. If that's correct, please say yes, if not say no to return to the previous choice."

Me: "Yes" (starting to get irritated since I only want to know if there's an outage).

Her: "Do you also use cable for television in addition to high speed internet?"

Me: "Yes."

Her: "Is your cable for the television working?"

Me: "Yes."

Her: "Ok, I'm going to need you to be able to access your cable modem, can you do that?"

Me: "Yes"

Her: "Great. I'll wait until you get there. Once you're ready to proceed just say 'continue'."

Me: "Continue"

Her: "I need you to look at the front of the cable modem. There should be some lights on it. Do you see the lights?"

Me: "Yes" (great, this is going to be a while)

Her: "Ok, I need you to wait a second while I access your account information and look for your computer on our network."

Insert Musak for fifteen seconds

Her: "I'm still accessing the information."

More Musak

Her: "Ok, I found your account information. I don't see your computer on the network, we're going to try rebooting your cable modem. I need you to go to your cable modem, when you're ready to proceed say 'continue'."

Me: "Continue" (thinking to myself, "Hey, there's something I would have never thought to try.")

Her: "Ok, there should be three connections on the back of the cable modem, a cable wire, a network connection and a power connection. I want you to disconnect the power and the network connection, when you're rea..."

Me: "Continue" (like I'm really going to do this after having already done it before)

Her: "Ok, Now I want you to plug in the power cable. When ..."

Me: "Continue"

Her: "Ok, it may take some time for the modem to initialize. I'm going to look for it on the network."

Muzak again, for about a minute.

Her: "I'm still looking for your computer on the network. I haven't found it yet, but I want to keep trying."

Muzak again, for about two minutes.

Her: "I'm still looking..."

Me: "Continue"

Her: "for your computer ..."

Me: "Continue!"

Her: "on the network. I haven't found it yet, but I want to keep trying."

Muzak again, for about two minutes.

Her: "I'm still looking. By the way, if you were talking to a customer representative it wouldn't be going any faster."

Me: "Bull****"

Muzak.

Me: "Continue!"

Muzak.

Me: "Continue!"

Muzak.

Me: "Continue!
Me: "Escape."
Me: "Break"
Me: "Control 'C'"
Me: "Computer: Initiate Manual Override"
Me: "End"
Me: "Exit"
Me: "Menu"

Muzak.

Me: "Arrrrrrgggghh."

Muzak.

Her: "I was never able to find your computer on the network, but I have a few more things I would like to try. When you're ready to proceed say 'continue'."

Me: At this point I realized that this wasn't working and I wasn't getting the information I really wanted. So I decided I needed to get out of this.

"Pancakes"

Her: "I'm sorry, I wasn't able to make out your response, when you're ready to proceed say 'continue.'"

Me: "Waffles"

Her: "I seem to be having trouble with your response, if you're ready to proceed say 'continue.'"

Me: "Little Wooden Boy! Spoon!"

Her: "I'm sorry, I can't understand your response, please wait while I transfer you to a customer representative."

Me: "Woo Hoo!"

Sadly in the fifteen seconds it took to get me a representative (like now I'm suppose to believe there wasn't really one available earlier) I was able to spot check the cable from the modem to the wall, and the cable as it went across the room and by the couch looked odd. The extension cable connection was slightly off. Looked like the kids had tripped over it. So I plugged that back in and rebooted the cable modem which sync'ed up as I was initiating a conversation with the tech support person. Ginger didn't have a lot of sympathy when I relayed to story to her as she was quick to point out that the cable that caused the problem was the one on the floor in the basement that I had said would only be there for 7 days max when we first moved in (busted!).

Completely unrelated news. Buffy Season Eight is going to be done in comic book form. Joss himself is going to write the first arc.

Playing The Part Of Nosy Neighbor...

The house next to us finally sold. Quinn pointed out a couple a weeks ago that the "For Sale" part of the sign was gone and that this past week "the face" part was gone (this was the section of the sign that showed the real estate agent). Today a moving truck showed just before I took the kids to school. It was a big 18 wheeler. Ginger's Mom was all excited about this saying that she wanted to see what type of furniture they had. I thought she was just joking playing the part of the nosy neighbor until she sat in the window and watched (I heard the moving guys eventually saw her and did a little dancing jig for her). Nice to know we've potentially already made a bad first impression. Although it's not like we're that social anyway, we're not really close to any of the people living around us.

So when I got home tonight there were Christmas presents in the hallway. Lots of them. And there was a construction digger in a bag from Target also. I recognized it as the one Quinn wanted us to buy on Sunday when we went by Target and I had told him no. Evidently everyone had gone by Target today after picking up Quinn up from school and Quinn convinced Grammy and Pop Pop to buy it for him for Christmas. When I walked in the door and asked what all the stuff was, Quinn came running up and told me they were Christmas presents for him and Catherine, and that the digger was a secret and he's not suppose to know what it was (he says this as he bends down and starts playing with the controls while it's still in the box). And don't think Quinn was the only one scamming the grandparents, Catherine also convinced Grammy and Pop Pop to buy her a treehouse from a local toy store as a Christmas present. Apparently I need to convince Grammy and Pop Pop to buy me a new Nikon D200 with the 18-200mm VR lens. I mean, if all you have to do is tell them you really want it then why shouldn't I be allowed to get in on some of this action.

And finally, it's been a while since I posted any of my outdoor stuff. So here's some leaves that are collecting on my back porch that I really need to clean off at some point (I'll get to it right after I fix that cable wire in the basement).

And Your Little Dog Too!

Thanksgiving week has begun. Ginger's parent's, grandmother and brother all arrived today (and they brought they dog too). Ginger put her Dad to work fixing stuff around the house that I should have fixed but haven't.

Meanwhile I picked up Quinn from school today so that we could surprise Ginger by getting her flowers. We had tried to do this Saturday, but the place we went to was closed. There's a place over on Colvin Mill Rd that I used to go to that had really nice flowers at a great deal. Last time I was there (which I admit, was a while ago) it was 2 dozen roses for $20. Sadly, they no longer do flower bundles (which I only found out after driving out there again, I really need to learn to use the phone). So I had to ask for the location of florist from a farmer's market that I stopped at to buy a stump (no, I'm not going to explain, maybe later). They pointed me to a Giant that was nearby. So much for trying get some quality flowers. Anyway, once we got home I had Quinn run inside and bring Catherine out to the car so the kids could take the flowers in and give them to Ginger.



And tonight was the first of the meals that will result in tons of leftovers. We had ham tonight which was very tasty. I suspect I'll be having it for lunch in the not too distant future.

Bowling With Ben

I'll just preface this by saying I initially wasn't even going to mention this and was going to conveniently 'forget' this entire incident had even happened, but Ben insisted that this should be captured for my public ridicule.

So after church today we had plans to go bowling with Ben. He needed to get in some practice and Quinn loves any excuse to go bowling. And besides, I haven't actually seen Ben in person for a while and this was a pretty good excuse. And I was thinking it would be a good chance to hear about how his work is going (too bad things were pretty hectic and we never got to that conversation).

Once we got to the lanes it was around three thirty and the place was a madhouse. I've never seen this place as crowded as it was. At first I didn't think we were going to get a lane since it sounded like league was going to be starting at five, but I convinced them that if we took two of the lanes the league would be using we could play two games and be done by four thirty. So we set up Quinn bowling on one lane by himself (so he could have bumper guards) and Ben and I were alternating on the other lane.


From the way I bowled, you would never have known that the last time I was in a league I had a 194 average at the end of the season (for purposes of full disclosure, that was my highest season average ever). I think you can see some of my previous season averages here from where Rob wrote a program back in the day to graph out our games (the values in the graph are the night's total which just adds the three games for that night together). So having said all that, this was not my best day. In fact, I can't remember the last time I bowled this bad. I think Quinn stole all my mojo because he did fantastic (he got more strikes that I did for the day). Quinn's scores were 102, 127 and 103. I, however, scored 106 and 142. I should point out that in the 8th, 9th and 10th frames of my second game, I let Quinn throw my second ball for those frames (which he managed to spare on two of them without bumper guards and the one he didn't spare on was a split). I only mention that because to be quite honest, I'm not sure I would have gotten those spares myself (as I said, he was doing really well today). So my score for that last game could have been a lot lower.


In fact, after we got home Quinn asked me what he had done to my butt. I'll admit, I hadn't been expecting that question and it took me a little off guard. After questioning him about it some I figured out that he overhead me talking to Ben during the first game that at the rate I was going, Quinn was going to kick my butt.

Busy Busy Saturday

Busy busy day today. Catherine attended Amanda's birthday party. And while she did that, I took Quinn into Vienna to see the model trains since that was open again today.

The birthday party was a girls only event at a ballet studio. All the girls got to dress up as ballerinas and dance and then later they all dressed up as Cinderella and acted out the story. Given how much Catherine loves Disney princess stuff, this was a real treat for her. And the goody bag she got was great too. And to go off on a tangent for a second, while I understand the concept of a goody bag for kids attending a birthday party, I don't particularly agree with it. When did we become this culture that can't possibly explain to our kids that since it's not their birthday, they shouldn't get toys? Although I say this knowing that when we hosted Quinn's birthday party that his school mates attended we provided these goody bags also. There, that's out of my system, now to get back on topic (like there's really any rhyme of reason to my 'topics'). Since it was an all girl party Ginger took Catherine to it. She took a couple of pictures, but all she had was Quinn's camera, so none of them were salvageable. I'm hoping Ken was there and took pictures of the event and got some shots.




Meanwhile, Quinn and I went to see the model trains over in Vienna again (they have an open house once a month). Rob was flying solo watching his kids today and we saw him there briefly (he got there before us, so we didn't overlap that much). After Quinn finally had his fill of the model trains, he headed over to the caboose open house for a bit. The caboose didn't entertain him for long though since he remembered there was a small local toy store just down the street and he wanted to go there. I managed to get out of the toy store without buying him anything, although we did buy Catherine a little tea set. This morning Quinn had been running with a porcelain tea set of Catherine's and had dropped it and broken it. This really bothered me because he wasn't the least bit phased or upset by the fact that he had broken it even though you could tell that Catherine was really upset (it had been a gift to her from Grandmaw). Unfortunately the break was such that I really don't think I could have glued it together (and the set pieces before being broken were under an inch or so in size and the handle on one broke into three very tiny pieces). So while we were at this local toy store we found another porcelain tea set and bought that. And Quinn didn't cry or whine about the fact that we bought something for Catherine but didn't buy him anything. Don't get me wrong, he would still occasionally ask if we could buy something he wanted, but he never got upset when I said no. So I guess that's progress. I still would have felt a lot better this morning if Quinn had felt at least somewhat bad about what he had done.


After the model trains, the caboose and the toy store it was about three thirty and already the sun was going down (we were in a really low area and the hills outside town were already blocking the light). So we packed up and drove up the street to a park that was at a slightly higher elevation so that the sun was still out. It was getting cold though, so I let Quinn use my gloves while we were there (they were a little big for him).

Boy Toy

Woo Hoo! Anyone that's been reading this blog over the long haul knows of the love I have for the Martian Manhunter. The old school version of him anyway, what they've done to him recently we'll just pretend never happened. Well it appears that he *may* be showing up on the CW's Smallville. Let's look at what we know so far from this past week's show. This past week a phantom zone escapee was on the loose killing people by ripping out their bones and then feasting on the bones themselves. Clark went off to stop the threat, but was way overpowered. As Clark was about to bite the big one, someone that was either invisible or very fast killed the escapee (the how part is still a bit of a mystery). Clark wanders over to see who saved him, and steps on what appears to be an Oreo cookie. He then sees a shadowy figure with glowing eyes that flies away. Clark later tells Chloe that this person could do things he could only dream of doing. Then for some ominous foreshadowing he steps on what appears to be another Oreo cookie, but this time in the barn at his house. I'm really hoping it's Manhunter. Although I'm also hoping it's not "Evil Manhunter" or "Extreme Vigilante Manhunter" (since he did kill the escapee, but since that guy had already killed over 200 people and couldn't be stopped by Clark, one could argue the use of lethal force may have been warranted). The only reason I thought it might not be J'onzz is the costume. Or I should say the lack thereof. From the silhouette we saw, it looked like a bald guy in a suit. So maybe I'm getting too far ahead of myself in thinking it's J'onzz (although why else would they show Oreo cookies? It's gotta be J'onzz).

In other news, Catherine has had a playmate after school for the past two days. The mom of one of her friends (Antoinette) at school is out of town and needed for Antoinette to be watched until three (when all their kids were picked up by the father, the other kids in the family are in the extended day program). So Catherine's friend came home with her for the past two days and played. I wish I could say Catherine was a model hostess, but from everything I heard she seemed to get upset anytime Ginger paid any attention to Antoinette and Catherine didn't do very well with sharing either. Guess we'll have to work on that. Next week should be interesting with everyone here.

With the holiday season approaching, the kids and Ginger have been discussing what to get me for Christmas (I keep telling them I don't want anything, but for some reason they seem to insist on buying something). At some point during the conversation Catherine decided that I needed a "boy toy" for Christmas. Now I know she said that because she knows some toys are targeted to girls and some are targeted to boys, but it's still funny to hear her say it.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

We interrupt continuing movie reviews for this special breaking report. It rained here today. A lot. Most of the east coast got hit by a big pressure system moving through that dumped tons of rain in a short amount of time. Ginger snapped some pictures of the creek behind our house during the downpour. This is what it looked like.


For comparison purposes, here's a picture of that same relative area that I took less than three weeks ago. It's not zoomed in as much. And I took it from ground level instead of out of a window from the house. And the angle is slightly different. But other than that it's the same picture. I've circled the place where rock is that's visible in the center of the picture Ginger took.


One of my first thoughts on seeing all this was that I had just spent a several weekends walking around back there picking up various pieces of trash. And now I'm betting that this is going wash a ton of new trash into the area.

Mini Movie Review III

So as I'm leaving work I was standing in the lobby waiting the elevator to arrive. The down button has been pressed and is clearly lit. Out comes someone else leaving, they look at me, look at the button, then walk over and press the down button. Why? It's clearly lit. Is it a trust issue?

Still working through my queue of movies I've watched recently. Tonight we look at 16 Blocks. I'll admit, I went into this movie with some preconceived expectations. Maybe it's just me, but when I see a movie that stars Bruce Willis playing a cop, I can't help but think of Die Hard. This movie isn't Die Hard. This is Willis playing a much more believable role. He's a cop, but one that's been on the force for a while. And as we learn early on, he seems to be coasting in his job at this point. He doesn't seem to care so much about 'upholding the law' as he does looking forward to his next drink and making it through to his retirement. Once the film firmly establishes him as anti-regulation and possibly an alcoholic he's then given a task to escort a prisoner turning state's evidence that's currently being held in police custody to the court house (16 blocks away, hence the title). This task comes just as he's about to get off shift at around eight AM. Needless to say hijinks ensue when other people would rather the convict not make it to the court house. The 'tension' comes because, and you just have to sort of go with it here, if they're not at the court house by ten, the grand jury won't hear the testimony and no indictment will be made. Rapper Mos Def plays the part of the prisoner. I don't know what else Mos Def has done, but his performance here is adequate (although his nasal speech takes some getting used to, but that's just a personal preference thing). Overall I liked the movie. For the most part they manage to keep the action going without going too far over the top (there aren't explosions for the sake of explosions or anything like that, but there is a bus chase scene). I liked that the two main characters aren't perfect and larger than life, but rather appear to be regular flawed individuals. I also liked that there's no real attempt made to excuse their flaws. The DVD provided an alternate ending to the movie also that I think I liked more than the theatrical one (although from a marketing perspective I can understand why they went with what they did).

Finally, I think this is going to be the final image from last weekend. For whatever reason I just loved the fact that there were so many leaves on the ground that were bright yellow. All the other trees had dried brown leaves that looked like they had fallen off weeks ago. This one looked like all the leaves had just fallen in the past day.

Mini Movie Review II

Ok, Quinn's whole "I will eat nothing except chicken nuggets, yogurt, crackers and biscuits" started to really get on my nerves tonight. Ginger fixed chicken strips tonight. These things were delicious. And they were very much like breaded chicken strips, but baked and not fried. Quinn absolutely refused to eat any. Wouldn't even try it until he realized he wasn't going to get any dessert if he didn't. Then when he did try it, he threw up. And if he had eaten it and then thrown it up, I wouldn't have gotten as miffed as I did, but he started throwing up even before he ate any. He's got himself psychologically convinced that he hates all these foods that he's never even tried. For the longest time I've tried to not push it, because I know when I was young I did the same type of thing with some foods (mushrooms, beets and squash come to mind), but I also had a much much wider variety of foods that I would eat.

Working through my queue of movies I've recently seen, tonight's entry is Big Fish. It's semi typical Burton material in that it's whacky, charming and whimsical while at the same time being just a bit off for lack of a better word. The story is about a man who's relationship with his father has fallen in disarray. Then when he finds out is father is dying, he goes home to come to terms about his relationship with his father and try to find out the man his father really is. The story is the life of the father told through a series of flashbacks narrated by a younger version of the father (played by Ewan McGregor). It's amusing and extremely poignant. I ended up really liking it and the ending was a tearjerker for me in a way that I don't think any movie has gotten to me since I watched The Champ when I was a little kid.

And now for tonight's picture from this past weekend. I really think this could have been a great picture if the hill was going up instead of down and the bench was turned the other way (either that or the lighting had been on the other side maybe).

Mini Movie Review

There's too much to do. Seems like Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner, and there's still a ton of stuff that needs to be done. And I'm not even the one that has the most to do.

I've noticed it's been a while since I've put up movie reviews. I don't have time to write all of them that I've recently watched up, but since I just finished one tonight, I felt I had to share. I watched Derailed. It took more than five nights over the course of two weeks to get through this one. In retrospect, I should have just given up once it was clear I didn't like the movie after that first night and returned it to Netflix, but I have this sickness where I feel obligated to finish watching it if I started since you can't really judge it without seeing all of it. The movie is horribly formulaic and extremely predictable. I think it's because they try to be clever and tell you how the movie ends at the beginning, but you're not suppose to pick up on it. Unfortunately I don't see how you can't pick up on it and the whole movie from that point on is only interesting in seeing the journey and not the destination. And since I had zero sympathy for the main character, the journey wasn't all that interesting either. There's only one character in the movie I felt any sympathy for, and that's the daughter of main guy. And she's only affected by his actions versus actually being in the movie (I think she's in it for maybe five minutes tops). So basically if it weren't for her, I wouldn't have cared about the movie at all. I don't think it helps that it's obvious that Jennifer Aniston is a TV actress and not a big screen caliber actress (although in her defense, maybe she does better in big screen comedies, but I haven't liked anything I would define as 'dramatic' she's been in to date).

Since I'm media content challenged for this post, I'll put up another picture from this past weekend.

Reading Progress

Weather wasn't anywhere near as nice as yesterday so we spent the day inside and only left the house this morning for church (and Ginger braved the crowds at the grocery store on her way home from the mandatory meeting for the church nursery workers she attended that was right after church).

Not much to report except Quinn read part of a book to me today. It was one of those "Dick and Jane" books. Since he's trying to read phonetically, he sometimes has trouble with a couple of the words (silent letters in words tend to cause the most problems at this point). And he tends to get frustrated with longer words because it takes him so long to sound stuff out. But still, he's making really good progress.

Didn't take any pictures today, but I have this one left over from the park yesterday.

Van Dyck Park

So it appears that the coldest day we've had in the past month has been the one day we had the Fall Festival. Today was fantastic. Mid 70s if you can believe that (and if you live in the area, I suspect you don't have a lot of trouble believing it). So we just had to do something to get the kids out of the house (especially since Quinn's been couped up for a while and is feeling much better now). So we went to Van Dyck park over in Fairfax that the kids have been to once or twice. The big attraction at that park is "the digger." I kept hearing about all the way there, about how you can dig in the sand with it and it's like a real construction digger.









Once we got to the park, it took a couple of passes through the parking lot to find a space. The place was completely packed. I guess with the nice weather we weren't the only ones that had the idea of going to the park. We were at the park for a while and everything was going pretty good until right as we were about to leave. At that point Catherine fell off the Merry-Go-Round. Normally that wouldn't be a big deal, but this Merry-Go-Round had what amounted to a moat of some really nasty standing water around it. So she got really really wet and dirty. Luckily we had a change of clothes for her in the car. We noticed that had it been Quinn, he would have either been out of luck or would have had to wear Catherine's change of clothes. Guess we need to remember to restock a change of clothes for both of them in the car at some point.




On the way home we stopped at a big screen TV store to get some info on what's the best current HD technology for what we would like to get. I'm kind of glad we didn't buy something back at the beginning of the year, the prices seem to have dropped almost 30-40% from what we were looking at back then.