7-31-07

I got into a fight with an air conditioner and lost!

I bought another air conditioner for the upstairs of my new place. I also bought more pesticide for my war on fleas. I was setting the new AC into the window when gravity felt it necessary to have it tilt out of the window. I went along with it. Luckily I lodged my knee and ankle in the window and held onto the AC with my hands. Somehow I got us both back into the window. Now without some bruises and cuts mind you.

I went to work and everyone wanted to know what happened to me. I told them about my epic battle with the AC and gravity. My manager gave me some bandaids to put on my cuts. These are the prettiest blue bandaids I have ever seen. So I walked around with blue bandaids all over my arms. I was an interesting looking waiter to say the least.

I pick up Charley tomorrow. Hopefully my flea extinguishing has paid off.

7-30-07

I have a flea problem.

While I was gone some fleas must have had a party in my house. I got home this evening only to be attacked by little black things. I've gone to Wal-Mart and acquired some materials to battle my flea problem. Just thinking about it makes me itch.

I have to go and scratch now.

7-29-07

Sadly I must go...

I didn't want to leave Chicago. I really needed this weekend too. I got to get in touch with a side of me that has been buried for a long time. I try to convince myself that I'm a 9 to 5 person who can get a home in the suburbs and drive an SUV. That's not me though. I'm one of two people. I'm the relaxed caretaker of ducks and geese on the farm whose only care is mowing and I'm a city slicker who loves 8 lanes of traffic and the hustle and bustle of city life. It's such a complex and strange combination but that's me. A confliction of lifestyles I guess.

We had one last class and it ended around 6pm. I learned a lot about myself during this weekend workshop. When I do improv and comedy I share with the world the best of both my parents. My mother had a great sense of humor and my dad a great imagination. I'm still amazed at the ingenuity and imagination my dad used in building things on the farm. Trust me. When you're trying to add new wood to and old house you need to think outside the box. Second City allows me to use both gifts that my parents have given me. It was emotional for me in some ways. But when I heard a laugh or saw smiles on peoples face, I felt a tug at my heart because I could see my mom and dad smiling and laughing too.

I believe it says a lot that after seeing my parents broken bodies and the violence we suffered at the hands of a hateful person, my dominant memories of my parents are of them laughing.

I will drive to Cleveland where I will stay with a friend. Then it's back to West Virginia.

7-28-07

I saw a preppie fight!!!

Today rocked!!! The time we as classmates spent last night really paid off. There are 18 of us in class and some of the students have never done improv before. Last night's time we spent together talking shop and getting to know one another helped make us closer in class today. We had a lot of energy and we clicked. I have never been in a class where everyone does a great job. There is always one person who doesn't get it but this class doesn't have that person in it. I have to give kudos to Mike. He's Indian and a doctor by trade. Yesterday he just stood there and said "Yes!". But today he rocked it out!!! He got animated and took part in scenes and structures. I give him the award for most improved student!

I felt better today. Yesterday I was down because of my loss of sight handicap. Today I was able to rebound and feed off the energy of everyone else. We work together well. Improv for me is like riding a bike. I got back on and it felt good.

Later that night we went to see our teacher Bryan's improv group (The Cupid Players) at the Improv Olympic. The OI is a much rawer version of Second City. They don't have a lot of rules and their improv is more experimental and cutting edge. It's not your father's "Whose Line Is It Anyway" improv. We saw a musical sketch show which had us in stitches. The show was way more cutting edge and raw than the Second City show.

Now for the preppie fight. As we were leaving and heading to a bar called "Sluggers" (which is right near Wrigley Field), we saw a group of young men who looked like N'Sync. Thow of the boys were doing what we thought was shadow boxing. That's what we thought until one of them connected. It was so slow moving. Well, someone stepped in to break it up and he got jacked. Then two Justin Timberlake clones jumped in to stop the guy who jumped in first from hitting the other guy back but while they were stopping him, the other guy was still punching people. There were three black beggars hanging out on the street corner and they just looked at the preppies and said "Ya'll a bunch of animals!!!" The scene became too surreal for us so we found our way to Sluggers.

I got some pics of me with some cast members of Cupid Players and of Wrigley Field and I will post them later when I get off my lazy butt and post them.

That was the highlight of an eventful evening.

7-27-07

7-27-07
A very long day for Bob.

I was up late last night studying for my Spanish exam. I’m pretty sure I did well on it too. This fall I have Spanish 3. I will take Spanish 4 in the fall and then I will have all my foreign language credits done. I’m pretty excited to know that I will be done with college this spring. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with myself knowing I have a degree. We didn’t have a final exam in Race, Class and Gender. We just had a weekly writing assignment that comprised our grade each week. So our last class we had a picnic. It was a lot of fun. I’m gonna miss fun classes like this one. It’s good we topped it off on a high not because the subject matter of the class was quite depressing. Racial inequality and prejudice can be a bit taxing.

After class I took Charley to the kennel and dropped him off. He wasn’t happy. I felt bad leaving him but I had to. Charley and I have bonded. He has settled down in our new place and as long as I spoil him he doesn’t poop in my house. He has his blanket and I give him greenies if he’s a good dog. Let’s not forget the continual rubbing of his tummy when he sit’s next to me while I watch television.

I left Fairmont around 2:30 and made good time on my way to Lorain. I had to slow down due to some heavy rain and construction but other than that it was a good trip. I got to the Penton’s house and took a nice power nap. Kristen came over and cut my hair. It’s nice to have a friend who cuts hair for a living. I left around 2am and drove right into Chicago.

I got to my hotel around 8am. I checked in and realized that there is a one hour time difference in Chicago. I forget that all the time. So I had an extra hour to sleep and guess what I did? Yup! I slept. I got up around 9:30 and drove to Second City. I’m staying in a hotel that’s only 1.6 miles away (so says Yahoo maps). I was late due to not finding a good parking space and driving in a city with one eye isn’t fun. I plan on keeping my car in the hotel garage and walking to Second City.
For those that don’t know Second City is an Improv and acting school. It’s where the first cast of Saturday Night Live came from. Others who graduated from there are George Wendt (Norm on Cheers), Chris Farley, Tim Meadows, Michael Myers, Tina Fey, Joan Rivers, Steve Carell (The Office, Evan Almighty) and Steve Colbert (The Colbert Report). I attended Second City in the late 90’s and performed at an Improv theater in Cleveland. I decided a few weeks ago to come to Chicago to see if I can still do this stuff. It’s been a few years since I have done this though.

Class started at 10am and I was of course late. We started out with some easy games to play to establish scenes and get a feel for our scene partners. I was frustrated by this. My handicap of having one eye played a major role during these structures. I was extremely upset and I almost left. I knew we would be doing some other things that were more advanced so I stuck it out and my handicap didn’t bother me so much. I was extrememely rusty and felt just like a rookie again. Our teacher is really on his game and he emphasized a lot of things that we didn’t do in Cleveland. I learned a lot and I do believe I will be a better improviser because of it.

After the workshop I went back to my hotel and slept for a few hours. We were to be back at the Theater at 7pm for the Main Stage show. It was called “Barak and a Hard Place” and it’s a sketch comedy revue created through improvisation. I thought it was hilarious. In a world that seems increasingly enamored with Barak Obama it was nice to see a comedy group make fun of not only him but of the people that think Ombama can walk on water an he’s the second coming of FDR.

After the show we went to a local pub and talked about what we learned today and the show. I didn’t stay long because I was dead tired. I got a well needed good night’s sleep.

7-25-07: Political Tidbits

The first article is from syndicated columnist Cal Thomas. I like Cal and he tends to point out the nuances of the political game quite well.

Senate Democrats, who had announced an all-nighter Tuesday to reiterate their anti-war positions, packed it in shortly before midnight, surrendering to a greater desire for a few hours sleep. Only a handful of stalwart senators kept the Senate — technically — in session. We know that Senate Democrats don't have the staying power to win the war in Iraq, but can't they even make it through the night without some shuteye?

"Harry, sweetheart," said Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who led a group of Democrats in pleading with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a delay in voting, "5:30 or 6?" Reid complied and senators abandoned the chamber so fast you would have thought it was on fire. This was not a demonstration of the strength needed to strike fear in the hearts of those who can tough it out in caves while plotting new ways to destroy us.

Eliza Doolittle could have "danced all night," but the prospect of staying awake all night was too much for the aging bodies and weakened spirits of most senators. Having surrendered to the loony left and having sent signals to our enemies that they are no longer in the fight to win it, most went to sleep.

One never hears Democrats speaking of victory, only retreat. They have embraced defeat, unwilling to wait for the "new strategy" they had demanded to work. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas Republican, noted that the surge of 30,000 American troops is in its infancy and in fact has just been completed in the last two weeks "and yet we're pulling the rug out from under the new plan. … We cannot be the greatest country on earth and say, 'don't trust us if you're our ally and don't fear us if you're our enemy.' And that's exactly what we would be doing if we leave Iraq because Congress sets a deadline, regardless of what's happening on the ground in Iraq."

Democrats are fond of saying that the United States should be fighting al-Qaida, but not in Iraq, and that if we pull out, or pull back, we will have more resources to fight terrorists. This is like saying we should not have fought the Japanese in World War II in order to devote more resources to defeating Hitler. There were some who argued that way and others who, before 1939, said Hitler was not a threat to America and that we should stay out of a European war.

Since the American Revolution, there have always been naysayers, doubters, fellow travelers and willing or duped enablers of America's enemies. There have been politicians, academics, clergy and journalists who claimed that U.S. foreign policy, whether promoted by a Democratic or Republican president, was the wrong policy and a different one should be tried. Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt had strong opposition to their conduct of the Civil War and World War II. Harry Truman left office with record low approval ratings. Those presidents eventually won favor from historians and most Americans because they stuck to their guns — figuratively and literally — and were proved right.

No one can predict whether the policy in Iraq and against terrorism by the Bush-Cheney administration will similarly be proven correct. We may not know until both men are long gone from politics and possibly many years after they have left this earth. This is a world war unlike any we have ever fought and it cannot be fought like we fought other wars.

The latest National Intelligence Estimate concludes that al-Qaida is continuing to focus on high profile political, economic and infrastructure targets in America for the purpose of causing mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, economic aftershocks and fear. Democrats argue that Iraq has emboldened them and served as a recruiting tool. But American troops were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001, or in 1993 when the World Trade Center was first hit. Numerous other attacks against American forces and interests occurred before the Iraq War. Al-Qaida needs no excuse for recruiting and killing Americans.

There will be plenty of time for debate in September when the report on the effectiveness of the surge comes from Gen. David Petraeus. Do Democrats fear it will be a positive report and so they are doing their best to undermine it now? Has our politics become so cynical that some would prefer defeat for political advantage than victory because it might aid the "other side," meaning Republicans?

If so, G-d help us.

The next piece is from an opinion letter submitted by Dean Riley in the Dominion Post which is a Morgantown newspaper.

My granddaughter graduated from high school, wanting to go to college and was seeking funds. When I suggested joining the military option, she said "Bush lied about Iraq and declared war; our soldiers were dying." She was not interested. (Our education system needs fixing.) I answered her with the following

1. Only Congress can declare war on Iraq; having done so, it is legal. Any war becomes "America's" war, not just the President's war. A bipartisan commission reported Congress had the same information on Iraq as the President. Some congressman say the President had "secret information" not wanting to admit to their mistake, since the information was wrong. If one says that Bush lied, one has to also say that everyone voting for the war lied! It is hypocritical for someone to say, "knowing what I know now, I would have voted differently." Using this logic, I could win the lottery. The US was spending two billion dollars a year patrolling the "no-fly zones" with Saddam shooting missiles at our planes (acts of war). European nations were making billions of dollars from the "oil for peace" program at US taxpayers' expense. Something had to be done, even if there were no WMD's.

2. History proves that an "ideoloy" cannot be defeated militarily without a better "ideology". When our ships and embassies were bombed, the US fired missiles, accomplishing nothing. Terrorist attacks escalated into 9/11. I respect President Bush for trying a different approach, introducing democracy to Iraq (better ideology).

3. Having introduced democracy to Iraq, the Middle East will never be the same. Pictures of women voting, electing a government, and a judicial system hanging Saddam, have an impact on the whole Middle East. Introducing independent TV stations, cell phones and computers exposes the area to the outside world. Every nation in this region will fight furiously to maintain the status quo. It might be years before any substantive changes are made. The seed "democracy" has been planted, like a fruit tree, taking time to bear fruit. When elected governments begin to emerge in the Middle East, historians will give all the credit to President Bush, because he was the only one with a grasp on history and the foresight to develope a plan to defeat terrorism.

4. Within the past four years, more than 2,800 troops have been killed in Iraq, about the same as 9/11. The difference is: Our troops ahve guns; the 9/11 victims did not. California which has about the same population as Iraq has more than 3,000 homicides a year. Almost 40,000 people die on the highways every year. To reduce deaths, why doesn't congress address these domestic issues?

5. I told my granddaughter, "Tell me what you are for (positive), not what you are against (negative).

Thanks Dean. Glad someone gets it.

7-25-07

Full credit load of summer school is not a good idea.

This is the last week of sumer classes. It's gone bye pretty fast. Mostly because it's kept me so busy I hadn't noticed it's been 5 weeks already. I'm just glad that I got one of my Spanish credits out of the way. That is a relief.

For a friend in one of my classes I will write about this. I fixed my dryer. I guess I didn't have to buy one in the first place. This past Saturday night I took my dryer apart and looked at the schematics. The problem was that during transport from the farm to my new place some wires came loose. I placed them where they belonged and got up and running. It took me all night but I got it done.

I spend a good amount of time up on the farm this past weekend too. I didn't work this weekend so I hung out with Mr. Hardaway while they took the last of the hay bails off the farm. Mr. Hardaway also gave me the idea to burn some rotting wood that is laying around up on the farm. I set it on fire Saturday night and within a few minutes I got a phone call from someone telling me they saw smoke on the farm. I called them back and told them it was just me burning wood. It's still good to know that there are people still looking out for us.

I have a Spanish final exam tomorrow. Wish me luck. I think I will do well on it. I grasp a lot of the technical aspects of Spanish but I still need to work on my vocabulary.

I have to take Charley to the vet today. I'm gonna miss work tonight but it needs to be done. Well, gotta go study.

7-12-07

Finally! A Harry Potter movie that didn't suck!!!

I would just like to say that I'm not a Harry Potter fan. I will not read the books and I think the previous movies have been awful. The first two were boring as all get out. The third one was bearable. The fourth one nearly drove me to gouge my eyes out with a spoon. But I must say that I really liked this new one.

I liked this one because it didn't have all that Hogwarts crap in it. Everyone going around talking about sniky wits and hookie-wats and dimbly dumps. The only thing that bothered me in this movie was that they still speak pig-latin when they cast a spell. For example, if I wanted to make somebody spontaneously poop themselves, I could wave my wand and say "Poopus orya pantus!!" See! Witchcraft is easy!

Honestly, this movie didn't bog itself down with the Hogwarts school and got right into the battle between good and evil. Harry proves that he can be a great Jedi Master and that the force is strong within him. The battle between Jedi Master Dumbledore and Darth Voldermort at the end of the movie was great. I use the analogy of Star Wars for Harry Potter because it's the best way to describe this movie. The only thing missing was light sabers (replace with wands) and stormtroopers.

I can't wait for Harry Potter and the War of the Clones and it's sequel Harry Potter and the Return of the Sith!!!

My Story: Part 2

Here is the continuation of my story. The first part is under March 26th 2007.

After the funeral I drove back to South Carolina. I wish I could have stayed longer in West Virginia but I had to get back to classes and my job at Outback. It normally takes me seven hours to get back to Spartanburg that is if there isn't any backed up traffic around Statesville or Charlotte, North Carolina. I like to stop off in Wythville, Virginia and gas up because you don't want to get gas in North Carolina. If you thought West Virginia gas was expensive!

On the way down I thought about the funeral and the last time I saw my Aunt Mary. She was in the hospital and you could see that she wasn't doing well. My Aunt Paula and Uncle Rick were with her. I remember Aunt Mary had a cut on her leg and it wasn't healing. That's a bad sign when you have cancer. I gave her a big hug and kissed her goodbye. I walked out of the room knowing that this was probably the last time I would see my Aunt Mary alive. I thought of that memory and the funeral itself. I have a cousin Johnny. We're close in age and I must say that I've enjoyed myself whenever I've been around him. We were talking and he said that it's strange that we only see each other at funerals. I agreed. He then said it was sad that that was the case. I agreed with him on that point too. It's funny though. There's family that I want to keep in touch with but life sometimes happens and before you know it you haven't seen them until the next funeral. I rememer promising to keep in touch but again, I didn't see my cousin Johnny again until my parent's funeral.

South Carolina had been my home since 2000. I moved down there after I burned myself out in Cleveland doing improv. Performing and doing comedy was fun but unless you're in Los Angeles, Chicago or New York, it doesn't pay the bills well. So I moved down there to work, save some money and head to Los Angeles. That was the plan until I fell in love with South Carolina, got a girlfriend and settled down. I eventually went back to college to get a degree in a more stable paying field. My parents had always instilled in me a desire to change injustice, so I decided to be a political science major. My grandparents on my mom's side and her siblings all lived down there too. They moved to SC after my grandfather retired from being a truck driver for 40 years. My parents moved to SC after living in West Virginia for a brief time. So when I finally got to SC I had my parents and my mom's side of the family to hang out with, plus the friends I made at work and college.

My parents of course moved to the farm after the funeral. I stayed in South Carolina. I had my own place in a really nice apartment complex. It was near college and work so I didn't have far to go. I didn't stay there a lot. I had two friends named Meghan and Natalie. They belonged to the Delta Zeta sorority and I pretty much lived at their place. I was over there so much that they used to buy me grocries and put them in their fridge. We had a close nit group from work that hung out over there. We would watch Adult Swim on Cartoon Network until wee hours of the morning and then watch the two hours of music videos that MTV would show at night. We would then find some time to crash on the futon or the floor and wake up for class. I don't think we ever went to a class were we weren't half asleep. I can say that fatigue did wonders for me in economics:-) We all worked together too. I remember we used to watch the movie Zoolander on DVD probably twice a week. That movie is so stupid it's funny. So at work we would talk Zoolander. We would recite entire scenes from that movie. I enjoyed being Mugatu! Of course I should mention Kathleen. Kathleen was my girlfriend. I met her when she was a hostess at Outback. We dated for most of the time I was in SC. We're not together anymore and I'll explain all that later. To sum it all up I had a really good college life going on in SC. I had family, friends, a girlfriend and really warm weather. I wasn't going anywhere.

Nope! I wasn't going anywhere. I kept in touch with my parents on a daily basis to see how they were doing adjusting to farm life. More my mom than my dad. It had been a long time since my mom lived on a farm. She was a child the last time she lived on a farm. My dad had been raised on the farm so he was back in his element. I'm sure after living in the suburbs it was like riding a bike again. I thought it would be smooth sailing for them but it wasn't. Things got a bit complicated for them off the start.

My mom called me one time and told me about the contractor they hired to renovate the farm house. His name is Kevin Fortney. Kevin's price to renovate the house was too good to be true. Kevin gutted the house and ran off with the money. Come to find out, Kevin has a cocaine problem and he would scam people with his father's contractor liscence to get money and run. Well, my parents got suckered by him. They couldn't stay in the farmhouse house so they rented an apartment in Shinnston and worked on the farm during the day. My dad decided that he wasn't going to get bamboozled again and that he would renovate the house himself. That's where I came in.

It's spring of 2003 and I spent my spring break up on the farm. This was right after Kevin ran off with their money. We didn't do too much to the house while I was up because my dad was putting in a waterline to the public water. My mom didn't like drinking the well water. She didn't trust it. My dad made a deal with Dale Eagle to run a waterline across his property to the county water in exchange for hunting rights on our farm. I have video of Dale and my dad using a ditch witch digging the waterline. I thought it was kinda odd that a man with a heart condition was doing manual labor. I spent my spring break playing with ducks and geese and helping my dad come up with some type of plan to renovate the house. We also spent time talking about the new business venture my parents were going to undertake. They wanted to raise alpacas.

In case you don't know what an alpaca is, it's a small llama with much more whool. They are indigenous to South America and their fleece brings a pretty penny. Most of the money is in breeding a better animal and if you have an alpaca with fine fleece then you can make a lot of money. My dad wanted to make the farm a working farm again but he didn't want horses, cows or pigs. He wanted a low maintainence animal that would be lucrative both short term and long term. Alpacas fit that bill. My parents took me to see the alpacas they bought. One of the babies was born. A little brown thing we named Lexington. I have a picture of Lexingtion with my mom when Lex was only four hours old. I also met a couple which would become one of the closest friends my parents had. Their names are John and Barb. My parents met them after they inquired about buying their first boy Montana. Montana was my dad's favorite alpaca and he said that Montana would never be sold. I found it only right to give Montana back to John and Barb afer my parents were murdered. It was a good spring break.

In summer of 2003 I came back up to help. By this time my parents had moved out of their apartment and were living in a 5th wheel trailer on the farm. The project that summer was to build the addition to the farmhouse which would be the laundry room and the upstairs master bathroom. I have video of me and my dad gutting the side of the house and we commentated the video like an episode of "This Old House". There's my dad with his straw hat wearing his wranglers with holes in them narrating on what we had done and what we were doing next. I'm just glad my dad didn't nail me with the nail gun! I was up for most of the summer and then went back for fall classes.

This is when my mom started trying to convince me to move to the farm. I would get phone calls and 10 minutes into the conversation she would say "Why don't you move to the farm and help your dad?" I would tell her no and that I want to finish college before I do anything else. I had Kathleen to think about too. Kathleen is a Marine and she was doing Marine things and I was waiting for her to get back home. That point was made mute when she came back home and we broke up. To tell you the truth, the real reason I didn't want to move to the farm was because I was afraid. I had never lived on a farm before. The farm is out in the middle of nowhere and the road to get up to it you need a four by four. I had grown up in the suburbs all of my life. People mow their lawns twice a day and neighbors houses are withinn 10 feet of each other. Life outside of an apartment complex or a culdisack is completely foreign to me. Plus it gets pretty dark on the farm at night. What if a giant bug comes and eats us! I'm just kidding. But that is the reason I didn't want to move to the farm and my mom would continue to be persistant in her inquiry. These conversations kept happening until one day in the spring of 2004 my dad took the phone from my mom and said "If you move up here and help me I will pay your tuition and let you live here on the farm rent free." That's an offer I couldn't refuse. I checked to see how much tuition was at WVU. It was $2000 less at WVU than at USC. That did it for me.

I called my dad back.

I said "Dad. I've given your proposition some thought."

He said "And?"

I said "I'll do it!"

I got off the phone and stood there looking at my cat. I like to talk to my cat because she just flops on her side and looks at me when I speak as if she's listening intently. I looked at her and shook my head in shock.

I was moving to the farm!!!!

7-11-07

President Bush will now receive ads from Circuit City!!!

Yup! The Prez will now receive all of my Circuit City advertisements. See, I hate it when I buy something from CC and first they ask if I want insurance or a warranty on my CD. What!!! Who gets insurance in a compact disk??!!! I make backups of all my cd's anyway. Then they want my phone number and my address. I don't like to give that information out so I thought I'd first be cute and second test the knowledge of the person gettin my information. I gave them 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. With Zip code 20500. Without even blinking the person typed it all in and then proceeded to check me out. For those that still don't get it...I gave them the address to the White House.

Let's hope I don't get men in black at my door. He He. Unless they want to offer me a job!!!

7-10-07

Global Warming is upon us!

This past weekend was a world-wide concert to battle global warming. The purpose was for the new religion's high priest Al Gore to spread his new age message of earth (guya)protection to the mindless masses of pop music consumers. Al Gore spoke of the impending doom of the earth on cataclysmic levels. And how can we stop the destruction of the earth? Cloth diapers go vegan and more expensive lightbulbs!!!!

I forgot to mention that Al said we should cut back on driving cars and planes. So I guess it begs the question how all those pop music stars and politicans got to these concerts. I do believe they all took their private jets and the concert-goers drove cars. I don't know of any rock stars that rode bikes or took the subway. But that's OKAY!! They buy carbon offsets. That means that whenever they pollute the atmosphere with their private jet, they buy a tree to be planted. It's kinda like buying an elevator pass in a building with no elevator.

I have a lot of global warming friends. They buy the story that the world is getting warmer and it's all caused by us. My only question to them is how is it our fault that Mars is getting warmer too? How does my car's emmissions cause Mars to get warmer. Could it be that we are in a warming cycle caused by the controlled perpetual nuclear explosion at the center of our solar system that we call the sun? And if Los Angeles is under water in 10 years is that such a bad thing?

So many questions about false religions and junk science...so little time:-)

7-09-07

Lazy Day...

It's been a long and tough week. I worked most of it and classes take a lot out of you too. It's to the point where sleep is a hobby and I try to get as much of it as possible.

There's not much going on right now. I'm doing some homework and studying and then I'll go to bed soon. I took Charley to McDonalds and got him some fries. He really enjoys that. I have to schedule him an appointment with the vet because I want to get him squared away with the whole flea thing. He's not as bad but I don't want him to have to deal with those pesky buggers. They make me itch just thinking about them. I have to get Buffy of the farm too. I won't bring her to my place until I et her dipped and de-fleaed also. Oh is she gonna love that!

I bought the BBC series Planet Earth. It's breathtaking. This series took five years to make and it chronicles some of the most rare and beautiful events in the wild with hundreds of different animals. I'm only half way through disk one. I recommend this to anyone. I swear after you watch this there is no way you can ever deny the existance of God. His world is perfect. Sadly we tend to screw things up.

7-03-07

I miss my dad...

I went and saw Transformers last night. I enjoyed the movie but what I didn't expect was an unpleasant side effect as a result of seeing the movie.

First off, I would like to give Michael Bay a very large thank you for making a movie that stayed true to the essence of the Transformer story and it's characters. Optimus Prime is as noble and honorable now as he was in the cartoon over twenty years ago. Megatron seemed to be pulled right out of the cartoon with his verbal digs at Starscream and his overall hatred of humans. The movie was for the most part funny and full of fast moving action. This is definitely a movie you have to see twice to take it all in.

What made me sad was that this movie made me feel 8 years old again. I was a little kid watching my favorite cartoon brought to the big screen. I was so giddy and excited. I wanted to share it with the only person on the planet who understood and shared my affinity for Transformers but he wasn't there. I felt like a little kid lost in the mall. I wanted to look for him or think that he would be back but the adult side of me knows that won't happen. My dad would take me to Hills department store at the end of the week to buy me a Transformer if I did my chores and mowed the lawn. In the late 90's we would get up at 8:30 in the morning and watch the computer animated show Transformers: Beast Wars together. This movie brought so much emotions, from feelings of elation to loss. Sadly, my friend Ryan saw me break down on the way back home from the movies. I miss my Dad. He would have loved this movie.

7-02-07

Yay! Transformers comes out today!!!

It actualy comes out tomorrow but ther is a special sneak peek tonight at 8pm. Guess whose going!!!

I had a long weekend full of unpacking and work. Friday I spent my day fighting with Lowe's over my dryer which they were supposed to ship to me. Now I won't be able to get my dryer till tomorrow. Which leads me to what I did Sunday. I washed clothes and then took them to the local laundromat to dry. Friday and Saturday night I spent traveling to Wal-Mart and buying blinds to put up in my new place. It's an old home to the windows don't measure to the sizes of today's blinds. So Bob had to improvise. I learned that from my dad. I do believe he would be proud :-)My only downside to this weekend was that I played hookie from church. Well, that and working all day Saturday. I don't like working from 1pm to 10pm. The whole day is worthless.

I ended my weekend with a DVD. I watched Casino Royale. I must say that this is the first James Bond in many years that I've enjoyed. I liked it because he's a rough Bond. He's not like the cookie cutter Bond that you can interchange any actor with a British accent with. This Bond actually has a personality. I hope he plays the role a few more times. It will be enjoyable to see his Bond grow and bring a much needed breath of fresh air to the character. I'm so glad Remington Steele (Brosnan) is off the role.

Well, I have a paper to write for class and then I am heading up to the farm to cut up a branch that split off a tree last year. I just haven't gotten around to it. I gotta get to it so that Mr. Hardaway can continue to mow. Then I will go home and wash up, pick Jamie up, have dinner and go to see TRANSFORMERS!!!