Fun day / Five Objs

Lil A and I got to spend all day together when the Mrs and lil N went up to Cinci. Me n lil A basically played around the house all day. We even walked to the McDs way down the street and ate some lunch. Of course, we also watched the Buckeyes put on a decent (not great IMO due to certain lapses in defense) game with Eastern Michigan, who, I have to admit have a pretty good QB.

Later in the evening after lil A had gone to bed, the Mrs and lil N finally returned. Shortly thereafter, lil N (whining and crying) went upstairs to go to bed.

Since I had my list already worked out, I quickly grabbed my pre-made list and headed outside. However, I forgot one thing. I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt and short socks. And it was windy and it was pretty cool outside.

But anyways, since my last session was kerflugled due to a certain satellite not showing up when I thought it should, I was a little anxious since I didn't know where to look when. I decided that I would just keep my eyes peeled in the general direction that I should be looking, even though the first thing on my list was 10 minutes away. So I waited and waited ... and waited. After about ten minutes I was convinced I wasn't going to see anything and then WOOSH! There was a bright flare across the sky. It was either a shooting start or an iridium flare. None of the sites I look at mentioned any possible sightings in my area, but they are a bit tricky to predict and, until recently when software was developed to help more accurately when they would occur, it was pretty much a crap shoot. Here is a cool story about Iridium flares.

About 30 seconds later, Cosmos 1400 showed up, exactly where it should have been at exactly the time it was supposed to be there (8:57pm). My anxiety was not helped due to this being marked as a fairly dim object (3.3 to 4.0 magnitude) but I saw it just fine. This helped to assure me that indeed the clock on the stove was correct. The int'l code for Cosmos 1400 is 1982-079A (thus is was launched in 1982). Just for fun, the launch vehicle for the Cosmos 1400 was a modified R-7 Semyorka which according to Wikipedia was the world's first true intercontinental ballistic missile.

Oh, lest I forget, before going outside I also grabbed my handy dandy $1.99 9-LED pocket flashlight. I took a couple post-it notes, cut them into little squares and taped them over the lens to deaden the light a little bit. This worked great! Later on, I took an orange sharpie and colored over the post-it notes and then added another layer, essentially giving me a very dim and red light... which is perfect since red light doesn't kill night vision (just ask any armed forces veteran).

Next was the Cosmos 2322 rocket booster at 9:09pm. Again, right on schedule. This particular rocket body is that of a Zenit-2. The int'l code for the Cosmos 2322 rocket booster is 1995-058B.

It was getting a bit colder, so I ran inside while there was a brief break and put on a sweatshirt.

Up next was the Cosmos 2428 rocket booster which showed up around 9:19pm. This particular rocket booster is a Zenit-2M. I'm not sure the difference between the Zenit-2 and the Zenit-2M. The 2M is newer, but carries slightly less than the regular 2 to LEO (low earth orbit) and it can't even get into SSO (sun synchronous orbit). It even weighs more. Maybe it's a reliability thing. *shrug* The int'l code for the Cosmos 2428 rocket booster is 2009-029B.

Next was the Cosmos 1833 rocket booster (yeah, there's alot of Cosmos satellites and rocket boosters that put them up there) at 9:21pm. This is also a regular Zenit-2 rocket booster whose int'l code is 1987-027B.

All of the Cosmos satellites or rocket boosters that I saw this evening were for Soviet electronic intelligence (ELINT).

My legs were starting to get a bit chilly, so I went in and put on some jeans and wool socks.

I went back outside since I still had another 7 or so on my list. There were some fairly bright ones that I should have been able to see, however... I didn't spot one. The only thing I spotted was a very brief satellite 9:53pm heading NNW at 50 degrees. It wasn't on my list and checking my satellite sites didn't turn up anything. So, maybe I was just catching the tail end of a departing aircraft (I had been fooled a mere 10 minutes previously by one coming out of the NW and it wasn't until it was in the W that the familiar blinking red and blue lights were noticeable.)

I had about 3 more on my list at that point, but I came inside because I was cold, some low clouds were coming in and obstructing the sky, and I had missed 3 or 4 others since 9:30 and some were very bright... so my game was officially off.

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Updated June 21 2011 to put the sightings in my standard template format

Here's the time-line of this evening:
Date: 25-Sep-2010 Saturday

8:57 PM - Name: shooting star - Magnitude: 2.0
Int'l Designator: none

8:57 PM - Name: Cosmos 1400 - Magnitude: 3.3
Int'l Designator: 1982-079-A

9:09 PM - Name: Cosmos 2322 Rocket - Magnitude: 2.2
Int'l Designator: Int'l Designator: 1995-058-B

9:19 PM - Name: Cosmos 2428 Rocket aka SL-16 R/B - Magnitude: 2.5
Int'l Designator: 2007-029-B

9:21 PM - Name: Cosmos 1833 Rocket - Magnitude: 3.0
Int'l Designator: 1987-027-B

9:52 PM - Name: JB-3 - Magnitude: 5.3
Int'l Designator: 2004-044-A

A couple more

The kiddo went to bed just before 8:30pm, so I quickly went down stairs and jotted down about 10 satellites that were occurring in the next hour. One never knows how long the Mrs will be up there. I got about a half hour in and saw 2 of 5 that I had noted. Part of the problem was that many were in the east, which is blocked from my house.

But being in the east didn't stop me from seeing the first on the list. This sighting was a Vostok-2 rocket (this particular model is the Vostok 8A92M) which launched the Meteor 1-31 Russian land resource satellite on July 10 1981. Int'l code for this object is 1981-065B.

I missed a couple more including a bright Resurs 1-4 Rocket (Int'l Code 1998-043G) which I believe I spotted before. Not sure how that occurred since, while the sky had a couple of clouds, for the most part the sky was clear.

The next one I am going to have to guess on. I saw it passing N to S, nearly directly overhead. It was 8:45pm. It was around the time of Cosmos 1703 which was on my list. However, Cosmos 1703 wasn't supposed to even be in the north until 8:49pm. There was one which I didn't have listed (and was only listed on one site), which was Cosmos 1818 which was much closer to that time (though the suggested magnitude would have seemingly made it very hard to see, but this seemed fairly bright. Anyhoo, since I trust the time more than the magnitude, I'll say this one was Cosmos 1818 which is a Russian radar ocean reconnaissance satellite (RORSAT) launched on February 1 1987 aboard a Tsyklon-2 rocket. It contains a nuclear reactor. Cool! Oddly, according to Wikipedia, this particular satellite fragmented into 30 pieces on July 4, 2008. So maybe I did see Cosmos 1703. *shrug* The Int'l code for Cosmos 1818 is 1987-011A.

Of course, since I believe I was seeing Cosmos 1703, my time table was all messed up so I was probably looking in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily, my wife returned and we went in to watch some TV which spared me from further insanity.

I've been trying to come up with my lists the day before, which seems to actually work out quite well. Typically I like to go out the minute lil N goes upstairs, so instead of spending a half hour writing down a list for the next hour, I can just grab my list (which I typically write up for 8:30 - 10:00pm) and go.

I need to get me a cheap-o dollar watch with a light on it so I can 1) sync my watch with the int'l atomic clock (which is what i believe the other sat obs site use) and 2) I can use the little light to help see my paper that I write all my notes on. Even when writing it on white paper with a big fat sharpie, it is still kinda hard to read so I usually end up going to the sliding door where there is usually a crack in the blinds that I can see with.

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Updated June 21 2011 to put the sightings in my standard template format

Here's the time-line of this evening:
Date: 24-Sep-2010 Friday

8:39 PM - Name: Meteor 1-31 Rocket - Magnitude: 3.2
Int'l Designator: 1981-065-B

8:43 PM - Name: Cosmos 1818 - Magnitude: 4.4
Int'l Designator: 1987-011-A

Morse Code vs. Texting

This is freaking awesome.

Morse Code-Leno - The best video clips are right here

Too cloudy :-(

I had a few satellites lined up for viewing (written with a big black sharpy on a while piece of paper which makes it much more visible at night... though, if I were REALLY trying to protect my eyesight, i'd do the opposite - black paper with white letters)... anyhoo...
I had a few satellites lined up for viewing, however I went outside and it was mostly a big blanket of clouds. I could see a couple of stars, but for the most part there were no big openings in the clouds... so nothing was observed last night.

So why post about that?

Well, I was kind excited about one of the candidates that I had:

It was a rocket booster for Cosmos 44. You might say "Well, so? You saw Cosmos 1674 the other day. And?" Well, need I remind you that most rockets and whatnot pretty much number their things numerically. So 1643 was launched before 2043... and so on. And you might say "So?" Well, I'll remind you that Cosmos 1643 was launched in 1985. The one I was excited about was Cosmos 44. FORTY FOUR!

Cosmos 44 was launched on August 28 1964!

And the rocket which launched this satellite is still up there (and so is the satellite itself). Going round and round and round the earth. If I were a complete math geek, I'd go find out how often it orbits the earth per day and then calc out how many times since August 28 1964 (and whatever time it was) it has gone around the earth.

But I'm not that big of a math geek. But I truly understand now all the hub-bub in the space community about space trash / Space debris. It just sits up there. And occasionally things get REALLY close to each other or just plain smack into each other. And possibly more often than people know since we only know about it when active satellites get hit. What about when two expended rocket boosters bump into each other and then possibly split or obliterate each other and create more debris?

Here's a quick 30 second clip which shows the satellites deployed and debris created (much of which is still in orbit) between the years 1957 and 2000. (Note: this is only to 2000, not 2010).


Note: The int'l code for the Cosmos 44 R/B is 1964-053B

Cartoons and Satellites

Cartoons!
When I got home, the wife informed me a package had come in for me. It was my Giant 600 Cartoon Collection that I got for a steal on eBay. 12 dual-layer DVDs and over 60 hours of cartoons baby!

=-=-=-=-

Satellites!

It was about 8:30pm and I thought I heard the kiddo go to bed, so I went to a couple of my satellite tracking sites and quickly came up with a list of four sats that I was going to try to see.

First up up at 8:45pm was a Zenit-2 rocket body. This rocket was launched on July 10, 1998 from the Russian Baikonur Cosmodrome. It deployed the RESURS-01 4 which was a satellite for the Russian military which observed and monitored natural Earth resources. Then either the same rocket, or the Resurs 01-4 satellite itself in turn launched the TMSAT-1 (that's Thai-Microsatellite-OSCAR). Both satellites have been decommissioned, but the rocket body still hovers around out there, 12 years later. This is why we have all that space junk out there. By the way, just so you know, Resurs is french for 'resource'. :) This was a 2.9 magnitude object, so it wasn't too hard to spot in the sky. The Int'l Designator for this rocket body is 1998-043G.

Up next was a selection (PRC 15 Rocket) that I chose merely because at 8:51pm it was going to be in the sky shortly after the Zenit-2 rocket body went past. It was going to be very dim (4.2 magnitude), low (25 degrees) and it was heading SW to SE. If you're in my backyard, that means it's towards Marysville and the Scott's plant, both of which give off lots of light and kills seeing anything in the horizon to the south. It was more of an exercise of how low and how dim I could see with the naked eye, with lots of light pollution. Needless to say, I failed. Some research after the fact showed I was looking for a Chinese CZ-3 or Long March 3 rocket body which had launched on April 8th 1984. It was carrying a domestic communications satellite known as Dongfanghong DFH-2. The Int'l Designator for this rocket body is 1984-035B.

Quite honestly, the third on the list I picked because of it's long name, Shijian6-3Aptr. It was going to be 87 degrees in the ENE sky at 9:05pm. This was another experiment to see the bounds of what I could see from my backyard looking east (which is towards the road that leads to my house which is lined with like 20 murcury streetlamps. The since I'm in my backyard, however, the house blocks the very bright lights and for the most part, if it's straight up, the sky is still faily black. Anyways, this was another failure, probably due to it's 4.1 magnitude. A little background: This particular item launched on Oct 28 2008. According to the NORAD ID and Int'l Code it's a piece of 'Satellite Debris'. I have no idea what that means, honestly. But whatever it is, it was launched from a Long March 4B Chinese rocket and carried two satellites (SJ-6E and SJ-6F) which were designed to study the harsh environment of space. The Int'l Designator for this rocket body is 2008-053D.

The fourth on the list was Cosmos 1674 (or Kosmos 1674), which was supposed to be going from N to S heading directly overhead at 87 degrees W at 9:08pm. However, I'm not sure I saw that one, exactly. I saw something head over at around 87 degrees in the E and it was more like 9:05pm. I looked at all the sites I have and that's pretty much the only thing during that time span going N to S and being directly overhead, so I'm chalking that one up. It was a 3.5 magnitude satellite. Kosmos 1674 is a Russian spy satellite for ELINT (electronic intelligence) network called Tselina-D and launched on August 8, 1985 but for some reason was end-of-life'd on November of 1985. The Int'l Designator for this satellite is 1985-069A.

So, two out of four (of which two were probably impossible to see from my area). I can't complain about that.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Updated June 21 2011 to put the sightings in my standard template format

Here's the time-line of this evening:
Date: 20-Sep-2010 Monday

8:45 PM - Name: Resurs 1-4 Rocket - Magnitude: 2.1
Int'l Designator: 1998-043-G

9:08 PM - Name: Cosmos 1674 - Magnitude: 2.8
Int'l Designator: 1985-069-A

Lacrosse 4 - sighted

I finally nabbed a glimpse of the Lacrosse 4 reconnaissance satellite this evening at 8:51pm. I only caught the last 15 seconds of it since it seemed a little early (but then again, 1) who's to say the clock on our oven is correct -and- 2) the sites have 'projections' of when they will be at their peak magnitude and their position in the sky.

I had a few more on my list, but my neighbors a few houses down who had their backyard lights on (which wasn't a problem really since I could block those with a postit note while blocking the BRIGHT moon with the outdoor umbrella), decided to get out their 1 million watt halogen light, which I heard they got for $5 at a garage sale (acoustics at night are amazing as well). Oh, and they shined it directly in my direction. They possibly even made a comment that they were amazed to be able to see me. I used my post-it briefly to block that madness, but after 3 minutes, I realized it was for naught. My little square postit (and the rest of the backyard) were no match for 1 million candles. I finished my High Life Light and came back inside. Most of the others I had planned were peaking in the east anyways so it would have been difficult to see them from my backyard which faces west. If I went to the front of my house, I would be dealing with no less than 15 orange streetlamps which would ensure that I my eyes would never adjust enough to see jack squat.

Oh well, I saw the L4, and that was the goal of the evening. Check!

Maybe I'll try again later this evening if the neighbors down the street decide to call it (and their 1M candle watt lamp) an evening.

(Note: the International Designation Code for the Lacrosse 4 satellite is 2000-047A)


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Updated June 21 2011 to put the sightings in my standard template format

Here's the time-line of this evening:
Date: 17-Sep-2010 Friday

8:51 PM - Name: Lacrosse 4 - Magnitude: 2.0
Int'l Designator: 2000-047-A

Take that, X-37B

At 8:30pm, I finally managed to nab a glimpse of the X-37B last night. Probably got to watch it for a good 2 minutes. The Int'l Designator for the X-37B is 2010-015A.

Yeah, watched that lil' white dot go straight overhead.

I don't know why I find spotting these little things so much. Probably because it's like a treasure hunt. You have to search the sky for them; looking at all those stars until you finally see something moving.

Up next, maybe I'll try to get a glimpse of one of the Lacrosse satellites. I should have seen Lacrosse4 the other night, but somehow missed it. Maybe the National Reconnaissance Office did something to cloak it!!! It is one of their little children after all. And, if you read up on Lacrosse 4's brother - Lacrosse 5 - this particular satellite actually has a 'disappearing trick'. Hmmmmmmm.



-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Updated June 21 2011 to put the sightings in my standard template format

Here's the time-line of this evening:
Date: 15-Sep-2010 Wednesday

8:29 PM - Name: X-37B OTV-1 (aka USA 212) - Magnitude: 2.3
Int'l Designator: 2010-015-A

W00t! Three SATs in one

Just got done seeing three satellites in one sitting. Armed with a list of 6 satellites / objects, I went outside around 8:12pm

I first went out looking for the X37-B Experimental 'Top Secret' Aircraft, but at 8:14pm, it was still rather bright outside and it's a fairly dim object (and my aim is still subject in the backyard, meaning, I'm not exactly sure where N/S/E/W are.

Next up was the International Space Station (ISS) at 8:36pm. I got to see the full 3 minute pass of the ISS and attempted to take a few pics since it was so bright. It was around a -2.9 magnitude... remember lower number = brighter. The moon is something like -11 magnitude. Anyway, I was hoping for some time lapse, but I have no idea how to work my camera (yet) so I only have two stills where you can see the object moving. But that's better than no photos. (I'll attach those later in the post). The Int'l Designator for the IIS is 1998-067A.

Next I saw "Unknown object B" (that's what the database called it) at 8:40. I wasn't sure I would be able to see it with only a magnitude of 3.0, but I saw it. Since my eyes had really adjusted by that point, it seemed as bright as the ISS earlier. I probably saw most of the 8 minute pass for this one. The Int'l Designator for Unknown Obj B is 2004-012C. Based on the n2y0 site, this is a rocket booster for CZ-2C rocket body. On April 18 2004 in China, this rocket launched two satellites: Tansuo 1 (Shiyan 1) which is for stereographic land resource mapping and Naxing 1 which was China's first nano-satellite which did 'high tech experiments' and weighed only 25 kg.

There was supposedly a pass of the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) at 8:43, but I missed that because I had no idea how dim it was (5.2 magnitude... REALLY dim). The Int'l Designator for IRAS is 1983-004A.

Next, at 8:56pm, was the launch vehicle (read: rocket body) for the Lacrosse 4 National Reconnaissance Office terrestrial radar imaging reconnaissance satellite. Yeah.. big words. Anyways, that one heading N to S. I probably saw most of the 6 minute pass for that one. Based on Wikipedia, this would be the body of a Titan IV rocket. The Int'l Desginator for this Lacrosse 4 R/B is 2000-047B.

The last one on the list was the actual Lacrosse 4 satellite. I went out and starting looking for it. I called out the wife (who was finally downstairs) and called her out. However, that turned out to be a plane. I should have known that it wasn't it since it was heading the wrong direction. At first it was just a bright light, but by the time the Mrs got outside, it was closer to being overhead and the blinky-blinkies were visible. Never did see that one. The Int'l Desginator for the Lacrosse 4 satellite is 2000-047A.

Oh well, 3 out of 6 on my first real attempt isn't too bad I don't think.

And now, the blurry (and heavily adjusted) photos. I've put a red square around the same part of the picture so you can see the 'motion' of the ISS. Enjoy (or not). You'll have to click on the to make them bigger to have any chance of seeing the red box, btw. Not sure how it'll come out on them fancy-shmancy LCD monitors either. Good luck!









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Updated June 21 2011 to put the sightings in my standard template format

Here's the time-line of this evening:
Date: 13-Sep-2010 Monday

8:38 PM - Name: ISS - Magnitude: -3.6
Int'l Designator: 1998-067-A

8:44 PM - Name: Tansuo 1 LM2r - Magnitude: 3.0
Int'l Designator: 2004-012-C

9:00 PM - Name: Lacrosse 4 Rocket - Magnitude: 1.3
Int'l Designator: 2000-047-B

Can you say TASTY?!!?!?!

This just looks awesome. I'd eat it for sure. Too bad I think they only have it in Japan.


The girl in the video is known as Gal Sone. She's awesome. She is one of the more well known competitive eaters in Japan. She can put away food like crazy. I've seen the video where she eats 6 kg of curry (Japanese curry, not Indian curry) in 23 minutes. BTW, 6 kg is 13.2 lbs. Oh, and she weighs something like 100 lbs. I've also seen her woof down 100 pieces of sushi like it wasn't anything.

Here's an old article from 2007 about her. The youtube video link is toast since several of the Japanese TV channels cleared out nearly all of the videos she was in.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/02/72640

Here's her blog if you want to see posing with people you don't know and pictures of food that you have no idea what it is.

Two words

Not awesome

Mike Portnoy has left Dream Theater.
http://www.mikeportnoy.com/forum/m2585154.aspx
http://www.antimusic.com/news/10/sep/09Mike_Portnoy_Quits_Dream_Theater.shtml

Like most, I am a bit stunned... but quite honestly not surprised either. As Mike stated, after doing shows with Hail, Transatlantic and Avenged Sevenfold, he realized that he was having more fun with those things that he was with Dream Theater. And I have to second that. In recent years I have enjoyed his side-project stuff much more than the DT stuff. They kept it up for 25 years, so it's not like they didn't have the chance to explore the world both physically and musically. It'll be interesting to see what sound Dream Theater will have without Mike (as DT is still planning on recording a new album in Jan 2011).

One disappointment is that there will not likely be a completion of the DT-project Mike was working on which involved writing a song for each step of the AA 12-step program. All of the songs were created so that, someday, the whole 12 song suite would be able to be played seamlessly together. The last album had part 9 and 10 on it, I believe. So the upcoming album would have likely completed this suite.

However, another disappointment was avoided. I'm glad that I got to see Dream Theater live (at one of the best concerts I've been to, too). It could have ended like it did with the Grateful Dead where I had the chance to go to a concert and said 'I'll catch them the next time around' and then Jerry died. So, no regrets on my part for the past few DT concerts I've missed. I saw them once (with Fates Warning and Queensryche, no less) and it was awesome.

One word

Awesome



Can't wait for the new Ben Folds album to come out! Sadly, this song will not be among them. It's a iTunes only track. Stupid iTunes.

BTW, the rest of the stuff from Pamplamoose (whose name is a play on the French word for grapefruit) and Nataly Dawn is incredible. Listen to it. Listen to it all (especially Nataly's take on 'Book of Love' by Magnetic Fields)

(written on 9-25-2010)
For posterity's sake, the first time I saw the International Space Station go overhead was on August 27, 2010. It was 8:30 in the evening and the sun was just starting to set, but it was still plenty light out. It went from the SW overhead to ENE and had a magnitude of a whopping -3.6. I saw pretty much the entire 6 minutes it was visible. It just kept going and going and going. I didn't wait for it to fade was as I did with the next ISS sighting. The international code for the ISS is 1998-067A.


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Updated June 21 2011 to put the sightings in my standard template format

Here's the time-line of this evening:
Date: 27-Aug-2010 Friday

8:36 PM - Name: Internation Space Station aka ISS - Magnitude: -4.2
Int'l Designator: 1998-067-A

My day playing hookie

Ok... they be clear about this... I really wasn't playing hookie. Hookie is calling up working and saying " I don't feel so well. *Cough* *Cough* I won't be coming in today. *Cough*". That was not the case. I put in for a day off and it was accepted. However, playing hookie sound WAY cooler, so we'll just leave it that way. :P

Tom picked me up around 8am and we headed off to the National Museum of he US Air Force. The main plan of the day was to see the Hubble movie on the IMAX theater. It was something that I've been wanting to see for a while now but just never had the chance to go see. I knew it was leaving soon, so I just took off a day to go see it.

We got to the museum around 9am. I got tickets to the 11am show and then we went and looked at some airplanes. We first went into the World War Two section. We wandered around there for, well about 2 hours. It was awesome. I like looking at the planes and reading up on their top speed, stories about the specific plane that is on display, other stories that involve certain aircraft. It's also nice to see the progression in the aeronautical technologies. I basically have two favorite aircraft. One of them is in the WWII exhibit. The Flying Tigers was the name of the 1st American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Airforce in 1941-1942. Their main aircraft was the Curtis P-40 which had distinct art on the nose of the airplane to resemble a shark. Like this. I've always stopped and stared at this plane every time I've been to the museum. And today was no exception. Except this time I took some photos so I can remember it a little bit better.

After the WWII section, I believe we continued on into the Early Years section (we kinda did that one backwards). Again, lots of planes. The coolest one that I remember at the moment, was the giant biplane bomber which had wings which were hinged so they could bend backwards. This was the Martin MB-2.

Finally at just before 11am, we headed to the giant IMAX theater. I forget quickly how large an IMAX screen is. It is big. The Hubble movie was good. I was slightly disappointed since I was thinking it was going to be the Hubble 3D movie, however this was the 'flat' version. And that was okay honestly. Most of the 3D effects would have been utilized during a section where they were peering into a galaxy n stuff. They did send an IMAX 3D camera up there during STS-125 (the last Hubble mission), so the repair mission parts would be cool to see in 3D for sure. But beggars can't be choosers and I was begging to see this movie, so... I got the 2D version. And it was good. :)

After that, it was noon but we decided that we'd quickly go through the cold war part of the museum. Of course, in order to get there you had to go through another hanger of airplanes from the Southeast Asia and Korean Wars section which was too much for us to pass up. So we went through all of that. And all of the 'Cold War Era'. And since we had seen that much, we topped it off by seeing the Space and Missle section which was in a 140-ft high building. Seeing a full size Titan II rocket is pretty interesting.

By the time we finished the space thing, we both kinda forgot that we didn't eat lunch. So we were rather hungry. We stopped at Subway. And Subway is good.

After that we went to Mendelsons Liquidation Outlet. I discovered this place when I was doing my circuit-bending hobby quite a bit. I was looking for a place which sold switches and capacitors and resistors and stuff. And I found it. And whole lot more. Which Tom can attest to. It was hot as heck in there since they didn't have air conditioning. The best part was when Tom thought he had seen everything in the store only to realize that he had only seen the first FLOOR. There was still a second floor to see. It's a good thing it went down that way since on the way to the elevator, Tom found some little kitchen gadget that he HAD to have.

After sweating to death at MLO, we caught some dinner at BW3s where the service was a bit on the slow side. I had managed to get a migraine while at MLO, so I wasn't much for eating (plus, we had a late lunch as well). Service there was a bit on the slow side. We stared joking about growing the potatoes and having to hatch the chickens. Eventually the food arrived and I ate most of my Asian Zing wings and some of my chips.

After we finished eating, I decided to play one of those crane games. Each credit was 50 cents. So I plunked in a dollar and got 2 credits. On the first grab I got a doll with a music box in it. The lil one isn't so keen on music boxes, so I tried to nab a bear on my second credit. And I was SOOOO close. It actually dragged it but then it dropped right before it got to the drop zone. Since I was so close to getting the bear, I plunked in another dollar for 2 more credits. On the 3rd try I completed getting the other bear. But then I still had one more credit, so I aimed for another bear. Which I got. So, out of 4 tries, I got 3 toys. Not bad at all. Most machines nowadays they cram the animals in there so tight that it is nearly impossible to actually grab anything. But in this machine, they were in there fairly loose and the claw actually had a little bit of grab to it. Another thing that was a bonus was that the claw did not engage until you had dropped it completely. Most machine you press the button and zoom it goes down and zip it goes back up. This one I could momentarily press the buttn and the claw would only go down a little bit. And as long as the claw wasn't all the way down, you could still move it right left forward and back. So that helped me as well get precise claw-grabbing ability.

Then we drove home.

All in all, it was a great day.

Weekend and my latest addiction (and no it's not cheap meth again)

Just thought I'd drop a note here.

-= Part 1: The Weekend =-
-= Saturday =-
Saturday my parents and sister came into town to do family photos. The kiddos behaved about as well as kids can when you're asking them to stand in the same place for 5 minutes. Had to let the lil little one run around a little bit when he started doing the 'I know you want to hold me , but I don't want to be held so I'm going to arch my back and contort my body as much as possible so you don't get the satisfaction of me being held' thing.

After the photo shoot, the parents dropped by the house. The Mrs and I took the opportunity to go out and get lunch and run around. We ate at Crazy Burritos which was pretty tasty. My lunch special shrimp fajitas (for $6.75 no less) was awesome. I'd certainly go there again just for that. After that we hit a consignment place that Mrs wanted to go to. There wasn't much there (other than some used carseats. I guess they didn't get the memo on it being illegal to resale used carseats.) After that we attempted to go to Goodwill, however there literally were no parking spots. It's on a corner and there literally are 4 parking spots for the store... two of which are handicapped. There was also no parking on the street around the store. I'm not sure how they expect anyone to shop there. :-/ After that we got some ice cream at a place called Old Farmhouse I think. It just recently opened. I got Peach and it was fresh and tasty.

After that fun, we came back to the house and attempted to tackle the basement. When we moved, we took a TON of stuff to my sister's house. So, lately, when she's visitd shes broght back a box or ten and it was soon becoming clear that we were going to run out of room. So, we decided that it might be time to unclutter our stuff and make some 'DONATE' and 'GARAGE SALE' piles. We really did get threw quite a bit which was nice. I let go of quite a few things, which for me is hard since I feel like I'm a border-line hoarder at times. I like things. Collections of things. Things that might be useful (and sometimes they are). But does one really need 5 extra keyboards? Does one really need those VHS tapes with three episodes of 'Behind the Music' on each of them? No. Not really. I have hung on to alot of stuff that honestly, I just don't need and that likely will not be of any use any time soon.

-= Sunday =-
Sunday I got to vacuum the whole house.

I also got to hang out with Ian. We went and ate at the Rusty Bucket in Worthington. It was tasty. We both got an order of the deep fried pickles. They were tasty, but the volume was a bit much. I got their coney platter which had two dogs covered in chili, cheese, onions and mustard (I told them to hold the sweet relish since I'm not a huge sweet relish fan... i like dill relish... not sweet relish) and some fries. It was a bit much. Ugh. I could have done without the second dog. The chili dogs were pretty much the cheapest thing on the menu at nearly $8. I'm a cheap-skate, so paying anymore than $6 makes me cringe unless it is REALLY good. This was not really good. Good. But not really good. I think my Pepsi was like $2.75. I should have just had water. Maybe then my bill for just me wouldn't have been $20 (another thing that makes me cringe).

After that we headed up to the OSU campus. After driving over one of the many bottles left in the gutter by one of the many college students (the tire was fine), we went to Used Kids. It feels like one of the few things that I can still recognize since I've been there. The Buckeye Donuts shop had a complete facelife. The Arbys and Stop n Rob have been bulldozed and replaced with a CVS. The Bike Source and Jousters bar have been bulldozed and replaced with a giant BW3s (which means one of the original BW3s places has been... bulldozed or facelifted. South Campus with all of its bars was bulldozed and now houses a whole complex of eateries, a theater and who knows what else. Even Used Kids techincally has changed. It was in the basement, but they had a fire some time after I left and had to relocate next door, to the second floor where there used to be a place called 'World Records' but that happened a while a go. 2000 maybe?

I'm rambling.

Anyways, we rooted around in the $3 CD and $1 record bins. I ended up with a Walter (Wendy) Carlos album where s/he covered various, random things that supposedly people requested... everything from Tchaikovsky to the Beatles. I also ended up with two double albums of music from some older MGM musicals. I'm not exactly sure why I bought them right now. I'm sure they will be among the first things to be put into the 'gone' pile when I finally get all the records in the house and start purging that collection. Maybe it's cause I felt bad about only spending $1. I like Used Kids. They have a crap load of crap there and that place has been an institution on campus since... who knows when (probably either in late 60s or early 70s). With the resurgence in vinyl, I guess I feel like making sure they place stays open for people to rediscover music from way back when vinyl wasn't just a 'retro-cool' thing but one of the main forms of distributing music.

-= Part 2: Addiction =-
So, after I got back from hanging out with Ian, I played with the kids and ate some dinner. Both of them had been up since early that morning, so by 7:30pm, they were both in meltdown mode and we put them to bed. Luckily, both of them went down somewhat nicely. One of them was convinced that we absolutely HAD TO go outside to hunt for treasure and repeatedly told us so for about 20 minutes before she was informed it was ABSOLUTELY time for bed. She whined and cried and hen crashed in a matter of minutes.

So, I went downstairs and rummaged through a couple more boxes.

And then I played my new addiction. A game called "The Movies". It's from 2005. I got it for $5 from Half Priced Books. You basically run a movie studio; hiring actors and directors, building movie sets, maintaining the studio grounds, trying to keep the actors and directors egos in check, trying to make sure that they all dont become alcoholics (seriously, that's part of the game). It was widely anticipated but from what I understand, people were disappointed with the game play or something. Anyways, most people now use it for making these weird movies that you can actually make in the game (something called Machinima. I was thinking about buying it for the wife when it first came out, since she's a big movie buff, but at the time her computer would have pretty much melted down if I would have tried to install this game on it.

Anyhoo... after I bought it, it took a few weeks to finally install it. On my machine first, of course. At first, I had a hard time... but I didn't read the directions either. D'oh. After I figured it out, I was off. After dorking around with it for THREE HOURS the first night. I came upstairs and told the wife how much fun it was and then declared 'that game is a such time sucker'. To me, that means it's a game that you can sit down with every intention of playing for 'just a few minutes' and the next thing you know it's 3 hours later. That's kinda what happened last night. It was 8:30 and I was going to just play a little while also working on another project from the wife. The next thing I know, it's 11:30 and my mouse clicking figure is stuff and my eyes are burning because I've been so intently watching the screen. It didn't help that I just hired a whole mess of actors/actresses and directors, had like 3 movies in production at one, and they were all getting bent out of shape and drinking and complaining that their entourage wasn't big enough or their trailer wasn't nice enough and blah blah blah and red lights going off everywhere and.... you get the picture.

It's a time sucker. And I enjoy it. I had a hard time, even at midnight, getting to sleep because my brain was actively thinking about what strategy I could use on my next game. I haven't even finished the first one yet! Actually, the game is open ended, but I figure when the year 2000 rolls around (It starts in the 20s... I'm currently in the late 70s) I'm sure that I'll probably start anew at that point. Maybe I'll hire fewer people and concentrate on building more sets (a current problem is movies using the same sets and blocking each other). Maybe I'll be 'Actor-land' so that I can keep track of the trailers better (currently they are strewn all about and it's nearly impossible to find a star's trailer when they need to be put into time out). Maybe I need to focus more on their entourages. Maybe I should use the custom scrip writing office earlier in the game and that could help me avoid issues with the same sets being used over and over again.

Anyways... that's all I have to say about that.

Save A Turtle Day

Okay, I don't really think there is a day called that... but today I saved a turtle. I was leaving work to hit Taco Bell. As I was leaving I about hit a rock that was up against the curb... or at least it looked like a rock at first.. but as I looked in my rear-view, it appeared to be a turtle. So, I drove on not really sure of what I was seeing. I went to Taco Bell and on my way back, I said, 'well, if it's a turtle, he/she probably can't get up on the curb, so... I guess I'll have to help it'. As I returned, I was it was indeed a turtle. And not a small turtle. Like, it's shell was the size of a 5 gallon paint bucket lid. So, I parked and walk all the way back to the turtle who obviously wanted to get up on the curb but hadn't quite figure it out. So I went up behind it and picked it up by its shell. At that point, the turtle I guess 'hissed' or something and failed it's legs about rather quickly. (One assumes that they ALWAYS move slow, which is a big no-no). Startled, I kind of let go of the turtle, but since we were right at the curb the turtle landed up over the curb and into some much right next to th ewalkway which goes right past one of the two 'ponds' that are in front of the complex of building I worked at. I walked off since the turtle didn't really appreciate me touching it. But I looked back to see it's long head extend back out and it start moving forward again. If that turtle would have stayed there much longer, it surely would have been hit since the exit is on a slight bend and people get all in a rush and whip through the parking lot to get to the road which was 20 feet away. Had I not moved the turtle, it would have continued to follow the curb until it got to the road.

I saved a turtle!!!
Good deed of the day: Check.

Mother's Day

Had an interesting Mother's Day.

Woke up and told the wife 'We're going out for breakfast'. Lil kiddo said she wasn't feeling well, but we atrributed that to her not eating much the day before due to her tonsillectomy. Rolled into Waffle House. Strapped the one kiddo into the high chair. The other one, made her way into the booth, and then, informed us again she was not feeling well... and puked into the diaper bag. So wife takes kiddo back to the car, I unbuckle the other one and walk back out. This all occurred within 30 seconds of finding our booth in the restaurant. So, we drove back home. Daddy (that's me) went and nabbed some McD's breakfast for the Mrs.

A couple of hours later, my parents came into town to watch the kids and let the Mrs and I get a little kid-less time. We went to Graffiti Burger for lunch. It was tasty. We both got the namesake. The Mrs didn't care for the zesty slaw on top but other than that she liked it. I thought it was as awesome as the first time I ate it. Got the milk shake for $3. I wasn't overly impressed with that. We also got 1/2 lb of fries. All told, it was $20, which is a bit expensive for get getting two burgers, some fries a shake and two drinks. But, still good.

We then hopped over to the Dublin AMC and saw 'Hot Tub Time Machine'. The original plan was to see 'Babies' but it wasn't playing until 3pm and we didn't know if lil kiddo was gonna have a meltdown or not as she was less than pleased when we left. Anyways, I have to say that this was an interesting pick for a Mother's Day movie. We both wanted to see it when the previews came out, so it seemed like the next logical choice. It's very hard to descibe how I feel about this movie, so I just won't. Go see it and you'll understand.

The Mrs while she somewhat enjoyed it, it certainly didn't give the 'fulfilling movie' feeling. So, I called the grandparents to determine that the kiddos were just fine. I looked at my watch and figured that if we busted ass, we could haul on down to the Lennox and JUST make the movie. And haul we did. And make the movie we did as well. We literally sat down (it was CROWDED as all heck) and had about 5 minutes of trailers and then the movie start.

'Babies' was what it sounded like if you've seen the previews. It's an un-narrated clip show about the first year of life for four babies. They were from various locations across the globe as to show the child-rearing differences. One was from San Francisco, one was from Africa, one was from Japan and one was from Mongolia. I didn't realize that it wasn't going to be narrated at all, but that didn't bug me really. There was also very very minimal music. Probably a little bit every 15 minutes or so would be my guess. Not alot.

We then trekked home, stopping by to get some Wendy's for all.

It was nice to spend time with the Mrs as I was about at my wits end. Hopefully, for the most part, I hope she enjoyed herself as well.

Saturday out and away

I went out on Saturday and did a little bit o wandering around.

First stop was the record show. Got there around noonish. It was packed, which I was actually happy to see. In recent times the crowd hadn't been that good (especially in the later Vets Memorial days), but today the whole Haimerl parking lot was nearly full. Nabbed a few things there. In a six records for $5 bin, I got the following (all in very nice condition): Walter Carlos - Switched On Bach II, Meatloaf - Bat out of Hell (have this on Cd, wasn't sure on LP), Boston - Boston (I think I have a copy of this, but don't recall the shape, this one is fairly nice), Foreigner - Head Games, Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond - Moods and Grooves, and finally... Foghat - Live!. And literally, 2 minutes before I was going to walk out the door, some guy made me a deal on a Tangerine Dream 5 CD box set called 'The Dream Roots Collection - The Tangerine Dream pink - blue box set'. I know nothing about this one, but he sold it to me for $10 so I can't be too mad. I've liked most of the T.D. stuff I've heard. My fave is still Lily on the Beach (which was the first one I heard, as well).

As I left, I went to the kitchen which was supporting some local charity and nabbed a suspect chili dog and a Pepsi. The chili dog was good anyways.

Since that wasn't much to eat, I figured I'd head down the street and go to one of the few remaining Rally's that I know of to get a Double BBQ Bacon Cheeseburge. However, it's now closed and ready to be bulldozed. They are doing alot of renovating over on Morse. So, good for them. But I'll miss that Rally's.

After that, I crossed over on Cleveland and went to Buy Backs. Holy shit! That place is just JAM PACKED full of ... everything. Tons o' DVDs, CDs and even VHS tapes. Their Budget DVD/CD section is crazy mad. Seemingly much bigger than the the CD collection at Used Kids the last time I went. If you have the will power, you could find some kick ass shit there for 1.99 on DVDs and ... I don't even know what the CDs were going for, but I suspect it's the same. I tried to find some super cheap '50 movie DVD packs' to no avail, but did pick up the following: 40 Year Old Virgin Unrated for $4.99, two Dora DVDs for lil N for $1.99 each (a fucking steal since they charge like $9.99 at walmart and each one only has like 4 episode on them)... and the coup de gras... Matinee on VHS for $2.99. For some reason 'Matinee' (a movie starring John Goodman as a Castle-like movie producer who is about gimicks like smell-o-vision, shock seats, etc) has been out of print for freaking ever. And I've never been able to nab a copy, until now. (Actually, I just checked Amazon and it appears that literally, on May 4th, they re-released it on DVD... guess what's going on my wish list????). Anyhoo... I was very stoked to find this copy. For some reason, it seems like there are 100 on Amazon now, but there used to not be. Oh well... maybe it's cause I was looking only for DVD copies which were going for like $40 bucks. Anyways... finding that movie was awesome for me and that's all that matter. But now I want that damn _new_ DVD version of it.

After that, I went to the Ohio Thrift Store next door. Didn't buy anything there except for a big box of Mike and Ikes. They were still (mostly) fresh. I've had worse at a theater, so they were acceptable.

And that was my day out.

Mid April Stuffage = Script Ohio

Before I forget all this stuff which I remembered this morning from the previous weekend (<--- was this even a sentence????)

We to my dad's shin-dig for Eastern Star. Had a beer and a stiff rum n coke to get me through the pleasantries. But the cool part of the evening was the fact that the entertainment that evening was the 'Hyperactive' Ohio State Alumni band. As I learned there are 3 active alumni bands. One is the 'performance' alumni band. They do the BIG alumni shows, ones that are covered on TV n whatnot. Then there is the 'active' alumni band which does the bigger conferences and stuff. Then there is the hyperactive band. They pretty much do everything: birthday parties, funerals (yeah, it actually happens), fund raisers, etc etc etc.

So the cool part was that my dad and his counterpart in the Eastern Star got to 'dot the I' while the band played "Le Régiment de Sambre et Meuse" (aka, the song they play during Script Ohio). But even better, the drum major invited people in the crowd to stand up and march along with them. So as any pure OSU alumni would do, I got up and started marching. The sweet part was because the path the drum major took, the marchers actually had to perform the 'cross over' where every one has to weave in order to not run into each other (it's part of the O if you've seen Script Ohio. So, I can officially say I've marched to Script Ohio with TBDBITL.

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The next day the family went to the Zoo. It was a wonderful day. It was in the upper 40s when we got there. I only had on a short sleeve T-shirt. It felt really good. The only time I actually got 'cold' was when we ate lunch by the 'lake'. It was a bit breezy and the wind coming off the 'lake' was rather cool. But other than that, it was wonderful.

We finally got to see the lion cubs. One of them started chasing a bird which for some reason refused to leave even when the lion cub was chasing it around. Finally the dad came over and put his paw on his sons head as if to say 'Son, quit chasing that bird and looking like a dork. You're embarassing me'.

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The wife got the kids a sandbox the other day, so I've bee making sand castles with lil N for the past couple of evenings. I make the castles and she crushes them. I guess that's fair.

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The wife got the first part of season 1 of 'Glee' on DVD from the Marysville library. So we've been watching that. It's good fun. I like musicals.

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OK, I'm done for now. I honestly just wanted to remember the Script Ohio and zoo stuff.

April n March n stuff

Lessee here....

Finally got to see Ian's house which was cool. Can't wait for him to get the rekording studio up n running in the basement. We went to Blue Ginger on Sawmill. It's in the strip mall with BD Mongolian and Buy Backs. It's one of those weird things where on the outside it's just like any other building in a strip mall.. but when you walk in there, it is a very nice Japanese restaurant. I got a combo meal where I could you could get soup and two rolls. I got hot n sour and a crunchy salmon (or was it tuna) roll and come other roll with calamari in it. The rolls i got were of the smaller variety. The one Ian got was this huge monstrosity of a thing with all sorts of sauces drizzled on it. It looked tasty! We then went to buybacks and bought... nothing. Then we headed to 1/2 Price books on Bethel. Ian got a slew of CDs and I bought the Jimmy Buffet autobiography book from the 1990s and some other biography on Brian Wilson (which was new enough to have one of the Brian Wilson comebacks in it... I think it was the late 1990s one... not the release of Smile one). It was cool to hang out with Ian for a little bit.

=-=-=-=-

The Monday after that I met up with my friend Tom and we went to 5 Guys Burgers. The place is very simple and the menu even more simple. The menu basically has single burgers, double burgers, fries, hot dogs and grilled cheese. That's it. It was very tasty indeed. They serve everything in a paper bag. If you go, get the regular fry only. I don't care how hungry you think you are, the reg fry will be plenty. See, then first package a reg cup of fries (kinda like at the fair). Then they put your burger in the bag, and then they they throw a whole bunch of fries in at the end. When Tom told me he couldn't eat all the fries the last time he ate there, I laughed at him and belittled him. Of course, that meant that it was almost guaranteed to be that I would not be able to eat all of mine... which is exactly what happened. (5 Guys Burgers is off of Avery-Muirfield by the BW3s). The double burger I got was good n greasy.

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The Tuesday after that, I met up with my friend Kevin at Graffiti Burger (which is up on Sawmill in front of the Kroger Marketplace and next door to Pei Wei). It is a very similar concept to 5 Guys where the menu is minimal. I believe that Graffiti Burger has burers only, but they do have milkshakes as well. I got the namesake burger (which contained a spicy cole slaw served on the burger) and it was f'ing tasty.

Between 5 Guys and Graffiti, I would likely choose Graffiti, but they are both tasty (and can be a bit exspensive... my meal at 5 Guys was $11 and my meal at Graffiti was $10)

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In other food news, a few days ago my wife returned from KFC with a surprise. Turns out, that while fried gizzards are not on the menu, some stores actually carry them. My wife was tipped to this when she saw a coupon somewhere mentioning that you could get 50 cents off of a gizzards meal but to ask at the store since not all carry gizzards. Prior to this, the only place I could get fried gizzards was at Lee's Famous Recipe. The closest one that I know of is in Bellefountaine, OH which is about 30 - 40 minutes away (though, it's on my way to heading back where my parents live). But now, I can have gizzards in 5 minutes as the Marysville KFC sells gizzards. TASTY!!!!

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I bought this weird documentary about song poems called "Off The Charts: The Song-Poem Story". Song poems are just what they sound like. If you've ever been looking at the ads in the back of People magazie or probably comic books or even Rolling Stone as some point and you see the ad that says, 'Send up your poems and we'll see if you might be a songwriter in the making. Maybe you'll even get royalties!' then you understand the concept of the song poem. Anyways... I made the wife watch it. It was actually rather interesting, at least for the first 45 minutes. It was interesting to see the different people who send in their poems to have them recorded, as well as seeing the different people who record these song poems. There are even people who collect the fairly rare record compilations that these song poem companies occasionally put out. If you want to borrow it, lemme know and you can watch it. If you do, you'll at the very see the 'video' for the song "Non-violent TaeKwonDo Troopers" which was the wife's favorite song.

Heh.. just found this website... I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't mentioned in the movie somewhere.

your monthly update... n stuff

Had a good weekend. The parents came up on Friday so the Mrs and I got to tool around town. We first went and got a family membership at the Y. I need to get my butt in shape! Then we ate lunch at the Montgomery Inn in Dublin. It was teh suxorz. As my wife best put it, everything was drowned in sauce. You couldn't taste the meat if you tried. My hoagie sandwich was on a fairly blah bun. The cole slaw sucked. The Mrs is from Cinci so she's a M.I. veteran, but she was disappointed. ... so after the sucky lunch, we went looking for a dining table. The $150 set that I got when I first moved into my townhome back in 1997 is getting a bit bobbly all around. We went to Value City, but they didn't really have what we were looking for. We then went to Dinette Gallery which is where we should have gone in the first place. We know what we want and we now have a good idea how much we need to budget in order to purchase it. Yay! After that, we went to one of the few remaining Friendly's up on the E side of 161.

Then Sunday we headed back to my hometown and sent to my uncle's 90th birthday. Got to see some of the family which was nice. The kiddos only lasted about an hour, which honestly is what we expected.

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The previous weekened (or was it the weekend before last... i don't remember anymore) the wife went to Cinci for the Feb birthdays so I got a 'pass'. I stayed home and flipped between a Science Channel marathon on the technologies of the Apollo moon missions and a Anthony Bourdain No Reservations marathon on the Travel Channel. I also put togeter a set of kitchen cabinets that we purchased to help get a little more space in the kitched. (It's techincally a kitchen island on wheels.... but we left off the wheels and pushed it against the wall)

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The wife and I have been catching a few more Redbox movies as of late...

Couples Retreat - It was alright. Lots of bikini shots for me. But the guys in the movie were 'meh' so the wife didn't get much to look at. Glad we didn't pay to see it in the theaters.

The Hangover - I was really expecting this to be a split your side the whole way through kinda movie (like I was expecting for Napolean Dynamite). Alas that was not the case. There were a few times that I laughed heartily, but nowhere near the number of laughs that were expected. The wife laughed more than I did, which I found amusing since it was mostly 'guy humor' which in general she has an 'I don't get it' attitude towards. Again, glad we didn't pay to see it in the theater.

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I FINALLY finished listening to all the MP3 CDs. Grand totals:
39294 songs
2474 hours 5 minutes 0 seconds.

I found it amusing that after all that it came out to an even minutes cound (ie, no 'stray' seconds).

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Yeah, I'm drawing a blank. The kids are great. Nothing very ha-ha to mention (that I can think of at the moment).

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Not too shabby a weekend

I had Friday off, so the wife ran a few errands. That gave me plenty o time to spend with the kiddos. It was nice.

Saturday, the wife and I cranked out some housework which was nice. And spent time with the kiddos.

Sunday, the grandparents came up and relieved us from our parental duties. We went out to Red Lobster (I had the peach and bourbon bbq chicken and shrimp, it was tasty!) and then saw a movie (Valentine's Day, which was as sugary as it sounds, but I'm a sucker for lovey dovey chick flicks, so it's all good).

Monday (yesterday) spent some more time with the kids. Got out of the house to finally get my hair cut. Went to Wal-mart and bought a new pair of tennis shoes for $12. They're Starters. I like the way they look. They weren't even on clearance. That's just how much they were. Everyone should be thankful that I didn't pick up the velco shoes in the clearance section for $3. ;-) I also got the 'special edition' of Smokey and the Bandit for $5. I already had a copy of this movie, but I bought it when I got my first DVD player back in ... oh geez... i don't remember when... about ten years ago... anyway, it was during that era that half the time DVDs were still full frame and had jack squat for bonus features. So, this new one is in anamorphic widescreen and has a half hours worth of bonus features that the wife and I watched last night. Then, at 9:45pm, I went outside for an hour to shovel out the 5 inches of snow that was in my driveway.

Now it's Tuesday and both Franklin and Union county are under level 2 and more snow is on the way, so I'm staying home, but hoping that my boss gets my email and sends some work my way as I actually want to get some stuff done today, but since I didn't bring my work computer home with me I don't really have much to work on. D'oh.

Natta Much

Not much going on in my world.

Lil N started preschool about 2 or 3 weeks ago. She's been doing quite well, so that cool news. I was worried she was gonna freak out, but on most days she loves getting on the school bus.

Work was nutty forever and finally let up mid-January. I was getting a bit tired from the 2 months of 60 - 80 hr weeks + most weekends. The wife was a really trooper through it all. Glad that shit is done... for now.

Totally missed the record show last weekend since the invite went to the old house and then had to be forwarded. Show was on the 6th, but I got it reminder on ... the 7th. D'oh! The next one comes on May 8th, so mark your calendar. Admission is still $4 or $3 with a card. Whee!

Gonna get the taxes tomorrow. I was glad to hear from my tax dude that I wouldn't have to pay taxes on the money I made from the house since I pretty much stuck the 'profit' right back into the house I bought, which, since it is my second home, I can get the $6500 credit thingy, I think. Not sure exactly how that one works, but I won't get that one right away. This one has been weird from the beginning I believe where you have to file separate paperwork. I just read something where they made it sound like you had to have purchased your second home between Nov 6th 2009 and April 30 2010. Which we purch'd before then. Trying to read the actual IRS doc is a bit difficult. Grrr... and this is why I pay someone to do my taxes. (Reading more from businessweek.com, it looks like we missed out. It appears that you had to close on Nov 6 or after. That's fucking bogus, but whatever... if that's the case then my tax dude'll tell me so.)

I'm tired of shovelling and I hope that lil' 1 to 2 inches we are supposed to get just kinda pass us by... or blow away or something.

Nothing much else to report, really.

Merry Christmas

Just wanted to wish everyone Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. It's been a crazy year to say the least, but with my family and friends by my side I've managed to survive.

The holiday's will be as nutty as ever with the my side of the family being tomorrow (Christmas Eve), our family and M's family on christmas day and then my dad's side on sunday. Doubtful we'll make it to have Christmas with my parent's neighbors (which my parent and until recently I have done since something like 1967 or something). And i have no idea if my mom's side is even entertaining the idea of getting together cause in the past few years we haven't been able to make the trek and it kinda interrupts when they head down to their condo in florida n stuff. or something like that. but anyways... it'll be busy enough for me.

So... I say to you 'Yay Baby Jesus!' and happy holidays. May your travels be safe and your food be good and plenty. Peace!

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

I need to find this on DVD somewhere. I checked redbox, but sadly they aren't stocking it. Looks like I might be able to get it from the Marysville library. I've placed my reserve on Anvil! The Story of Anvil!

The funniest (and saddest) part about all this, is that some of the older CDs are not going for good money (like $35). For example, their first major label release 'Strength of Steel' is going for that. I can officially say that I had this on CD (which in itself was rare). I believe I picked it up out of a bargin bin from Camelot Music in Piqua, OH. I have to say that I disliked it, so I remember trading it at a flea market in Columbus for a bootleg of Skid Row's 'Slave to the Grind' which had the now deleted track of 'Get the fu&# out' on it. I still have that cassette somewhere. But I have it on CD now as well. Which makes me wish that I still had that Anvil CD, which I am fairly certain is the only CD I've ever traded away. (I take that back, recently I've been selling off CDs, but at the time, 15 years ago, I really didn't get rid of anything.

I'm not sure what brought that on. I think it went something like this... was listening to some Iron Maiden, the Piece of Mind album... I was looking at the wiki for Iron Maiden... then looked at the wiki for McBrain which described his single pedal footwork... which noted a very specific song on the Flight 666 movie... which lead to youtube... which reminded me that the Anvil movie was also out there.

We said if you don't got Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin

One my my wife's friend told her 'bout this. Yeah... that's right. Amazon has nearly all of Mojo Nixon (and by nearly all, I mean 152 our of 155 songs) up for free for download. Rock on. Amazon got Mojo Nixon.

Dead Milkmen rule.



... We got into her car away we started rollin
I said how much you pay for this
Said nothin man it's stolen!

Punk rock girl
You look so wild
Punk rock girl
Let's have a child
We'll name her Minnie Pearl
Just you and me
Eat fudge banana swirl
Just you and me
We'll travel round the world
Just you and me
Punk rock girl

Chalk white apartment walls surfaces my every flaw...

What to say.... ?

I've been a bit grumpy, annoyed, etc lately. My wife can vouch for that. I'm sorry I've been such a pain in the ass lately.

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I've been listening to cassettes in the car since, well, the car only has a cassette player. Some of the more interesting side 1 / side 2 combinations have occurred this week:

Side 1: Kiss - Kiss
Side 2: Starship - No Protection

Side 1: Iron Maiden - Somewhere in Time
Side 2: Kool and the Gang - Forever

Side 1: Kiss - Dynasty
Side 2: Stand By Me OST

I can't make that kind of shit up.

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I went through Burger King for lunch today... a Whopper Jr w/ everything and a medium onion thing. They quickly hand me my order and I pull off slowly... checking the bag... and them fuckers forgot the zesty sauce. That's the whole point of getting the O-things... that zesty sauce is so damn tasty. So I had to park my car and walk in to get my damn sauce. The whole point of the drive through is that I can DRIVE AWAY. Not park and walk. Grrrrrr

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It's all okay now, though. I ate my damn sandwich and my onion things with zesty sauce and it was tasty. My demeanor was also help by the fact that the next album on the ol' MP3 CD was red house painters - ocean beach. Nice and slow and mopey music. Helped bring me down of my frantic, pissed off mood. Plus helped smooth out the aggitated parts so that I just got kinda mopey... which is way better than the complete bastard I've been for the past 2 months or so. Cabezon is a great instrumental and Shadows I swear I've heard somewhere else before...either on a soundtrack or covered by Suddenly Tammy (which I checked, and it's not on either of the albums they released... so who knows.) I dunno. It's what I needed though. Something that has the same mood as my inner demeanor. Just mopey. Not Kool and the Gang, not Kiss, not Iron Maiden, not Testament, not certainly f'ing Starship.

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Heading off this weekend to two different events. The wife is having her ... 20 year reunion ( I had to think about it for a second there). It should be fun. It'll be nice to spend time with the wife without the kids. We desperately need some time like that. I'm sure that's part of my problem... not getting to spend much time with the wife that doesn't involve the kids playing / crying / whining / screaming / laughing in the background. On occasion, we get to catch an episode of thritysomething (which FINALLY came out on DVD to my wife's delight)... but sometimes even that is interrupted by one of the kids waking up, causing us to pause the show and sometimes even having to halt the episode altogether.

Anyway...

Number two on the agenda is my dad has a ceremony that we have to attend to. No bother mentioning what it is cause I barely understand what it is either. It involves being at the Dayton convention center and instructions like 'you'll just have to find us cause we're not sure where we'll be or how we'll be dressed or what time things will start'. Gee. Thanks. I just love going into things where nothing is set in concrete. Especially when I don't know where I'm going or what I'm looking for. NOT! If I'm lucky, my wife won't kill me by the end of the day. And after we pick up the kids, I'm sure I'll pass out in the van on the way back home... possibly with a migraine (though I have every intention of bringing along at least enough for two headaches).

Soon, we'll have the grandparents come up and we can spend an afternoon together and just do whatever or, maybe even better yet, nothing. Everything seems to cost money. Everything seems to come back to the kids. And sometimes that's fine. I love my kids to death and it's amazing to watch them grow and get personalities and all that. But I guess lately I sometimes just want to be able to spend time with my friend alone, without any of the other cares in our lives being in fore- or even background.

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Here's a Red House Painter song that that's called "Song for a Blue Guitar". It's not "Shadows" but similar in tone, in my opinion.


Here is Shadows:

home.

well... we're finally settled into the house (read: the sofa does not have plastic on it, the computer network is set up, one room is painted, the swing set is up, the cats are alive... but there are still 150 boxes that need unpacking)

i don't remember much from the past 4 days. here's what I remember.

Thursday - The wife took the kids down the Cinci to stay the night. This left me to pack the rest of the house which I thought would be easy peasy. Dad came into town to finish cleaning up the back lot. Finished packing the garage around 5:30pm. Dad and I ordered 'The Meats' pizza from Papa John's and watched a couple of episode of MASH. It's still a good show. I started packing the rest of the house. Again, I thought it would be easy peasy. I called no friends in for support for this reason. About 10:30pm I realized my mistake. I had to call it an evening at 2:30am. I still was not done packing.

Friday - Woke up around 7am or so. Continued packing crap. Tom showed up at noon as requested by me the night before (in a panic of course) Originally he was going to show up at 2:15ish to pick up the cats and take them back to his house until we were done with closing. Anyways, Tom showed up at noon to start tearing down the computers and get them packed into my car. Maryann showed up around 12:30pm-ish after leaving the kids with a set of grandparents. We packed up her van as fast as we could. The movers were showing up at 1pm. However, by 1:30, we STILL didn't have my car packed _and_ the movers weren't at the house yet. Closing for the soon-to-be-old house was at 3pm; new owners to take possession IMMEDIATELY after closing. Oh, and btw, I still didn't have my final 'numbers' for the closing of the new house (in other words, I still didn't know how much to make the check for, so obv I still needed to go to the bank). Maryann called the movers. They'd be there in 10 minutes which was accurate. At 2pm I FINALLY got my final number. By the time Tom and I finished loading the car, it was 2:15 and I was sweaty and prolly smelled like a homeless person. However, there was going to be no time to take a shower as I still had to make my way to the bank and then to the office up on 23 by 2:45.

(I'm gonna start chopping this story down from here on out as this post was left unedited for the past 3 days)
So I hopped in the car, drove to the bank. They handed me the check. It had my name misspelled. They give me another check. It's correct. Thanks. I then hope into the car, still gross and sweaty, and drive to the realty office. My agent is already there in the parking lot. I say 'Hi' and then whip off my t-shirt in front of her. She's like 70. I say 'Sorry, but I'm really sweaty and gross, and I'm pretty sure you've seen all this before.' I put on some deoderant and wait for my wife to arrive, which she did about 5 minutes later. We hope into the agent's car and drive to the title agency to get down with some paperwork. We meet the early-20-something girlfriend of the guy who is buying the house. Up to this point, we thought that the people who were buying the house were in their thirties and had two kids and the wife worked at OSU. We're still not sure where that information came from. Anyhoo... we get through both closings in about an hour and a half.

Back in the parking lot, I call Tom to tell him that we're done and ask if he needs any help getting the cats back in the carrier. There is a pause and he tells me to 'come on home' cause the movers are still packing. We get back to the house and sure enough they are still packing. Luckily, the new owners were planning on catching some dinner and then painting later that night. Anyways, the truck is pretty much full when we get there. I'm glad we didn't get the U Haul. Those guys packed that 26 ft truck (which is about 2 feet taller than a U Haul 26 footer), top to bottom, front to back. There is no way me and my peeps would have made it fit. No way, no how. It was funny to watch them pack the last 5 or 6 things. They would pick up the item, look at the truck, look at the item, look at the truck... repeat until someone points to a crevice of space in the truck. The only thing that I had to leave behind was the snow blower, and that fucker hasn't worked right for the past three years, so fuck it. I left it on the curb. Good luck to whoever picked it up.

So, at 5:15 the posse of 3 cars and 1 truck started rolling. I knew we were in trouble the minute we got to the 270 exit. You could see that it was backed up. Long story made short, it took about 45 minutes to get from the Sawmill exit to the 33/161 exit. All the while, I was praying that movers would cut me some slack seeing as how they are getting paid hourly. After finally getting to the exit ramp for 33 (which leads to Marysville), we see the problem and the cause for the back up. A school bus had broken down and all the kiddie-football-jocks were sitting in the grass. Everyone was rubbernecking to see what was going on. Once you got past the school bus, it was 55 miles and hour. I hate gawkers. Stupid people.

So, we finally get to Marysville around 6:30. The truck shows up about 15 - 30 minutes later. I think they may have had to stop for gas and maybe a bite to eat. Anyways, the clouds started looming overhead. And at 8pm, it started raining. But the movers kept moving, just like should. Just like the load in, the load out had them moving the big furniture wherever it needed to go and the boxes were placed in the garage. While they were doing that, Tom, Maryann and I were moving boxes out of the garage to wherever we thought they should go. Tom's wife, Amy, was also at the house and was watching her kiddos play in the kitchen (as everywhere else was sea of movement). The movers finished up around 9:30. I paid them and they (and Tom) went on their way. The plan was to start painting lil N's room, but we were both tired, so we opted for sleep. It was a bit odd sleeping in the new house and not having the kids around.

Saturday - My wife's family, my wife's family friends, and cousins of my wife's family friends showed up to help us get moved in. And they all did a great job. There was the debacle of painting N's room. They started putting the primer on but it kept pulling off the walls. We ended up having to switch the primer. So a job that probably should have taken only 6 - 8 hours, ended up taking 2 days.

I don't remember much of Saturday. It was all a big blur. I can recall doing the following: installing the washer and dryer, helping the cable guy get the cable hooked up, putting together the swingset, putting together the swingset, getting my computer and the wireless network hooked up, and putting together the trampoline. About 4 or so, I got a migraine and took a 'nap' for 3 hours which didn't get rid of all the headache, but after a second dose of Imitrex, it finally went away. We had White Castles for dinner in honor of her family friend's dad who loved White Castles (it was the anniversary of his passing).

Sunday - Well, it was a blur as well. I had poop issues all day. It sucked. Too much stress from the past week, I'm guessing. The friends finished up painting N's room. I think it was mostly a day of unpacking and whatnot.

And that's pretty much where we are at. Still unpacking boxes. I've gotten a couple of gates installed. I need to redo the one upstairs. It's fine closing, but when opening it back up, it's sticking. I just need to move the wall mounts up just a smidge and it'll all be okay. Maybe back a little too. Who knows. It'll be the one that gets used the most so I want to make sure it's done right.

Anyhoooooooooo.... we're moved in and we're happy. Yay!

bleh.....

So, I had a coupon that came with a McDouble or a large fry or something from McDonald's "Get a free med drink and med fries when you try the new third ponder angus burgers". Something was amiss already since they've had the angus burgers in Columbus for what seems at least a couple of years. So what's so new about it. I dunno. Maybe the whole bacon n cheese and de-lux and mushroom and swiss are new. *shrug*

Anyways, I thought I'd give them a shot for f'ing giggles sake. I got the bacon and cheese burger. Total? 3.99. Well, there's ONE reason I won't be buying it again. Four f'ing dollars for a hamburger at McDonald's? Whatever. Anyways, I got that and my free med fries and my med coke and headed back to work (which is only 3 minutes away) to eat it.

I'm not impressed. It was dry. And even with the bacon and chese, the hamburger was virtually tasteless. The only thing that provided some flavor was the purple onion strip (not a ring, but a single 'strip'). I get a better tasting (and more satisfying) meal by getting a dollar McDouble and a dollar fry.

Nice try to get get into the gourmet burger market, McDs, but you're going to have to try harder.

Now, if you'll excuse me... i need to chug down this medium coke to try to put some moisture back into my mouth after the angus burger dried it out. Well shoooooot. It's all gone. Good thing we have free pop here at work.

let the sun shine... let the sun shine in...

very quick note to give the latest in the house dept:

1) the electrician put the new panel in. it works. yay!

2) the radon peeps put in the thing. it doesn't look like much and now the house has a slight hum like someone left the fan on in a bathroom somewhere. there is a little gauge which shows that the radon fan is pulling out air. it was showing much movement, so i was growing concerned that the numbers were gonna be bad. got the results today... 0.8. yay! that's below 4.0... and MUCH below our previous number. so, all is good there.

3) talked briefly with the title peeps who are doing both closings. they still need something from the new lender (who probably just got the definitive profit numbers from the title company for selling my soon-to-be old house. i just wish they would get me my final number already. kinda hard to show up with a check if you don't know how much to make it for. it makes me more edgy since i know i am cutting the numbers a little closer than i would normally like, so if i have to do some last minute scramblin' (which I shouldn't have to do if all my numbers that _I_ worked out are close)... but you never know when people start adding in fees here and adjustments there and whatever. i'm sure it'll all be fine.

4) it's gonna be weird moving into a new house. i've been in this one for 10 years. at least 4 different bands have played in the basement (sucking in large amounts of radon, of course ;) ) it was my first house that i got as a bachelor and figured, at least for a little while, that i was just gonna grow old and alone in that house. of course, a few short years later i met my wonderful wife (who has proved that she's both a saint and wonder woman in the past 2 months) and then had two kids. i've watched spare room become, offices and offices become nursery and bedrooms and watch the old band stomping grounds go from a desolate room with drums to an office crammed with so much stuff that it wasn't possible to walk through. 10 years in that house. i've gone from all rooms in the house being one color to painting most of the rooms different colors. i've replaced siding, roofs, gutters, bathroom fixtures, kitchen fixtures, light switches, carpet, electric panels and more things than i care to remember at the moment. i've had fans installed and uninstalled and ceiling lights put in. 10 years. i was talking to a friend and it certainly doesn't feel like 10 years. i guess time flies by when your having fun. the old house is just about fun'ed out... but a new house will begin another chapter of fun for everyone.

Keep on truckin'...

Well... the electrician stopped in for about 4 hours today and replaced the panel. Joy o' joys! The other installer comes in on Wednesday to mitigate the slight radon problem in the basement. MORE FUN!!! I think they are stopping by the soon-to-be-old house to do the appraisal. Not sure when they are doing the appraisal on the new property. Hopefully soon. Once all the appraisals are out of the way and all the numbers come back the way they should, then... and only then... will I actually be breathing easier ... at least until I remember that we still have to sign off on all the mitigations that they have to do to the soon-to-be new place... which takes place I believe four days before the closing. Come to think of it, the new peeps have to do the same. And UHaul isn't calling until like 24 hours before to tell me WHERE to pick up my truck (since the one nearby doesn't handle the 26 footer that I want).

In other words, I'm gonna be a basket case until closing day.

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In other news, I hit two big milestone in the Music Counter project: 2000 hours and 30000 songs. Actually, I've been at 30000 songs for a while... but the 2000 hours I finished up today by listening to the soundtrack for the original Little Shop of Horrors. FEEEEED MEEEEEE!

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Yeah... I got nothing else. I need to get Ian his pile of stuff. I think I had stuff for Todd, but it might have been packed away. I still might go to the rekkid show if Todd still wants to (since I think Ian already said he wuz gonna be bizzy that day packin' up the shit (some of which I hopefully already have given to him).


Tt-t-t-t-t-t-t-that's all folks!

It's Official...

ramble mode: on

Our house is sold. Sold in 7 days. And we are buying a house in Marysville.

We put our house on the market on Monday. Tuesday we saw three houses with only one being marginally acceptible. I was a bit distraught by the end of the day thinking that we had no chance of finding a house for the right price. By Wednesday we had 3 showings. Another 2 on Friday. A second showing on Saturday as well as two offers. At the same time on Saturday, we went and saw 5 houses. A few were front runners... but one we both went ga-ga for. Headed back to the realtors office, accepted one of the offer on our house (with a slight modification to allow us some wiggle room since they wanted to close by the end of the month)... and put in a bid on the other house. Turns out it was owned by a relocation company. since there aren't alot of jobs going around, there aren't alot of people needing to be relocated and therefore, dumping of houses begins. it had been on the market since may with a slightly inflated price (aren't they all) and it had just dropped in price again. with our offer we dropped it even more. since a company owned it, there was no weekend negotiations... so we had to wait an agnonizing two days (sunday and monday) before they countered and we accepted the slightly higher price (but still well below their original discounted price). So now we're just trying to get all the loan paperwork taken care of which... i think we're about 95% done before it gets sent off into mortgage la-la land where they look at it and thumb their noses at you while you wait (mostly impatiently) and then they finally 'accept' your loan two days before closing. i'm hoping it goes better than that. anyhoo... if all goes well, we'll close both houses on the 28th. of course, the family buying our house wants to move in immediately after signing, so we'll have to have EVERYTHING packed up before heading closing. oh the joy we will have. but in the end, it's gonna fucking rock. :)

ramble mode: off

Great Weekend

This past weekend the Mrs. and I left the kiddos with the grandparents and we trekked up to Cleveland for a weekend together. We left at 7pm on Friday, stopped to eat at Quaker Steak and Lube for some wingz, fried pickles and ribs and got into Cleveland around 10:30pm. We stayed at the Crowne Plaza which was nice enough. Better than some hotels we've stayed at. The hvac unit in the room only blew cold air which was kind of a drag since it was rather chilly in the room when it was going but got stuffy if it wasn't going.

We got up on Saturday and ate at a lil Ma and Pa restaurant called Addy's at the suggestion of the hotel staff. They kindly took us there in the shuttle even though it was only two blocks away. I had some french toast and the wife had waffles. Both were tasty.

We then walked the two block back from Addy's and then another two blocks to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. It was crazy windy pretty much the entire weekend, so it was like walking in Florida when there is an approaching hurricane. I'd been to the RnRHoF before, but the wife hadn't. They had changed some stuff around. I picked up on a few new things that were pretty cool. My favorite thing was seeing some pictures drawn by a young James Handrix (that would be Jimi Hendrix to you). He was a big college football fan, so he draw pictures of players from UCLA, UofC, Oregon State, etc. He also draw a rather amusing pencil drawing that said "Obey Railroad Crossing Signals" and was complete with a car with a crunched up hood. There was also an exhibit there for The Boss (that would be Bruce Springsteen to you). It was cool seeing some of the notebooks with his lyrics written in them and some of his first guitars. After about 4 or 5 hours, we left.

That evening we went to a Vietnamese restaurant called Saigon. It was right across the street from Lola which is one of Chef Michal Simon's restaurants (he's well known on the Food Network). We would have went there, but the wife got a look at the menu but nothing really sounded good. Good thing we didn't eat there. The food at Saigon was wonderful. I got shrimp in 'special Vietnamese sauce'. It was spicy and tasty and had lots of onions in it. I wisely avoided most of those since I didn't want to stink us out of our hotel room during our little mini-vaca.

After dinner we walked to the Tower City Center. One of my friends had told me that there was 'nothing down there, kinda like the Columbus City Center'. However, there wasn't a single 'for rent' sign in the place, Several upscale stores, a full food court and lots of people. We went to the theater to watch Star Trek. The theater was, okay. It hadn't been improved in some years. A step above a dollar theater. Some of the arm rests had been ripped off and replaced with duct tape, some chair were non-sittable and had black garbage bags over them. I think the Center is in the process of upgrading lots of things. The theater obviously has a ways to go. No matter. The movie was great. I'm not even close to a Trek fan. I don't know if I've seen a single movie all the way through. But I enjoyed this movie nonetheless.

The next morning we ate at the hotel, which was stupid of me. We should have just walked back down to Addy's. Would have been better and cheaper. After breakfast we went and toured the "A Christmas Story" house. It was pretty interesting to be standing in front of it. There was a little museum in a house across the street which held some artifacts from the movie, like Randy's snow suit, the hat and goggles from that weird kid in Higby's (btw... which we also saw on our way to the Tower City Center), and some other stuff. We toured that whlie waiting for the tour to begin.. which was just us. :P Of course, most of the movie wasn't filmed in the house. That was done in the studio, but many other parts of the movie were, really, now that I think about it. Basically the scenes inside the house were filmed at a studio. The rest was done in Cleveland. The Black Bart scene, the BB scene, when the leg lamp arrive, when he was trying to position the leg in the front window... those were all done at the Cleveland house. I enjoyed it for what it was. And I'm glad it was only $7.50 to get in.

And then we came home.

It was nice to get away. We were both pretty close to our wits end before this weekend. I've been working long hours at the office for about a month straight and wtching kids 24/7 tends to wear one out as well. So our little trip helped recharge the batteries.

I love my wife. She is a wonderful wife and mother.

Thoughts: I really do think I am rebelling against the diet thing. And that's half the problem... I keep calling it a diet... and that's not what I am trying to do here. It's about eating BETTER. That means watching what you eat (I watch it as it goes into my mouth and into my belly.... GET IN MY BELLY!!!). That means watching how MUCH you eat. Maybe I'm subconsciously living up to the adage of 'if there's something worth doing, then it's worth doing a lot'. Eating is good and therefore I eat a lot. Not always often (though I do that too), but just in sheer quantity. I have so many food issues it's not even funny.

Stress eating: Wind me up and watch me eat. It takes my mind off of whatever is bugging me.

'Principal' eating: I bought it therefore I must eat it, otherwise it's wasted money... and I hate wasting money.

The quantity over quality aspect: everything I do, I tend to do to excess in the quantity volume. That's how I ended up with like 6000 45 RPM records. That's how I ended up with nearly 1000 CDs. That's how I ended up with 20 rolls of tape. The list goes on and on. I'm

I like food: I watch Andrew Zimmern on Bizarre Foods. I watch Anthony Bourdain: No Boundaries. I watch Iron Chef. I watch the Food Challenges. I watch competitive eating and follow the IFOCE website. I make a point of actually watching the July 4th Nathan's hot dog eating contest. You can see how this ends up tying in with the quantity over quality.

I have serious food issues. I admit it. But I'm gonna try my best to get back to a reasonable weight. My dad has put on weight over the years and now he's borderline diabetic, probably has blood pressure issues and probably other medical issues I don't even know about. I don't want myself to get into that position. Granted, I'm kinda there already, but I need to try to get away from that is what I'm saying. I can't get there by eating a Cinnabon for breakfast, frozen meal and a raspberry filled long john for lunch, an entire bowl of Dan Dan Noodles from Pei Wei and then a bowl of chips and salsa at 9pm. That's what I ate yesterday. And I'm not working out at all. I can't to where I want to be living that type of lifestyle. It just doesn't work that way.

Maybe the answer for me is the eating smaller meals more often. Or not. I dunno. But I need to figure it out. I used to say I that I was 'fat and happy'. Well, guess what? Read everything above. 'Fat and happy' is a big fat lie.