Crying

Ok, spoilers abound.

Let it be known that I have never read the book Bridge to Teribithia, so I'd had no idea what was in store as we sat down as a family tonight to watch the film version of it. Right now I'm surrounded by a bunch of crying kids and crying Denise.

Part of me is tickled that a movie is making Denise cry; another part of me is pissed that nothing in the way of all the previews I'd seen for this movie warned me it would be a sad movie and make my kids cry. I don't like it when things make my kids cry. Everything I've seen has made this out as a kids fantasy movie, which it is, and leaves out the interlacing of death (which I did see coming miles away).

Hmph.

Vacation

Just got in from watching Fingers of Passion play a gig at Off Limits. Good fun, great energy. You can really tell Bandito's a skilled drummer; I just wish the instruments didn't drown out the vocals so frequently. Still, had quite an enjoyable time of it, as usual. Really enjoyed their Go-Gos and Kim Wilde covers (a statement likely causing Ian to cringe).

Ian's been visiting town for the weekend so I've spent some time catching up with him, getting a couple drinks, playing some pool, etc. Continued to get to know Bailey significantly better as well. It's been a while since I've made a new girl buddy. She's fun. Me, I lost our second game of pool (she was my partner) when prematurely sinking the 8 ball. I suck.

Opportunities missed. Opportunities bungled. All in all, a good night though.

Speaking of pools, I accidentally fell asleep for a few minutes while floating in the pool yesterday and now I have a somewhat uncomfortable sunburn on me legs.

12 days 'til Chris returns. A few more days after 'til Travis and Shel are down to visit and make me all jealous and proud. 3 and a half weeks or so until Drew comes to visit. All groovy.

Oh, venting moment--it's been how many years now since I stopped going by my first name and started going by Evan? All of the friends who seemed to have the most difficulty adjusting have finally adjusted and almost never slip up. So why do I still get e-mails from a certain someone I've been friends with for half of my life where she still insists on calling me "David"? It makes me grate my teeth.

Venting over.

Who's watching Bruce Campbell's new show Burn Notice on USA? Yeah, he's just the supporting lead, but still he makes the show.

s-e-x-x-y

The Everything Test

There are many different types of tests on the internet today. Personality tests, purity tests, stereotype tests, political tests. But now, there is one test to rule them all.

Traditionally, online tests would ask certain questions about your musical tastes or clothing for a stereotype, your experiences for a purity test, or deep questions for a personality test.We're turning that upside down - all the questions affect all the results, and we've got some innovative results too! Enjoy :-)

Personality You are more emotional than logical, more concerned about others than concerned about self, more atheist than religious, more dependent than loner, more lazy than workaholic, more traditional than rebel, more artistic mind than engineering mind, more cynical than idealist, more leader than follower, and more introverted than extroverted. As for specific personality traits, you are slutty (91%), innovative (86%), intellectual (85%), horny (75%).

Stereotypes Punk Rock 93% Emo Kid 89% Old Geezer 67%

Life Experience Sex 75% Substances 41% Travel 12%

Politics Your political views would best be described as Socialist, whom you agree with around 100% of the time.

Socioeconomic Your attitude toward life best associates you with Middle Class. You make more than 70% of those who have taken this test, and 31% less than the U.S. average.

If your life was a movie, it would be rated NC-17. By the way, your hottness rank is 71%, hotter than 85% of other test takers.

TAKE THE TEST
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Abracadabra

50 Book Challenge #15: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.k. Rowling. Yes, I've finally broken down and decided to give it a read (babysitting today lasted longer than the shows I had saved up on their tivo, so I buckled and cracked open a book. Damn that literacy). I gave the book a try way back in early 2001 and didn't find it to my liking after one chapter, and so stopped there. I do have to say that the first three chapters or so remained tortuous to me. And despite the descriptions in the text, much of the imagery is controlled by my film viewing experience. However, given the furor of excitement over the new book, I felt maybe it was time. I liked it ok. I don't come away feeling it was as fantastic as so many of you make it out to be. It was good genre fantasy work and I'll give book two a try (each book will determine whether I want to read the next).

That's all. Still a little under the weather. Had a mostly pleasant weekend.

Peace.

I'm Only Happy When It Rains

Here it is, the middle of July and it's freaking raining. Blech. Yes, I hate the heat, but I'm no big fan of rain in summer--no pool, no going outside to play. . .blech.

I really don't have much to report since my previous post of two days ago; I just wanted to whine about the weather.

Yesterday I began feeling sick to my stomach and clammy. I woke feeling better--until I got up from bed. I guess the weather's at least suited to my health for the day. Denise goes in for her rhogam shot after work.

Only three weeks 'til Chris comes home, and four weeks 'til I can see him :). It'll be nice to have my confidante back for a while.

Read a Book

Brian's introduced me to the following two hilarious Youtube videos. I think they're keen; one's a video originally from the BET channel, the other I believe is a mock ad for Smirnoff Ice Tea.

Enjoy.

My last week went all right. Our friend Terry (previously, I may have referred to our friends "the lesbians;" Terry was half of this unit) finally came out of the closet as single again after keeping her broken relationship from us for a year. In her new openness at singledom she's become a lot more social again and on Saturday coerced me into going out for a couple drinks with her (hoping she would meet someone naturally). While out we ran into the Comic Shop Girl that one of my friends is completely crushing on, and her roommates. The night ended up being very fun, with skipping, dancing and plenty of innuendo (I'm having difficulty washing off where one of Comic Shop Girl's roommates wrote "sexay" on my arm).

Sunday was the second session of my new nerdgame session run by me. Everyone still seems to really be digging on it, which is refreshing. We've needed refreshing for a while; having just single GM nerding the past year was a drain on my creativity that I hadn't realized until I offered to take one of the sessions over again. Now everyone's having fun in all the sessions again.

In last night's Deadlands game at Brian's we've inadvertently set up a situation where we cause the Confederate army to blow up the Mormon army (we're on neither side, even though my character is a Moron Blessed). He left us cliffhangering that so I can't know for sure until next time.

Otherwise I've been just trying to enjoy my days spending all this time with my kids.

Meanwhile, I want to thank Chrissy and John for all the work they put in helping me get our Mustang back on the road--and on the same day we officially retired the van for all eternity. And want to thank Terry for being my ride back into town from delivering the van to the dismantlers.

I also want to thank my mom for sending me a birthday greeting on my birthday that primarily was a message about how horrible a son I am to her. It didn't bring my day down at all. Fuck you very much, ma.

I hated Transformers even more than I thought I would. So much so that I actually look forward to seeing Harry Potter.

The Great Eight

I've been tagged by The Real Sam Johnson with a meme, and while I'm trying to be the guy who writes fewer memes as filler, I can't seem to say no to a tagging; it's the kid in me who always hated being tagged and needed to tag others and get away as soon as possible. To start the meme, I must do this..

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.

2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

3. People who are tagged must make a post about their eight things and post these rules.

4. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

5. Don't forget to leave them each a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

And so, here are eight more tidbits you may or may not know about me (I'm going to try and pick tidbits eve my darling wife remains clueless about, if only to make her feel silly for not trying to learn these things about me sooner).

1. My first actual real job was as an employee in a music store. It was my second shortest-lived job I've ever held (the first being my day and a half as a telemarketer (a job, and duration, shared with Chris and Chrissy)) and remains the one I enjoyed the most.

2. As a child I concocted a "potion" made from various cleaning fluids, shoe polish, milk and water and convinced my sister that drinking it would give her super powers (specifically, she would gain super strength but would only be super strong during the night--just like Night Girl of the Legion of Substitute Heroes). Amazingly it neither killed her or made her even the slightest bit ill--it just made her angry when the powers didn't arrive.

3. I am very snobby. For various sundry reasons (your poor taste in music, movies, literature, friends, hairstyle, men, etc.) I probably think I'm better than you. I realize this is entirely an assholish quality on my part and I wish I could say that I feel sorry about it, but really I don't. Feeling sorry about feeling better than you would make me feel less better than you, and frankly that just can't happen when you keep getting mullets and throwing money at Michael Bay. Thankfully, some of my closest friends are just as snobby as I am and so they can't claim an aura of self righteousness with me over this.

4. My only regret in life is sleeping with Denise and losing my best friend in the process, but because of my love for my children, it's also a regret I would never take back if I were given the opportunity.

5. I have a stuffed animal named Butchy that I've had now for 28 years.

6. My advice to men who want to date women with a higher predilection for willingness to do anal: date Mormon women. It's no guarantee, but it is a slightly higher percentage of likelihood. This is first-hand knowledge. Yes, I went there.

7. If given the opportunity, I would not go back in time and kill an infant/child/pre-fuhrer Hitler. Yes, he was an evil fuck, but we don't know that having him out of the picture wouldn't have left things open to an even greater evil fuck.

8. I have a favorite child (I'm not telling), and every parent of multiple children is the same way.

A bonus 9th: I have been a card carrying Communist in the past.

I choose to tag:
Drew
Adj
Aimee
Shel
Chrissy
Ian
Chris
Chris

Down With the Sickness

Yesterday evening I wasn't feeling well. I chalked it up to too much sun and not enough sleep and went to bed early. This morning though I still feel sick, so I'm left hoping it's something that'll pass fairly quickly.

As for the rest of you, in the USA anyway, I hope you have a pleasant 4th of July.

Lazy Day Afternoon

Ah summer. . .

Still spending most of my days watching my kids and the Chris & Krissy kids. You'd think the kids would really have the case of "sick of each other" by now, but thankfully they don't. There's the occasional personality clash about once a week, but very manageable and agreeable on all fronts. I think part of it is the way we switch up which house we spend the day in while all together--the slight regular change in scenery helping keep the doldrums at bay (for me anyway). I miss the constant working out of last summer, but the pool is very nice and cool and being well used.

Otherwise I've been spending a decent amount of time being surprised at how little complaining Denise is doing at how much Xboxing I do in the evenings lately. She has various nerdgaming tasks she's been working on which keeps her busy enough not to get annoyed at all the Elder Scrolls-ing.

Sunday was the inaugural session of my new D&D campaign--the first I've GM'd the game in over a year. It went well; I've got the players pretty well on edge and in heavy "lost in the unknown wilderness" survival mode, unable to tell which way is up and all that jazz.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I took the kids to see it a bit over a week ago. Not being an FF fan in general, and having hated the first film I really didn't have great expectations for this one. That said, stacked against Emo-Spiderman, this was so much better. There were still enough problem areas, sure, but there was a lot more for me to like in this installment.

Top Five Favorite FF:RotSS Moments:
1. The Jessica Alba and Chris Evans eye candy.
2. Everything Silver Surfer.
3. The Super Skrull nod.
4. The Alicia Masters and Frankie Raye moments.
5. The Jessica Alba and Chris Evans eye candy.

All that said, there were still plenty of things to gripe about as well, but I won't bother. I want to press on while adding that I have no plans to go see the Michael Bay ass raping of my childhood that comes out this 4th of July.

Later this coming week I drive the van off to the auto dismantlers and turn it over to them so they can send it off to that big junkyard in the sky. The plan is for Denise & friends to be getting the last of the Mustang repairs done while I'm driving the van off to Redding.