Who complains about too much free time?  Well, with no wife or kids, a dislike for many common social activities- okay let’s just go with the truth here and say no friends I hang out with outside of church, and work that takes less than the normal eight hours plus lunch per standard, I just have too much free time.  What do I do with it?  Get movies from the library, spend time on the internet, and play games mostly- what a life, eh?  In the last few days I have even purchased several games on Steam– did they have to make it so easy?  I didn’t even use steam until they had a $9.99 sale on their Orange Box collection a few months ago.  Now I have the complete Luxor marble game collection, Ghostbusters, GRID, and Osmos.  Anther service called Direct2Drive also successfully tempted me with a $5 sale a short time back.  I added no less than a half-dozen games from them including Neverwinter Nights 2 and Serious Sam Gold.  A waste of time and money really.  Well, I have been playing a lot of Serious Sam and the Luxor games, so just a waste of time in their case.  To be fair, I didn’t pay much for any of the titles, nowhere near full price, but still…

So what can I do instead?  Theatre groups abound in this area, but I know very few of them anymore- I would have to look them up again.  I have also looked a little into compassion ministries, serving those in need.  I still have to look it up on the church website as I was directed to a few weeks ago.  The obvious one in most people’s minds is the friends issue.  I have been to singles group, but it was very uncomfortable for me so I really don’t go anymore.  No friends that way.  Perhaps through the other two potential outlets?  I don’t know.  I know I have needed to schedule a quiet time with God, but I have known that for so long I wonder if I am really capable?

For now though I just sit here on the computer…

So what does it mean when it’s November and I still have posts from September sitting on my front page?  Still not all that excited to blog I guess.  It has now been over a week since some of my Ohio friends came out and we all went haunt hopping.  It’s a little late to review them, and I’m no expert on this sort of thing anyway so I think I’ll just say that it was a good time had by all of us.  Fortunately the threatening rain stayed away.  Sorry you had to miss the last haunt, J and M.  According to C & L it was really good, though whether it be that I was third in a group or just my logical mind drowning out the “let’s have fun” portion I just didn’t get as much out of it.  That said, I though the actors did a good job, especially outdoors (I really wish I had seen the one jumping out at the younger kids but I was facing the wrong direction at the time- apparently their reactions were priceless).  Thanks again C & L for paying for that one.

For work, this week was much better than last for the most part.  The only work-day that had rain was Friday, but I was able to take a full-day sub job that day instead, bumping my one Friday gig to Saturday- yes, the holiday.  Did you all have a happy Martin Luther day?  You know, the anniversary of Luther nailing the Ninety-Five Theses to the church door in 1517 (the doors were popularly used as bulletin boards at that time).  Oh, you celebrated a different holiday you say?  Well, so did the kids on Friday.  Unluckily for the teacher I subbed for, her son got sick on party day so I was the lucky one who got to take the job in her place.  It was my favorite grade, 5th, and it was quite easy.  The morning consisted of three tests- didn’t you hate days like that in school?- split by an hour of gym and music.  At least one of the tests was only spelling, so only two of them were big thinking tests.  Of course, I say “at least” for the spelling test as I was a really good speller in school.  I suppose for some it may have been just as rough as the other two.

Lunch time, then the kids were back in costume.  Did I mention this was the one day of the year 2/3 of the class went home for lunch?  All afternoon was party time.  There was a costume parade through the neighborhood scheduled as well, but- you know- rain.  As a result, the parents came to the school and watched the kids march across the stage instead.  Outside of this time the parent volunteers were in charge.  They organized the classroom party- the food, games, and whatnot- while I just helped as needed.  The kids had a scavenger hunt, played cauldron bowling and a scooter-relay with toilet paper mummy-wrapping, created a haunted story web, felt brains, hearts, and whatnot in a box, jumped for donuts on a string, and had cupcakes and water (where was the punch??).  Most of the year in hometown district serving food in classrooms is a big no-no- they even stopped birthday treats last year- but this was one of the few times they still get to eat sweets in class.

Some of the costumes were classic.  There were a few wearing ghoulish costumes including the obligatory Scream mask, some costumes of movie/tv characters like Darth Maul, and a few M&M girls, but there were some stand-out ones including a girl with an overturned bowl of spaghetti on her head (represented by white yarn with brown yarn-ball meatballs), another girl who came as a washing machine with her head under a pile of “dirty” clothes on top, and a boy who came as a vending machine.  Actually, while original, I’m not sure the last one would have won any awards.  The front really did look like a vending machine with real chips, candy bars, and whatnot, but in reality it was what could have been a store demo with straps so he could wear it in front of him.  It was apparently heavy too, as he took the elevator upstairs instead of the stairs.  I hope he had permission, but I felt for him so I didn’t ask.  The washing machine on the other hand was an excellent costume.  I already mentioned the pile of clothes to hide her face, but it also came complete with a box of fabric softener and bottle of detergent taped or glued to it.  The only thing that would have improved the costume was if the round door in front actually opened revealing more clothes.

So what did I do for halloween?  Well, following work on the windy day I…  handed out candy.  Yep, that was it.  I did have a “phantom of the opera” half-mask, so I wore it when I answered the door, but that was pretty much it.  We had our usual half-dozen groups of kids come to our door.  Seriously, is our house on the sex-offender list or something?  Since moving here we have had no more than ten groups of costumed candy-beggars stop by each year.  Nothing at all like or previous location across from a school.  Oh, well.

We did have a 4th/5th grade church party Friday night, but this post is getting long so I think I will save it for a future church post.

Take a look at this trailer for the 1951 version of Raiders of the Lost Ark (click the video to go directly to youtube for a larger version)!

What, there was no such version you say?  So what was was this then since the actors are real 50s stars?  Give up?  Go to this youtube link that breaks it down for you. 🙂

Incidentally, this isn’t this guy’s first work on a trailer like this.  Click here to see a couple more goodies.

Just haven’t felt much like posting, though I did make an attempt to do a post yesterday, like fellow blogger JustJ did the other day, after playing around with Vista’s voice recognition software.  Incredible in comparison to Dragon Dictate from several years ago, though I suppose if that software is still around it is at least as good as Vista’s.  Of course, knowing Microsoft their software may very well *be* Dragon Dictate, or some other commercial package bought by them.  They started off that way back when when they bought a DOS from someone, relabeled it MSDOS, and licensed it to IBM way back when, so why not these days with voice recognition?

Anyway, I still don’t have much to say, so I leave you with this hilarious video mentioned on Majorgeeks in today’s news:

I am back from camp and have in fact enjoyed a nice afternoon with C & L, who are in the area for tomorrow’s Chicago vs. Chicago game. There was a new indoor mini-golf place over at Stratford Square mall which we were told just opened last week. I’ll take their word for it since it has been over ten years since I have been there. Following 18 holes of golf (out of 54) we decided our eyes were getting tired of the black-lighting (the whole place was lit that way with the neon paints) and proceeded to have some dinner. Deciding against the one real restaurant which L said seemed like an Applebee’s after looking at the menu, we opted for the food court. I had Chinese, they had Sbarro’s and some pretzel dogs. All of us had blue raspberry lemonades from the pretzel stand which was quite good. Instead of going back to play more golf, which we could have as the fee C paid for us covered the entire day, we talked for a bit and walked around the mall which surprisingly was still quite active with seemingly less than 5% vacancy. I guess maybe I am used to other local malls, not counting Woodfield in Schaumburg, that have closed in the last several years. We stopped at a pet store and C & L found that they could happily own a glorified mutt with a fancy name for the bargain price of $1600. No, I didn’t accidentally add an extra digit. Not $160 or $600, but over a grand and a half! Ouch. Well, that was pretty much it. They had to go shortly after and so we went our separate ways.

What? You wanted to hear about my week at camp? Well, that is coming soon. As for the title, C talked me into updating Live Messenger with the newer Live Essentials version and I noticed I could install a Writer program to write my blog posts. Right now I am seeing this post exactly as it should appear on my blog page once published- grey background, full justification, and lowercase title included, unlike the WordPress editor on which I would have to click a preview button to see how it would look. It seems pretty nice and barring any difficulties I will probably give this a longer test run with added pictures and whatnot. There seem to be things that I don’t think the WordPress editor even has. I’ll see how it goes. Well, until later…

Edit: Well, that didn’t go well- I needed to edit the post straight away.  It added a bunch of #160s and forgot to encase the paragraph tags in <> symbols so the post had extra p, em, /em and /p characters included in the text.  I guess there are bugs to be worked out- oh well.

Memorial Day

a remembrance of those who have given their lives for freedom, and a prayer for those currently fighting for freedom all over the world.

God Bless our Troops

Well, I did it.  I paid the extra bucks to go see Star Trek in IMAX.  As expected, the screen was large, though not superhuge like at Great America when I was growing up (dunno if the screen is still there).  I also noticed that it was curved, but failed to notice if it was silver.  I would guess yes since they bothered to curve it.  Why to I mention this?  Well, because 3D movies utilize a silver, curved screen.  While this was not a 3D movie, there are many IMAX movies that are also 3D, so I would presume this theater is just set up for them when they happen.  Back to topic, once there a half-hour early, the good seats in the theater were already starting to fill up.  I did notice though that they tended to sit not in the true center, but rather the center of the visible image which was not centered but toward the left.  The commercials weren’t in IMAX and probably utilized a different projector entirely.  Once 4:00 rolled around, they dimmed the lights and switched to IMAX for the previews and movie.  Well, they tried.  The audio came out crystal clear, but- no picture.  At first I though this was a preview that just started dark then the picture would kick in at just the right moment, but after a minute (less, really) it became clear the picture wasn’t coming at all.  They eventually stopped it, and I could see several shadows on the screen from the projection area as they tried to figure out the problem.  After several minutes they got  a picture going, but one that was a little out of focus, or rather some color separation.  I heard something move into place and the picture became clear.  Wait, how could I hear it when a preview was going you ask?  Because now it was a picture with no sound!  They froze the picture and worked another few minutes.  Finally, the Harry Potter preview could be seen *and* heard.  Boy, could it be heard- volume a wee bit too high.  It started with color separation again, but once again that was quickly resolved and we were on our way.  We only did see the tail end of the one preview before the movie, and also a commercial which also served as a “silent your cellphone” reminder, but I was just fine with that!  By the time the movie started, the volume level was fine as well.

So, about the movie.  As a Trek fan, I found this movie very enjoyable.  JustJ pretty much covered the basics, so I won’t go there, but I can see how most of the differences would be plausible as (highlight to reveal spoiler) an altered timeline can explain the discrepancies.  Besides JustJ’s one rant, there was a big nitpick I had toward the end though where they used a technology known to be in the next generation but not in the original series (highlight to reveal spoiler rant:)

Eject the warp core?  Really??  What with the change the Romulan ship made would cause the Federation to develop an ejectable warp core so early?  Nothing I saw.

I also see why (highlight… well, you know) they left the new timeline alone rather than fix it, so they can feel unencumbered by Star Trek canon when making future movies.  Next Generation, Deep Space 9, and Voyager?  (you know what to do) All in the old timeline now.  Who knows what the future will now bring for the Federation? Oh, one more thing- (yep, again) did anyone else think of the Death Star when they saw you-know-which-planet destroyed?

One slight nitpick left, one I’ve had since The Next Generation- while some may think it’s sexist which is whay they changed it in the first place, to be PC, but I really think …where no man has gone before fits better than …where no one has gone before.  Why?  Simply put, at least “man” can only mean human, if only just half the population, while “one” refers to everyone- human, vulcan, klingon, and every species they have not yet met.  They are going where no human has been, or no Federation citizen, but most places have had someone go there before- the local sentient life, whoever they may be.  So, a slight nitpick but valid I think.

Was it worth the extra price to see it in IMAX?  Maybe.  Once they got it together over there it really did look nice, and Star Trek is just the type of show to look great on the large screen.  Certainly I wouldn’t go to see just any show in IMAX, but for this one I think I can say I was glad to see it in IMAX.  The only other show this year I know for certain I will see in the theater is Harry Potter 6, but I think I will save money on that and see it in the local theater.  I wonder if the price is still under $7?  I’ll find out.

So that’s the way it is, is it?  I’m fine, thank you for asking.  Okay, I know all of you do care as I know you well enough to know this- clearly I just caught all of you in a busy time, perhaps with your own scares of this flu.  But I still have to punish you, so instead of sub news here is a goose (two actually in one pic) and her goslings.  One gosling short of calling her octomom.  Somehow, septamom (heptamom?) doesn’t have the same ring to it.  These bad pics were taken with a phone camera the other day outside a doctor’s office.  I didn’t want to get too close and be attacked so sorry, no closeups of the goslings. 🙁

It seems as if yesterday I skipped over Saturday morning, so I guess I will go back to it before skipping ahead to Sunday.  Saturday morning several of us met at Ritzy’s (did I get that right?) for breakfast.  For those who weren’t there, they somehow interpreted a party of 12 as a party of 20, so here were five tables put together in a C shape.  Most people sat together, but Jamiahsh and I kind of sat alone on the opposite side, though in my defense there was only one seat between C and I.  The eldest girls and their cousin Austin had some fun being little animals under the table.  The look on J’s face when he was caught unawares one time was priceless- sorry J! 😀

Following breakfast (oh yes, the food was good) L’s family bid farewell and headed out.  The rest of us headed back to C and L’s house.  The girls invited J and myself into their room to play with their pet rats.  Now, I never had rats growing up, but we did have hamsters, gerbils and guinea pigs at various times so I was familiar with rodent pets and didn’t freak like the preschool teacher mentioned in T’s blog.  I was happy when they didn’t relieve themselves on me during this playtime as often happens with rodents.  After we had enough of the rats, T took us into their closet and showed us some Viewmaster (R.I.P.) slides on the ceiling using their projector.  Call me old-fashioned, but I think the whole point of the Viewmaster was lost by using the projector, that of the images in 3D.  I think we went through their entire library.  Finally, T and S put on a puppet show for J and me, during which time I was called away and we finished organizing our fun activity- see previous blog entry.

So… Sunday rolled around and I got up and showered, then went to Mickey D’s for a small breakfast before church.  Too bad for me it was 10:28 and they had just closed breakfast.  I’m I the only one who thinks anything before 11AM should be considered breakfast?  I must be in the minority, else why would McD’s have changed to 10:30 so long ago and stuck with it?  So breakfastless, I headed to the house.  Fortunately I had bought a box of Crunch and Munch at the dollar store the previous day.  That worked.

We headed to their church, which I had to admit was pretty nice.  I’m not sure I liked their pastor’s preaching style, but that’s probably because I’m used to my own pastor constantly on the move while he gives his sermons.  I did enjoy the worship time though.  Following this service T, who had gone to children’s church was waiting for us- apparently grade school kids can be trusted to be let out on their own, or maybe their teachers were still watching, I don’t know.  The younger ones still needed to be retrieved from their rooms though.  After church, we headed to a hotel by the turnpike for brunch.  There was no waiting time to be seated as there were plenty of seats, but there was definitely some waiting to get the food.  I would have to rate this meal lower than Saturday’s breakfast unfortunately, but at least I could eat as much as I wanted since it was a buffet.

Back at the house again, C and L pulled out their Office board game and we played.  Unfortunately, I learned that seeing every episode only once, including deleted scenes for seasons 2-4, did not mean in any way shape or form that I would remember the details.  I did manage to get three Dundies, though once by a complete guess and once because C pretty much gave the answer away (thanks!).  L won the day though, but even C earned more than me even though he took the harder (“regional manager”) questions while I barely managed the “assistant to the regional manager” ones.  Oh, well.  Finally, they had to do some cleaning for the meeting that night and I bid my farewell.  This, however, doesn’t end the post…

As most of my readers here are well aware, Sunday was a day of rain, starting after brunch.  For much of the trip driving was fine, but as it got later it stated coming down pretty hard.  The worst parts were the trucks- just approaching one would cause a torrent of water to be unleashed onto the windshield from their wheels.  Passing them was a nail-biting experience.  Remember- the speed limit for trucks is 15MPH less than for cars until Illinois.  Speaking of Illinois, when I got there- you think I’m going to say traffic, don’t you?  Well, traffic can be a hassle, but I lucked out.  While there were some traffic spots, for the most part it was fairly light for suburban Chicago.  Maybe people just weren’t driving because of the sleet.  That’s right- the rain turned into sleet and snow.  Wonderful.  No longer was it a nail-biting experience just to pass a truck- now just driving was problematic.  But as I said, traffic wasn’t bad at all and I did manage to make it home in one piece.  Next time I think I will check the weather report before I leave, even if it might mean having to leave earlier.

So, that was my weekend, how was yours? 😉

Sing with me… “Friday night I crashed your party, Saturday I said I’m sorry…” Okay, so I was actually invited but then the song doesn’t quite fit.  Oh well.  Anyway, this story starts before Friday, actually earlier this week.  I was given advice to see what represented a 10th wedding anniversary.  So I did a web search and found this site with information on anniversaries.  We all know about silver and gold wedding anniversaries, but the years leading up to them are rather short of the glamour silver and gold bring, with things like paper, cotton, leather, and wood.  10th anniversary is tin or aluminum, so I got the idea to purchase them some snacks in tins.  Well, apparently stores only sell snacks in tins around Christmastime- they were nowhere to be found.  I finally found something kind of lame at Meijer, but it was in a tin.  I would be giving them another gift along with it so I figured as long as the idea got across the tin would be fine.  Next day, I had a job in 8th grade and I noticed the teacher had a tin in his room- full of puzzles.  Ding- of course.  Games and puzzles can come in tins, and my friends are wild for games! So, back in Meijer after school I found some options in domino sets (double 6, 9, and 12), and Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader Disney edition.  I leaned toward the dominos, but decided to check Walmart across the street first.  Good thing, as their domino sets were half the price of Meijer’s!  But wait, they had several more items in tins including a classic game set, a couple of jigsaw puzzles, and a Phase 10 card game.  It took me awhile to decide what to get, but C & L know what the final selection was.  So, I wrapped them up, found a half-day job for Friday AM, went to bed, couldn’t sleep, canceled the job at about 4:30 after only short bursts of sleep, went back to bed until 9:30, then got up, finished getting ready, ate, and headed to Ohio, stopping only once for gas and a snack (what a sentence, whew!).  Once I finally gave the gifts away later in the evening C guessed something about me wrapping the gifts in tin foil and I had to kick myself for not thinking of it.  Well, the paper was the color of tin anyway.

Backing up just a little, I arrived at 3:45 and checked into the motel.  $25 per night- even better than the amazing $29 C told me on the phone!  Not too many frills, but I wouldn’t be there except to sleep so I didn’t care.  I finally arrived at the theatre around 5:40 and discovered several people were already there and I didn’t really need to delay at the motel as long as I did.  I saw C’s mom for the first time in a long time, as well as the rest of the family and friends there.  Once they started it was short but emotional.  One of the two (I won’t say which, though most of you readers already know!) broke down while reading which only added to the powerful sincerity of what s/he said.  Then it was off to the reception across the street where I had my second meal of the day (I skipped lunch) and, well I’ll just skip ahead since this part is already in my friends’ blogs.  We all had a good time.  When we went to their house afterward, they graciously allowed the few of us to stay for a short time and we had a fun few rounds of a Tribond game before we all retired for the night.

The next day they gave me some options for a fun, family activity- drive an hour to the Toledo Zoo or even longer to an animal park.  Umm…  Since I drove four hours the day before and would drive four hours again the next day, the animal park was really a no-go.  The zoo might have been an option, but I had seen the zoo just a year before around the same time of year so we finally decided to go to town.  It wasn’t bad.  The important part was just hanging out together, so it really didn’t matter much what we did.  The kids enjoyed some playtime at Menards, and then we went to a couple other places, including a few runs of go-karting (their eldest was visibly upset when she was asked to sit out first since not all could go at once, but I think she got over it after going twice in a row.  Everyone- including us adults as we had to watch their youngest who couldn’t ride- rode two out of the three runs) before having dinner at a pizza buffet.  Since it was a Chuck-E-Cheese style (somewhat) place I wasn’t expecting much from the pizza, but it was actually pretty good.  Not Gino’s East or Giordano’s good, but for sure better than Dominos or Little Caesar’s.  They even took requests, so I jokingly asked for something with jalapeños, and they actually obliged- not an unusual request I guess.  Well, when they have peanut butter and jelly pizza I guess nothing’s unusual!  The kids had their fun at the games there, and then we rented a blu-ray movie to watch through my computer on their HDTV.  Unfortunately, due to draconian copy protection and software issues it took some time to get the movie going, but we were glad when we finally did.

Hmm.  This post is getting a little long so I think I will chop it here with a: