Opening Day in the Bronx with the added spectacle of a little jewelry distributing.  Across the street the rubble that had been the home of the Bombers was little more than a memory of years gone by.  I was lucky enough to visit the cathedral in the 90s.  World Series Champs for the 27th time!  Presenting the hardware was the most decorated Bomber of them all… Yogi Berra (with 10) and former pitcher Whitey Ford (who has a mere 7).  Throwing out the ceremonial first pitch… another Yankee great: Bernie Williams.  I still have to question the release of two heroes from last season particularly in the post season: Johnny Damon (off to Tiger country) and Hideki Matsui (MVP of the 2009 World Series at the stadium today as an Angel of Anaheim).  However, new stars Nick Johnson and Curtis Granderson (from Detroit) have put an early mark on the team.

Some early naysayers have played the age card.  Admittedly, Posada, Pettitte, A-Rod, Rivera, and Captain Jeter are getting up there but they all seem just fine to me (even if it is only week two of the season).  The pitching is better than ever.  C.C. had a no-hitter going into the 8th inning on Saturday.

Today’s game was a dandy.  I could not watch it as I had to work but I kept checking the score via cell phone.  The last I remember, the Yanks were up 7-1.  When I got off at 5, I saw the final was 7-5!  It must have been a whale of the top of the 9th.  But The Great One dispatched his former teammate to seal the deal.  5-2 Record.. .5 games behind Toronto in the start of the season!

Tonight was another rare American Idol viewing. We are to start Tuesday night rehearsals soon but nit was ice to be off early on a Tuesday night.  This week the top nine took on the task of attempting to channel their inner King of Rock & Roll.  For the most part, they all did a great job with two very notable exceptions.  I have to say how much I idolize the performer who came from nothing and achieved such a memorable place in entertainment history.  Not only was he instrumental in the evolution of pop rock music but he also crossed over to country and sang gospel/spiritual music like no one else.  I have always appreciated the religious side of Elvis more than any of the other genres.  I think these songs showed a personal, vulnerable side that few of his “hits” conveyed (with the possible exception of “In the Ghetto”).

In what has been called the “’68 Comeback Special” after the Hollywood era of a long list of movie attempts, the King set out to do what he had done best… perform in front of a live audience.  Not only did he perform many of the crowd pleasing songs, but also included a montage of gospel songs.  I’m not going to post the nine minute section of the special but here is an equally moving piece that closed the concert:

Remember, it WAS the late 60s.  If you put the song into the context of the turbulent times, the song speaks for itself.  I don’t think he was exceptionally vocal about his world view but his music spoke volumes.  He may not have written a large number of songs but the songs he chose to perform was his genius.

Unlike the precision of the tides, you will never know which way the wind will blow. The tides come in and go out on a very precise schedule. They have charts made for high and low tides in areas where that is important. The winds of the day can make the tide higher or lower, but it will not cause the tides to cease.

Life is very much like the tides, it flows in an almost predictable pattern. We are born, we live and the we die. The length and form of our lives depends on other influences. Inland the tides are never noticed, but they can be measure with the right equipment. On some ocean fronts you will see the tides marked on the beaches. In other places you see the marks of the tides on cliff walls. Much the same with our lives. We can sometimes see the tides and other times they are barely noticeable.

It is that way until something changes. Winds blow in, the coast line changes and the tides come in with quick fury. The winds change, and in our life things change.

We never know which way the wind will blow but we must prepare for the tides.

A cold wind blew tonight, and I was not prepared….

You knew my unspoken words. You knew the way my mind worked. You knew things before I knew them myself. You knew my heart, and I miss yours.

Well, we missed our yearly trip to Disney World this year, so it feels like ages since I’ve been on the Small World ride.  That isn’t what this post is about anyway.

13 years ago when we started dating, I met my future husband’s mother, father, and grandmother for the first time at his grandmother’s house.  She lived beside a lake, and I have fond memories of walking their new 8-week-old adorable Cocker Spaniel puppy Murphy around the lake with my new boyfriend, with whom I had already fallen in love.  A few years later, we were married, and my father-in-law was tragically diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).  The disease is awful; one’s mind remains intact while muscles in their body begin to fail.  My father-in-law was soon confined to a wheelchair, and one day while his caretaker was taking him for a walk, his beloved Murphy ran into the street and was hit by a car while my father-in-law was forced to watch, completely helpless.  Murphy was taken to the vet, and miraculously, she had no major injuries.

After my father-in-law passed away, one of the tough decisions we had to make was what to do with Murphy.  My mother-in-law worked all the time and didn’t feel it was fair for Murphy to be alone much of the time; she thought my husband and I should take her.  I would normally do my best to take in an animal in need, especially a dog as sweet as Murphy and especially back then when I had only one child.  But at the time, there was so much going on that it was impossible.  I will spare many details, but among other things, we had a new baby, there was a crisis with our business, and we knew we would have to be moving in the near future – it’s difficult to find an apartment (especially in the Chicago area where we lived at the time) with the pets we had –  one dog and one cat – let alone with adding another dog to the mix.  So it broke my heart because I knew my father-in-law would have wanted Murphy to stay with us, but I said no.

We did our best to find her a good home; we spread the word, and my mom put up fliers at the school where she worked – someone heard about the story of Murphy’s “dad” and was interested.  So she took her home, and months later, we heard that she had been made a part of their family; even  getting her own professional Christmas pictures taken.

All was well, 10 years passed, and from time to time, my husband and I would think about Murphy.  The woman at my mom’s work moved on to another job just a year or so after taking Murphy, and they fell out of touch, so we often wondered what became of them.  It had seemed like we had made the right choice and that Murphy had found her family, but you just never know…

And then today I got this email from my mom:

After our fun Friday game night and awesome anniversary celebration on Saturday, Sunday after church we decided to take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese.  We decided to bring along Sammie’s little 5-year-old friend (the one who is moving to Mexico – the new one, or New Mexico if you don’t speak 5-year-old), and that turned out to be…  an interesting decision, for lack of a better word – more on that later…

We had a blast at Chuck E. Cheese –  we don’t live really close to any like many people do, so it was kind of a new experience for my kids, and they had a lot of fun.  We found some great internet coupons, and we were able to escape with minimal monetary damages – plus the kids didn’t blow through their tokens nearly as quickly as I had expected; thanks no doubt to my husband’s brilliant token allocating.  My son, who will be 2 in July, just loved Chuck E. and called him “Mouse” pronounced “Mow” like rhyming with “Ow”.  He kept saying, “Where Mow”; it was so cute!  Here’s a video; he’s saying “Right there, mouse”.

And luckily I didn’t capture any of this on film, but I have to give a bit of a public service announcement here.  Sorry if it gets graphic and disgusting, but just remember we had to witness it; you just have to read my blog about it.  If you go to Chuck E. Cheese or just out in public in general, please keep your pants on.  I know it sounds obvious to most of us, but you would not believe how many, er, how much we saw that we did not want to see.  I guess those low-rider jeans are in style, but I don’t like them.  And I especially think that women who have small children should not wear those at all, especially at a place like Chuck E. Cheese where you are constantly bending down to talk to or pick up your kids or squatting to get tickets or whatnot.  Use your imagination if you don’t know what I’m talking about because I certainly don’t feel like describing it.  Thank goodness we hadn’t planned to eat there or appetites would have been lost – YUCK.  Enough said.

We had a great time, except that my daughter’s 5-year-old friend was extremely hyper and by no means a good listener.  She was the kind of kid who made me truly appreciate how well-behaved my own kids are, and I’m still working on un-doing some of the bad habits they learned on the hour-long car ride to Chuck E. Cheese – like putting Mike & Ike’s in their noses and spanking butts.  At Chuck E. Cheese, they have a kid-friendly check-in system, so we wanted to let the kids roam a  little bit, but this was next to impossible since our little friend was the kind of kid who was constantly climbing on the outsides of rides while other kids were on them.  Then, she came up with two little finger rings, and my husband asked her where she got them.  She led me to someone’s table, and I was horrified to realize that she had taken the rings from the table.  Could have been an honest mistake, but I could tell by her face that she knew she didn’t really “find” them – at least she was honest about where she “found” them.  Luckily she had no trouble putting them back, and kudos to Hubby for being so head’s up.  Maybe it sounds mean, but we high-fived each other all day that she is moving.  Don’t get me wrong, she’s not a bad kid and she and my daughter get along great, but our 5-year-old is our biggest challenge behavior-wise and having a friend prone to misbehavior would not be a good thing for her.  Besides, she’s only 5, and she will make other friends – friends that will listen to their parents as well as to their friends’ parents.

Overall, a great day to finish out a fun-filled weekend!  Even though it will probably take me all week  to recover sleep, it was well worth it!  🙂

Title — Tarzan of the Apes
Author — Edgar Rice Burroughs
Year 1914
Digitized by Google Books from a 1914 copy Epub format

I have read this book before, but I decided to load it on my book reader and read it again.

This is not your Movie or TV Tarzan. The information about wild life (apes in particular) is a bit dated, but you should not let that keep you from reading any of Burroughs’ Tarzan stories. Tarzan of the Apes is the first in a long series of Tarzan novels written by Burroughs.

In this story, the apes that raised Tarzan are not Gorillas. Burroughs created a new smarter species to have a smarter animal to raise a human infant. This allowed Tarzan to ‘speak’ with the apes in the book. A good plot enhancement to allow the readers to have an early view of Tarzan’s young life in the wild. The apes themselves are seen as caring individuals (at least the female that took Tarzan to raise) and bloodthirsty savage beasts (almost all of the male apes). Tarzan was one of the bloodthirsty savages until he chanced upon meeting ‘white’ humans.

While reading this book, I had a feeling that it was written as a serialized novel. I seem to recall that a number of stories of this type were published in sections by numerous magazines of the time. I did a search on this and found out that this story was publish in full by the magazine it was submitted too. It may have been written as a serial novel, but it didn’t turn out that way. Just an interesting tidbit of information with this story.

I sat down to read this story knowing all of the above, I just pushed that aside and read this as I would any action/adventure tale. Except for Tarzan, the characters all seemed a bit flat. They were all secondary to story line. They were there to give Tarzan something to do. During the reading, I found that I didn’t really care what happened to them.

However, the background and setting of 1914 Africa came alive in the story. This was Tarzan’s supporting character. The descriptions of the ‘Jungle’ and its animal inhabitants kept the story flowing. This background gave the character of Tarzan some depth and meaning. While I didn’t care about the other characters, I did find myself interested in the way Tarzan felt about them. They were secondary, but his reactions were primary. I don’t recall too many stories that have me thinking in that fashion. I’m going to have to read more authors from the same time period to see if this is common in the era.

As far as the Ebook version, I did notice a few problems with the OCR conversion. It seemed to have problems with accented and capital letters. I’m not sure why that is, but there were a couple places it was an annoyance. I don’t remember this from the project Gutenburg book I read last year, but that was just a scan to PDF and not a digital reading/recognition of the words themselves.

I think that I would give this 3 out of 5 stars. Good book to read, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to hunt it down.

This past Saturday, April 10, 2010, marked 11 years of marriage for my husband and I.  Since it was a weekend, and we treasure that as family time, we didn’t think about calling the babysitter to get some alone time.  A generous friend stepped up and offered to watch the little ones for a few hours for Hubby and I to have some alone time, and we contemplated our options that morning.  I love the zoo, but it seemed like too big of an endeavor to travel all the way to Toledo after staying up until 3 the night before for game night.  We had an awesome time Friday night, but note to self – no more game nights the day before our anniversary!  Boy, were we tired on Saturday!  So anyway, we ditched the Toledo idea, and we thought about just staying home since Zambrano was scheduled to pitch for the Cubs, and he is always entertaining.  Finally, my husband came up with a great idea – we’d go to Buffalo Wild Wings, and our friend could take the kids across the street to Menards to play while we sat and watched the Cubs game at Wild Wings.  Before you think I’m nuts, I should mention that Menards (at least our location, anyway) has a hugely awesome indoor play area for the kids – they have many of their playground sets, play houses, and sandboxes on display for people to see and for kids to play in while parents shop – our kids love it and always have a blast, plus it’s free!

So Hubby and I sat at Buffalo Wild Wings and watched the entire Cubs game on Saturday!  And, as a special Anniversary present to us, Zambrano led them to victory!  They started out playing terribly, but turned themselves around (which is rare for the Cubs!), and actually looked pretty good by the end of the game – I’m talking diving catches, great plays, homeruns, and most importantly, turning a 3-0 deficit into a 4-3 victory!  YES!!

And I have to add that Buffalo Wild Wings was actually a great, albeit non-traditional place to celebrate an anniversary.  Not only did they not mind us sitting there for hours watching the game, but they were happy to accomodate us in letting us choose which channel we wanted, AND they gave us a hat with 4 balloons attached to take home for our four children.  AND a free anniversary dessert!

After watching the Cubs win, we got the kids and took them over for some go-carting.  Always fun, and this is the first time in a long time no one had to sit out with a baby!  Our son is old enough to ride this year, and although he was apprehensive at first, it only took him until the first turn when he began squealing with joy!  First time he rode with Dad (because everything is less scary with Dad), and I was able to snap this pic before we took off:

Then I got to take him on the second time, and he was such a wonderful little passenger; he had so much fun!  As I was riding in the beautiful weather with my little guy next to me, I had the thought, “It doesn’t get much better than this!”

Happy Anniversary, Honey, it was a great one, as always!  And thank you for eleven wonderful years of marriage and for four beautiful children!  I love you!

at Wrigley Field, anyway.  For Cubs fans the game was not the greatest eve the best of the season to date, and for me anyway there was a pretty cool piece of pre-game entertainment featured on WGN News.  The song may be familiar but the delivery is awesome.  An obvious plug for their new album which drops tomorrow:  SNC With a Twist.  The video was not available on youtube so you have to follow the linkage to the site.  Of course, you can check out other videos as well.  So, when will they be performing at a Yankee game?  It seems only fair.

IMMEDIATE RETRACTION:

OR AS SOON AS I GOT THE COMMENT.  Doesn’t happen often, but I must apologize to taylhis and all the Cubs fans out there.  I dunno what possessed me to think that the game was the first played at Wrigley last week when I knew perfectly well that it was played at Turner Field in Atlanta.  I will take full responsibility if the Cubbies are defeated by the Brewers today and will accept the wrath of said fans.  I know not what I do.

What would happen if characters in fairy tale land (or Disney animation land) joined real-world New York City?  That is what Princess Giselle of Andalasia learns when she is banished on her wedding day by the Evil Queen Narissa.  The Queen sends her son’s intended off to the land where “happily ever after” doesn’t exist.

Upon arriving in the Big Apple, Giselle meets Robert, a cynical divorce lawyer, and his daughter Morgan who believes that a real princess has stepped out of a book.  Of course, her father has forbidden her to read such make believe drivel.

But not to fear, Prince Charming and Giselle’s chipmunk friend, Pip, come to the rescue!  BUT… the Queen’s vile spy, Nathaniel, has been sent to put an end to Giselle for good.

I found Enchanted to be a really cute musical comedy if a bit cliched with all the ties to past classic animated features.  I really liked the nod to the past with the opening and closing of the book and the narration (provided by Julie Andrews, herself).  The name of a restaurant brought a chuckle.  I thought the leads were all well cast.  Notice Timothy Spall who played Nathaniel.  He played another “rat” in a little well-known film franchise… he just has that face and persona about him.  And if you think that a bunch of people singing and dancing around Bethesda Fountain is strange… just imagine how many out-of-work performers there are in New York City alone!  But I imagine that it would look rather ridiculous if it were not being done for a Disney movie 😀   Actually, it was one of my favorite parts of the movie… being accompanied musically by a street corner reggae group around Central Park (in the daylight, of course).  Wonder how much money Robert really put in their box.

The climax might be a little much for the very young, but overall I think Enchanted would delight any young princess 6 and over.  Cute movie.

Well not quite yet, but maybe a new category if I keep reading at the rate I have been. Since this is an Ebook review, there will be some things about the books that you will only get from the ebooks I’ve been reading. Almost all of the books have been copied from original text and had OCR software run on them. I’ve notice in a few places the character recognition software just wasn’t up to the task. I will have to note where I got the copy, how it was translated to digital text and the edition year it was copied from.

I’m thinking this will be a lot of fun for me, but my readers may be a bit bored by my reading selection. Oh well, you get what you pay for. I’m reading free books, and you are reading a free blog.

This week I finished 3 ebooks, so I have a choice as to which title to review. Decisions, decisions. Life sometimes complicates these things. 😉