Annual Haircut

No, I haven't shaved my head yet this year. That is scheduled for mid-July. I'm just thinking about the haircut a little early this year. It has been part of working through my grief since my best friend of 13 years died at 8:30am (Eastern) on June 29, 2003.

Several of my friends either have recently moved or will be moving soon and, being human, I'm not real thrilled about this. But I've often heard the saying that "In Life, change is the only constant". So I either have to get used to it or I have to quit eating so many fortune cookies. (lame attempt at humor)

Today I had coffee with a good friend who always gets me thinking. Later this evening I will read a short story that I've been looking forward to reading for some time now. There are several things that I want to say right now but the words are all jumbled together in my head.

I'm afraid that it might take a good haircut to get things unjumbled.

America:Freedom to Fascism

This movie is an hour and 49 minutes long.
Some of this information I've heard many times over the past 25 years.
Some of this information I had never heard before.
All told, this is the scariest thing that I've seen in a long, long time.
Tell me what you think.

Wolverine

At my cool almost-40 un-birthday surprise party (enough qualifiers?) one of my good friends gave me the graphic novel compilation of the 4 issue Wolverine mini-series. This was written by Chris Claremont and pencilled by Frank Miller. Claremont spent over a decade scripting the Uncanny X-Men through some of their greatest story arcs. Claremont's original "Dark Phoenix Rising" was going on just at the time I was getting into comics, so I might be a bit biased in my judgement of X-Men in those days.

A few years later, I sat in the audience at Galaxy Fair 90 in Dallas, TX and listened to a panel of comics experts that included Chris Claremont. During that panel, Mr Claremont downed round after round of scotch and his high alcohol tolerance is the only thing that I remember about that panel all these years later. Many great writers have been alcoholics ("But I Digress..." - a phrase made famous in comicdom by Peter David, another great writer and I won't even start on his proclivities)

In the introduction to the Wolverine compilation, Chris Claremont mentions that Frank Miller is not only a great artist but also a great writer who had the audacity to get even better. Miller is currently probably better known for his comic magnum opus "Sin City" but this should not overshadow his standard-setting work on Daredevil and Batman.

If you have never read the Wolverine mini-series, I highly recommend it. This book is a very good example of the modern comic as art and literature, even though I know some people seem to think that nothing produced under the umbrella of a corporation (Marvel or DC) could truly be art. I will have to opine on "indy books" another day.

Happy Un-birthday to Me!

Well I'm almost forty and I've been married (to the same woman) for almost thirteen years and she can still surprise me! For two weeks my wife and daughter have been planning a surprise "un-birthday" party for me. My birthday isn't until next month and she really played up the "Big 4-0" angle. Black streamers, a "Welcome to Over the Hillville" sign on the front door - she is great. I had no clue what was going (believe it or not) until I saw the front door.

My wife finishes her day at 4pm. Some days I don't get done at the office until 6 or 6:30. Many times I have talked to her on a Friday afternoon and her conversation has been something to the effect of "Hurry it up, man! I want to go see a movie!"

Yesterday I was having a bad day (SO ready for the week to end - hardware problems, software problems, staff problems - oy!) then to top it off, I got a sinus headache. Naturally I called my wife and, wouldn't you know it, instead of the usual Friday "just sneak out of the office" pep talk, my wife was giving me a "you can hang in there" pep talk! (But I didn't get what was going on)

She told me "call me when you're really really leaving work and I'll tell you what to pick up for dinner because I don't feel like cooking". No prob. Before I went inside the pizza place, I called to find out what she had ordered - I was in no mood to get home and find out I only had half the order (or whatever). Do you know what she told me? "Three large pizzas, one black olive, one pepperoni and one supreme. I don't feel like cooking all week." I know. You're thinking "What dunderhead would fall for a line like that?" In my own defense, I consider pizza to be its own food group and I have, more than likely, eaten enough cold pizza to fill a dumpster. So the prospect of eating cold pizza for a week was fine by me. The only problem is that I think my wife is just waiting for the next time I call her with a sinus headache...

She pulled off a Great surprise party with some of our closest friends. I had a really great time just eating pizza and chocolate cake and talking with my friends. It was the best un-birthday I've ever had!

koloradokid on xanga

Thanks Manda, this guy is TOO COOL! Ya'll have to check out his entry on May 1. The pic at the top is great but go down about two-thirds of the way on the page and read the entry (still on May 1) entitled "This about sums it up".

If it was fun, they wouldn't call it "work"

I like to shoot guns. (At paper targets, tin cans, clay pigeons, etc.)
Not to digress too much but using a two liter bottle of water for a target and "liberating" it with something in the neighborhood of at least a 50 caliber round is most invigorating. If you've never tried it, you ought to.

You see, I love my job but the Only Reason That I Go To Work is because they pay me. And, to coin a phrase, "Work is cutting in to my free time." I realized that it was quite a savings to buy a membership at the gun range - now I have to take a day off to go shooting.

I will be taking management courses starting in a few weeks, hopefully I will figure out how to manage a little more time at the range and with my friends.

Seriously, OY VEY!!

Family Fun Fest

Family Fun Fest was great. Like Manda commented on the last post (my bad for not publishing this entry sooner - more on that later) there weren't any people drinking in the park. In fact it was really calm for being a city park in south Texas on Cinco de Mayo. I have no idea if the city has an ordinance about alcohol consumption in the parks but, if they do, that could explain the lack of "rowdies".

We had a great group turn out (unofficial count - 111) from all age groups. One thing I really like about our church is the diversity. We have families from all over the globe and quite a few "intercultural" couples (my wife and i included :-). The games were great, the food was great (i didn't cook any of it) and the fellowship was great!

I saw Lily walking around taking photos so I know there are some great shots of the picnic.

I can't remember if this is our third or fourth year doing this, but its a bigger success every year.

Cinco de Mayo

Our annual church picnic (Family Fun Fest) is coming up this weekend. This will also be the weekend of "Cinco de Mayo" so i'm kinda concerned about how many people will be "celebrating" with a bottle in the park. I never used to worry about this kinda stuff before becoming "daddy". Hopefully, everything will go off without a hitch and i'm just being a worrywart.

Deskercise and Chocolate Fiber

In a little over a month i will hit a landmark birthday for me. It's not such a big deal, really; but the reason its landmark *for me* is because this is the age that i thought people got OLD. But what did i know?

Back then, my first computer cost three times as much as my first car. It had a color monitor. All computers back then had color monitors - you just had to pick the color, yellow or green. Ours was green. Back then, the cases were any color you wanted, as long as it was beige. (Can you say "DOS" ? I knew you could.)

Did i mention that one of my first conscious memories is being at a political rally? We were all in an airplane hangar in Tulsa, OK. I was on my dad's shoulders and everybody was looking at the man who had just stepped out of the airplane and shouting "Four More Years! Four More Years!". (Thats not a joke - and before you throw stones, he was *the* foreign policy president. No president in either the 20th or 21st century even comes close to him on that.)

But i digress...

I am, frankly, out of shape. ("Do these jeans make my gut look fat?") One friend even told me "Oh get over it!" (you know who you are ;-) so i guess, being as old as i am, i should just "grow up". That's why i'm glad there's "Deskercise"!



Now with a happy bowl of Kellogg's Special K chocolatey delight Naturally and Aritifically Flavored Crunchy Rice and Wheat Flakes with Chocolatey Pieces "Losing up to 6 lbs in 2 weeks Just Got Easier". Gosh, with this and the Deskercise, i'll just be a shadow of my former self ;-)
[warning to youngsters - any time a man is obsessing over his weight, something is wrong. He's liable to shave his head or exhibit other "age defying" behaviors]