Yesterday (the last day of early voting here in Texas) my wife and cast her ballot. She researched the candidates ahead of time and when she got to the voting booth she was able to vote "Straight Party".
Wow. Her first election and she does something that I've never done in all the elections I've voted in. I'm telling you, I married a smart lady!
Just kidding - my wife didn't actually "win" an election but I just got done watching Jay Leno doing his bit on "funny headlines" so I couldn't resist.
The truth is this - my wife has been going through the long process of becoming a naturalized citizen. She was sworn in as an American citizen earlier this month and just recently received her voter registration card in the mail. We have both been poring over election information to make sure that we are well informed about all the candidates on our local ballot. Due to the mass of people that I encountered during the Texas primary in March, we will both be taking advantage of early voting. Our county has many locations for early voting and they are open seven days a week!
Inform yourself! Know where ALL the candidates stand on issues that are important to you! Don't waste your vote - every current Supreme Court Justice has served as a lower court judge and many people with high political aspirations start out in small local elections.
While we were out on vacation we saw a lot of neat places but we didn't have an "official" anniversary dinner.
Once we got back home, we took the kiddo to spend a couple days with my folks (what are grandparents for? :-) and then wifey and I went to her favorite restaurant (Olive Garden) for a nice, long, calm anniversary lunch.
We ordered too much and brought home a "doggie bag" for supper.
I really love my wife.
My wife and I are (sorta) fans of M Night Shyamalan (i never can pronounce his last name). So when one of his movies makes it to my local chain video rental store (I'm nothing if not cheap) we get some popcorn, rent the movie and prepare for a good old-fashioned scare.
Okay, admittedly a couple of his movies are more "freaky" than "scary" but they're still chilling.
The other day my favorite movie date (wifey) & i rented the only one of his videos that we had not yet seen - Lady in the Water. I'm not gonna give away the plot but I gotta tell you - I was more scared by Monty Python's Meaning of Life. When I asked sweetie her opinion of this "horror movie" she just rolled her eyes. It's like M Night was trying to make a black comedy instead of a horror film - it honestly made us laugh.
Disappointing.
So I stop in to my local video rental chain store to pick up Smallville Season Two Disc 4 (my wife and I have recently become followers of the show after she saw a few old episodes on Spanish TV) and they don't have it. Well, this is a bummer. If I was looking for a movie and it wasn't in, I'd just get another movie but I'm actually following this teenage soap opera. (oh the shame)
We even had a bit of confusion when we rented season 2 Disc 1 - we had seen the last episode of season 1 a couple nights before and now nothing was making any sense. My wife took it straight back to the video rental chain store and the teenagers behind the counter just feigned confusion. [This is the part where I really refrain from making tacky comments and just get on with the narrative] Anyway, my wife is bound and determined to see the episodes in order so, one day while I'm at work, she uses her new laptop to look up episode guides, plot synopsis, just all sorts of Smallville trivia and calls me at work to let me know. This kind of research is a bit out of character for her. Normally my wife just uses the net to look for recipes and decorating tips (not being sexist, just stating a fact) and I have to do all the "serious" research (yes, referring to Smallville as serious was tongue-in-cheek but let's not dwell on that).
So Smallville has effected us. (Not to mention that I could really become addicted to watching television shows with no commercials)
Apparently somebody else has also recently started following Smallville because I keep finding season 2 discs out. But not to fear. My resourceful wife picked up House instead (she knows I like medical TV shows) and each of these episodes is a stand alone so I don't have to watch them in sequence for everything to make sense! (I know you're so happy for me :-)
Today the Application for Citizenship for my wife goes into the mail. (That is one long form!)
The process of immigrating to the US of A "by the rules" is tedious at best. She originally emigrated on a fiance' visa for the express purpose of getting married to me. They told us that it would take six months and it only took nine months. (Oy!)
The process of becoming a naturalized citizen is not much better. But this is NOT A REASON to break the rules. A friend of mine at church recently became a naturalized citizen after a long process and I think that he would tell you that it is worth the effort.
For quite some time my wife has been telling me that she wants a laptop. Now don't get me wrong, she's not a "gimme, gimme girl" - she hardly asks for anything. And I know that a laptop is something that she really can use to help her prepare and organize things for her job and her volunteer activities. A while back I bought her a nice desktop from a friend at a "going out of business" sale. Its a nice machine, but not very portable. So we had decided that Tuesday she would go get a laptop computer.
This morning, we took the new laptop to a local burger joint with a Wi-Fi hotspot. (You see, there's this old line from the Wizard of Id comic strip "The King is a fink!"; and most everybody in my family has sort of a warped sense of humor so, for many years, "Burger Fink" has been sort of a running joke in my family.)
After a quick call to my IT guy, we were able to get the necessary download [did I mention that i HATE Windows Vista?] and now we're back in the land of wireless 'net and I can get my goodreads fix from home again.
Yay! My "niece" got married today. It was a lovely ceremony with the groom's father and the bride's grandfather officiating. My wife was listed in the program as the "Wedding Planner". She has been helping with details for a couple months now and yesterday she did a really good job making sure that everybody knew where to stand and when to enter, etc. and everything today went really well. I am very proud of my little Nita and I have told her so several times today.
The bride's mom (Tracy) is my wife's best friend and our daughter has referred to Tracy as "Aunt Tracy" since about the time she was old enough to talk. That's how I got to be Christina's "Uncle".
My wife and I just got home from the local "dollar theater" where we watched the movie "Shooter" starring Mark Wahlberg. In a word - "sweet". The movie is 2 hours and a few minutes long and I was pleasantly surprised to notice only one obvious small arms error (with a pistol). However my knowledge of the long range small arms weapons that star in this movie is really limited so we'll see how it stands up to closer scrutiny. I had decided to buy the DVD by about 30 minutes in - enough details had been mentioned that I knew I will want to see this picture again. I'm glad I saw it on the silver screen and I'm glad I saw it with my wife, she really enjoyed it, too. (if you don't believe me, ask her yourself)
I have to strongly recommend this movie. Not a single sex scene in the entire film - I didn't know that Hollywood was capable of that in a movie that wasn't aimed at six year olds. (Even the movies aimed at six year olds are kind of dicey now a days - but I digress...)
I was going to say that they only used profanity 5 or 6 times in the entire film but my wife says it was 8 or 9 times so we're safe to say "under a dozen". The movie has plenty of tense situations with a lot of tough guys running around and the sparse profanity is actually believable.
If you've seen any of the commercials, you have a basic idea about the plot and if you haven't seen it, I'm not going to give anything away. The movie gets its "R" rating for multiple head shots - if you're squeamish you can just look down (over and over and over) but, as my soccer coach used to say "Blood makes the grass grow."
Today we went with some friends and had some great hot dogs at the local Chicago Dogs location. Today is my wife's birthday (thirty-something) so we knew we were gonna go out and eat but the question was where she wanted to go. Late this afternoon she called and said "You know that hot dog place that we've driven past a couple times and said that we have to try? Well, thats where I want to go eat."
No joke, that's the best hot dog that I've had in a l-o-n-g time. (and we're no where near Illinois :-)
At a recent bridal shower at church (Sunday afternoon) my friend Lily was making her baby (Isabella) laugh and another friend (moonjib of many names) had a video camera and posted it on YouTube! My wife is in the video, too.
When you pop over to YouTube check out this video, too. The user that posted the video titled it "Ultimate Lego Rubberband Gun" - it might not be the "Ultimate" but its pretty close. i'm just jealous b/c i wish i had done this. (hm, the dollhouse is almost finished and the kiddo and i will need a summer project... i wonder....)
Now i have to go back outside and do more yard work - what fun.
