Dumb Movie

Watched a dumb movie last night. I had added The Patriot starring Steven Seagal to my Netflix queue thinking that it was The Patriot starring Mel Gibson. Granted I didn't expect the Mel Gibson movie to be any great piece of work either, but I figured I'd watch it once.

So anyway... in The Patriot, Seagal breaks out of his standard mold of an ex-government agent who's trying to lead a quiet life but has to get back in the action to foil some nefarious plot. This time he's an ex-government immunologist who's trying to lead a quiet life but has to get back in the action to foil some nefarious plot. Did you see that? Did you see how they took what might be considered a formulaic plot line and throw in some completely unexpected twist? This movie goes about as you might expect. The bad guys unleash their plot, Seagal get's caught in the middle. The bad guys threaten someone Seagal cares for. Seagal uses godlike cunning and intelligence(?) and master-level martial arts to win the day. I think this entire film was made for two scenes. One is of U.S. Soldiers in full bio-gear picking wildflowers and then another where helicopters are flying over a town dropping flowers as if they were bombs.

Oh, What a Night!

I had to be at work at 9PM last night so we could have a conference call with our Asia offices.

So I'm driving home about 10pm. I drive down Altamesa Blvd and there's this apartment complex called Railridge Apartments there. As I'm approaching the front of these apartments, there's a little red pickup truck out in the median area and he seems to be waiting for traffic to pass before turning out into the street. Well, guess what! He apparently got tired of waiting because he pulled out right in front of me and I hit him! I didn't hit hard I had locked up the brakes (my supposedly anti-lock brakes) and had nearly stopped when I tapped him. So I turn on my flashers and check over my shoulder for traffic so I can pull over and when I look back around he's two blocks away! That little bastard ran off! So I called 911 and had to wait like 45 minutes for a cop to show up. There wasn't really any damage to my truck, in fact you could hardly even tell that my bumper had even touched anything, so we didn't bother filing a full report, but he took down all my info and the details about the other truck (I wish I'd gotten the fool's license plate). At least that way if the little bugger tries to come back later and file a report or something it'll be on record that I stayed and he didn't.

But that's still not the end.

So I get home about 11pm fully expecting Terri and Dee to be asleep. But when I open the door, Dee's sitting in the middle of the living room playing and Terri's on the couch looking haggard. So we end up driving Dee around for about 45 minutes to get her to go to sleep. We finally got back home about midnight with a sleeping baby. But that only lasted till about 2AM! About then, Dee woke up again and started fussing. I think her teeth were bothering her. We gave her some baby Tylenol and tried to get her to go back to sleep but she was restless for pretty much the rest of the night.

Excuse me while I go take a nap...

Infidel's Bash and Father's Day

This weekend we had our annual Summer Infidel's Bash. This year it was at John and Shelly Hattan's house. It was a lot of fun and we had a great turnout. The only drawback was that it was raining when we were supposed to be cooking out on the deck so we didn't get a chance to try out John and Shelly's new grill.

Sunday was Father's Day and Terri, Dee and I spen t the morning out house hunting. We drove by twenty-five houses and narrowed the list down to about 12 that we'll tour next weekend with the realtor. Then we went up to my brother's in-laws for swimming and a Father's Day dinner. Dee had a lot more fun in the pool this time thanks to her recent swimming lessons.

Where's that then?

I talked to my brother yesterday and told him that we were meeting with a real estate agent to begin our house hunting in earnest. He asked me, "where's that?" My brother the CPA.

Anyway, we did meet with the agent last night and put together a list of 25 homes. We're going to go drive around this weekend and look at them and try to narrow it down to about 10 houses. Then we'll go tour each of those houses next weekend.

Waterworld

Finally watched Waterworld last night. Boy, that movie really sucks. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not like I consider the movies we've made to be pieces of high art. It seems to me like they just thought, "Hey! Let's do Mad Max on the water!" Which, in itself, may not be that bad of an idea, but you don't do it as the most expensive movie ever made. If they'd instead tried to do it as more of a mid-range budget and threw in a lot more T&A, it'd probably done a lot better. To date it's grossed around $255 Mil. That would be a pretty good return if they hadn't spent $175 Mil to make it.

On a related note, Dee started swimming lessons this week. She'd been in a pool once before when we went up to the Amstutz's for Mother's Day. She did a lot of clinging to Mom & Dad that day and her first swim lesson wasn't really any different. On the second swim lesson Dee had a lot more fun and Terri got to be the nervous one. In this lesson, the swim instructor takes Dee under water and keeps her moving so water won't go up her nose. It's Terri's job to look happy and supportive when Dee comes up out of the water. Not an easy job when the only thing going through your mind is, "SOME STRANGE WOMAN IS PUTTING MY BABY UNDER WATER!"

Also, we're meeting with the buyer's agent again tonight to start our house search in earnest. He says that we should be able to find a house within a couple of weeks.

La Leche League Weekend

We went to a La Leche League conference this weekend in San Antonio. It was pretty cool. We attended several sessions on everything from good nutrition for the baby to the benefits of co-sleeping. Dr. Robert Sears was there. He's one of the sons of Dr. William Sears author of The Baby Book and others.

We stayed in the Adam's Mark Hotel. This has got to be one of the worst hotels I've stayed in. The rooms were filthy. When we put Dee down to crawl on the floor her knees and feet got black as soot! The elevators were woefully inadequate for handling convention traffic. The hotel restaurant was AMAZINGLY overpriced. (I've stayed in nice hotels all over the US and Canada so I'm generally prepared for the typical hotel prices, but this was above and beyond my experience.) The hotel had an extreme shortage of high-chairs. You would think that a hotel that is hosting a parenting conference where the parents are expected to bring their children might make special arrangements to be sure to have enough high-chairs. Did they? Of course not! On the plus side, the hotel is on the San Antonio River walk. On the minus side, it's on the far north part of the river walk and on the side of the river walk that is not stroller friendly (or wheelchair accessible). While this last point is not the hotel's fault, it certainly doesn't help the overall experience. Also, the hotel offers no shuttle service to tourist attractions (like the Alamo) or shopping centers. Additionally, it was virtually impossible to get any kind of useful information from the Concierge. The most they'd offer were some xeroxed maps with some poorly placed X's on them.

All that aside, we still had a good time and learned a lot. I won't hesitate to go to another conference, but I hope the organizers put a bit more thought into their hotel selection in the future.

I've got no power

Well the power was out again this morning when I woke up. The frequency of our power outages is one of the main reasons I use a battery powered alarm clock.

What do we pay these people so much money for? We have so many power outages that I keep flashlights handy in nearly every room of the house.

We're looking at moving and once we're in the new house I'm going to go ahead with the solar power conversion project.

I've got it all worked out. I start with the solar water hear and solar powered attic fans. Then I build the "battery bunker." You've got to have an extra building for housing your batteries and power converters. Then I start adding solar panels. I'll add them in stages that way I don't have to shell out all this money at once.

Dee's Birthday Party

We had Dee's first birthday party on Saturday. My parents called about 9am and said they weren't going to make it because of the weather. But after I checked the weather it didn't really look that bad so I figured my mom was just looking for an excuse not to come. But imagine my surprise when they showed up around 12:30 anyway!

I cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill and I think everyone had a good time. I'll post some video of it later.

Power On, Inlaws In

Power finally came back on yesterday around 3pm. That's a total of 42 hours we were without power.

Also Terri's parents arrived last night for Dee's Birthday party tomorrow. Her birthday's actually today. My little girl is one year old!

We took Terri's folks out to eat at "The Original" Mexican restaurant here in Fort Worth, then drove them through downtown to show them araound a bit. Terri and Dee will be spending the day with them today. Unfortunately they've got to head back to Georgia tomorrow before Dee's actual party.

Power Still Out

The power is STILL out at home. It's now been out for over 35 hours!

I can't understand why the power grid is so vulnerable to wind and rain. The TXU people are saying that we haven't had a storm this strong in 100 years, but I don't buy it. We lose power in our neighborhood every couple of months. I think the power grid needs to be upgraded and protected. One thing they need to do is bury more power lines. The power lines in our neighborhood are buried, but the feed where it comes from the overhead lines into the buried lines is always going out. I know where this junction is and whenever our power goes out I know that I can drive right by that place and find the TXU/ONCOR guys working on it.

Unfortunately nothings going to get done about it until someone holds TXU and ONCOR's feet to the fire and force them to upgrade the power grid. This is another reason why I'll be working to convert our new house to 100% solar energy.

Texas Weather

Last night we had two big storm cells move through here. The first one went just east of us but the second went right through us.

Our house was OK though part of the back fence was damaged and some of the siding was damaged. But the house across the street had a tree blow down. I think it's a mimosa or something. Anyway it just missed their house.

Our power went out last night about 10 pm and it's still out this morning. Unfortunately it's supposed to get up around 90 today so I told Terri she might want to take Dee and head to a mall until they get the power back on.

Parental Stress Dream

Had a dream Saturday night about losing the baby.

Me, Terri, Dee and a couple of our friends were going to some kiddie place in the dream. We got there and outside the place there was some orphanage asking people to take one of their orphans inside with them so they could have some fun as well. So I pick up one of the kids. Now I'm carrying Dee in one arm and this other kid on the other arm.

The steps leading into this place were very weird. The steps were about 100 ft wide but they were made up of 12 inch square stepping stones with about 4 inches between each stone. Also, as you stepped on each one, they'd randomly move up or down. And not just a little bit either, some of them would move several feet. It seemed as though someone thought this would be a fun entrance and it probably would have been had I not been carrying two infants.

I finally get to the top of the steps with the children and as I turn to go into the main door, I realize that I'm no longer carrying either of the kids! So I start frantically looking around and I tell the friends that I'm with to help me look, but they're nowhere in sight. So we start retracing our steps back to the van (even though I KNOW I got to the top of the steps with the kids). So we get all the way back to the van and I check inside. Inside is one of the friends who came with us asleep with her two children. About then I hear Dee over my shoulder so I spin around. Right next to the parking lot is a cemetery and I see Dee crawling out of the cemetery toward a slight embankment. But before I can get to her she takes a tumble and lands on the pavement, but she's not hurt. I pick her up and squeeze her tight apologizing to her for losing track of her and crying the whole time.

Then I woke up.

More late night baby time

Dee went to sleep a little early Friday night. That should have been a warning. She woke up again around midnight and absolutely refused to go back to sleep. So we end up taking her out for a quick drive around 2:30am. Fortunately she went back to sleep pretty quickly once we were in the van.