Friday, May 29, 2009

A Slow Weekend Coming

Well, there's just not a lot going on at the moment. As I mentioned earlier in the week, I'm going to have to spend Saturday trying to hack down the yard. It looks like it's going to be nice and hot for me too. Other than that, as I said before, I'm on call, so we won't be going anywhere out of town or anything. June should pick up though.

As I'm sure most of you are aware, June starts the hurricane season. It looks like it's kicked in a little early though. "Tropical Depression One" formed yesterday. It's just heading out to sea, but hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come this summer.

I still haven't managed to finish playing Prince of Persia. It's on the list for this weekend. I really want to get it wrapped up so that I can get it back to Don. I hate having other people's stuff for too long. It makes me feel like I'm taking advantage.

I didn't finish "The Host" yesterday like I thought I might. I'm really close now though. I should probably be able to finish it tonight.

And that's all I've really got for today. Have a good Friday and a good weekend. At least the sun is going to be out.

--Paul

Thursday, May 28, 2009

I Still Have No Idea

I still don't have a clue as to what I had planned to talk about yesterday. I guess it's gone forever. Oh well...

I've almost finished "The Host". It's gotten better since the last time I wrote about it, but I feel like I'm still missing the point. Something I've now noticed about Stephenie Meyer: She can write emotion like it's no one's business. There's no doubt that she can write something poignant and moving and make it look easy while she's doing it. Plotting and flow: not so much. She seems to get hung up in the middle of all her books, going into great detail and part of that is what makes her writing good. But it makes her endings suffer I think. If you think about it, the endings of all her books feel rushed. I may just be over-thinking it, but I feel like I've read through 550 pages of "The Host" and still can't see where it's all going in the end. Anyway, I'll revisit it when I'm finished and see if it was worth the effort or not.

Courtney's coming to stay with us tonight. Her nephew's graduation is tonight, so all of her family is in town and she needs a place to crash, so we're looking forward to that.

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Oh Well

I'm pretty sure I had already thought of something I was going to talk about today, but I can't remember what it was. That's going to drive me crazy the rest of the day. Anyway, maybe I'll have it for you tomorrow.

Since I can't remember what I was going to talk about, let me give you a warning. Next week the annual E3 video game conference kicks off in L.A. E3 is where the major video game companies make most of their major announcements for the year. I'm telling you this in order to prepare you for the geek onslaught that might occur once the conference kicks off. Bear with me during this time and after a few days it should be over.

Other than that, I don't really have anything. I guess I should have saved something from yesterday to talk about today. There's not a whole lot I can even do this weekend. I'm on call, so we won't be going anywhere. I've got to get the grass cut. All the rain has kicked the growth into high gear and has at the same time prevented me from cutting anything. This has led to the small rain forest we have growing around our house. Right now Friday and Saturday are looking pretty good, so maybe everything can dry out on Friday and I can get it cut Saturday morning.

Alright, I'm going to quit boring you with details about my lawn (or lack thereof). Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Another Day Off Would Be Nice

The long weekend was great. The only bad part about it is that it's over. Well, there was the rain, but still, I'd rather have another rainy day than have to go back to work. Can I retire yet?

Friday we didn't do anything. Period. I think we went to bed around 9:30.

Saturday was a pretty busy day. The church had a video projection system installed along with getting a new sound board and closing off the sound room. The contractor met with Bryan and I Saturday afternoon and we worked on getting all the kinks worked out along with cleaning up the room and getting everything set on the new board. We were there most of the day but it paid off as Sunday went off without a hitch.

Saturday night we went and watched Star Trek. All in all, I would say the movie was well above my expectations. Even DeAnne liked it, so it must have been pretty decent.

Sunday was church. Pleasant Home also had baccalaureate services Sunday afternoon and I had agreed to do the sound for that, so I was at the church most of the day Sunday. Sunday night we hung out at Garrett and Amy's. We got a Subway platter and ate and talked. Before it was over, it was around midnight.

Yesterday we hung out with Bryan and Adrienne, watching movies and watching it rain. We had dinner at Mr. Jimmy and Mrs. Tammy's and played a game. It was a great, just ordinary, lazy day off and it was absolutely wonderful.

So that was the long weekend. Not bad. It would have been nice for it to have stopped raining long enough for us to go swimming or something, but we managed to have a good time despite the weather. I guess now it's back to the grind. Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

Friday, May 22, 2009

Another Friday Has Come

Long weekend!!! Woo!!! It's too bad the weather isn't going to be nice, but at this point, I could really care less. Three days off is three days off.

Tuesday night after American Idol, Fox showed the pilot for a show that's starting in the fall called "Glee". It's mainly about a high school teacher that heads up the schools glee club and what he does to try and make the club successful. The show was extremely quirky and was really hilarious. We actually probably wouldn't have watched it, but we caught one commercial that was pretty funny and once we realized it was a comedy, we were sold. There was also a lot of singing, but the cast is mostly made up of people from Broadway, so all the songs were pretty good. The version of "Don't Stop Believing" at the end of the episode was just awesome. It's not coming on again until the fall, but when it starts up, you should definitely check it out.

I haven't gotten much farther with "The Host". I haven't had a whole lot of time to read and what I have read, the story is starting to drag a little. Maybe it's just because I haven't been able to make much progress in the book this week, but I can't really see where it's going and I'm beginning to wonder what the point is. Maybe I can get past this part this weekend and get to something better.

I'm all out of time for today. Have a great extended weekend.

--Paul

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Blown Away

I have a real love/hate relationship with American Idol. The part of me that loves all things music, good or bad and that loves good TV really loves American Idol. The part of me that's a music purist and thinks that manufactured pop hits are then end of all that's good in the world really hates American Idol. Last night, for the American Idol finale, both sides felt like they won and I ended up more entertained than I have ever been by an episode of American Idol.

It was easily the best finale they've ever had and it has nothing to do with who won. By the time they actually got to telling us, I don't know that anyone really cared anymore or if they even should have cared. The number and range of big name music acts was simply incredible and minus one or two of the performances, they were all incredible. KISS, Queen, Rod Stewart, Santana, Fergie and the Black Eye Peas, Steve Martin (who knew the guy could play banjo), David Cook, Cyndi Lauper and several others all performing hits accompanied by various contestants and for the most part all sounding great. It was one of the greatest varaity shows that's probably ever been on television.

I'm just blown away. We were getting close to the end of the show and I told DeAnne: "The only way they could finish this out is if they brought out someone like Paul McCartney." Two seconds later Queen was playing and my jaw was on the floor. I don't know how they'll ever top this finale and the people the set it all up and lined up the talent need big raises.

I could probably keep going on about it, but it's time to go. Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Hm...

So I'm lost for a title today. Sorry.

DeAnne and her Mom watched and enjoyed "Bride Wars" last night. DeAnne's Step-Father had a meeting of some kind to go to so her Mom decided to come eat dinner with us and stayed for the movie. I didn't watch it, instead opting to read, but I hear that it was pretty funny.

Speaking of reading, after the Twilight series, I decided to go ahead and read Stephanie Meyer's one other book she's wrote, "The Host". It's pretty good but it's a little different for anything I've read before. I generally haven't read much science fiction even though I enjoy sci-fi movies and tv shows and "The Host" is firmly planted in the sci-fi genre. It still has all the trappings of Meyer's vampire books: the love story, the two beautiful leads, the lost love, and so one, so it's familiar in that respect. I actually worry a little that it's too similar to Twilight. I'm not quite half-way through, so I'm going to reserve judgement until I finish it, but at this point it's good enough that if you liked Twilight, you shouldn't have a problem with The Host.

That's all I've got. Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Come Back, 24!

It ended on a cliff-hanger!!! Ah!!! Is every show we watch going to end on some huge cliff-hanger this year? I mean, come on, haven't you people ever heard of "closure"? 24 was good last night though. Tony turned out to have his own reasons for the things he had done other than just "I'm a bad guy now". It didn't mean he was right to do those things, but at least they made an effort to explain his motives better. I also like the fact that once Kim knew she was in trouble she did something about it and managed to be successful in the attempt instead of just getting herself kidnapped again. That's a pretty big change of pace for her. It was one of the best seasons 24 has ever had, I just can't believe they left it the way they did. January isn't going to get here fast enough.

There's a new search engine that launched on Friday called Wolfram Alpha. I posted a link on my twitter and facebook to a demo video, but the full site is live now. It's different in that it's based on mathematics instead of just general search. For instance, if you feed it "2 + 2", it will come back with the answer "4". You can also search for things like the weather in a city or the population, GDP numbers of countries and other general knowledge things like that. It's really awesome and could really do a lot for research and different things where google might fall short. It also has a bit of humor built in to it. For all you Monty Python fans: The velocity of an unladen European swallow.

Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

Monday, May 18, 2009

Back To The Grind

So we're back around to Monday again. It's a big day though, or a big night rather. It's the season finale of 24 tonight. There's always a few twists at the end. This season has been one of the best so far, so I'm curious to see what happens in these last two hours.

We had a good weekend. We ate dinner with Dad and Sherry on Friday night and then we came back to the house and just lay around doing nothing. We made a short Wal-Mart run, but that was about it.

Saturday the new love seat arrived. DeAnne's still not crazy about the fabric on it. It really doesn't look anything like what it did in the store and she's not at all happy about it. It is what it is though and she told me that after a few years we'll just get it recovered when it starts looking worn. Yeah, great. After we got done with getting the love seat in, we headed over to Kinston for lunch and so DeAnne and her Mom could go get some baby shower presents. What started out as them going to one store turned into a 5 hour, two town marathon. Fortunately, I had decided to hang back at the house, but even I can only read so much before I start to get bored.

Sunday was good as always. The children put on their spring musical last night and it was cute as ever. Other than that, it was just a lazy Sunday. The rain just intensified the laziness.

So that was about it. There's not much on the horizon either for this week, so it may be a bit of struggle to find something to talk about. I'll do my best. Have a good Monday.

--Paul

Friday, May 15, 2009

Lost!!!

We watched the Lost season finale last night and WOW! A ton of questions were answered and in typical Lost fashion a whole lot more were brought up. I can't believe we have to wait 7 months for the next (and last) season.

I've sat here looking at the screen for about 3 minutes now trying to figure out what else I could say about Lost. I'm really just that blown away. It's going to be a long wait until next year.

There's not much going on this weekend. I'm not complaining though. We could use a down weekend. The grass doesn't even really need cutting (thank You Lord). There's a little cleaning to be done around the house and the usual laundry, but other than that I guess we'll just be hanging around doing nothing. If you're out there and you're bored, give us a call and we'll go do something.

Another short one. I think the brain drain I'm experiencing at work is starting to affect my blogging. Maybe I'll be recovered by Monday. Have a great Friday.

--Paul

Thursday, May 14, 2009

So Close

After the rough start yesterday morning, the rest of the day went by pretty quickly. We did have a server at work go into full melt-down mode late yesterday afternoon but it was a box that's been giving us trouble for a couple of weeks now and its death wasn't totally unexpected. We've got replacement hardware on the way already but we had to figure out a work-around to last us until it gets here.

We didn't get to watch it last night, but I just read that Danny got sent home on American Idol last night. I figured he had too much of a following to not make it to the finals, but I guess the Allison voters moved on to either Adam or Kris and left Danny without any new support. Either way, it's fine with me. I thought Kris had the best performances this week and I thought Danny had the weakest.

We didn't get to watch the Lost finale either, but hopefully we'll be able to fix that tonight. The season finale for Lost is always awesome. I don't think they've had a season end yet that wasn't just mind-blowing. Hopefully they delivered again this year. We've got just one more season to go. Hopefully it'll all be explained and the answers will be worth the time and effort it takes to watch the show. Just one year until we find out I guess.

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Running Late Already

It's going to be a short one this morning. When I went to get the milk out of the fridge, I opened the door to a mess. We had a roast in the fridge thawing out for dinner tonight and evidently it finished thawing out during the night and then proceeded to leak all over the fridge. A fine way to start a morning. At least it's Wednesday already.

At any rate, I don't have much to talk about this morning anyway. We've started walking in the afternoons. We're not full on with the diet again, but we're trying to get into some better habits that we had going while we were on the diet. Walking is one of those. Thankfully, since they paved the roads in the neighborhood, we can just step out of our door and have a decent place to walk. It'd be nice if we had sidewalks, but I guess you can't always have what you want. (But if you try sometimes, you find, you get what you need.)

I'll try and have more to talk about tomorrow. Also, I hopefully won't have to spend 10 minutes or better cleaning up a mess. Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

So The iPod Is Awesome

I've wanted an iPod Touch for a pretty good while now. With all the wait, I had built up a pretty large amount of expectations for the device. After playing with it for a couple of days now, I can safely say that all my expectations have been met.

The music player is great. It's also very pretty. The album art fills the whole screen and makes for a nice background while the music is playing. If you turn the ipod on it's side, it goes into cover flow mode which is even cooler than it is in iTunes.

The apps are where it's at though. In addition to carrying around my own music, with apps from Pandora and Slacker radio, I can listen to my personal internet radio stations while I'm near a wi-fi point. The facebook app is one thousand times better than one for my blackberry and twitterrific beats any twitter app for the blackberry hands down.

So far I've only downloaded apps that are free. I have a hard time paying for something that I don't know what I'm getting. That's one of the few downsides. There's no demo version of an app that you can download and test the app for a few minutes before you buy it. Even with music, they let you play a 30 second clip. Demo versions of apps would be great.

I've also had a little trouble getting my gmail to work with it, but I think I got that fixed this morning before I started writing.

Other than those couple of things though, it's been a great experience. It's too bad it's not an iPhone, but of course, if it was, I'd be paying a monthly fee for it too, so this is probably better anyway. Either way, I love it.

Have a good Tuesday.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Happy Birthday To Me

It's that time of year again. Today is my birthday. I'm now 28 years old. Wow, that was actually kind of painful to write. It's hard to believe I'm so close to 30. Anyway...

Friday was Adrienne's birthday, so we went out to eat with her and Bryan and then we just hung out at their house the rest of the night. Saturday was my one chance to get the grass cut, so I did that and then when I was finished we headed up to Montgomery to see Mom and Sid. Sid's birthday was last Monday, so it was a double birthday/mother's day celebration. Mom surprised me though by buying me the iPod Touch I've been wanting (more about that later) and we all went out to eat.

Sunday we went to church in Opp with DeAnne's Mom and then ate lunch with her family. They also had me a birthday cake. After lunch we made one last stop by Dad and Sherry's and spent a little while with them before heading on to Wal-Mart and returning to our normal routine.

Outside of the iPod, DeAnne got me the Wolverine game for the 360 and then I've gotten some cash from several people, so all in all, it's been a good birthday...and I got all that over the weekend. In the end though, I guess all that doesn't really matter. I'm just happy to have had another year. It's had its ups and downs, but you can't help but be happy when you're surrounded by people who you love and who love you in return. I am extremely blessed and extremely grateful to God for it all.

Have a good Monday.

--Paul

Friday, May 08, 2009

Finally Friday

It's been a bit of a long week, but that's alright, we still made it through.

First, Happy Birthday Adrienne!

Next, our dear friend Courtney (Stephens) Perry, has finally see fit to join the blogging realm. She's been able to resist for a good while now, but she finally caved when she got her new camera yesterday. Welcome to the dark side, Courtney.

This weekend is Mother's Day, so tomorrow we'll be heading up to Montgomery to see my Mom and then we'll be spending Sunday over in Kinston. We'll also be hitting Dad's house to see my step-mom. So nothing major there, just the usual.

I'm all of 12 pages away from being done with Breaking Dawn, so I'm going to see if I can squeeze it in before I have to get ready for work. Have a good Friday and a good weekend.

--Paul

Thursday, May 07, 2009

The Week's Almost Gone

In spite of working late every day this week, Thursday has snuck up me and is here already.

I'm getting close to the end of book 4 in the Twilight series. I have to say, I'm a little disappointed with this one. It started out fairly strong, but it seems like she got what she mainly wanted out of the way and then realized it wasn't really long enough or something and then tried to tack some stuff on to the end. The book is practically over and the fight that's been brewing for over a hundred pages hasn't happened yet, which leads me to think that either the fight is going to end very quickly and possibly badly, or there's not going to be a fight and all of this worry on the character's parts is for nothing. I'm also worried that no matter what, the ending isn't going to be very satisfying with so few pages left to get it out in. Maybe I'm wrong, I certainly hope so. The series has been very good up until this point. Really, if she had taken the beginning of book 4 and tacked it on as an epilogue to book 3, the whole work may have come out better in the end. But I'm not an author, so who knows.

So that's all I've got for today. Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Speaking of T.V.

Let's see...

I finally got a chance to watch the Heroes finale last night and it was pretty good. They've set up some interesting things for next season. Heroes has struggled ever since the end of season 1. It improved a lot the last couple of months though and hopefully next season will be a return to greatness.

DeAnne's recently gotten hooked on Biggest Loser. There's only 1 episode left. It's pretty amazing to see how far these people have come. One of them is an 18 year old kid and he's lost almost as much weight as what I weigh total.

And after so many weeks of horrible themes, American Idol finally got around to "Rock Week" last night and I have to say, it was probably one of the best shows they've had all season. I know I'm a little biased on the genre, but it was pretty awesome. The only one I didn't really like was Danny's "Dream On". I think it was just a little too much for him. He did great though on "Renegade" with Kris. In fact, Renegade was probably my favorite performance of the night. I doubt it was enough to get Danny voted off though and with the way the judges downed on Kris, he'll probably be the one to go.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Carrying On

Possibly the most interesting thing we did this past weekend was visit the Mobile Flea Market. I've been to flea markets in the past, but it's been a while and at the time I wasn't paying much attention. We walked the three halls they had and it was pretty amazing. There was a lot of junk, but there was also a good bit of stuff that was worth the time. More interesting than the stuff though was the people. I think we saw every type person you could think of. People in large crowds are always interesting to watch and the flea market definitely didn't disappoint.

The TV season is starting to wind down. Several shows that we watch are already done for the summer and there's only a week or two left on the rest of them. 24 has about two weeks left. It's been really good this year and I'm really excited to see how it ends.

Also, I wanted to mention that yesterday's post was post #350 for this blog. The majority of those have been in the last year, but I'm still pretty excited to make it to a number like that. I guess that's the comic collector coming out in me.

Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

Monday, May 04, 2009

Another Great Weekend

We had a great time in Mobile this past weekend. We fit in a bunch of stuff. We ate lunch with Lyndsay but didn't get to see Josh. We hit the flea market and that was just as interesting as I ever imagined it would be. We played Harry Potter Clue with Don and Laura and that was a blast and we saw Wolverine. The girls went shopping and we ate a couple of times with Harry and Heather. And to top it off, I was also able to squeeze in a good bit of reading.

Wolverine was pretty good. I think that I had hyped it up in my mind so much that it was a little bit of a letdown. They also took a good number of liberties with the characters and while I understand why they did, it still kind of bugs you when it's different than what you've read. Overall though, it was a good action movie and was fun to watch.

I've never played Clue before, so it was a totally new experience for me, but it was pretty fun. Edwin and Courtney won, but it was close. They guessed at the place and got it right. DeAnne and I had the person and thing but we weren't sure enough to make the guess on the place. So probably not bad considering DeAnne hasn't played in forever and I've never played the game before in my life.

I'm out of time, so there may be a few more Mobile-related things to talk about tomorrow. Have a good Monday.

--Paul