Moving

Don't worry, the title doesn't refer to DeAnne and I.  I'm actually referring to my Grandmother.  That's right, my Memaw is moving to Andalusia.  She's got an apartment behind the hospital and so this weekend, she's going to be moving from Atlanta down here.  I'm not really sure what brought on the move, but I think more than anything she's tired of the size of Atlanta.

I think it'll be good having her around.  She's been in Atlanta for more than five or six years now and we've only seen her when she's been able to come down or when we've gone up there for something.  Hopefully, she'll keep herself occupied by baking plenty of pound cakes.

So helping move Memaw is the big plan for the weekend.  I also need to cut the grass at some point.  I almost want to just wait until it all dies now, but I think if I cut it this week, I'll be able to get away with waiting after that.  So hopefully I've just got two mowings left this year.  Of course, after it gets and stays cool, all the bushes need trimming.  That's going to be a killer of a chore.  They're pretty wild right now.  We cut them back in the spring but I think all the rain we got earlier in the year put some major growth on them.

Other than that, I think we're going to go cheer on the Pleasant Home Eagles tomorrow night.  I think it's their next to last home game for the season and we've only made it to one so far this year, so we want to try and at least make one more if not both of them.

Have a good weekend and I'll see you on Tuesday.

--Paul

#600

It's hard to believe, but this is post #600 for this blog.  It took us a little longer to get here because of the new schedule I started earlier this year, but here we are.  If you're still reading after all this time, then thank you.  I'm glad you're hear and I hope I can keep entertaining you.

The weekend was pretty great.  We headed down to Mobile Friday afternoon and hit the mall while waiting for Courtney and Edwin to get home.  Saturday Edwin and I headed off to the Magic tournament while the girls went and shopped some more.  The tournament was fun even though I finished the day with a 2-3 win-loss record.  Edwin and I actually played the final round and he beat me 2 games to 1 to hand me my final loss for the day.  He finished a slightly more respectable 2-2-1 (win-loss-tie).  He could have been 3-2 but one of his matches ran long and ended in a tie because they ran out of time.  We had a great time though and we both got some cool cards.

The tournament finished up just in time for us to get back for the Auburn game.  If nothing else, Auburn has put on a show every game this year.  It'd be nice to be able to relax for a game though.  Hopefully we'll be able to this week.

Sunday we hit a few more stores on our way out of town and then made it back in time for church Sunday night.  As always, I want to thank Courtney and Edwin (and now Edwin IV also) for inviting us down and letting us stay with them.  We always have a great time and this weekend was no exception.

--Paul

Weekend, Here We Come

After trying for several weeks, we're finally going to be heading down to Mobile this weekend to see Courtney and Edwin.  We haven't been down and spent a weekend with them since before "little" Edwin was born, so we're looking forward to getting to hang out with them and getting to see the baby.  We've seen him a couple of times now, but we haven't really gotten to spend any time with him. 

DeAnne's looking to get some shopping done while we're down there.  She's in need of some new work clothes.  She also has to find some fabric for a couple of bulletin boards in her classroom.  Hopefully that will keep the girls occupied long enough for me and Edwin to play in the pre-release tournament for the new Magic set.  I'm looking forward to this set of cards.  Looking at the previews, it looks like a strong set and I feel like I'm better prepared than I was the back in July.  I kind of hate that I won't be heading back to Crestview to hang out with those guys again, but I'm looking forward to having Edwin along for the ride.  This will be the first time he's played competitive Magic.  Maybe between the two of us we can do fairly well.  

And as if getting to play Magic wasn't enough, Auburn has a big game this week against South Carolina.  It should start about the time we're wrapping up the tournament, so it should be one heck of a Saturday, filled with intense competition across the whole day.

Have a good weekend.

--Paul

PETA's Going To Hate This

So football season is in full swing and we're finally starting to get to the meat of most team's schedules.  Clemson turned out to be a bigger test than most fans probably thought they would be.  In all reality, we really lost that game.  During the game there were a lot of ups and downs.  The first half especially had more downs in it than ups.  Since this was the case, I was so disgusted with Auburn at half-time that I asked DeAnne if she wanted to do something else.  So we went to town and did a little shopping.  Our last stop was Wal-Mart and we went ahead and did our grocery shopping for the week.

So all durning the shopping excursion, Edwin is sending me messages on my phone about what's going on with the game.  Of course, they came back out from the half and started lighting up the scoreboard.  So by the time we're in Wal-Mart, I'm kind of getting excited and I start hoping that we make it home before the end of the game.  Well, we made it home during Clemson's last possession.  I grab some bags from the car, run inside, dump the bags, turn on the TV and pause the game.  I then go back out to the car and finish getting everything inside.  After getting everything put up, I start the game back and eventually, it's all said and done and we get a miracle and win.

At this point, it's around 10:00.  DeAnne heads to bed and I take the dog out and start looking for the cat that had gone outside when we got home.  Emma does her thing but I never see Izzy, so I call for him a few times and figure he'll hear us and come be at the back door in a few minutes like usual.  So I go inside, give Emma her treat and get ready for bed.  I go back to let Izzy in and he's not there.  So I give him a few more minutes and he's still not there.  So I get a flashlight and go back out looking for him.  No cat.  Anywhere.  DeAnne even gets out of bed to come help me.  Still can't find him.  We go from concerned to frustrated (he's done this before) and give up and call it a night.  

So the next morning I wake up and realize that Izzy never woke me up meowing in the window during the night to be let in.  So I go check the back door and he's nowhere to be seen.  At this point, I'm starting to get worried.  I go looking for him again.  I circle the yard a couple of times and check the street and the woods and still nothing.  I decide to get the car and drive the neighborhood.  I go back up to the house and that's when I look at my car and notice that Izzy is sitting in the back windshield.  I see him, he sees me and then he opens his mouth and because he's in the car, I can't hear him, but he's meowing as loud as he can.  He spent the whole night in the car.  Evidently, he went outside and climbed into the car while I was between trips bringing bags in.  I felt so bad for the poor little guy.  He was fine though and he didn't even make a mess in my car (thank goodness).

So maybe PETA won't come after me.  It was a complete accident and everything was fine in the end, but I still feel pretty bad for Izzy.

--Paul

Slow Going

After a couple of kind of crazy weeks, things have started to slow down a little.  Hopefully, that slow down will culminate with a weekend of laziness this week.  We don't have anything on the docket and that's the way I would really like for it to stay.  DeAnne does want to go to Dothan Saturday and look for some new work clothes but that's not a huge deal.  We should be able to go and do that and be back for the Auburn game.  

Probably the coolest thing I've seen all week is this video that I posted to facebook earlier in the week.  It shows a different way to tie your shoes.  I guess it makes sense that there are different ways to tie a knot, but this one really blew me away.  Since seeing this video, I've tried to switch to using this method.  You'd be surprised at how hard it can be to try and retrain yourself how to tie your shoes.  I guess after doing something a certain way for 20-something years, it's pretty difficult to retrain your brain.

The band had a good night last night.  It was our second time having Joy play with us and I really think the keys fill out the sound really well.  Katelyn is doing really well with the bass too.  For someone who's been playing for less than a month, she's really killing it.  She's worked really hard and made a lot of progress in a short period of time.  Having the bass and keys has just really brought the band together.  

Have a good weekend.

--Paul

It Was Bound To Happen

DeAnne's come down with her semi-annual sinus infection.  In the spring, it's the pollen that does her in.  In the fall, it never fails that as peanuts start to be harvested and dust starts hitting the air, she gets sick again.  We were prepared this time though.  We already had antibiotics on hand and hopefully she was able to head it off so that it won't be too bad.

Other than DeAnne getting sick, we had a good weekend.  We got to spend some time in Kinston which we haven't really been able to do since DeAnne started working.  Saturday night the boys in the youth group all got together at Bryan's house to hang out and watch the Alabama game.  Everyone had a great time even though Kaleb and I got put out of the ladder-ball tournament way too early.  Sunday was church as usual.  DeAnne didn't make it Sunday morning but she was feeling good enough Sunday night that she went.  The Wednesday night band led worship and I think we managed to probably play better than we ever have.

So all in all, it was a good weekend.  I hate for DeAnne to be sick, but at this time of year, it's just going to happen.  We just have to pump some drugs in her and soldier on.  Hopefully, she'll improve this week and then we'll be past it for this year.

See you Thursday.

--Paul

Now What?

So on Tuesday when I made my run down of things to talk about and then managed to make it through it all, it kind of left me in a tight for something to talk about today.  Oh wait, I've got it.  I don't think that I've talked about "The Colony" yet.

So "The Colony" is a show that's been coming on for maybe six or eight weeks on the Discovery Channel.  It's basically a reality show with the premise that a super-flu has broken out and wiped out a tremendous portion of the world's population.  It's kind of like "The Stand" meets "The Real World".  The took 8 people and dropped them off in an abandoned part of New Orleans that was blown out by Katrina and they've been trying to survive on what little provisions they were given to start with and what they've been able to scavenge from the surrounding area.  All along the way, they have experts in different fields run commentary about how the colonists are doing and what's driving the decisions they're making.  They try to simulate different things along the way, mainly in security situations where hostiles will wander in to the camp and try to either steal or talk the colonists out of supplies.

It's been a really cool show.  The biggest thing that they haven't talked about and it's because of obvious safety reasons, is guns.  They deal a lot with security, but all the run-ins with hostiles have been with non-deadly weapons.  Of course, they're not going to actually really hurt anyone on the show, but if the situation were real, everyone left would probably be armed to the teeth with what munitions they could scavenge.  Outside of that though, the group dynamics and social interactions between the colonists are pretty interesting to watch.  It's also interesting to see what kind of things they manage to create out of stuff they find laying around.

They created a windmill and put it on top of the building they're using for a house.  Using bike chains and an alternator from a car, they're able to generate electricity and charge a set of car batteries they scavenged.  They've built a forge and flattened metal into machetes and they've created a reverse trike by hooking a flat trailer to the front of a motorcycle they got running and use the trailer part to haul stuff back to the camp.  The list goes on, and I'm not certain that the producers aren't feeding them ideas about what they can do so that it's more interesting that just watching them forage for food, but it's amazing to see what kind of stuff they've come up with.

The fall TV season is about to get rolling with most shows starting in a week or two.  We're down a few shows this year, but I've seen ads for one new show already that looks pretty cool.  "The Event" looks like it will be right up my alley.  Other than that, we'll have to see.  With DeAnne working we haven't had a lot of time to watch TV.  I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing, but we would like to keep up with the shows we do watch.

Have a good weekend and a big War Eagle!

--Paul

When It Rains

There's a lot I want to talk about and I doubt I get to it all, but here goes nothing.

Left over from Thursday, there are a few things that I want to mention about Apple.  First, it's come out that still pictures on the new iPod Touch have been limited to some ridiculously low resolution.  I've not yet seen a good argument as to why Apple did this.  If it's to up-sell to the iPhone, then that's pretty crappy as Apple even admitted at the event that the Touch is like having a contract-less iPhone.  It's also been confirmed that the Nano has lost all video capabilities.  I can kind of see why this happened, but it still makes it more expensive to get into a video device with Apple now.

Finally, I didn't talk at all on Thursday about Ping, Apple's new music-centered social network.  I've signed up and while I think there may be some potential here, there's not been a lot of activity on it either.  None of my real-life friends have joined as far as I know and most of the music artists that I would like to follow haven't signed up yet either.  Like any social network, it takes an active user base for it to be worth while.  Apple has a lot of iTunes users out there so the potential user base is huge, it's just a matter of convincing them to get on Ping.

The long weekend was nice in some respects and hard in others.  Last week, DeAnne's grandfather passed away.  He was from Orlando but was living in Arkansas so that DeAnne's aunts could keep an eye on him.  Because of that, they had a service in Orlando on Saturday.  We left Friday afternoon and headed down, went to the service and came back Saturday afternoon.  It was a tough drive, but DeAnne wanted to go, so we went.  In the end, it was worth it as she got to see a lot of family that she hasn't seen in a while and doesn't get to see very often.  I made a pretty big deal out of the whole thing and I owe DeAnne a bit of an apology for it because it wasn't all that bad.  So, sorry I made a big deal out of the trip, DeAnne.

We did make it back in time for the Auburn game.  I'm excited that football season has come around again and Auburn had some moments to be proud of even if we still have some work to do on defense.  Cam Newton, the new QB looked awesome though and he should be a huge player for the team this year and next.  I'm excited about the possibilities and I'm looking forward to a good season.

Wow, I actually made it through pretty much everything.  Sunday was church as usual, although we did have a "tailgate breakfast" for the youth to celebrate the return of football and class promotion day at the church.  Memaw was in town too this weekend.  I got to see her Thursday night for dinner and we went over and spent some time with her Sunday afternoon and Monday night.  Monday was nothing big.  I cut grass and even though she had the day off work, DeAnne spent most of it down at the school working.  All in all, not a bad weekend.  Hard at times, but not bad.  Hope you had a good one.  At least now we have a four-day work week to look forward to.

--Paul

Apple Excitement

As much as I don't really have a need and can't really afford anything Apple ever announces at their press conferences, it doesn't stop me from feeling like I'm going to die if I don't have something they just showed off.  I guess that's really why they do the press events and if I'm any indication, they work.

They announced a refresh of the entire iPod lineup except for the Classic.  The shuffle is going back to be a square and it's going to have buttons on it again.  I know a couple of people that bought their kids the last shuffle that had buttons on the headphone line and they weren't too excited about it.  The iPod Nano is probably the biggest change.  They made it just a little bit bigger than the shuffle and made it touch screen.  From all that I can tell, they've dropped video playback from the nano and decided that that's going to be a iPod Touch level feature.  The new nano looks pretty cool but I really think Apple's trying to use it as a gateway to get people buying the more expensive Touch.  They added front and rear cameras to the Touch and gave it the same high-resolution screen as the iPhone 4.  What the Touch really represents is the iPod that keeps on giving.  With iTunes and the App Store built in to it, revenue doesn't really stop with the sale of the Touch.  They keep making money throughout the life of the device and I think Apple's realized that the more people they sell a Touch to, the more apps they're going to sell, the more music, the more videos, etc...

Finally, they showed off a revamped Apple TV.  The Apple TV has never been a huge product for them but I think this version has more potential.  There's no local storage on the device, it's based around streaming content from other sources.  Netflix is there as well as the ability to get media off of the computers on your local network.  What Apple is betting on though is iTunes rentals.  Movies seem a little steep to me.  $4.99 for a movie rental that is day-and-date released with the DVD.  If they wanted to drive movie rentals to this thing, they should have tried the Netflix model.  $7.99/month for unlimited streaming for movies would probably be huge.  Unfortunately that's not the route they took.  TV show rentals are going to be $0.99 per episode.  I actually don't think this is all that bad.  They're HD if you have the internet connection for it and they're commercial free which is more than you can say for Hulu.  So if you were to rent an entire season of a show, it'd be around $25.  If they offered season discounts, I think they'd have a huge win.  A season for $20 would be about $0.80/episode.  A decent discount.

To me, the more Apple tries to make the Apple TV work the more they prove that as time goes on we're going to be consuming entertainment in more and more different ways.  I believe that traditional TV subscription models are coming to an end and we're going to see the emergence of more online type entertainment consumption.  It's going to be a few years before it really starts taking hold and faster broadband speeds are going to have to become more standard, but I really think that TV over the internet has a lot to offer, mainly in giving consumers more control over what they're paying for and what they're watching.  There's a lot of potential and a lot of questions still left unanswered.  It's products like the Apple TV though that are going to push the issue and it's companies like Apple that are trying to answer the questions that are going to be successful in the long run.

--Paul