http://snakesonaplane.varitalk.com/
If you haven’t done it yet, hurry up and prank a few people before it’s too late and this gets widespread! This site lets you send a personalized voicemail from Samuel L. Jackson himself to the “victim” of your choice – sounds the farthest away from an automated message as I’ve ever heard … very cool, indeed. Enjoy!
…but this was pretty entertaining…
The Daily Show Investigates Snakes on a Plane
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKjvpX3pt9Q
Just finished packing and loading everything in the car. Mental note – stop putting this part off until the last minute!
Will be a little late for work … forgot to call in and just got a call from the boss, but at least she didn’t sound mad.
Comic is all queued up and ready to go for tomorrow. (Although anyone who reads via MySpace will have to wait because I still have to do that manually and I don’t want to post it there ahead of schedule. Multi-million dollar company and they can’t incorporate RSS into their blogs???)
Hopefully will have wi-fi at the hotel tonight because airports are usually too busy for me to bother getting my laptop out there, but we’ll see. I do have a lot of work to do, but whether it will actually get done or just wait until Tuesday is still to be forseen.
Last night Sara talked me into getting a pedicure. Still waiting to find out if I’m officially gay or not, but either way it was a good time for both feet involved. Hmmmm…
Will be in Michigan about twelve hours from now, and Northern Michigan another fourteen or so from then. Should be fun!
And lastly, was just reminded today that Snakes on a Plane opens tomorrow. I might drag Lori and Ray to go see it with us, if Gaylord’s theater won’t be completely packed. It’s on, biatch!
The Good
The Bad
The Frustrating
…iTunes seems to have this stupid habit of crashing my network connection now anytime I open it because it wants to update all of my podcasts at the same freaking time! Apple – I like your software, but not enough to warrant rebooting my machine every time I want to hear some new music. Grrr…
Man, am I going to be happy when these stressful days are gone.
Of course, that’s not likely to happen anytime soon, so I guess in the meantime we’ll just take it one day at a time… 😛
It was a very busy weekend as we began preparing for our trip up to Michigan later on this week. Yesterday we went over to Downtown Disney for presents and also saw a movie (Miami Vice – it sucked – should’ve listened to everyone’s reviews). Today was pretty much entirely devoted to finding Sara a dress for the luau, which we did actually do after visiting about the 113th beach shop along the gulf coast. It was a very trying trip and we were both immensely happy when she found something that would work, but as a side note, in the meantime we did decide that we’re going to buy a sweet condo on the beach once we’re millionaires and have tons of money to blow. I don’t quite remember whose responsibility it is to make all of that dough, though – will have to check back on that one.
So we’ve still got a ton of crap to do – gifts need to be prepared, articles for the paper up there need to be written because a deadline will pass while we’re away, packing of sorts needs to take place, I need a haircut and Sara wants to get her nails done, the house never actually did get cleaned from when we got back from the last trip – the list just goes on and on! Also, we have strong suspicions that there might be a mouse or rat living up in the attic … either that or some very large cockroaches … because we could hear them scurrying around the other night above the bathroom that sits off of our bedroom. We bought a neat, little trap for that purpose earlier today, but I’ll be very surprised if it gets put into place anytime before we leave.
So much to do, so little time – these are the days of our lives!
Does anyone know if there’s a way, either now or in the future, for me to play the new Super Mario Bros. game for the Nintendo DS on a screen larger than, say, three inches or so? I got a small taste of this thing while we were perusing Best Buy last weekend and had to come home and plug in the old Super NES to help quench my thirsts for koopas and walking mushrooms, and after seeing the new game and playing it for a few minutes, I’d love to partake in this new adventure, too, but I am getting “old” and just can’t stare at that tiny screen for hours on end. Any ideas if there are plans to go cross-platform with this title and offer it on the upcoming Nintendo Wii, or maybe something’s available where you can hook up a DS to one of the console systems, as I believe they did between the Gameboy and the Game Cube.
Help a brother out – I need my Mario and Luigi!
http://www.floridafilmmakers.com/Afternoon_KS/kevin_smith_index.htm
Finally … one of Kevin’s hilarious Q&A’s is finally coming to a venue within driving distance! I literally just found out about this today – Saturday, Sept. 23rd at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando – $35 / ticket. Sara and I are sooooo going to this!
So Sara and I spent a little time unwinding down at the pool last night, which was nice because work and stress and more work these days have really taken a toll on the amount of pool time that we’ve been able to enjoy recently, but it also didn’t come without its taxes, either.
We got down there around 9 o’clock, so it wasn’t too late and there were actually other people still there (normally it’s much later than this, but it was a “school night”!). Anyways, the trouble began when we recognized the people as ones we’ve seen before – a couple of teenage girls and (presumably) their much younger brother. This kid can’t be much more than five or six, and at that you can probably already guess where I’m going with this one. Being the typical teenagers that they are, these girls want absolutely nothing to do with the kid and pretty much ignore him whenever they bring him to the pool, so he comes over and wants to “play” with us. Cute, because he’s a little kid, but totally not the time because we came down to relax and spend some time with each other, not babysit. So hoping that he’ll get the hint, we walk all the way back around the pool to the deep end and get in there.
Of course, it doesn’t phase him one bit. He’s young, and it’s not really his fault that he’s this curious.
Nonetheless, for the remainder of his stay he proceeds to bug the hell out of Sara and I, trying to hold conversations with whoever is closest to him, throwing rocks in the pool when nobody listens to him, etc, etc… At one point I told him not to throw rocks in the pool and that I was going to tell his parents, to which he gave me a really funny look. I mentioned that he really needs to go back by his sisters, who were now over in the hot tub completely unaware, but I got a really odd response out of him that left me wondering if a) his parents were the “not around, I don’t care”-type or even literally not around; or b) the girls he was with weren’t really as young as they looked and one of them was the kid’s Mom. Either way, I was getting pissed, and not at him.
If I were to make a top ten list of pet peeves, irresponsible parents would be right up there at the threshold, next to idiot drivers and idiot politicians (oxymoron?). I know it’s not simply limited to the current generation, but what makes these parents think that their kids can just run around doing whatever the hell that they want?! Just because they pay HOA dues doesn’t mean their kids have free reign of the place, too. It’s called community-living for a reason – try having a little respect for the rest of the people in the community. Not to mention the safety factors involved – the whole No one under 18 without a parent or guardian rule is posted for a reason. If that kid had fallen in when he was playing in the deep end and gotten into trouble, how long would it have been before his “sisters” had even noticed? Granted, I’d have probably done something if it happened while I was there, even though good samaritans get burned more and more these days, but what if it had happened while they were the only ones there? These people live right next to the pool, so no doubt he’s down there a lot – possibly even by himself sometimes.
Talk about a pain in the ass – it was disrespectful and unsafe to leave the kid unattended, it made me feel like kind of a jerk when I got to the point of just ignoring him, and it cut into what little time Sara and I had together for just relaxing. And all because Mom and/or Dad couldn’t get off their asses and come be parents. I don’t want to hear excuses about the sisters not doing their part to watch him – ultimately he’s still his parents’ responsibility and they should be aware of who they can and can’t trust to adequately supervise their child. I could go on and on, but I think you get my drift. Grrr…
…
Other than that, though, the water was great! Both of us came out rather prune-like, we each got to try out Sara’s new floating chair that she found on sale for $5 (a quarter of what it was when she wanted me to buy it for her two weeks ago!), and we did still have a rather good time just wading and talking. Good times, indeed.
Where does the time go???
No, seriously – anybody feel free to jump in and throw a guy a bone here because at this point, I’m stumped! This weekend we were supposed to clean, and I was supposed to write, and Sara was supposed to get a bunch of her lesson plans done…and go figure, most of that didn’t actually happen. Instead we spent some time at the pool, watched House, The 4400, and Weeds together, I bought the new Jaws game for PS2 and wasted plenty of time last night, and Sara spent most of today sleeping on the couch with a migraine / stomach flu / I’m honestly still not quite sure what it was, but I do know that she wasn’t feeling well at all. Fun times, indeed…
So unfortunately, this has sort of been our pattern for a while and we’re still trying to make heads or tails of it. I feel bad because I think I’m just overwhelmed by trying to put too many things on my plate at one time, all the while I’m also feeling bad because Sara sometimes blames herself for my lack of productivity, even though I tell her that I was “this motivated” long before she came around – if anything, at least I don’t feel like I’m totally wasting my day when I’m spending time with her. On the other hand, she’s also feeling down because I did do at least some of the massive cleaning efforts that we had wanted to do this weekend, whereas she wasn’t able to do anything because she didn’t feel well pretty much all day, and I can see both sides of it – sure, it would be nice if she’d have been able to help me because we’d have made more progress, but likewise, she’s sick – there’s really nothing that she can do about it. It’s not like it’s her fault – I just know that it’s getting really frustrating for her because she’s still got another week before she gets to see the specialist that she scheduled months ago. I really hope they’re able to figure things out.
But on to happier news, a little smile was brought to my face not too long ago while talking to my Mom about our upcoming trip up to Northern Michigan. You see, as I had mentioned earlier, my final verdict from our trip to New York remains that simply put, I hope Sara feels as at home with my family as I did with hers (side note: yeah, yeah – I know I still haven’t posted pictures or stories about the trip yet … long story short, I’m still fighting with gallery to get all of my photos online and looking pretty, but they’re coming – I promise!). Anyways, I’ve got a good hunch that she’s going to get along just fine with at least the important members of the gang, but to add a bit of extra reassurance, this may sound simple but I found it comforting when my Mom mentioned that she needs to put together a list of what Sara likes to eat so that she’ll have the right stuff in the house for our visit. I know it may not sound like much, but Sara’s Mom had made it a special point to do the same for me before we went up there and it’s those little things that make a person feel welcome at the end of the day. Personalities are always going to be either a hit or a miss right off the bat, but gestures like this just show that our families really want us to be happy with one another and going the extra mile to ensure that comfort really means a lot to me.
Then again, if that wasn’t enough, Mom also was quick to reply with, “Oh, we’re going to get along just fine!” when I mentioned that Sara is an ice cream fan and to make sure she had some in the house, so I’m just looking forward to a lot of fun. It’s always good to see family, but even more so I just can’t wait to introduce everyone to the girl who makes me happier than I’ve ever been. That, and the fire-breathers at the luau should be interesting, too… 🙂