First Date Anniversary #8 – Looking Back…

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There’s been a lot of reflection lately around here, as I can only imagine is fairly common for one to do when they pass over that threshold of bringing a new life into existence and all, and so in that same vein I thought it might be appropriate for this year’s First Date Anniversary post to take a little trip down memory lane and look back at some of those first pivotal moments from way back in the day when we were just starting to get to know one another… 😀

Date #1 – the infamous date that started it all on April 20th, 2006 – found us meeting for the first time in person at an Applebee’s not far from Sara’s apartment for dinner after work. The food was, well, it was Applebee’s, but we ended up hitting it off well enough that we ended up going back to her place afterwards and talking for another 3 hours … good start!

Date #2 took place a mere two days later when I used the excuse of “going over to Disney to buy a present for somebody” as an in to invite her to come along with me to Epcot for the day. It’s kind of crazy considering how many dozens of times we’ve been there together since over the last 8 years, but that was apparently her very first time. I guess she liked it… 😉

Date #3 is admittedly where things started to get a little fuzzy just because it didn’t take us long to hit a period where we were pretty much seeing each other every couple of days. I do recall one slightly rough patch where I came over to hang out in the evening and Sara had a bunch of stuff to do, so I ended up going on a scavenger hunt to find a copy of Osmosis Jones on DVD for her science class instead. It took me forever because nobody had it, and by the time I got back with the DVD (and ice cream!), I pretty much got sent home empty-handed because she was getting ready for bed (…because somebody had been keeping her up far later than she was used to going to bed…).

Thankfully she made up for it pretty much the next day, which is still impressive considering my tendency to hold onto things that I’m forever working on…

Fast-Forward maybe a month and we had already made a huge step in that I let her stay at my apartment while I was up in Michigan for a week. It actually hadn’t started out that way, but Sara had a lot of problems with the people she was sharing her apartment with … to the point where she had been pretty much staying with me more nights than not for the past couple of weeks. I got a call maybe the second night I was away that ended with me getting a hold of a friend who had my spare key to hand it off to her … and aside from a minor smoke alarm scare, thankfully I returned to find my home not only not looted, trashed, or otherwise burnt to the ground, but I also found myself in a relationship that was a bit stronger based on that trust and hope that was building between us.

And jump forward another month to see the next progressive step from that because if we were around May when our last trust exercise concluded, it was barely a month later when we were actually moving in together for real. It was a very spontaneous decision that stemmed from those previously mentioned terrible living companions back at her own apartment that found her very suddenly and very unexpectedly without an apartment to call her own, and although our first discussions had talked about maybe thinking about moving in together at the end of the summer, fate decided to accelerate our process and thus on the 4th of July (2006), Sara and I officially began cohabiting my apartment together.

As you would imagine, it was quite the whirlwind summer from there – at that point we’d still only been dating for a couple of months, but throughout the course we traveled back home to both New York and Michigan and got the opportunity to meet each other’s family. It’s kind of funny because one of the most notable moments from meeting hers was when I was in the bathroom and overheard Sara reporting back to her family, “I’ll have a ring within a year…” – I say funny because as flattering as it was to hear that she herself was that happy in our relationship that early, I specifically waited until a couple of weeks after the 1 year mark to propose just out of spite after hearing that comment!

Sometimes it’s the little things… 😛

And that was all just in the first year! It’s kind of crazy to think that we’ve known each other for a whopping eight now, and even considering all that we’ve been through thus far, I think we’ve still got plenty more to keep things interesting at least for a couple more years. 😉

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They’re here!!! I found them!!! The Simpsons Lego Minifigs have arrived!!!

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Here I’ve been reading on Reddit that people are starting to find them popping up at random Walgreens and other stores, which kind of irritates me that stores aren’t respecting the release dates because it results in collectors swooping in and buying an entire case at a time … though admittedly I’m mostly just bitter because the Walgreens IN MY AREA didn’t have any when I looked at two different stores! 😛

But then on a very random whim this afternoon at Target, after checking the actual Lego aisle and coming up empty-handed as usual, I walked around the corner and caught a glimpse of an end-cap display with clouds on it, and upon closer inspection I found an almost already completely empty display of the minifigs that aren’t supposed to be released for another two weeks!

I ended up buying 10 packs – partially showing restraint because I would’ve felt a little bad clearing the shelves entirely the day before Easter when they make pretty good treats to stow inside of Easter eggs, and also partially because they’re marked at $3.99/each which personally feels a bit pricey for a single minifig and I hope isn’t a trend that’s going to continue much more into the future…

Anyways, overall I’m pretty pleased with my initial take – only 2 duplicates out of the 10, so that’s cool. I’m not really sure what I’m going to do about displaying them just yet because Marge’s hair is considerably higher than anyone else, and Scratchy’s tail isn’t exactly doing him any favors, either. It might be time to revisit that whole display anyways because after filling almost five base plates at this point, there are a number of the bigger figs that I’ve had to separate from the rest of their series … which bugs me for reasons. 😕

That said, I like these ones so far – even though their heads don’t fit with the usual minifig design, I think being The Simpsons gains them a lot of ground in my book, so hopefully it won’t take me nearly as long to complete the full series, and I’m also getting pretty curious to see how the Lego episode of the show itself turns out coming up here on May 4th.

Bringing the Little Boy Home…

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I’m supposed to be asleep right now, but I can’t.

I’m probably going to regret it when 7:00am arrives and I have to get up…

…but I think it’s understandable because in less than 6 hours – assuming everything has gone well through the night – we get to bring Christopher home from the hospital!!!

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Apparently the sleep deprivation begins already… 😀

movie thoughts … Captain America: The Winter Soldier

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MV5BMzA2NDkwODAwM15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwODk5MTgzMTE@._V1_SY317_CR1,0,214,317_[1]Whoa boy – lot to talk about with this movie!

This afternoon, in preparation for the tomorrow to come, we decided to take in one last movie as free adults before (hopefully!) bringing Christopher home from the hospital tomorrow morning.

So no pressure, Cap’n, but this had better be GOOD because it might be the last non-rated-G movie we see for quite some time!!! 😛

*** SPOILERS!!! ***

Overall, I did enjoy the film, which is convenient because I’ve been looking forward to this one ever since I started seeing the trailers for it. Since our first introduction, I’ve rather taking a liking to Captain America and arguably would probably call him my favorite Avenger, which is impressive in Iron Man’s wake, save the fact that 2 wasn’t as good as 1 and that I downright didn’t like the third installment.

Though maybe that’s just the way it goes with these types of films because I definitely ended up liking Captain America 1 more than this one. I can’t really speak to Thor because I wasn’t super crazy about either of his movies…

But The Winter Soldier definitely had some very cool, very intriguing moments! The chase scene where they were hunting Nick Fury down, the elevator battle was awesome even though it was the second time we’d seen it after watching it before Thor 2, watching Captain America take fall after fall like a champ. Good god, can that man fall – if anything, this movie certainly confirms for us that the serum worked at hardening Cap’s skeletal structure after we saw him plunging into the concrete again and again! 🙂

If I’m allowed but one complaint, it’s that I wish it would’ve been somebody other than HYDRA at the root of it all because when the evidence all started to unfold, it just felt like we were being forced back into a history that had been fairly well wrapped up in the last film. I mean, 70 years of sleep, frozen in the ice … why drudge up the past so that Dr. Zola can play Max Headroom in the most cringe-worthy scene in the entire film???

The rest of the plot was fine … some rogue force infiltrates and slowly turns SHIELD into something very different, planning to unleash a force of automated, predictive guns in the name of preventing terrorism before it happens … although admittedly the more I think about it, there is a striking resemblance between that notion and another movie that our new, bird-like superhero, the Falcon, was featured in a few years ago called Eagle Eye that I actually kind of enjoyed.

Anyways, the action sequences were great, and I especially loved even the outlandish ones like watching Captain America systematically take down a SHIELD jet all by himself! The battle scenes with our three heroes and The Winter Soldier seemed well spread out … my only real qualm about the second title character being that I would’ve liked to see his storyline resolved a bit more instead of being left hanging…

Although I did learn that apparently we missed out on a second end credits scene that showed a hint of a change of heart of The Winter Soldier as a teaser for his own future, so don’t leave the theater until they turn the lights on – WHY HAVEN’T I LEARNED THIS MYSELF WITH MARVEL MOVIES BY NOW?!?!?!

A few other minor critiques:

  • I didn’t care for Peggy Carter’s return as a dying, old lady in this movie, as much as I really loved her in the first one. Again, that ship had sailed and they could’ve told more of her back story with file footage rather than putting the Captain at her bedside, knowing that they were both once kinda-sorta in love.
  • If Captain America’s apartment was under surveillance, why didn’t they shoot Nick Fury long before the Captain returned home?
  • Or even a step before that, why didn’t the rogue agents follow Fury into the sewers?! Twice people got away by burning a hole through the concrete in this movie and nobody once thought, “Hey, we just blew up 20 city blocks in pursuit of these guys … maybe we should follow them down into the sewers…”
  • Army security must not be what it used to if veterans are allowed to just have classified documents laying around their apartments.
  • Dr. Zola wasn’t nearly as catty and Riddler-like in the first movie, and maybe it added to my dislike for that scene, but it seemed very out of character for him to be actively provoking Captain America in a very 60’s Batman sort of way!
  • Are there any actual police officers that work in Washington D.C.?! Ok, sure – the six cars in the immediate vicinity are all rogue SHIELD agents, but that chase went on for a while … seriously, not a single cop in the city said, “Whoa – explosions?! Machine gun fire in the streets??? Maybe we should look into that!”

Nonetheless, the movie had some great dialogue – both humorous and serious.

“Well it’s not like they write the floor numbers on the outside of the building!”

“Then what’s not broken?! Air conditioning is fully operational.”

I loved the Captain’s speech to rally the remaining good SHIELD agents before the battle, too – kind of cool to see him rallying his own army, so to speak.

Stan Lee’s cameo was hilarious as always.

Looking back, I guess it was a pretty decent movie overall – it’s just that glaring HYDRA stamp that I kind of could’ve done without. It does open up some intriguing questions for the future – if The Winter Soldier is still at large, will he end up being the entire focus of Captain America 3? Will we eventually see Bucky take up the shield if Chris Evans’ Captain dies off like he apparently did in the comic books … a strange possibility, considering that Evans has been quoted as negotiating only a 6-picture deal whereas they have his recent friend-turned-enemy down for 9 movies.

Who knows – there’s lots of speculation there because the same has been said about Robert Downey, Jr., too, and frankly it’s hard to imagine anyone as Iron Man after all that he’s given to that role. But maybe after we see Avengers 2 next year and Marvel tips its hand regarding the next phase of superhero movies (presumably Cap 3, Thor 3, Avengers 3, but also hinting at Dr. Strange and some other new faces), we could see the original fab four stepping back to only appear in the ensemble Avengers movies every few years.

Anything to prevent them from just rehashing the origin story incessantly like is far too often the common trend with this superhero-type movies… 🙁

So quick summary – I liked it … didn’t hold a candle to The Avengers, but it was still probably the best Marvel sequel to date … though Captain America: The First Avenger will still be the one that keeps me glued to the TV at 2:30am when I should be going to bed.

Dream Journal : Bullied

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It was like I was in the middle of one of those made for TV movies…

I was coming back to school after being out for some reason, and it was kind of a big deal. I was really happy about it, and after parking in the school parking lot, I guess I was just sitting in my car listening to music before going inside.

For some reason, I was sitting in the backseat.

I remembered hearing a good song come on the radio that I enjoyed, and I was just sitting there chilling out, and all of a sudden I noticed that my own car was moving. A few new cars had pulled in around me, and when I looked forward, one of the guys in my class had gotten into the driver’s seat and was moving my car. Apparently he hadn’t liked how I had parked too close to his car, which was fine, but after he re-parked the car a couple of rows over, that’s when it started to get ugly…

He started joking with his friend as he took my keys and got out, and he made the motion like he was going to chuck them across the parking lot. Once I realized what was going on, I started pleading with him not to do it and they both laughed for a while, then he finally threw the keys at me in disgust.

That’s when I finally broke down and screamed, which led them to walk away shaking their heads.

I got out of my car after them and envisioned punching my bully in the face, yet somehow I knew myself that in reality it wouldn’t actually go down that way. The two were standing on the other side with my car between us when one of my teachers walked up and pulled me aside, and said, “I’m going to send you home for the day – it’s the only thing that I can do anymore to protect you…”

I looked up at him confused and asked why I had to go home, and he continued.

“They just saw that you were happy, and they latched on … like they do. Somebody saw the things in your car this morning when they heard that you were back, and they could see that you were doing better, so they came out to mess with you. It was entertainment for them when you went out, and now it’s just entertainment again that you’re back. They’re not your friends. I’m sorry.”

It took me a few moments to process what he was saying, and I’m not sure if I entirely did, but I got the gist that everything about me was just a show for my classmates, which threw me back into a rage again. Looking at the back of my car, the trunk had somehow opened and was filled with the things that I had been so excited to bring in for my classmates – apparently baking supplies, some of which I had bought specifically for the guy who was provoking me.

I started throwing things on the ground and randomly threw some of them at him, who at that point just stood there staring at me as he got pelted by these bags of flour and sugar that were being thrown at him by the crazy kid.

Scott’s Arcade – Opening…Eventually?

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Between watching old episodes of The Game Chasers and this recent episode of Penny Arcade: The Series where Mike shows off his home arcade, it’s kind of gotten the old nostalgia gears turning in my own head of some similar projects that I’d like to undertake myself…

…eventually, anyways!

I’ve always thought that it would be pretty sweet to have my own personal arcade. I didn’t necessarily spend a ton of time in them growing up, as most of my gaming was done in the comfort of my own on my NES and SNES and we only had just the one small arcade/pizza place anyways, but there were still a few classics that I remember fondly today – The Simpsons Arcade Game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Street Fighter 2 … not to mention all of the different varieties of pinball machines, even though I always feel so horribly helpless at it.

More recently, Sara and I occasionally find ourselves in need of something to do over at Disney that’s not under the sweltering sun, and we’ve had a lot of fun killing time on all of the classic arcade machines found around DisneyQuest. How sweet would it be to pick up maybe half a dozen or so machines of our all-time favorites … boy, that would be really hard to whittle it down to only six, though, now that I think about it, and that’s only looking at my list and not even my wife’s at this point! 😯

Maybe they would be mostly the same??? Boy, wouldn’t that be convenient!

Anyways, on top of that general awesomeness, why stop at just a few arcade machines when this fantasy game room of mine might as well also serve as a loving tribute to that 8-bit game console that started it all for yours truly. Apparently it’s a big thing right now for people to collect the full catalog of their favorite console’s games – most notably the NES, and even though there’s something like 700-800 games that were made for the system (not counting imports or whatever), I’d like to think that if I get to the point in my life where I’ve got enough room in my house for a mini-arcade, also scoring a metric ton of Nintendo games at a few bucks each (for most of them) shouldn’t be too much of a problem, either. 😉

Of course, that’s really the catch there because in our current house unless I were to gut the Lego shelves that I painstakingly constructed over the course of last summer, there’s just really no room to do this kind of project justice where we stand today. In a way, I kind of love seeing how Mike of Penny Arcade transformed his garage into his arcade, but let’s be realistic – he lives in Seattle, I live in Florida! I just about break a sweat walking out into the garage to dump the trash, so without some crazy overhaul to air condition my garage (and basically denounce all hope of ever parking my car in it again), it just isn’t in the cards here today.

But that’s not to say that it’s not going to be a serious selling point if/when we find ourselves looking to upgrade our humble abode as our bustling family continues to grow!  :mrgreen:

Leg Problems

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For the longest time growing up, I used to think that I had something wrong with my legs. I would get charley horses where it felt like someone was taking my muscle and wrapping it around the bone from the inside, to the point where I was convinced that they just had to be something far, far worse than charley horses because it just felt far too painful to be something that so many people had, and with such an innocent-sounding name.

Charliehorse[1]I mean, how in the world could something named after a beloved character on Lamb Chop hurt so much?!

I think it was compounded by the fact that they almost always happened at night when I was laying in bed, and it became particularly awkward when I grew older and actually had someone laying next to me because I would wake up in so much pain and have no idea how to get it to go away aside from swearing under my breath and praying for it to stop as I tried not to kick the person beside me!

I guess I always just looked at whatever it was that other people called charley horses to pins and needles or something far less threatening. This all came to mind because I had one when I was getting up this morning, and I still concur that if they’re going to hurt that bad, we need to come up with a much less innocent-sounding name…

Groundhog Day x11

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MV5BMTU0MzQyNTExMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMjA0Njk1MDE@._V1_SX214_[1]I feel like I’m currently living this movie because for almost the last two weeks, my schedule has been exactly the same like clockwork:

  • Get up sometime late in the morning
  • Try to do a little work – writing or day job
  • Do something on my list – work on the nursery, laundry, cleaning, etc…
  • Sara comes home from the hospital mid-afternoon and updates me on how Christopher’s doing
  • She takes a nap after breast pumping and I do some more work
  • Later in the evening, we pack up and head back to the hospital for Christopher’s nighttime feeding and checks
  • Grab late night dinner from a dwindling selection of places that offer takeout after 10pm
  • Stay up watching TV for a while because I have no energy to be creative at that point
  • Rinse and repeat

I can say that I’m at least getting fairly good at knowing whether it’s a weekend or a weekday, though specifically which one is often still a stumper as I find myself driving that path to the hospital that I could pretty much take in my sleep at this point!

And on one hand, don’t get me wrong – we’re certainly grateful for the cautious attention that they’re continuing to give the little guy because the last thing that we want to do is have to bring him back a few days after taking him home because they took him off the monitors too earlier … he is still only 36 weeks at this point and 37 was technically our most recent of goals.

But at the same time, boy will it sure be nice to only have to commute down the hall as opposed to across town to see this little guy…

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Privatization Isn’t Always “Better”

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Unlike a lot of people, I don’t fear my government.

Sure, they make some really bone-headed mistakes from time to time, but who doesn’t?! Republicans often like to use these examples to cite why many government functions, from prisons to the post office to other random administrative functions, should be relegated to private businesses, which always seems comical to me because I think I can probably count on one hand the number of businesses I know that put consumers ahead of making a fat profit for their investors.

Here’s a fun example – I sat down today to order Christopher’s birth certificate.

The State of Florida gives us a few options … you can mail in a form, you can show up in person, or you can order a copy online. Naturally I figured the quickest and easiest would be to order online, but here’s the catch – you’re not ordering online from the state, you’re ordering from their approved vendor, VitalChek.

The difference?

  • Order a copy through the mail or in person? $9 for a basic, computer-generated birth certificate
  • Order a copy via VitalChek? $26 for the same thing!

So why, pray tell, is it that a government agency can do the work for a third of the price that its one and only approved vendor charges for the same service???