Friday Fun

Well, I've almost made it through my third day back at work. It hasn't been as bad as I expected getting back into the swing of things here - though Wednesday itself was pretty tough.

Luckily, to keep me going through the brain-drain, the Intarwub (primarily YouTube) has provided entertainment:

• Heat Vision and Jack -- this is a pilot for a TV show with Jack Black, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson that was DOA. This is one of the most entertaining things I've seen in quite some time - it's so ridiculous.
  
• For the comic book folks - Civil War reenactments? Try SECRET WARS reenactments!
• C For Cookie - Sesame Street meets facism, anarchy is gluttony?
• Though it's still more than a month away, you may want to start getting ready to celebrate the National Day of Slayer - June 6th, 2006.
  

Two Weeks Later, Sci-Fi Day Pass

Been two weeks since Evie was born, and they've went by in a flash. As we've done for the past 9 months, I'll still keep most of the purely Evie-talk over at her page, but that doesn't mean that this will be purely devoid of baby-mention. Still, for baby-talk and pics, be sure to stay on top of things there.

Because Amy is the awesomest wife/new mom ever, I did get to hit the 23rd Annual Ohio Science Fiction Movie Marathon this past weekend. Since Evie was originally due on the 20th, it was really unlikely that I'd be going, but since she came early and friends & family were available to help out, Dad & I did get to go, which was awesome. We've been going every year since I was in middle school (I'm pretty sure 1990 was the first year we went), and it's a heck of a lot of fun. These days Gary and Hutch come too, as well as other folks depending on availability. The highlights of this year's marathon for me were definitely Godzilla: Final Wars (which I hadn't seen) and Serenity and Forbidden Planet (which I had seen before - the latter quite a few times). They also showed about 6 Batman serials from the early 1940s (during WWII) which were hysterical - so different from anything they'd show today - Batman got knocked out at LEAST once per episode, sometimes more often, and was constantly getting bailed out by Robin and even Alfred!

Getting ready to go back to work later this week, which means polishing off yard work and such so that Amy will be able to just relax and hang out with Evie during the days. Found out that we've got a robin's nest on our fence. We didn't really want one because the dogs might bother it / get into it, but after tearing down two completed nests, it came back a third time and now there are eggs in it, so I'll just try and leave it be and keep them safe:


There's three little eggs under the proud parent there. I don't think the dogs know about the nest, so lets hope that things stay that way. You'd think that even in a neighborhood without any mature trees like ours, there's still GOT to be a safer/better place to nest, but hey, I guess for a bird this persistent, we can allow a little backyard squatter.

April 11, 2006

All details, and links to more pics over at Baby T's page!

Make It Stop

Another weekend, another Monday. Not a whole lot of note done over the weekend. Saturday Amy & I just hung out and relaxed, Sunday Amy went out with the girls while Gary & I hung out, gamed, & relaxed. So relaxation is good.

Going back even further for a sec to pimp Shadowbox - Go see Crazy From The Heat at Easton. It's a damn good time, including new sketches for quite a few of their better regular characters - Jason's Scary Stories, American Top 40, Dr. Mystery, the game show gang, etc. Lots of fun. Additionally, of course, BillWho? rocks the house with some great tunes.

Today was a pretty busy day at work, but I did get a bit o' free time here & there to do some interesting reading. This is what really got me worked up - Telegraph headline: "Bush is planning nuclear strikes on Iran's secret sites". ARE YOU SERIOUS? I mean holy crap, as if the whole propaganda parade wasn't already bad enough, now they're alleging that folks in the administration are refusing to take the nuclear option off the table. The story has spread to a lot of other sources as well, and SERIOUSLY. SERIOUSLY - the fact that military action is on the table AT ALL here is a testament to how deluded folks in Washington must be about how things are going over there. Given the news from Iraq, the fact that we're still in Afganistan, how could we POSSIBLY afford (money-wise, troop-wise) to open up yet ANOTHER front? This does make last week's story about the US plan to build new nukes for the first time since 1989 (possibly up to 125 new nukes a YEAR!) a LOT scarier...

A senior Pentagon consultant said that Mr Bush believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy".

...YEAH. And that's your warm fuzzy thought of the day right there.

Illness, April 1st Fun, Further Evidence

So I'm pretty well recovering from the plague that struck me down last week. Unfortunately, I've passed it along to Amy, who isn't open to get the same NyQuil/DayQuil benefits that got me through last week. I feel really bad and hope that it makes it's way through pretty quickly.

We did have a pretty good weekend. Saturday I spent a good portion of the morning checking out all the various Internet April Fools shenanigans that were out there. I think the overall quality was a hair down this year (perhaps because it was a Saturday?), but there was still enough good stuff out there to make for an enjoyable hour or two. The nice thing about April Fools Day on the Internet these days is that most folks are wise to the games now and basically nothing is taken seriously that goes up, is announced, or changes on 4/1. Which means the malice is gone and it's just fun. Although a lot of the original pranks are gone now, this is a pretty comprehensive list of what WAS there. Some of the standouts for me were Google Romance, My Little Pony the RPG, Burgercraft, and Wikipedia's homepage, which was redone with all fictional stuff. Of those, all are still up except for the Wikipedia changes.

As promised, I gave the Evidence another shot. This episode was definitely MUCH better than the pilot, especially as far as the acting and dialogue goes - Estes and Jones felt a lot more natural and not as forced... so it wasn't BAD like the pilot was, but it also really wasn't all that stellar - falling into a "meh" category that might get it watched every now and then, but definitely isn't going to earn it a place in the already way-too-crowded regular viewing schedule. The gimmick of seeing the evidence first and last isn't holding up well either... it's somewhat intruiging, but not really all that earth-shattering. Ah well, still LOTS of other TV to watch, not like I needed one more show.