Thanksgiving with the in-laws

Most of you who know me have heard me state that I don't like the 5/8's in-laws much more than I like my own in-laws. Family can be such a pain in the backside. Usually for Thanksgiving we head to my brother's house where his anal-retentive wife keeps a perfectly clean Mrs. Cleaver style house. Never a spec of dirt anywhere. There is a place for everything and everything is in it's place. The worst I have ever seen her house is after dinner at Thanksgiving where the table is strewn with black Friday ads from the day's newspaper and the grown ups look through the ads and pass them around, and look through them again. The women mapping their black Friday attack vectors to hit the best stores with the best deals at the most opportune times. Planning and scheming with one another, "you pick that up for me at this store, and I'll pick this up for you at that store."

This year we made the grueling 30 mile trek to Lawrence to spend Thanksgiving with the in-laws (mine, not hers). Her parents bought one of those half in the ground houses on a five acre lot a couple of years ago, and we seem to be spending much more time there now than I had ever wanted to. Before they lived in a decent sized house, but her ol' man is somewhat of a packrat. Well, somewhat is really an understatement. He is a packrat extrordinaire. Some people drink, other's smoke dope, some look at pictures of naked ladies (or men) on the Internet (or in magazines). But the FiL's true calling is packratism. This guy can save the most mundane things which he can find a reason for them to be nigh invaluable. When they had moved from their old house to their new one, we would go over on the weekends to help clean up out the old house. There were several large plastic trash cans full of empty oil bottles - just to give you an idea what this guy is like.

So we made the trip to Lawrence. The kids (of course) are fighting and bickering the whole way there. I'm never excited about going to Lawrence. The FiL is one of those guys who drinks some sort of whey protein drink for breakfast. It's green and stinks like I don't know what. He is always going on about some health thing. When the 5/8 was a kid, it was milk. They couldn't drink milk because it had some cancer causing enzyme or some such goofiness. Now it is turkey. It is ok to eat turkey once in a while, but folks shouldn't have turkey sandwiches because if they eat turkey all the time it will kill them.

One of the things that I missed by going to Lawrence - and I didn't know I would miss it, I'd never even thought about it before - was sitting at an actual table as a family and sharing the Thanksgiving meal. At the in-laws everyone sits in the living room eating off TV trays. I suppose it works for them, and that is fine if it does, who am I to judge really. But it just doesn't feel like Thanksgiving when everyone is eating from paper plates and off TV trays scattered about the house.

With my family, there is this sense of camaraderie that just doesn't seem to exist in the 5/8's family. There isn't a lot of joking around going on. Most of the conversation centers around what we should be eating to live to be 100 (as if I would want to live that long), as well as what sham good investments to make, and of course, no trip to Lawrence would be complete without a long, and sleep inducing trip through the FiL's biblical insights. He swears he is going to write a book about his thoughts on the Bible and Christianity. And that is admiral I suppose, and of course since he is family I would buy one, and perhaps even start to read it. But I'm I'll know how it ends and pretty much what it says after listening to the man for the past 20 years.

Movie Thoughts: Where the Red Fern Grows

We watched Where the Red Fern Grows. I put it on our list at Blockbuster.com because it sounded like a good family movie. The kind that are made from old books written for teens and almost-teens, and I was right. The story centers around a young boy in the Oklahoma Ozarks who desperately wants a coon-hunting dog. He works doing odd jobs and somehow, during the depression, manages to scrape together the $50 to get a pair of hounds. He spends years training them and of course they become the best coon-hunting dogs in the area.

One of the things that surprised me was that Dabny Coleman actually played a likeable character. I can't remember the last time I saw Coleman in a role where you actually liked his character. The story was entirely predictable for those of us who have seen 100s of these types of movies in our collective lifetimes. The thing was, it wasn't predictable for the kids, and that is the important part. Even No. 2 Son who barely sat through Transformers, was nigh glued to the story and interested in what was going to happen next.

Just Read: Cell by Stephen King

  I'm a pretty big Stephen King fan. I can't say I'm a huge fan. I haven't read all his books. I haven't read any of the Bachman books, so maybe I'm just a fan, and not even a big fan really. My favorites from him are The Stand and The Dark Tower series. I'll have to admit the final Dark Tower book kind of fizzled though. It didn't seem like his heart was in it. Almost as if he wrote it just to get it out of the way, to be finished with Roland and Jake and Detta and the rest.

The Stand, for the uninitiated, is an end of the world story. An extremely dangerous, genetically engineered super flu virus (nicknamed "Captain Tripps") is accidentally released from a government facility and eliminates 2/3 of the world's population. Coming into the midst of this is Randall Flagg. Flagg is, I believe, one of the greatest, and most evil villains since Darth Vader.

Cell is another try by King at an end of the world story - with zombie types thrown in for good measure. But it falls far, far short of The Stand. The story centers around Clay Riddell who is a graphic artist and things are just looking up for him. He sold his graphic novel "Dark Wanderer" and was about to be rolling in the dough. Well, maybe not rolling, but at least he could provide a better life for his wife and child. That same day, everyone who had a cell phone went completely bonkers. Some sort of pulse was transmitted essentially wiping out their minds, leaving only the most basic emotions. Riddell is in Boston, and his wife and kid are up in Maine (natch!). The story follows Riddell and a few others picked up along the way, on his quest to find his wife and son, while trying to avoid becoming food for the zombie "phoners".

King's usual character development is non-existent. While the book does suck you in, it just doesn't, I don't know, doesn't 'get you there.' I don't know how else to explain it. It is almost like King didn't even really write this book. It reads like a book that is written in the style of King, as an homage to him, but not by him.

It is a good story though. Maybe he was channeling Bachman, and this is the way he wrote the Bachman books (as I said, I've never read any of them - just not that much of a sci-fi fanatic where books are concerned). Or a graphic novel. It would have made a great graphic novel. Maybe King should have dropped a line to Frank Miller, or Klaus Jansen or John Byrne and had them illustrate it. I probably would have enjoyed it more if he'd done that.

The slo-mo effect

It was one of those bright blue Sunday afternoons that Kansans know only come with a bite of chill in the air. The usually warm-day haze of humidity and gunk in the air, that can be seen as a rather brown haze on the horizon was gone. Replaced with a bright, glowing yellow sun, and a blue sky that could be used to perfectly describe the color sky-blue. There was a bit of chill in the air, but not quite enough to see your breath, or even for a jacket.

The keys tumbled in the air. The bright sun shooting little twinkles on the metal as they turned end-over-end. Things seemed to be moving in slow motion (slo-mo as they say in the 'biz'). I have experienced the slo-mo effects only a couple of times in my life, and I can pretty much remember them.

The first time I was cognizant of it was in grade school, during a pick-up neighborhood baseball game. The batter hit the ball and I was playing shortstop I think. The ball sailed up and up and was coming right for me. I jumped with all my strength. It felt like I was ten feet in the air, making a dramatic catch that even Cookie Rojas would envy. Time slowed to a crawl, my mind was working at regular speed, but my actions, and everyone's actions were in slo-mo. The ball hit my glove and everything sped up to normal speed again. I caught the ball, the batter (Kenny, maybe?) was out. I'm certain the play was not nearly as dramatic as I had imagined it being. Just as sure of that, as I am that I probably only jumped about 6 inches off the ground (maybe 10, but I was a really fat kid, and I'm not sure I could have jumped 10 inches).

As the slo-mo effect came into being, the keys were tumbling and turning through the air, No. 1 Son was half visible behind the van. He was walking around behind to get to the driver's side as I was heading to the passenger door. His head was cocked slightly to the side in that way that he does, a sly smile on his face was made crooked by the one eye that was squinting in the bright sun. Calmly, and with purpose and confidence, he raised his hand and allowed the keys to hit his palm as he closed his fingers around them. The slo-mo effect subsided just as he gave me a knowing wink, his face full of pride and expectation.

I remember what it was like. To be a teenager, to still be new enough at driving that getting to do so is a treat. A treat that you feel should be cherished because who knows when it will come again. It is all at the discretion of the parents as to whether a teen with a learner's permit will get to drive. I think I know exactly how he felt at that moment.

"There is no shame in being second best"

For quite some time now No. 2 Son has been talking about his great desire to be a Navy Seal. I don't know what it is that created this desire in him, but I'm not going to do anything to dispel that either.

As the regular readers know, No. 1 Son is in the Marine Jr. ROTC program at his high school. The instructor for that program is CWO Gunner. Awhile back No. 2 Son and Gunner were discussing things, and the discussion turned to the military where No. 2 Son did not hesitate to relate his desire to be a Navy Seal. Gunner asks why he would want to be a Seal, and No. 2 Son responded that while he knows the Marines are tough, the Seals go in, get the job done, and get out without anyone knowing they were there. This didn't seem to phase Gunner in the least (very little does) as Gunner responded "Well, that's ok. There is no shame in being second best if that is what you want."

This conversation was brought to memory yesterday as we were watching "The Unit". I have said before, and I still believe, that this television program is the single best hour long commercial for the US Army ever developed. The plot was the team was extracting a kidnapped journalist from Lebanon. Things didn't go according to plan and their extraction helicopter was shot down, and one of the team was badly wounded in a gunfight so they could not get to the secondary extraction point. They tended the wounded soldier and put a marker on the top of a building hoping the satellites could see it and send help.

At the end of the show, help arrived in the form of the US Marines. This sent No. 1 Son into hysterics as he found great joy that the US Marines had to be sent in to rescue the US Army Special Ops team. I'm certain that at school today, he is telling all of his MJROTC comrades about it.

I been tagged!

Military Mom has tagged me with the "Show your desktop" meme. So here is mine:

The picture is one I took during the last full lunar eclipse we had back in August or July or sometime around then.

Here are the meme rules/instructions:

My Desktop Free View Instructions:
A. Upon receiving this tag, immediately perform a screen capture of your desktop. It is best that no icons be deleted before the screen capture so as to add to the element of fun. You can do a screen capture by:
[1] Going to your desktop and pressing the Print Scrn key (located on the right side of the F12 key).
[2] Open a graphics program (like Picture Manager, Paint, or Photoshop) and do a Paste CTRL + V).
[3] If you wish, you can “edit” the image, before saving it.
B. Post the picture in your blog. You can also give a short explanation on the look of your desktop just below it if you want. You can explain why you preferred such look or why is it full of icons. Things like that.
C. Tag five of your friends and ask them to give you a Free View of their desktop as well

Now I'm supposed to tag five other folks. I don't know that many, so I'll tag the following:

Count
SoHos
Skipper
Christy
Captain D's Mom

Holy Frijoles!

I like to browse the blogs over at ZDNet, and I ran across this entry by Robin Harris.

He reports that Professor Guarav Khanna at the University of Massachusetts has clustered 8 Sony Playstation 3s (donated by Sony) to create one supercomputer. Researching his black holes and quantum cosmology cost him $5,000 in grant money on a conventional supercomputer, but for way less than that, one can run whatever complex computations they desire with the supercomputer created out of PS3s.

Picture stolen from ZDNet, please don't sue me!

Awesome!

Sometimes you can't catch a break

Sometimes it is just too difficult to get anything of worth accomplished. Like a blog post even. I sit down, fire up LiveWriter, and begin typing. Then comes commotion from the kitchen. So I have to get up, walk across the house, and knock some kids upside the head. While in the kitchen I notice dishes in the sink so I figure I might as well put those in the dishwasher while I'm there. Because, you know, nobody else in the whole danged house can put a dish in the dishwasher.

Then I sit back down and write maybe two or three more words, and the 5/8 brings a basket of clothes from the dryer. I stop again and get up and walk across the house to help fold the clothes. By the time that is finished, the kids are at it again, and I have to take the time to go out back and knock them upside the head again. When I get back inside, I notice yet more dirty glasses in the sink. After loading those in the dishwasher, I sit back town, and type another couple of words.

About 1 1/2 paragraphs into a post is normally when one of the 'rents calls with some task they just can't seem to get accomplished by themselves. Difficult things to be sure, things like changing a light bulb, or moving some 2x4s from one shed to another. So I stop again, and drive on over to the 'rents house and get done whatever dangerous and difficult task they just had to have done 'right darned now.' When I get back I once again notice more dishes in the sink. After cleaning out the sink for what seems like the 23rd time in the last three hours, I can sit back down at the computer and crank out a couple more lines of a post.

Of course, about two more lines grace the electric glow of the monitor before the 5/8 comes back up from the basement with more dry clothes which require folding, and the kids are requiring more head-knocking, and there are still dirty dishes in the sink. All of this going on, and when I ask No. 1 Son to do something I get the response "Sheesh, can't I just get one day for some 'me' time?" All I can do is laugh, because the other thing that goes through my head at those words is a felony.

Movie Thoughts: Transformers

I have to admit, Transformers sounded like it could be a cool movie, but I wasn't so sure it would be. Like Godzilla, and some other gigantic movies before it, the probability was there to just make a complete dud. Way heavy on the special effects, and pretty much nothing else.

While I have never been a huge Transformers fan, in fact, you could say - with a great degree of accuracy - that I didn't really care about the show in the least.

The movie was pretty much what I expected. Heavy on the special effects, light on just about every other aspect of movie making. The plot was typical, two giant races of robots decide earth is a good place to make war on one another. There is, of course, a 'good' race and a 'bad' race. The bad race (decepticons - natch!) want to destroy all humans and re-shape earth to be their new home world, which was destroyed during the first good-guy/bad-guy war. The good guys (autobots - what kind of name is that anyway?) want to save the humans, and co-exist (but in secret - disguised as...autos!) in secret.

At any rate, the movie was good on action scenes, and the special effects were awesome! If you are looking for substance, run, run as fast as you can. But if you are a big fan of awesome CGI and like lots of explosions and the like, it definitely beats Godzilla hands down.