Countdown

Weekend:
Picked up Tracy from the airport.
Saw Wall-E (cute and engaging ... loved the fat people ... can SO relate!)
Taught my grammar and punctuation class Saturday (I love the class but can't get many people to come ... shocking, I know!)
Watched the newest "Rambo" flick on NetFlix (bloody violence, good ... dialogue and plot, bad)
Saw "Son of Rambow" an English flick about a kid who makes his own Sly movie (cute but not great) with Christi and Andy.
Took the kiddos to the pool.
Watched a couple episodes of Season 2 of "Dexter" (love this show almost as much as the books!)
Finished reading "Heartsick" by Chelsea Cain on the recommendation of my buddy, Dan. What a great book. I know I'm sexist but I normally don't like female thriller writers, but this one is awesome. Great story.
Started the new Odd Thomas book by Dean Koontz. I love Dean. Not a huge fan of this series, but it starts off pretty good.

So, now the countdown begins. Short week this week because of the Fourth and then we prep to head out for our family reunion in Seattle. I can't wait! I'm so excited to see my neice and nephews (and my sis, her hubby and my mom and dad). Golf. Beach. Not working. I can't wait!

Live Like Harv!

My new hero ...

The Mist

On a recommendation of a friend, I rented it.
I'm sure this was WAY better as a book. King movies often feel that way (except Misery which was equal to it).
Anyway, it's a bizarre story. Has some interesting elements about religion and faith driven by fear ... which certainly was a major theme.
The ending, however, was so sad and shocking, that I just had a hard time with it. As a parent, it was brutal to watch. I think it would have been better with a better actor. The main dude just doesn't look nearly as shocked as a real person would be.
Anyway, I guess it's worth a rental, but plan on having bad dreams.

I miss college

This is from one of my new fav sites:

http://www.photobasement.com/

Brilliant

My friend Eric posted this on his blog and I thought it was just brilliant.
This is a site for cubicle workers to fake work while reading great works.
http://www.readatwork.com/
Not sure if a Mac version is planned.

Wedding weekend

So, we went to a fun wedding on Saturday. Greta Willoughby used to work for me at Aims and she's just a hoot. She got married at a rodeo arena and then had the reception at a bar (that is being closed and will soon be a church!?!?).
Pics below, me and the bride at the reception and then Tracy sitting on a hay bale for the ceremony (the boys are standing behind her under umbrellas because it was freakin' hot!

Other than that, we had a low-key poker game on Friday (everybody but Dono and I finished early. He and I stayed up late drinking, playing cards and arguing politics ... fun).

On Sunday, the whole family (including Ruth and Greta) went to see "Get Smart" (funny flick but not as slapsticky as the TV show). After dinner together, we did a short tour of the tornado zone in Windsor and Greeley. This was my first time out there (the tornado hit a month ago). It's amazing to see some people already rebuilding. But the devastation is incredible.

A moment of $%&#ing silence

George Carlin is dead. Truly sad day.
Say at least one of the seven words today in his honor.

Daddy day

Had a great Father's Day weekend. A little swimming. Saw "The Happening" with Dono (I actually liked it and he hated it but he hates everything right now and somehow he ends up comparing every movie to a flaming bag of dog poo ... ).

On Sunday, Big Andy (as opposed to Little Andy, my son) and some other friends played the Eaton Country Club in our continuing quest to play the local courses we haven't played before. It's a nice course ... not great, but nice. So far this summer we've added Marianna Butte, the Olde Course in Loveland, Highland Meadows in Windsor, Thorn Creek in Thornton and I got to play the Greeley Country Club in a tourney last week. Marianna and the Greeley CC are my favs so far, but I'm such a hacker that I still enjoy Mad Russian more than any of them. Currently my game sucks. My drives are pretty good (hit one 298 at the GCC!) but I can't pitch or chip or putt to save my life.

After golf, I got to go home, open some nice gifts from the fam, call my dad to wish him a good one and watch the Tiger/Rocco show that continued into the work day yesterday which was awesome.

Tracy wanted to take a pic of me and the boys to show to a friend of hers, so I thought I'd share it here.

Exhausted

This is Alex after staying up all night for the Relay For Life on Friday/Saturday.

He was excited to stay up, but he couldn't even keep his eyes open once the sun came up. All night long, he was putting entries into a raffle for a portable bike that one group was selling. He waited for them to do the drawing, but fell asleep on the sidewalk. He didn't win, but the lady who did win wanted Alex to have it.

We tried to wake him up to show him, but he was dead to the world. I picked him up from the sidewalk and he stood up, but he was still pretty out of it and didn't even register the bike. He started to stumble and I caught him and placed him in this chair. About 30 minutes later, he woke up, saw the bike and said, "Whose is that?"

All in all, it was a great Relay. Alex's team won Bronze status (I've never had a ranked team ... must help to be cute!).

This is an amazing community and even after the horrible tornado and the more than $250,000 raised in relief for the victims there, this event still raised $417,000 for cancer research and programs.

The rest of the weekend was a blur ... sleeping (lots), saw "Don't Mess with the Zohan" (terrible!), watched the first disc of Season 3 of Weeds (hilarious!), almost finished Season One of Veronica Mars (pretty darn good but not as "top 5" brilliant as Kevin Smith says), took the boys to "KungFu Panda" (OK, but the voices were under-used), bought some more plants for my garden (my volunteer pumpkins didn't volunteer this year ... got some more, some watermelon, tomato and cucumber), killed three wasp nests in the backyard (I hate those buggers) and watched a HUGE fire just down our street as one of my neighbors was later arrested for setting his own house on fire.

Yesterday I played in an Arizona Scramble golf tournament at the Greeley Country Club. It was the first time I've played that course and it was awesome. I didn't play particularly great but we used my drive about six or so times. The best was on the last hole which also happened to be the long-drive competition hole. I cranked one right down the middle and it measured 298 yards! (ended up being halfway between the women's long drive and about 30 yards shy of the men's). That was probably my best drive ever and I was pretty darn giddy. Then watched Alex's baseball game and then played softball. No wonder I'm tired.

Nice

10-hour days suck, but having three-day weekends is nice over the summer.

Sure, I spend most of my Fridays doing work around the house but then that leaves Saturday and Sunday for a little more fun.

This weekend, the boys and I did a massive cleaning job on their activity room on Friday and Tracy went to the Sex and the City movie with her chick friends (woo-hoo! I don't have to go!).

Saturday, I had to do a work thing in the morning and then Tracy and I went out to see The Visitor (not bad, Tracy liked it more than me but it still wasn't as good as the director's The Station Agent) that night.

Sunday was chill day. A little cleaning. A little laundry. I got to read a bit on the back porch ... until I started noticing all the weeds and so I started pulling. And then Tracy came out to help.

And then we realized we hadn't heard from the children in a while... They are at that age when you think you can leave them unsupervised for long periods ... And then you go to the front yard and see this ...

Yes, Alex and his goofy sidekick, Andy, had built a mud dam to block the gutter and then gotten in a mud fight (Alex took the worst of it). The worst was their mud dam was not in front of our house but rather a house three or four houses down and we had to carry buckets of water down there to wash it out.

Yes, I was pissed about it, but boys will be boys and it's good to see my kids getting in trouble outside for stuff like this than inside vegging all summer.