Dark Knight Review (holy crap!)

Saw the Dark Knight movie Sunday afternoon, at 2:00. The movie theater was packed even then, and I understand why. This movie shot up to one of my favorite movies ever, and not because it was a Batman movie (but that didn't hurt). Had this been a movie about Bob the vigilante cop and his psychotic enemy, Roger, this movie would have still kicked ass.

Christian Bale is now one of my favorite box office draws. I now want to see movies just because he's in it.

Ledger's performance was amazing. I really couldn't even tell it was Ledger. The look, the voice, everything was so completely the Joker that it may as well have been the Joker himself, jumped out of the pages of the comics, auditioning for this role and winning out.

It sucks that the Joker was kept alive at the end, because if they ever tried to bring him back in any subsequent Batman movies now, I don't think anyone could do him justice the way Ledger did.

Harvey Dent's character went through the transition from DA to Two Face nicely, but (spoiler alert) the end where he's contemplating killing the kid I thought seemed a little to quick to madness. Revenge against those who had destroyed his life I understand, but to include the kid I thought was a bit overmuch.

Holy Crap I want to see this movie again.

Nostalgia

Found this link:

http://www.prepsportswear.com/ProductList.aspx?schoolid=173567&category=9

and seeing my old HS's ancient Trojan logo brings bad some feelings of nostalgia. However, My school hasn't existed for a couple of years now. It consolidated with two others a few years back, and a new mascot has been adopted, et al.

oh well.

mmmelted

Frosted Flakes makes for a decent Dinner

Although, an hour or so later you might be really hungry again.

The dog I'm dog-sitting while everyone is out of town woke me up at 5:00 a.m. today, whining and crying to go out.

I let him out, walk him across the street to the park area to pee. He does nothing. I walked him around for 5 minutes, and he did nothing.

Back inside I try to go back to sleep. Dog keeps whining...I can hear him through my bedroom door.

I let him out again. Same thing.

I feed him some, hoping that will help him go. He eats and a little later he's begging to go out again. I let him out. Nothing.

2 hours later he's whining really loudly. I half expected him to piss/crap on the floor. I was in a foul mood (unable to go back to sleep) and could have used a better reason to yell at the dumb beast.

I let him out he finally goes. I feel like crap though because I didn't sleep well as it is, and getting up at 5 after going to bed a midnight really wasn't my plan.

Last Night's Dinner

So last night I had to fend for myself. Instead of going out, I did the sensible thing and went grocery shopping. I didn't go the the expensive grocery store, because I know my wife wouldn't want me to. Instead I went to H-E-B. I bought non-store brand foods. Campbells, Freschetta, Dreyers Fruit Bars.

These are the best by the way. I promise you you'll be addicted after just one.



Dole has pretty good ones too.

Dinner last night ended up being Corn Beef and Hash. Not very healthy. Don't think tonight will be any better. Velveeta Shells and Cheese!

*Crickets*

The house is empty once more, save for two dogs, and a broke down 30 year old.

The wife and kids have begun their 3 week summer travels, with stops in Denver and Gunnison, Colorado, before they head to Chicago, Newton/Olney, Thomson, Illinois.

They left yesterday, and the evening was already a lonely one.

My evening walk with the dogs was quick, as we hurried around the block, hoping to get in before the storm hit, pursued by our cat Pumpkin. She walks with us at night.

Eh, I don't update nearly enough, but I really want to

I'm tired of the bad news showing up too. So I'll just quickly start off with this: My dad's brother did lose his battle with cancer as we expected, and we lost him in July. Granddad, my dad's dad, is needing surgery on his gall bladder, and no one is optimistic he'll survive the recovery. This has been an off year for us.

I am contemplating a job change. Doing work very similar to what I'm doing now, just minus the burden of long-term travel and it's in-house. The pay and location are way better. Plus I already know the team, and one of them is one of my best friends. David took me under his wing and mentored me when I showed up as an 18 year-old private at Fort Hood. He had only been in a year before me, but had his college degree. Sometimes he's more of a big brother to me than my own is, though I wouldn't trade my bro for anything; but David has been looking out for me and my career for a number of years. I've never asked him for help, but he's always been willing to help out anyway, and he's been great.

One of my greater fears might be emerging....and it's more or less a petty fear.
My kids aren't doing well with school. I wasn't the greatest student, I don't think, when I was younger. However, my brother taught me to read before I entered kindergarden, as well as to count to 99. So, dealing with a child in the first grade who has trouble reading has been frustrating to say the least. Having trouble with math I can understand....math sucks. But by first grade, I would have thought she'd be a little further along.

Her younger sister is having trouble with everything. She's about to enter kindergarden next year, and can't figure out the difference between numbers and letters. She just learned how to spell her name, but only because we went over it and over it in a sing-song way. She has Hannah Montana's music catalog down, but can't get her name right.

Sometimes I wonder if their issue is for lack of effort. They seemed so bright earlier, but I fear I'm doomed to have kids who will struggle in school. Unless they're taking after me. I was an average student until the 7th grade...then something clicked and I never had any problems with school until college.

My oldest finished a soccer tournament today. She scored another goal, and seems to have the talent to be a good soccer player the older she gets, but she doesn't seem to give her best all the time.

Alright....I feel bad for raggin' on my kids now, so I'll just post some pictures of them.

Bad news really blows

Man. This has really been a bad year. I got an email from my mom about two weeks ago, with a family update. My Uncle Clyde had died. Uncle Clyde was my grandmother's last remaining sibling, she lost her other brother, Uncle Lou, a long while ago. Uncle Clyde was great. Whenever I would visit my grandparents in Newton, he would drive an hour down from Marshall, just to see us. Or he would make it a point to call, just to talk for a bit. Great man who loved his family, all of it. It's a sad shame that no one made it to his funeral to pay their last respects. I'm 1100 miles away, and swamped at work, not a good excuse, but his own grandson thought it was more important to go to a gun show than to attend. There weren't enough relatives in attendance for pall bearers, so my cousin told me.

The same email told me that my Uncle Jim, grandma's oldest son, my dad's oldest brother, has now become paralyzed from the waist down due to his cancer. He won't last the year.

Also in the email, Grandad is getting worse (this same grandma's husband). He was in the hospital a while ago because he couldn't breathe. Spent about a week there, and is now back home, but tells my dad that he's ready for all this suffering to end. That's rough to hear.

I'm a little drunk tonight. Second time in two nights. Before this, I hadn't been drunk since 4th of July last year. The reason though, is not celebratory. Yesterday I got a call from my mom, telling me that a really good friend of mine was found dead in her bathtub, from an epileptic seizure.

Megan was an angel. We knew each other all through school, it was hard not to with a school so small, but when I was a tiny freshman in high school, Megan befriended me for some reason. She was a grade ahead of me, but she included me when groups of people would go out. For 3 years we were close.

She would always say to me, at the end of the day, "I love you, Brent"; to which I'd arrogantly reply, complete with cocky grin, "I know."

When she graduated, I finally replied with an "I love you too." She had become one of my best friends, but after she graduated, she moved away, and I didn't see her much after that. We'd chat every now and then, but after my graduation I left for the military, and lost touch with many of my old school friends.

Occasionally I'd see her during my visits home, and we'd hug and catch up on old times, but that was it. Still, the pain of losing an old friend somehow feels no different than if we had remained close up to now.

Goodbye, Megan.

yup. A new entry.

So i suck and should never have signed on to a blog. I disappoint my loyal fan each day I never update.

2007 has sucked this year.

It began sucking when my daughter fell at the table, slamming her tiny 5 year old chin down onto the tabletop, splitting it open. I can tolerate many things....seeing my kids bleed is not one of them, sad to say. Nevertheless, I stopped the bleeding and took her to the ER and sat with her while they put in 3 pretty blue stitches.

2 weeks later my wife slices her hand opening a can of potatoes. She should have gone to the ER for stitches, but was too stubborn. Well I wasn't having that...the next morning I showed her!

I decided that it was time for another round of kidney stones (my 3rd go around in my young 28 years). All 3 times I have had them, having them get stuck while moving through me has hurt waaaaaaaay more than actually pissing them out. This one was the mother-effing-armageddon-like-meteor of kidney stones! I was in so much pain when it began passing from my kidney to the bladder that I was bawling and puking at the same time, writhing around on the floor while my kids watched, terrified.

I should have called the ambulance and sent them to their rooms.

Instead, we drive them to my in-law's, drop them off, and my wife and I go on to the ER (all of these things happened on the weekend) and I wait, in knife-twisting-in-my-belly agony for 2 freaking hours before they got me into a room and drugged me up. After that I was fine...passed it about a week later.

My wife had her hand looked at, but still opted out of getting stitches. But hahahaha she got her tetanus shot the next day.

Not to be outdone, though, my wife plots her one-uppance. She targets her retaliation when I'm at my weakest. The family is nailed by a nasty bout of fluish cold. I'm aching from head to toe, sore throat, cough...terrible stuff. Juicing up with the vitamin C and multisimptom cold medicine....all of us are....well come to find out that my wife is hypersensitive to these medicines. Normally she only takes half dosages anyway, because any more and she feels......off. But we were in bad shape....so she takes normal dosages, and her body reacts as if she's overdosed.....so at 5 a.m. we're trucking to the ER once again! They flush her out and send her home 7 hours later.

Well by now my other kids are feeling left out. So at my oldest's first soccer practice, a couple of weeks later, my son decides to get run over by a hefty 8 year-old, fracturing his collarbone in the process. GOAL!

My middle kid better not even think of getting sick this year.

And so I leave you with this, your moment of Zen.

Update

this is just to get the Sausage salute off the top. Carry on.

A Salute to Sausage!

I am going back to New Braunfels this weekend to celebrate me some sausage.

http://www.wurstfest.com/

I get to eat some sausage on a stick, get a meat kabob, and have me some real Germane beer. I might just slide down the big blow up slide in a potato sack again. My only hope is that my son, Garrick, goes easy on himself. Last weekend the little dude was rocking out to some live polka and fell, smacking his head on a table in the big tent. About 20 minutes later he does this again. About 30 minutes later it does it again, only this time he splits his lip too. Poor guy had to have had a bad headache that day. Next day we stayed snug inside the lakehouse, as the weather was crispy, and my son fell against another table and re-opened his lip. Later that night, he fell down the last 3 steps of our staircase, bouncing his battered noggin off the last one before coming to land on the ground floor.

Here are your 2006 Polka winners.



I have not worn my new hat all that much. I'm sure it feels inadequate compared to my last one, RIP. I saw my last one at the lakehouse last weekend....I tried to fix it again, just didn't look right.

Today is my wife's birthday! I got her gift at lunch. Got her some tennis outfits and spent over $200 on it. yeesh. And last night's dinner cost $150. And tonights dinner/movie will be about $30. I don't remember what I got for my birthday this year.



Ziggy Zoggy, Ziggy Zoggy Oi! Oi! Oi! Ziggy Zoggy, Ziggy Zoggy Oi! Oi! Oi!

5 years later.....

5 years ago I woke up as normal....at the last possible moment that left me enough time to shower, dress, and go to school...my wife drove me in, with my baby girl, Elizabeth, just 5 months old, in the back, strapped safely into her car seat.

My first class was French.

the TA thanked everyone for showing up, in spite of all that was going on....class was a little noisy with chatter, so I turned to a classmate and asked, "did something happen today?"

My classmate told me that two planes crashed into the WTC, and that another hit the Pentagon. I'll admit that my bigger concern was the Pentagon, as I actually knew people there....

French couldn't end soon enough. After class I rushed back to the front of the studen union building, to where Senora was picking me up. I jumped into the passenger seat and called a friend of mine. Dave had yet to end his term with the Army, to work for the FBI, but he said that those we knew in the Pentagon were accounted for, and were fine.

I called in to work, telling them I wasn't coming in for obvious reasons.

Upon arrival at home, I switched on CNN and held my 5 month old as tight as I could without hurting her, and cried for hours.

I don't watch many 9/11 shows, be they documentaries, special reports, or movies based on the event......it still hurts, and I knew none of those that were lost, nor none of the families that lost a loved one.

REJOICE!!!!!!!!!

Yeah!

Who's the most badass mothereffing Texan you know?






After that, who's the next most badass mothereffing Texan you know?





y'all suck!



H4T3RZ!

So my oldest is a Kindergartner

So she went to her first day of kindergarten on the 16th. I took her. I walked her to her classroom to make sure she got settled in with her supplies. She gave me a hug and a kiss goodbye and sat at her table.

I retreated through the door and stopped, just outside the doorway, leaning slightly to peek in at her. She looked around for a second, then sat down in her chair, looking around at her new friends and enemies. Then suddenly she turned and spotted me, so I fled. I fled her hallway, and felt the tears well up. Quickly I shoved my sunglasses onto my face as I round a corner, successfully concealing my distress from an approaching teacher. I compose myself as I leave the front doors of the school...but...

as I pass by the front on my way back to my car, I stop at a window, and I have a great angle into her classroom. There she is, my first born...the girl I stayed up all night for when we brought her home from the hospital, putting my finger under her nose every 5 seconds to make sure she was still breathing....no longer spending all of her time with us...we are relics now, people she used to know....

Watching her with her cheek resting in her hand, looking bored, a thick wall of brick separating us, saddened me so much, that the tears no longer welled, they flooded my eyes and poured down my face. As I called my wife to tell her Elizabeth had made it to school okay, I couldn't choke out the words. She told me not to go to work right away, to come back home.....

By the time I was home I was better, just barely. My little girl still worshipped her Daddy when I got home, and she had much to tell me.........

such as this morning when I was taking her to school. She told me of her friend Ty. Ty cried yesterday after school. Ty is Elizabeth's new best friend. They're in the Brownies together now.

Ty cried because some boy first made fun of her socks after school, where the children were outside (supervised) waiting for their parents to pick them up. Then this boy (not a classmate of Elizabeth's) pulled Ty's hair.......then he pulled down her pants.........................................................

okay, so when I was in the 1st grade or so, I can recall lifting up dresses of girls on Wednesday's "dress up day" (I didn't realize "dress up day" was a day to wear nice clothes you see.....) but I was hoping parents had stamped out this type of behavior by now.

Y'all are Lucky!

I went back to the zoo for the first time since my hat went Ed Martin on me, and they weren't selling it anymore. There were some crappy imitations, but the real McCoy was nowhere to be found. My search will continue, but newer photos of my riot inducing apparel must wait.

I'm swamped at work.

They're Back!!!

And I couldn't be happier for the already trashed downstairs! It took them all of 30 minutes to have all of their toys out of their toy room and scattered all over the place....I even helped! I was a Lincoln Log building machine just so my son could play Godzirra and knock them down. Sooo happy to have my family back again...

At dinner my son sat on my lap and I was sandwhiched in between my girls. I've had more hugs the past day and a half than I had the two weeks preceeding their departure.

My wife was a site for sore eyes too....*WARNING MUSH AHEAD* we cuddled on the couch after the kids went to bed...............................................

I'm not cut out for bachelorhood...Though I did get to hang out with some friends, which was fun. I bowled. First time in about 10 years......I bowled a 111 and a 123.....yeah I'm not good.

And our psycho kitten, Pumpkin, finally has someone else to terrorize.

What would you do?

A buddy of mine asked if this made him a complete jackass....

Story:

When he and his brothers were younger, they were saving their money up to buy a go-cart. Their father was putting the money into an account for them. Well something happened, they ended up forgetting about the account, their dad bought them a go-cart later on anyway, and just recently his dad was going through his finances and saw the account was still active. He withdrew the money, closed the account, and divided the amount 3 ways; each brother getting $400.

My buddy has not told his wife about the money yet for a few reasons. 1) she'll want half and he's a little selfish at the moment with it, since it was his money that he was saving. 2) she'll want half to go spend on something and it won't get saved (my friend is really good about his finances and saves his money.

So is he wrong for not telling his wife? Is he a dickwad for wanting the money for himself? Either to spend on himself or to save?

I have been known to use my birthday money (I still get birthday money from parents and grandparents :)) on gifts for my wife, but I spoil her rotten and probably shouldn't...because as a result she bought me some orange Nike Air Max's for $160.00. I appreciate the gesture, but for some reason she didn't hear me saying "I would never spend $160 on a pair of running shoes." She justified it by saying I splurge on her all the time (she spent $180.00 at my Dad's jewelry store....we get 50% or better discounts there (most times we pay cost or less even) and I said it was fine). *Here is where I'd insert the head bashing off the wall emoticon*.

Feedback?

I think the only ones who read this are Sarah and Jackie :D.....



for which I'm grateful!

Just because...

Voicemail

Had a voicemail last night from my kids. They were outside catching "lightning flies". I guess they mixed up the terms fireflies and lightning bugs; it was cute. They love me and miss me too. It brought a smile to my face.

now.....

I'm increasingly disturbed by the amount of unrest in the world. I wonder why some people feel that war and violence is preferred over diplomatic solutions, or why diplomatic solutions fail. Is bloodshed and death really that much more desirable to these people than peace and progression?

One of my biggest frustrations comes about when I fail to understand the "why" behind certain decisions or thought processes. When there is no rational/logical explanation behind some decision to insult, assault, or committment towards prolonged aggression I still try to find one....because I cannot comprehend the severity of evil that lives inside the minds of men.

What does Korea have to gain by testing the tolerance of the world? Even their own allies in China want them to cut it out.

WTF is happening in Isreal now? The Lebanese had to know that Isreal would not tolerate the kidnapping of their own soldiers, especially when the kidnapping took place within Isreal's border. Did these Labanese covet the bombings of their roads? The deaths of their families?

Hell, I should just throw in the whole Middle East right now, and include the U.S. in this. I understand fighting for people's civil liberties and God given rights, but there has to be some point where we need to realize we're a hated nation, and that our continued military operations only increase that hatred and aggressions toward us and our allies....and that some people just don't like our God; and some just don't believe in our God...or any God.

And this comes from a former U.S. Soldier and moderate Republican who is as patriotic as you can get. I'm just at a point right now where I'm tired of the U.S. being the answer. I'm tired of our guys in green...having the targets on their backs, and chests....I would like to see the U.S. back off from these military operations for a long while.

The problem with that is Europe is so inept at handling conflit that evil would spread unchecked and the problem would get worse, and then what?

I suppose the forces of good and evil will always clash in this perpetual struggle for dominion, and I will watch in wonder and fear the type of future that is laid out for my children.