Category: Stuff (Page 41 of 65)

I like Jerry Seinfeld. Great show. Funny comedy (isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?) But I’ve not seen him do a whole lot of stand up before. I’ve almost rented his DVD a few times. I will before way long. But I decided to see where he was going to be on tour.

Holy Smokes!! He’s going to be just a couple of hours up the road from me in Memphis next Friday night at the Orpheum. How about that. Wait. Wonder what ticket prices are going to be.

Holy Smokes!!!!!! They’re $95 to sit in the balcony and $145 for floor seats. Multiply that by two because The Wife would come along. Don’t forget to add the tax and ticket handling fees and all that junk. Then you gotta figure in dinner somewhere, plus gas to get up there and around. Then we’d have to stop by Target because we were so close to one, of course. So you’re looking anywhere from $300-$450 for that trip.

I’ll go rent the DVD for $4 and eat some Mac & Cheese some night instead.

When we got married, we decided to go on our honeymoon to Seaside, Florida. We’d had friends who’d told us of how great it was. We absolutely loved it. But at Seaside, there wasn’t a lot to do. That was part of the charm of it though, to be honets. It had a few shops, a few places to eat, a small but pretty cool little market/grocery store (with big prices). But if you really wanted to go to a bigger restaurant or grocery shop or whatever, you had to drive down the road either east or west. If you went east, you went to Panama City, which is very touristy. No thanks. But to the west was the Destin area.

We enjoyed it then. It had a really nice outlet mall (decent prices, but great selection) and nice looking area. Plenty of stuff to do and see, but not to “cheap” looking, if you know what I mean. Well, this is where we decided to go on our vacation. It was sweet. We did have to endure a two and a half hour sales pitch from Fairfield Resorts (how many different ways can you say “no”?) but we got two nights at a hotel, $30 off of dinner, and $100 off another stay at a hotel down there…all for $99. So it was worth it.

We took lots of pics of The Kid in the pool. We’d had a handful of swimming lessons so far, but they weren’t all smooth. So we spent a lot of time in the pool kicking, spashing, jumping, and holding our breath. But it paid off. She got better, and it showed when she returned to swimming lessons here back home.

We spend our third and fourth night in Fort Walton Beach. It’s just over the bridge from Destin and it’s all with in a few minutes driving. The waves were bigger in FWB to me, but The Kid still liked the beach as long as I held her. We got plenty of son. I got pretty red, but it’s faded to brown, but it’s itchy, so that means I’ll peal before way long.

Would we go back…oh yes. We will!

USA Today Article

I expect this to draw lots of attention over the next few days. Look for it to catch him a lot of flack. But Larry always seemed to be one who spoke his mind.

Excerpts

· You know when I played, you had me and Kevin (McHale) and some others throughout the league. I think it’s good for a fan base because as we all know the majority of the fans are white America. And if you just had a couple of white guys in there, you might get them a little excited. But it is a black man’s game, and it will be forever. I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.”

· Bird also says that when he was playing he “really got irritated” when a white player guarded him. “I still don’t understand why,” he says. “I didn’t care who guarded me — red, yellow, black. I just didn’t want a white guy guarding me, because it’s disrespect to my game.”

I’d hoped to get internet access while we were on vacation. We didn’t have it at our first hotel but did at the second. But it wasn’t working just right. So I didn’t get it finally working until the last afternoon there, just as we were going out to eat for the night. So I really didn’t do anything except get to check some baseball scores before we had to leave. But I guess spending oodles of time on the internet isn’t what you go on vacation for anyway.

We had a great time down on the Emerald Coast. Got tanned plus a little. Ate plenty. And The Kid had loads of fun on the beach and in the pool. I was hoping to be giving a day-by-day updates…but didn’t get it. I’ll try to carve out some time and give some highlights and thoughts from the time down there.

Vacation was good.

We got the report from The Wife’s mom that day two of swimming lessons wasn’t a good one. I don’t know if it was because there was a day off inbetween Day 1 and Day 2 or if it wasn’t The Wife or me taking her. But she cried a good bit.

We took her yesterday. Before we ever got there, she was telling us that “I don’t really want to go to swimming lessons.” They in the car she told me that she wasn’t feeling very well. But we went and she ended up crying just about the whole time. She was crying for me. “Daddy! I want my Daddy!” “Daddy, don’t leave!” We’d talked before hand. I told her I’d stay if she didn’t cry. So of course I had to leave. The whole time I was walking away from the pool she was crying, “NO Daddy. Don’t leave me, Daddy!”

There were a lot of other parents around. The lady who teaches the lessons teaches about 4 at a time, and parents are usually there for the lesson too. So I got a lot of grins and “It’s hard isn’t it?” I had a few tell me that their kid was like that last summer. So there are a lot of repeat clients.

I watched from inside the house in the sunroom off the kitchen. It got a little better. She’d kick and swim w/ her arms when it was her turn. But she was usually looking and crying for me when it wasn’t her turn.

The Wife took her today. I stayed home. She told me it was better. A little bit of crying, but not near where it was yesterday. I think she’s building some trust up in the teacher and also knowing that she’s not going to get out of going. But she hates getting water in her eyes. That’s one of the biggest things with her too.

We’ve got one more lesson until we go to the beach. We’ll get our time in at the pool, I’m sure. Hopefully we can build upon it so when we come back and finish up, there’ll be no regression.

The good thing is that she didn’t hold it against me for leaving her. I was expecting her to tell me that I left her over and over after we got home yesterday.

Good movie. Kids like it, but lots of jokes pass over their heads. To be honest, I thought it was a little more family friendly than the first one. But the first one was probably over the kids heads a lot..the parts that were blatent innuendos.

Lots of people have said they liked it better than the first one. I’m not so sure. But it’s worth seeing, none the less.

Rain out. The Kid doesn’t like swimming in the rain. And they were cancelled anyway.

We weren’t actually there though. We’ve been (and still are) in Jackson for the weekend. Helping out with the church’s Confirmation Retreat. I feel like I’ve eaten more the last 24 hours than I ever have. Not looking good for the beach time next week. I need to run-run-run next week to get in beach shape!

The Kid has another swim lesson today. The Wife’s mother is supposed to take her. Hopefully Wife’s Mom will be able to drop her off and leave so she won’t distract The Kid from doing right in the lesson.

We’ll be back later this afternoon for the full update. Right now everyone’s being lazy in the hotel.

Today is the first day of The Kid’s swimming lessons. I’m about to go home for lunch and see how they went. I’ve no idea what to expect. She loves the water. Loves the pool. But likes to be in a life jacket (because she can’t breath underwater.)

The lady teaching her is pretty hardcore. We’ll see…

Yesterday was our last day of Vacation Bible School out in the woods. One of my guys needed to drive back into town to get his guitar. But one of the girls went to get it for him. A little while later, I’m standing over by the volleyball court and see people scrambling around jumping in the back of a truck and barrelling down the road. I couldn’t tell if they were excited about something or frantic about it or what.

Turns out the girl had a wreck. She was stuck in there. But another girl that was with her crawled out and ran up the road for help. Me and two other guys jogged down the road (much farther than we thought it would be. We’d seen another girl run up barefooted and thought it couldn’t be that far since she was w/o shoes. Turns out she’d just ran from a truck a few yards away!). We saw the 4Runner flipped over in a ditch. Paramedics and firemen and police and all were already there. I was impressed.

They got her out slowly because she’d been whipped around pretty good and thought her neck was sore. But they checked her out at the hostipal and everything is okay. She had only had her liscense about 2 months and was in another guy’s car, not her own.

When asked if they had their seatbelts on, they said that they’d had them on til they got to the gravel road…they took them off then.

The last two days have been busy with Vacation Bible School. The past two years we’ve had a theme of Market Place AD where there are different tents/booths/areas set up around our church’s back yard and parking lot. It was fun for the kids and hopefully meaningful.

This year we moved it to a place called Wrenwoode. It’s about 5 miles out of town out in the boonies. But it’s an old camp with a great layout, old buildings, and plenty of trees. Trees provide shade. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure that having everything out there was a great idea to begin with. But we’re off the hot concrete of the parking lot, baking for three hours each morning.

Tomorrow’s the last day. The Kid is officially too young to participate, but The Wife and I are both helping out, so she’s w/ us by default. She’s had a great time with it too.

But I was wondering today how much the kids really learn from it, and how much they just like the crafts, games, songs, and snacks. Hopefully if nothing else it’s building some sort of positive foundation that can be built upon over the years.