Funny How 'Tomorrow' Can Turn into 'Two Weeks'...

First off, sorry that you’ve all had to read about the Sarah Palin rally for the last two weeks. I know that was quite grievous for some of you.

This is one of those situations where I’m now so far behind that the events have lost their immediacy, so it would be somewhat fruitless for me to describe them. I’ll just post a few pictures now of that beach trip we took at the end of September- good grief, that’s been a month ago now:

We went back to Charlotte again this past weekend, making the trip Friday night after work and coming back Sunday evening. On Saturday, we met the Kuda women for lunch at a nameless Chinese restaurant, where I shocked Shelly by ordering a "dragon roll". Utilizing my new camera phone, I took this shot of the effervescent ethnic appetizer, which ended up tasting surprisingly good:

OK, the restaurant had a name, I just can’t recall what it was.

Parting ways with the Kudas, I made an ill-advised side trip to the local Hobby Lobby to check out the selection of model ships and airplanes, not that I was planning on buying any. While there, though, Shelly spotted just the perfect mirror to mount over our fireplace, and shortly thereafter, Hobby Lobby had my money and I had their mirror. This disastrous turn of events was eminently foreseeable, and I have only myself to blame. At least I didn’t end up with any additional fall décor.

I have little to complain about, really, as earlier that morning, Shelly had presented me with an early Christmas gift of some value. Apparently, during our previous trip, her mother and her, under false pretenses, had gone out and purchased a Wii game system for me! Shelly, loath to let such a valuable prize collect dust for an additional two months, couldn’t resist giving it to me early! Unfortunately, this eliminates our main reason for visiting the Collier girls, but I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing Bonkers again from time to time. :)

Later on that evening, Mary, Shelly and I went out to the movies. There was nothing I really cared about seeing, so Shelly selected Eagle Eye. After finding out that the theater had discontinued the senior citizens’ discount, a circumstance that nearly caused Mary to come to blows with the ticket agent, I paid the ridiculous price of $30 for three tickets, vowing sullenly to never again visit that theater.

Things didn’t get much better with the movie. About midway through, I leaned over to Shelly and whispered "This is an insult to our intelligence." Afterwards, the two girls had to listen to my haranguing of all the plot inconsistencies and sheer unbelievability of certain things. Shelly pointed out I had little problem with Transformers and Terminator. The difference is, it’s fine when a movie asks you to suspend disbelief for a single plot element (robots from space, cyborgs from the future), but you can’t ask the audience to accept more than one or two unbelievable things in the same movie. Right around the time a power line came down and precision-fried an uncooperative jeweler, I was thinking "OK, if the villain here is anyone other than God himself, this is just silly."

Then, just to add a little bit of groan-worthy political correctness to the egregious brain damage this movie had already inflicted, a character ended with the moral of the story being the standard line about ‘in protecting ourselves, let's not go so far we that we lose the freedoms that make America great’, or words to that effect.

Sorry to go off on a rant right in the middle of weekend update here, but this tripe has been repeated ad nauseam since shortly after 9/11. By show of hands, how many of you have had a government agent show up on your doorstep asking about a book you checked out at the library? Has anyone had their phone tapped and been thrown in jail for speaking out against the government? The few people who have had their rights ‘violated’ were either not American citizens in the first place, or were American citizens fighting overseas against the American military, and the ACLU has been only too happy to make sure they get their day in court.

To the contrary, any reminder to Americans that they actually face legitimate dangers in the world is condemned as ‘fear-mongering’ or ‘a distraction’, and the fact that people actually buy those arguments just shows how incredibly and unexpectedly successful the strategies employed after 9/11 have been. The only reason people stand for the downplaying of fear of terrorism is because they’ve forgotten the horror they felt that day 7 years ago, the discomforting feeling of vulnerability and the stark realization that, no, we’re not impervious to foreign attack. I find it deeply ironic that President Bush’s stunning success in keeping the country from suffering another attack has sufficiently diminished the public’s worries about terrorism to the point where it now looks likely that a man who has shown virtually no leadership or courage in his political life, ever, and has no experience worth speaking of, is now on the verge of winning the Oval Office.

Oh wait, the movie! Well, even that wasn’t bad enough! The final 5 seconds of the movie deliver one final kick to the ribs. Come on! After all that, the hero doesn’t even merit a closed-mouth kiss on the lips? If the camera kept rolling another 3 seconds, I’m pretty sure Shia LaBeouf’s next line was "That’s the last time I defy a near-omnipotent super computer and get myself shot to keep you from getting blown up!"

Anyway, back to the weekend. Sunday, Shelly and I made lunch for Stefanie and her family. I include myself in that because I put a few trays in the oven and later helped carry them to and from the car. We did cheat a little and get the biscuits from Bojangles, but no one complained much. After lunch, we watched the Panthers play the Cardinals, with the Panther’s early play causing a few ulcers in the room, but they ended up on top 27 to 24, thanks to a botched extra point and a failed attempt to convert a 4th down with a faked punt on the part of the Cardinals. I had to content myself with the occasional flash of the score of the Ravens/Oakland game, which didn’t even make the halftime highlight reel, despite the unusual safety that apparently occurred early in the game. Here’s a picture I snuck with my phone:

As I guess most readers have picked up on by now, I recently got a new phone when my old one disappeared under mysterious circumstances. It was time anyway, as the old one had a bad crack in it, flipped back and forth freely with no resistance, and randomly powered off for no apparent reason (but I’m my father’s son, and I’d of kept using it anyway if I hadn’t ended up losing it). This new one has a 2 megapixel camera and Bluetooth (and a bunch of other features that I probably won’t ever use), and even it was on the low end of the spectrum of choices. Unfortunately, in a set of circumstances more befitting a classic Greek tragedy than real life, I actually took the time to write down all the numbers in my phone, but then somehow lost the sheet of paper (I suspect someone else in my household saw a random sheet of paper on the kitchen table and, being disinclined to tolerate clutter, disposed of it). So, basically, if you changed your number anytime recently, or if Shelly doesn’t also have your number, I probably can’t call you at this point. Do with that knowledge what seems best to you (IE, call me and make sure I have your number!).

Alright, just because it's getting incredibly late (Shelly's loudly sawing logs in the other room) and I'm tired and can't think of an appropriate segue, we went out with Erika and Charlotte this evening. Erika, desperate to avoid Jason's rage for a few hours, as she'd forgotten to order his John McCain mask in time for Halloween, met us at Panera's at Southpoint Mall for dinner. Charlotte was her usual photogenic self:

Her mom... (I can't decide whether to finish that sentence with "not so much" or "decide for yourself", so I'll just choose not to choose. Erika won't see me until the weekend anyway, so there will be no physical retribution for this... I hope.)

Good night, all. I hope you appreciate the sheer number of hyperlinks I had to put in this post! That alone kept me up another 20 minutes!