Life Lessons Learned

So, Debbie has been taken down by a pretty nasty bug. She's been running a pretty high fever and is generally feeling bad. That meant I was on my own for dinner last night (I know ... I'm such a compassionate guy). Recently, I've been on a grilling kick, trying to make meat based products for dinner using ridiculously high flames. Because of that (and the insane sizes of meat you get at Costco), we have a ton of pork chops. Last week, I made Grilled Brown Sugar Glazed Pork Chops which I loved. Last night, I thought I would try my hand at breaded pork chops in the oven. After reading the instructions, my first step was to melt the butter. I figured 30 seconds in the microwave would do it. Did I mention the microwave was on high? Yup, so the inside of our microwave has a nice buttery coat thanks to the dairy explosion. No real damage done and a quick sponging took care of it. Next, I was supposed to spray the pan with some kind of non-stick cooking spray. I decided that would be too much work, so I pulled out a sheet of wax paper, put it on the tray, put the pork chop on the paper, and put it all in the oven. About 2 minutes later, I began to wonder why smoke was coming from the oven. Whoops! With Debbie and Lauren asleep, the last thing they needed was a nice, old school fire drill. Fortunately, neither stirred very much despite the klaxons and I quickly brought the situation under control. So, to reiterate:

1. NEVER microwave butter on high to melt it. It explodes.
2. NEVER put wax paper in the oven. It smokes. A lot!

On a plus note, the pork chop was very good.

How not to watch a movie

A little while back, Debbie got me the Godfather Trilogy DVD collection. I loved it as I had not seen any of these movies, but really wanted to. Shortly thereafter, we watched The Godfather and I was very impressed. Last night, we decided to watch The Godfather II. My initial impressions were not very good, which surprised me greatly because I had heard that this was one of a handful of trilogies where the second movie is considered better than the first. Just a few of the problems I had with the movie after watching it are:

• The movie seemed to pick up right in the middle of the action with no exposition and no real story telling as to what happened between the last movie and this one.
  
• There were far too many references to things not shown in the course of the movie that I thought should have been. I could not count the number of events I had to pick up through some throw away line a character mentions in passing.
  
• For all the accolades Robert DeNiro received for his work in this, I felt he hardly appeared at all. His scenes were very short without much acting for me to even think this was worthy of such praise.
  
• I found the movie incredibly short, only 70 minutes, to be considered such a masterpiece, particularly when I felt so much was missing from the movie to begin with
  

Now, anyone who has seen The Godfather II can probably pick up why I did not enjoy this movie as much as I thought I would. We only watched Disc 2. That's right folks, yours truly here completely ignored the Disc 1 sitting right next to Disc 2 and started watching a 3 hour 20 minute movie 2 hours and 10 minutes into it. No wonder I felt so disjointed. It was funny though because I wondered why the DVD makers would put the 1st and 2nd DVD's in the same jacket while the 3rd movie and an extras DVD were in their own separate jackets. I even got angry at one point from trying to explain to Debbie what was going on, probably because I had such a hard time following it as well. *Sigh* I guess this is like A Few Good Men where the first part of the movie I saw was the final, climactic courtroom scene. I had no idea what happened prior to that for years. I didn't care because I knew how it ended. I guess in this case though, I definitely need to go back and watch Disc 1.

What is Lauren doing right now?

At this very moment, 11:00 am CDT on 6/20/2005, my precious little girl is on her way to her very first swim lesson. I hope none of the boys there ogle her or I'll have to go and open a can of whoop-ass on those babies. And believe me, I can usually take a baby no problem.

The Weekend of half finished projects

So, this weekend I started working on a few project the supervisor (read: wife) wanted me to work on. The only problem was I couldn't finish either of them.
The first project was install a baby gate around the bottom of our stair case. This is one of those attached to the wall baby gates with extension panels. This particular gate allows you to wrap it around corners, which is something we desperately needed. The only problem was that the latch part of the gate is supposed to be installed on a wall. We can't do that because that would cause the gate to block off most of the hallway. Since I'm doing an "not recommended" configuration, I needed to order a few parts to make my install work.
The second project was a work bench I bought. This is a 6 foot behemoth with a peg board back. I got it because all my tools are moving to the basement and I wanted a nicer area to keep them in. This was also the most frustrating project because I realized 2 pieces were missing after I had assembled most of the frame. Arrrrggggh! So, that was another call I had to make on Monday. Fortunately, this company is really good about replacement parts so i had no trouble. But still .... ARRRRGGGGH!
That just leaves this weekend to finish doing all that crap. Yeah!

It's a good thing ...

my wife appreciates my sense of humor. I mean, it's a REALLY good thing or I would be dead by now. Yesterday, I forget what preceipitated this, but Debbie's response to me was "Well, you don't have to get up before 6 everyday like I do!!" My only response was "Yeah .... but you should be used to it by now."
If I didn't have that "I'm kidding and I fully appreciate what you do" smile on my face, I'm pretty sure the best outcome would have been a quick and painless death. More than likely, I would have suffered a hideously slow and painful one. Fortunately, she noticed the smile (in particular the "I fully appreciate what you do" portion of the smile) and let me off with a minor beating. I tell ya, it's a good thing she appreciates my sense of humor!

Come on ... it's the weekend ... almost

Here we are, late Thursday afternoon. You know you don't want to work. Or, maybe you're reading this on Friday, in which case we all know no work gets done. So, rather than read boring internet articles and playing solitaire, why not pass the time looking at some photos Cutest Daughter in the World. Sixth and seventh months are now complete. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday

Guess who turned 7 months old today?

Movie Previews that don't actually suck

So, it's been a LOOOOOOOOONG time since I've been in a movie theater. Probably close to a year now. But, Thursday night, Debbie and I went on a "Date Night" (trademark pending) to see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. I'll talk more about the movie later, but what most shocked me was there was not one preview that didn't interest me in some fashion ... NOT A SINGLE ONE. So, below is a list of the previews we saw and my impressions of the movie.

• Cinderella Man - Russell Crowe as a Depression era down on his luck boxer who captures the heart of a nation. Kinda like Rocky, but based on a true story. It looks like a renter, but I did get a little verklempt in the preview.
  
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - This preview easily won the longest title award. Based on the short snippets I saw, the visual effects are far superior to that BBC version made in something like 1970. Actually, the word I used when talking to Debbie was "stunning". This is one gorgeous looking movie. I think we may have just made plans for another Date Night (TM Pending) sometime in 2006.
  
• War of the Worlds - Let's just say the demographic for this movie fits in well with SW:ROTS watchers. You have to watch this movie if you want to retain your geek card.
  
• Batman Begins - Just an interesting take on the Batman saga. From the first Batman movie with Michael Keaton, we know Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered ... we know he decided to begin his career as a crime fighter by dressing up as a bat. Why a bat? Did he go from teenager to the Dark Knight instantly? How did he get started? This movie answers some of those questions. I couldn't pick out an archnemesis from the previews, but that may be the point. Anyway, comic book movies can be quite entertaining if done right. Just don't watch Elektra.
  
• Fantastic Four - Okay, this was a movie Debbie had no interest in seeing. I, however, remember the Fantastic Four so I want to see how badly they raped my childhood. Also, it has Jessica Alba as the Invisible Girl and that's just too hard to resist.

Those were the previews ... watch for my impressions of the movie later on.