Mix and Match

An article by Don Quixote    5 Comments

Labor Day weekend is always an interesting time for me. Each and every year for the past 5 years I’ve spent it working. While everyone is off enjoying the last summer weekend at the lake, camping, doing odd jobs around the house, I’m the guy who gets the privilege of working. Now, I really don’t mind, I get paid well for doing it, but still, I long for the day when I too can have a 3 day holiday weekend.

Now, none of this is to say that despite working I didn’t have an eventful weekend. So here’s the run down:

Hero

The highlight of the weekend was going to see Jet Li’s Hero. For anyone who’s bee reading any of my blog over the past few weeks you know that I’ve been on an Anime kick. This movie was anime brought to life. Visually it was stunning, the color, the shots, great eye candy. The moral of the movie (which is the root of all Japanese story telling) was moving as well. Now, I had not expected sub-titles, but sure enough, they were there. It wasn’t really distracting, if you made it through Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, then you can make it through this one. But be warned: some of those sub-titles are in fast forward, so read quickly. I liked the movie a lot, go see it on the big screen. I give it an 9 for its visual effects, story telling, and the fact that Jet Li is one bad man (in a good way).

Faith: More than a T-shirt

Keeping with the stupid people find me at the movies theme. Michelle and I were sitting near the top (again, is a pretty empty theater) and this group of three guys comes up to us and asks if the seat (two seats away from Michelle) is taken. He’s sporting his “Lord’s Gym” t-shirt. Considering we are in the middle of the row, we assumed that they were trying to count seats for a large group of people. Always doing our best to be accommodating, we said nope, and Michelle moved some of her stuff. So, does he sit in the open seat two seats away? Nope, plops himself right down next to Michelle and then proceeds to take over the arm rest. We moved her over to sit on the other side of me. It’s getting time to for the movie to start, and where is the rest of this large group? Nowhere, it was just the three guys. Then, they proceeded to mock the film, provide running commentary and had the audacity to comment on the rudeness of others talking and how dare someone bring a baby into their movie (which by the way was more well behaved than the Christian T-Shirt guy). Michelle made me behave, but I so wanted to break out a lecture on how your faith should be of more substance than a cheaply screened graphic on the front of your shirt. For the rest of you, if you’re going to where the name of Christ in any fashion: clothing, hats, jewelry, bumper stickers than you better make sure you actions make those, people are watching.

21 Grams

Sticking in the vein of movies, I watched 21 Grams this weekend. The movie was excellent. It drug on it’s choppy story telling a little too long, as 4 hours into it (oh, that was another thing, the movie, though under two hours, felt like 5) I was thinking, I get it already. Move on.

It’s hard to think about such extreme tragedy. The death of your children, the loss of a spouse, killing people in an accident; “The guilt will crush you to the bone”. Life is so short, and the only day we are given is today.

Record of Lodoss War

We finally finished this up (13 30 minute episodes takes a little while). It was a great story. Oh, and the Image comic book that was based on this series is called Warlands, just for those of you playing along at home.

XP SP2 & Windows Media Player 10

So I bit the bullet this weekend and installed SP2. Wow, other than it being slightly annoying at first and getting your security settings in place, I actually like it better than SP1. Granted, I had to update some of my programs, allow some things through the firewall, but I feel like my speed and performance has improved. While I was at it, I went ahead and installed the new WMP. Slick, but nothing huge in the way of improvements, however you can now download music in an iTunes fashion.

Ringo, Snowball, and other names for the white dog

It appears that the saga of the stray dog is coming to a close, and frankly it leaves me a little sad. As I mentioned before the neighbor lady had taken a liking to the dog as well, and since he seemed to like her dog (which we later found out is a girl dog), we had resigned ourselves that she would claim him as her own. She even mentioned that her nieces and nephews like him and called him Snowball. So we finished up the last bit of dog food that we had bought for him yesterday. The neighbors dog had gotten out with him and they were touring the ‘hood together. He was obviously interested in more than just a casual friendship as he spent most of his time at the tail end of things. While sad, I was okay, at least he would have a home and a friend, and that was okay.

On our way to the movies, the guy at the drug house stopped us to tell us that he had called Animal Control since the brown dog had growled at him. Ugh. Later in the day AC showed up, and snagged the brown dog (the neighbor ladies), she came out, there was an ordeal over it. We watched from the window not wanting to get involved nor did we want to see the white dog taken away. Just when all hope seemed lost, the AC guy let her have the brown dog and didn’t take away the white one. Perhaps she was going to take Snowball in after all. After we left, we went over to her house, the white dog was in the back hard having a great time, kids we petting him, he was amazingly friendly and he was no longer skittish. The neighbor said she had been calling him Ringo because of the black ring around his tail. We commented on how happy he looked and glad that he found a home.

Oh no, I don’t think I going to keep him, the Animal Control guy had another call to go on and asked me if I could contain the dog until he could get back. UGH! While she still wasn’t decided on if she was going to keep the dog or not, it seems that he is bound for the pound. That makes me sad. If I could afford to get a fence up today I would just to keep the guy. Oh well, hopefully a lovable dog like him will find a great home.

Spider

I’ve been forbidden to speak of it, but after all the commotion, it earned a spot in The Blog. Michelle thinks there is a spider upstairs plotting her demise.

Well kids, that’s all the news fit to print. I hope your Labor Day weekend was as eventful as mine.