A Weekend of Movies

This weekend was lazy...with the exception of two things. I went to Best Buy to pickup the new(ish) Kid Rock CD titled "Rock N Roll Jesus." It has his new song "All Summer Long" which seems to be insanely popular. However because Kid Rock is being a punk, he won't allow the album to be sold on iTunes. This is the first physical CD I have purchased in forever!

Anyway, while I was there I also picked up this nifty little device that would allow me to use my iPod and iPhone through my car stereo, hardwired. No more of that piece of shit FM Transmitter. I installed it, and it works fine. There are many adapters like this out there, but none of them would allow me to continue to use the built-in XM radio, this one does. It also has a nifty "aux" input. After trying to figure out how to control the iPod through the stereo head unit, I've decided that it's a pain in the ass and I'm going to go through the headphone jack and the aux input now available. Screw the steering wheel controls I say!

On Saturday I went out to my garage to head to the store, but my car wouldn't start. The lights and everything would come on, but there wasn't enough juice to turn the engine over. @#$%^&* Carrie came to the rescue. She took me to AutoZone to buy a new battery (current one was 3 years old, it was time). However, that was probably the most fun I have EVER had in AutoZone...not that I have ever spent much time there to begin with. The employees working were a real hoot.

After figuring out how to remove the old battery, then installing the new one without getting soaked several times by the headlight washer-sprayer-thinggymagigs, everything seems to be working just fine!

Carrie and I then proceded to watch movies and have glorious Hodak's fried chicken. We watched A Few Good Men had dinner, then watched Saving Private Ryan, and finished up with The Count of Monte Cristo. Then yesterday evening we watched Live Free or Die Hard (aka. Die Hard 4). Movies movies movies!

Favorite Quotes:

"I'm gonna rip the eyeballs out of your head and piss in your dead skull! You fucked with the wrong Marine!" -- Col. Jessep, A Few Good Men

"I have here a very old letter, written to a Mrs. Bixby in Boston. 'Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, Abraham Lincoln.'" -- Gen. George C. Marshall, Saving Private Ryan

"And if you're thinking just now 'Why me, oh God?' the answer is: God has nothing to do with it. In fact, God is never in France this time of year." -- Dorleac, The Count of Monte Cristo

"You have got to be running out of bad guys by now. Is there a line or something you call? 1-800-HENCHMEN? Oh, I bet you're still on the line with "Can I get another dead Asian hooker bitch over here right away." - John McClane, Life Free or Die Hard

One more thing...

I start school again tomorrow night. This time I have to suffer through Accounting Theory and Practice. Weeeee! I have to buy books and get my parking permit tonight. This sucks.

Crazy weekend

I seem to be forgetting to blog as much as I used to. I need to get back into that habit. But it seems so much of what is going on right now is just more of the same old shit. So why take the time?

That being said, this weekend was pretty busy. I got an email from mom on Friday morning saying she and dad would be bringing Madeline with them this weekend.

The three of them arrived around 6pm on Friday. Madeline is sooo much fun right now. Every time I walk into a room, she points at me and yells, "Hi Uncle Ryan" or "Hi Uncle Rhyno!" When you give her something, she always says "thank you" and always says "please" when asking for something. Especially grapes...the girl LOVES grapes. It was entertaining watching her eat them without using her hands, and when she finished, she would proclaim, "look, I ate it all!"

Mom took her to Grants Farm on Saturday and then to the Zoo on Sunday. She came back and was all excited because she got to see the tigers, bears and zebras. Strange kid. Heh.

Dad and I spent most of the time working in the basement. We rented a jackhammer-ish piece of equipment to help chip up some of the concrete in the basement. We're removing a big sloped piece of concrete around the support beam in the middle of the room. The floor needs to be flat so we can lay carpet down. We also sealed up a crack on the front porch that was allowing water to stream into the basement every time we had a heavy rain.

On Saturday, my buddy Andy Briscoe stopped by. He was in town making the various friend circuit, seeing people, making appearances, etc. He and I chatted for a bit while dad continued to break all kinds of noise ordinance violations, I'm sure, in the basement with the jackhammer. Damn that thing is loud!

They left around 3:30 on Sunday, when Mom and Madeline returned from the Zoo.

Will & Grace
On another note, I've started Net-flixing Will & Grace. Starting from the beginning... Tivo was recording episodes for me, but I decided that since the DVDs are all out, I should start over and watch them all in order. That's one thing I hate about the cable networks, they seem to play them randomly. Pisses me off! Okay, it really doesn't but it sounded good.

Hotter than SHIT!

It is hotter the hell in St. Louis lately. So hot, I'm not going to use these tickets to the Cardinal's game tonight.

Okay, enough about that. On to more important topics. Either my ears have gotten smaller, or Apple made the iPhone ear phones a little larger. I can only stand to wear them for about an hour before my ears hurt. My regular iPod earphones can be worn for hours and hours...especially while crammed into a cabin on a train barreling through the Swiss Alps with your parents.

Everything else seems to be going well here. Still no word on if I get to remain employed by A-B. It's still pretty slow around here. However, for the past couple days I have been working on a manual for B.A.S.I.S (the boys state database system). I've gotten 21 articles written with about a billion left to go. Adobe makes a great little program to building help/knowledge bast systems so that's a plus.

This past weekend was rather low key. I went to a movie on Friday night with Rick Oleshak (a brand manger here at A-B) and some of his buddies. We saw Stepbrothers. Mildly entertaining, but I shouldn't have wasted $8 on it.

After the movie, I went home for a bit, then to Jimmy's parent's house (they were out of town). We hung out for a while and talked before James+Nick and Carrie arrived. James+Nick and Carrie arrived a while later. We sat around and chatted for a while, poked fun at each other, while Nick fell asleep on the floor. Looser. Heh.

The rest of the weekend was full of weird food cravings, movie watching, and basically just being a bum. I can't wait to do it again this weekend!