SFO

 Made a quick trip to San Francisco this weekend to visit some old friends.  One of them was in the hospital but he tried not to let that get him too down.

I got him the "Three Wolf Moon" shirt, that's what he has draped over him.

He really didn't want anybody taking pictures but I got to take these a few minutes before I left.

Weekend

Saturday afternoon all four of us went to see The Wiggles at Nokia Live in Grand Prairie.  I've been watching The Wiggles for about 6 years now and a lot of our family discussions center around The Wiggles so Julie and I were both really looking forward to it.  We kept it a secret from Corey until about the time we entered the parking lot and she saw all the kids in Wiggles outfits. Sammy and Corey both loved it.  Julie and I loved it, too.  It was an impressive show with all The Wiggles characters, dancers, and acrobats.  I never appreciated what an athlete Anthony (the blue Wiggle) is.  Both he and Jeff (purple Wiggle) did a lot of acrobatic stuff.  Even Captain Feathersword had some impressive moves.  Murray and Sam weren't nearly as physical as Anthony and Jeff but they were both great as well.   Very good show and they brought out most of the hits. 

Saturday night we were going to a writer's club meeting but everyone cancelled out.  It was down to me and Julie and the girl who was hosting it so she cancelled it.  We had already made arrangements for my parents to watch the kids.  We looked at movies but there's nothing out that I'm dying to see.  Some old friends were in town and having a get together so we went there.  I guess I didn't eat that much on Saturday or something.  I got really drunk really fast and it was an early night.  Had a lot of fun while we were there, though. 

Sunday, took Corey to horse riding lessons.  She's been going for about 2 months now and getting more confident and more familiar with horses.   Sunday afternoon, hung out with an old friend, John.  He's deep into the homebrewing hobby so I tried some of his beers.  It's been a while since I've homebrewed, hard to make the time these days.   Sunday evening, Julie's friend Angela came over.  I watched her 4 year old daughter and Corey and Sammy while they went to see "500 Days Of Summer".   This was one of the movies I had no interest in seeing the night before, even though it has Zooey Deschanel who I really like.   Julie confirmed that it wasn't that great and I Zooey played a pretty unlikeable character.

The TV show "Lost" is now available on Roku so I started watching episode 1 of Season 1 Sunday night.  For years I've heard nothing but great things about "Lost" but haven't had the time or inclination to start in on it.  First episode was pretty good so, we'll see.  A friend of mine who knows a thing or two about TV shows told me that it's a bit like "X Files", they throw a lot of crap out there that doesn't make sense and it's never going to be explained.  It's cool and all that but there's never going to come a point where it all comes together, it just keeps going.

Stuff I Did Today

Hello Hello

I've been reading a lot lately.  "Let The Right One In", the novel that the movie was based on, "Go Down Together", the story of Bonnie and Clyde, some Peter Straub books, "In The Night Room" and "Lost Boy Lost Girl".  All of them high quality works.  I keep not blogging because I don't feel like I have time to write out everything I'm doing, kind of lost the urge to tell the world who I am and what I'm doing.  Some people blame Facebook but I don't do a whole lot on Facebook either.  Currently reading "Shroud Of The Thwacker", a novel by Chris Elliot.  If you don't know who Chris Elliot is, he used to be a writer on David Letterman and was in many of the sketches way back when.  He starred in his own sitcom "Get A Life" in the early 90's and he's a strange guy.  This book "Shroud Of The Thwacker" is very silly and really good.  After the first 15 or 20 pages I thought to myself, "Is he really going to keep this up for an entire novel?". Yes he is. I'm really enjoying it.

Saw "Transformers" at an Imax theater several weeks ago.  That's definitely the way to see that movie.  I understand why critics hate it, poor storytelling, two dimensional characters and lots of loud explosions.  But, overall, it was a lot of fun.  Saw "Public Enemies" with my dad, also very good.  The book "Public Enemies" is next on my list.

Corey's about to go back to school.  Two weeks and she'll start first grade.  Sammy's about to turn 2 in about 8 weeks.  We have a new dog, Bailey.  I don't have a picture to put on here right now but it's a good story.  Our neighbors moved in several years ago and had two dogs in their backyard, a black one and a white one.  The black one was named Bailey and the white one was named Cheeto.  As the husband of an animal fanatic, I know a lot about proper pet care and one of the important things is that you can't just leave a dog in the backyard all the time.  Dogs get bored, the bark all the time, they can get aggressive.  Dogs are pack animals and they think their human owners are part of their pack so they do not understand why they have to stay outside and the rest of the pack goes in.  A couple of years ago, Cheeto, bit somebody and they took her back to the humane society.  Might have been a boy dog, I don't know.  Now Bailey was left all alone in the backyard and sometimes he would howl practically right outside our window.  Around April or May of this year he started escaping.  I'd be sitting in the couch with the blinds half open and see a dog walk by, run out and it's Bailey.  Julie would chase him down and bring him in the house until the neighbors came home.  The neighbors tried several things to keep in the yard, even had a new fence built, but he just dug under it and by this time, he would escape and just come over to our front door.  Early June I told Julie that if this kept up, he would either get hit by a car or they'd end up taking him back to the pound.  I said, if they felt they couldn't handle Bailey, we could take him in.  Even though we already have 3 dogs!   The neighbors were for it and we got him.  They'd never taken him to a vet.  We took him to the vet and, of course, he had hookworm and heartworm.  We got the hookworm treated and we've been saving money this summer to come up with the 400 dollars it will take to start the heartworm treatment.   We should be able to start it this weekend.  I'll post pictures some other time but that's the Bailey story. 

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