New Friday Knights Episode Up

Check out the new episode here.

Friday Knights 1st Episode is up!

The first episode of mine and Nick's "show" is now up for your viewing pleasure on my other newly created blog Friday Knights of the Round Table. Enjoy!

Down to Hershey

This past Sunday I took the day off of work and Kristina and I went down to Hershey, Pa. to visit the Davis'. For those who don't know, they left us this summer to become House Parents at Milton Hershey School. We were really excited, this was the first time we had seen them since the wedding reception.

It was a really easy drive down there; all the way down 84, then on 81. No tolls, traffic or bad weather. We left here just after 9 on Sunday morning and arrived just after 2pm down there. The house they are living in is amazing. Their apartment is attached right to the kids house, which is huge. It was nice that they didn't have any kids yet so we were able to utilize the entire house while we were down there.

This is our "hotel room" where me and Kristina slept.

It was a nice relaxing time while we were down there. We just hung out a bunch, visited Jon and Kate +8's house (not very exciting as there was no one visible from the outside), and went to a really sweet mall. We visited Sierra at Chocolate World and I bought some chocolate bars. There was a 5-pound bar that you could buy for $30, but I stuck with the 1/2-pound bar. We also went on a tour of the school, visited a couple of the houses Ace and Debbie were working at and Kristina got to go to the outlet stores. And finally me and Ace got to talk a bunch about Wheel of Time, which I think was cathartic for the both of us.

Ian in his room.

On the return journey we got stuck in some traffic and tried to detour, then quit the detour after the GPS wanted to take us home by way of Iowa. It was a little longer ride than expected but we got home and in bed relatively early so all ended well. All in all we had a great time and can't wait to go back. We are hoping everything works out so we can soon.

Change and Hope

So Barack Obama is now the President Elect. Starting next January we here in America are going to have 4 years (hopefully that's all) of an Obama administration. I was sitting there watching the TV when they announced it and all I could think of was, well America you got what you asked for. For the past 4-8 years we have all been inundated with anti-Bush slams and a lot of talk about change. Well, I fear that we are going to have "change"; and a lot of it.

This election would not be as big of a deal if it were not for the number of seats that Republicans have lost in Congress. For at least the next 2 years the Democrats are going to have carte blanche on any policies and bills that they want to pass. This country just took a radical turn to the left. As I look at the TV and see all the Obama supporters cheering in the streets of Chicago waving their "Change" posters around in the air I wonder: What about this amazing country do they want to change so badly? Is it the healthcare system that everyone in the world, except us, think is the best around? Is it the war in Iraq that has steadily been getting better, and keeping us safe? Is it the millions of opportunities left out there to make something of yourself and advance yourself in the world if you are just willing to put in some hard work? America is the greatest nation this world has ever seen, and they just voted to "change" it.

As I look back on this campaign, and into the future, I do have hope though. Hope that as President of the free world Barack Obama will realize all the power that he has. I hope that he will be the man that he has said he is for the past couple months, and not the one that he has been for the past couple years. He touted himself as a man who could work across the aisle but his record does not show it. He said he was a uniter but his record shows him as one of the most partisan Senators of the past 4 years. I hope Obama falls very far to the right and lands somewhere in the happy middle where most Presidents have been, and should be. Because right now he is a lot more to the left and a lot more of a radical than, I think, most people realize. I hope that the true colors of Barack Obama do not come out, but stay hidden behind this mask of middle America that he has been wearing all these months.

So America, you got what you asked for, Barack Hussein Obama will be the next President of the United States of America. Here we go...

New Spring Graphic Novel

So this past Monday was probably the most exciting day of my life. Not really, but I was pretty excited. Because my Wheel of Time graphic novel (comic book to the untrained eye) finally arrived. And that in itself is a miracle. I spent the previous couple of weeks searching comic book stores and regular book stores for the series and cannot find it anywhere. Even searching online they are all sold out except for one website. Whenever I come close to finding another website that would sell them the website is either shut down or they are only selling one....used. Now needless to say that the site I did buy it from is way overcharging. To save my mothers sanity I will not say here how much I did shell out for only 1 volume out of 5. Suffice it to say I would rather not do so again, if it can be helped. So I call upon you, my faithful blog followers to keep your eyes peeled, though good luck having a better time of it than I did.



Anyway, the book itself is really cool. It's nice to see the things that I have been reading of. Especially for a fantasy book where a good deal of the things are made up, it's nice to know what the author is thinking. Now about this time I am going to start losing my audience because no one really cares but me, and maybe Ian, though he probably gave up on reading this blog a while ago.



Though on a final note they are producing books now on the rest of the series and the first is due out in December, so I'm excited about that too. Hopefully they will be a little bit more accessible.

Holy Land Experience

We finally did it! Nick and I finally made it up to Holy Land U.S.A. We had been planning on doing this for ages just never got around to it. I guess that's what happens when two not very self motivated people plan something. So anyway, it finally came to fruition and let me say that it was the weirdest place I have ever been. It was a cross between Jerusalem and Middle Earth.



Apparently back in the day it used to be some kind of bizarre theme park that Catholics could make a pilgrimage to, or whatever. They had like a mini-Jerusalem set on a hillside with little concrete buildings all over the place. They recreated the Temple Mount and Calvary and different scenes like that.



And I must admit that it was pretty cool, don't know if I would have paid money to go and see it, maybe just trespass and park illegally to boot.

Now the real reason why anyone knows that this place exists is because of the famous Holy Land Cross that can be seen whilst driving down I-84. It's up high on the mountain in Waterbury, and I always used to wonder what it was when I was a kid and driving by.



As you may or may not know they just newly renovated the cross. The old one, I'm told, used to light up and looked a lot junkier, but it was the original, so a lot more highly coveted. I guess that's what procrastination gets us. Anyway, we finally got to see the new one up close and personal, and it was really cool. The view from the top of the mountain was spectacular too. Waterbury actually looked like a decent place from up there.



It was just a really neat place. There were all sorts of statues in seemingly random places with writing on huge, cracked stone tablets. It really did feel as if I was in Middle Earth. I was expecting Frodo (or Steven Chadbourne in costume) to pop out at any moment.



If you want to see all my pictures that I took, the full album is on my Flickr page.

Day on the Town

Yesterday morning when I woke up I called my mom to see if she wanted to come hang out with me for the day. Being the bum she is, she was still sleeping at 10:30am. Just kidding of course, she was probably up all hours of the night tending to a cranky grandson. So anyway, I called back later and asked, and I must say I didn't really have high hopes as my mother is not one to deviate from a schedule and/or make spur-of-the-moment plans. Surprisingly she said she would and showed up at my house around 12:30 or so.

This being her first time over in well over a month, I had to give her a tour of the updates on the house, which weren't all that numerous, but the niceties need to be followed. We sat with the dogs for a bit and Cody beat up mom pretty bad while Milo took advantage of the monopoly on the toys. She had suggested we go out to eat, and with activities being rather limited we hopped in her new Ford Explorer of which she is so very proud. We then proceeded to drive around aimlessly down Route 6 to find a good place to eat and finally settled on Carmine's, an Italian restaurant that ended up being very good.

Anyway, we ate, talked, she paid and left. I then tried to convince her to run across (literally) Route 6 with me to GameStop to see if they had a baseball game I could buy (they didn't). She refused and took her car across instead to T.J. Maxx. I joined her there after my fruitless search and spent about 5 minutes trying to find her. Finally succeeding, in the baby section, I steered her over the the men's section and a really cool hat I wanted her to buy. To make a long story short, didn't get the hat, but I did get a really sweet jacket for the winter. Then she dropped me back off at home and left, supposedly not wanting to be mauled by dogs again.



Lunch and a jacket, we should do this more often mom, thanks!