Christmas Wrap-Up, Iowa Trip Prep

We had a nice Christmas yesterday with presents and donuts and a nice Christmas dinner, and today is Cheryl's birthday.

I was so hoping to have the Building Permit in time for Cheryl's birthday, but my drawings took too long. I didn't get the application submitted until late this afternoon. It'll probably be another week or so before it gets approved.

Meanwhile, we're going to celebrate Cheryl's birthday today by going out to dinner at Macaroni Grille. So we can draw on the paper table cover and dip hot bread into delicious olive oil. And then come home and watch a movie or something.

After that, we're going to get crazy with the packing because we're heading out to Iowa early tomorrow morning.

I stopped by the library this afternoon after dropping off the building permit application at City Hall to return some bad book-on-CDs which Cheryl had picked up last week. For some reason, two of the CDs from one book were identical. Weird.

Since we're leaving so early in the morning, though, the kids will be sleeping through the first three or four hours so I don't expect we'll need them both. One book generally takes 12-18 hours, which should cover most of the trip.

Frankly, I'd rather drive in absolute quiet. I like to just drive and let my mind wander. It's very relaxing.

The Hobbit Part 3

It's been too many years since I read the very short book, so I can't judge whether it was really worth creating three very long movies about it, but speaking strictly from a mathematical viewpoint, it just don't add up.

There was this hobbit by the name of 'Bilbo', right? And he was living in his little hole in the ground in a community of like-minded people, some of whom were OK and some of whom were ... annoying. Bilbo, unlike the majority of his neighbors, is curious about the world. When Gandalf, the 'wizard', offers him a chance to explore the world (via some behind-the-back conjuring and outright trickery), he ends up on a big adventure which takes him from the safe confines of his home to the Elven lands and then to a city besieged by an evil dragon and then to the Lonely Mountain where he witnesses a huge fight between Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Orcs. He is rewarded handsomely for his efforts (as a 'burglar') with gold and mithril and goes back home to rest on his laurels and retire in peace and harmony.

Until many years later when he returns to the land of the Elves and leaves his Precious in the hands of his nephew, Frodo. But that's another story.

Three movies. Nearly nine hours. Wow. Seems to me I remember the whole story being told in an animated version several years ago, and that only took two hours. It served the purpose. It got the main points across.

This version goes on for a long time, and after a while it occurs to me that it isn't so much the story of the Hobbit as it is the story by the Hobbit. Bilbo is certainly there as a witness, but he is not central to the action; indeed, in this third part of the new 'trilogy', it is more the story of the Madness of Thorin on one side, and the Nobility of Bard.  (There's also some trivial nonsense about the Elves and Wizards battling the Necromancer, but that's just there to create the link to the LOTR story.)

We all enjoyed the movie but I'm not sure what we'll remember when it's all said and done, when the DVD is out and added to our collection and it sits on our shelf along with the other ones.  There have been a lot of arguments about it on-line, but since most of us (with the exception of Adam) aren't really interested in debating the subtle nuance of invented worlds, we'll just have to wait and see what kind of staying power it has in our minds.

Meanwhile, we are thankful to James for taking the whole family out to see it. This was his Christmas gift to the family.  And we had a lot of fun!

Thanks, James!

Shocking Failure

We're getting ready to go to Iowa to visit Sandra and Brian. We decided, instead of renting a van over at the airport, to take our ancient Caravan over to the dealer and have it tuned up.

They found a list of things wrong with the car, but we opted out.  Except for the actual tune-up. Three hundred dollars for a tune-up. Seven hundred dollars (minimum) for all the other things they want to fix. Shocks. Fuel filter. Kind of surprised me. How on earth could it cost so much to replace some simple shock absorbers and a fuel filter?

Of course, I'm remembering how much it cost to do the same thing for the old Toyota. Fifty bucks for the shocks, fifteen bucks for a fuel filter. A couple hours of labor, tops.

But not on the Caravan.  Why? Because the fuel filter is located on top of the gas tank. And you have to drop the gas tank to do it.

Huh? What a stupid design!

I figured it would be easy enough to do the shocks myself; I bagged the fuel filter because not even I am stupid enough to try that one on right before a major trip.

I soaked the shock bolts in solvent because they were kind of rusty and let them sit overnight, but apparently that wasn't enough. The top one came off easy enough; the bottom one busted right off.

Rats.

A couple days later, after a trip to the Firestone place (I was too embarrassed to take it back to the dealer) and some additional payola, the shocks were fixed and we were ready for our trip.

End of the Year

The Christmas season is supposed to be relaxing, isn't it? Days off of work, time to sit around with family and spend quality time?

So why am I so stressed out again?

My focus is completely wrong. I'm anxious about finishing up these Christmas cards -- mainly because we didn't send out (hardly) any at all last year -- and am feeling overwhelmed by the amount of time and effort it takes to write them.

Friends and family, I love you all, but you are wearing me out.

It doesn't help that my job -- you know, the place I go to every day to try and earn some bread to put on the table -- is turning into a nightmare of dread. A nightmare because I. don't. care. any. more. My drive, my ambition, my desire to succeed has fizzled out like last year's birthday candle. My anxiety overload has washed over that old flame like a biblical flood and drenched it so deeply that it will never, ever, ever burn again.

So my job is wearing me out as well.

There are so many things going on around here that contribute to the endless spiral of depression that I cannot begin to list them all.

I'll just shut up for now and go eat chocolate.

Chocolate with peanut butter.

That always makes me feel better.

For awhile.

Grace Point Finale revisited

OK, now that we've seen the finale in its entirety, it makes a little more sense.

(Spoilers ahead!)

Detective Carver is (sort of) reconciled with his daughter. He's going to get the surgery he needs.

Detective Miller's son, Tom, was the one who killed Danny, but it was accidental. Her husband, Joe, took the fall because he wants to protect Tom, who actually killed Danny. But Tom was trying to protect Danny from Tom, who is a pedophile. Danny just got in the way when Tom was swinging the oar at his father.

In a weird sense, justice was done. If Joe Miller (the dad) hadn't been pursuing Danny, none of it would've happened. Joe feels responsible, so he's going to pay for the crime of being a pedophile even though he wasn't the one who actually killed Danny.

And it wasn't the look that passed between father and son in the interview clip that revealed the truth to Detective Carver; it was the admission by Tom that "nobody else" had hit him. Only Tom.

Detective Miller is leaving town. She cannot live there anymore, even though all her friends are there. She feels responsible because, as Beth said, how could she not have known her own husband was a pedophile?

So she didn't answer the call from Detective Carver because she knows her husband didn't kill Danny. She didn't want to hear his suspicions that Tom was the one. Because she's going to protect her son, no matter what. And she has agreed with Joe that the truth will never be told.

Danny, of course, will have to live with the fact that he killed his friend. And that his own father is a pedophile who was trying to develop a relationship with his friend. That's a horrible combination of guilt, disgust, and jealousy.

That kid is going to need some serious therapy.

Grace Point Finale

We'd watched most of the Grace Point episodes because we just can't get enough of David Tennant.

He was a perfect Barty Crouch, Jr., a psychotic Hamlet, and an amazing Dr Who, Now he is playing a "famous" (or infamous) detective attempting to solve a murder in a tiny little village on the northwestern coast of the US. Only instead of taking a couple hours to tell the story, it is dragged out for ten episodes to the point where you want to scream.

Tonight was the final episode. But it was also the High School Orchestra Winter Concert. And since Cheryl is the president of the Band and Orchestra Boosters, and because we really enjoy music, we attended that in lieu of watching the silly TV show.

Because, after all, we can always watch the TV show, but there is only one live performance of the orchestra students.

The kids were wonderful. The directors put on an amazing show. And it ended too soon (although my eyes were burning holes in my skull from the dry air we've been experiencing lately).

Afterward, we went home to eat celebratory ice cream and watch the last ten or fifteen minutes of the TV show. Which was just enough to leave us wondering what really happened. Like ...

What was the significance of the look that passed between Tom Miller and his son when they were being interviewed?

What did Detective Carver see in the interview clip, and why did he call Detective Miller? And why didn't she answer the phone?

And why does it always seem that scriptwriters use pregnancy as a means to imply a reconciliation between an estranged couple? (See Parenthood for a particularly outrageous example of this phenomenon.) The Solano family hast just lost their preteen son and suffered through an excruciating investigatory ordeal; is another child going to erase all that trauma?

The last thing a strained marriage needs is another baby in the house. Especially when there are already teenaged-or-older kids in the house. Do they really have the energy to spend another eighteen years raising ungrateful offspring?

Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy was in the theaters for about a month or so, and I never found time to see it. Everyone said, "You must go!" but I never did. Because there are so many other things that had higher priority. Like the job, housework, basement plans, etc. I have long ceased to be a fun person. Facebook bears testimony to the fact that all of my family, friends and acquaintances are far more fun than I am: countless pictures of vacations, weekend pleasure trips, adventures in Disneyworld, European tours, potlucks, birthday parties.

Movies.

Well, maybe we can do something about movies.

The DVD for GotG finally arrived at the stores and I picked it up so that we could have a movie night at home. Most of the kids had already seen it, but us old fogies hadn't, so it was a bit of a struggle to keep them from talking through all the good parts (warning: our kids have a tendency to talk through movies even if some of the audience hasn't seen them yet). Nonetheless, we still managed to enjoy it.

The "origin story" is quite engaging, and the characters grow on you like mildew on a shower curtain. And it has everything needed to entertain. There's action (including  the obligatory slaughter of anonymous persons who are no more than cannon fodder for any conflict between good and evil) to define the distinct attributes of each of the primary players, romance (which always plays out as two characters who can't stand each other in the beginning), humor (an alien who takes everything literally), pathos (the son who lost his mother at an early age), and mystery (as in, why was the main character abducted by space pirates in the first place?). There's beautiful aliens, handsome starship pilots, and weird creatures from other planets - including a genetic human/raccoon hybrid and a talking tree.

In short, it has everything required to provide two hours of riveting entertainment. And it was directed by Joss Whedon.

'Nuff said.

Just Teasing. Not.

Having been on the receiving end of bullying in my youth due to my small stature and good grades (yes, it was a crime to be smart back in my day, too), I am forever curious to know why people talk mean to one another, then try to pass it off as "just teasing". It infuriates me; does it infuriate you as well? Or are you one of those people who think it is funny to make cruel remarks or innuendo and try to laugh it off?

Every few months, for some odd reason, I visit Orson Scott Card's website. He's the writer of "Ender's Game", a rather famous Science Fiction story (for those of you who aren't into Science Fiction). Which was a great short story, a passable novel, and a horrible movie. I read the short story; I endured the novel (and a couple of the sequels), and passed on the movie (even though it has Harrison Ford in it).

On his website, Mr. Card writes movie reviews, political essays, and commentary on the life and times of North Carolina, where he lives. It is sometimes interesting, sometimes funny, sometimes insightful, and sometimes annoying. Mr. Card is a Mormon, but he does not proselytize on his website, which I appreciate since I don't agree with his theology.

Mr. Card wrote about this particular issue -- teasing -- back in October, which tells you how often I read his site. I just read it today. And immediately wanted everyone in the world to read it, too. Especially people who experience a perverse pleasure out of teasing other people.

I do not like teasing of any kind. Teasing makes me angry. People pretending that it isn't harmful to others, makes me angry. Some say I'm oversensitive. Especially guys. Guys who remind me a lot of those kids back in school who bullied me because I wasn't big and strong and athletic like they were. That's how guys communicate, right? Teasing, punching, slapping, insulting. In school, I developed a defense mechanism for dealing with it: they wouldn't hurt me if I insulted myself first. They thought it was funny. They couldn't hit and laugh at the same time.

It bothers me when I hear this at the office or at church. But it bothers me most when I hear it at home. I've tried to convince the kids that it is not acceptable, but sometimes I still hear it, and I go ballistic. I don't want to hear it in my house anymore than I want to hear swearing in my house. It is simply not acceptable.

I want the home to be a place of safety, a place of refuge. And this quote from Mr. Card really got to me:

"If your own home is a place of danger instead of a refuge, then it's not really your home, is it? You are bound to look for that refuge somewhere else."

Home is supposed to be a place where you can relax and be safe, let down your hair, be totally yourself and know that you are accepted for who you are. What happens if the one place you want to be safe is just another place you can be bullied?

Winter Band Concert 2014

Marching Band ended just a little while ago, and suddenly it's time for the Winter Band Concert. Where does the time go?

Deb plays in the Symphonic Band, but there were a couple other bands who played their pieces first. Freshman Band, Concert Band. Then Symphonic. Then some other upper-classmen bands. I didn't really notice those as much. While we support the Music programs in general, we mostly support Deb in whatever band she is playing in.

I had to do a little training with the Robotics team in another part of the building prior to the concert so ended up rushing things a bit to get to the auditorium in time. But some of the kids in the Robotics team are in Band, so everyone understands how those things work.

The concert went from 7:30 to a little past 9:30, so we were all a bit tired and cranky afterward. I was definitely ready for bed.