Oh, What Rapture!

Alternatively, "Oh.  What rapture?"  heehee

Over the past few months, Rowdy has changed his mind about what he wanted to do on his birthday from "have a great big party in the park with a jumpy house, taco truck and my friend Richard's band" to "let's go up to Universal Studios". 

We drove up to LA this morning.  It took us about two hours and change to go from our house to Hollywood, which isn't all that bad.  I hadn't been to Universal Studios since 1980, and Keiler and Rowdy had never been, so it was pretty-much a new experience for all of us.  Can I just say that it totally pays to get the preferred parking and the "front of the line" tickets?  Yeah.

Very fitting that we parked in the Frankenstein lot.  Rowdy loves the old Universal monster movies.

It wasn't very crowded, which was nice.  It was also nice that we got through a everything we wanted to do in a relatively short period of time.  Especially great was going to the front of the line at the Studio Tour.  That alone was worth the price of the "front of the line" upgrade. 

The King Kong 3D experience during the tour was really good--about 1 billion times better than the King Kong movie.  Universal also has a thing for having its rides and attractions spit on the customers.  Dinosaurs slobbered on us in King Kong and the Jurassic Park ride.  Scarab beetles spit on us in the Mummy part of the tour, and Maggie Simpson sucked on us like a pacifier and spit us out on the Simpsons ride.

The next time we come here, I'm going to use a scopolamine patch or take Dramamine.  The Simpsons ride made me too nauseous to take The Mummy ride. It was so fun, though.

A good time was had by all!  Happy birthday, Rowdstar!  I love you!

Rather Than Fast Five, Watch This Movie Set in Brazil

Waste Land

From IMDB:  An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.

Inanities

Before I totally leave the subject of weddings behind, I have two things to say:

The first is that whenever I hear something about the Crystal Harris/Hugh Hefner impending nuptials, I think about this clip from Christopher Guest's "Best In Show":

Crystal and Hugh talk and not talk for-ev-er, and still finding things to not talk about.

And then there was the news this week that Marie Osmond remarried her first husband, Steve Craig.  I do not know either of these people personally, but Marie strikes me as kind of a nutjob.  Who wouldn't be if they had to live her life?  But I think that she's a harmless nutjob and deserves every happiness.  How sweet is it that that she and her first love (I assume he was her first love) got back together, so many years after their divorce?

I remember when I was a freshman at the Y, and Jeffrey R.  Holland was the president of the university.  He gave a talk in which he mentioned that he and his wife had gone to the movies, but arrived late and couldn't find seats together.  They could hear people whispering, "Oh, that is too bad!  They're not going to be able to sit together!"  Then he looked around and saw that people were not whispering sympathetically about him and Sis. Holland, but about Steve and Marie, who were on a date.  Months later, when Steve and Marie announced their engagement, Pres. Holland gave another talk in which he said that he felt like he had a hand in pushing that relationship along by "outing" them in the earlier talk.  I wonder if he called them up on the occasion of their remarriage?

Movie Review--Major Suspension of Disbelief Edition

An action movie set in Brazil with no jiujitsu or B.O.P.E?
Absurdo!

Where Do We Go From Here?

So Public Enemy #1 is finally dead.  Objective achieved!  Now what?  Can we justify staying in Afghanistan?  Wasn't finding and killing him the main objective of that mission?  I'm just not that savvy about things like that, but I do know that my heart goes out to my friends and family who are affected by the endless deployments.

Bike Month!

May is bike month!  I am going to ride my bike to work as much as possible, including Bike to Work day on the 20th.

Accounting

I am almost half-way through a year of weekly challenges.  I cannot report that I have faithfully fulfilled every challenge.  Upon reflection, however, perfect completion of each task does not determine whether I grow and learn from each exercise.

For instance, did I record Weight Watcher's points every day last week?  No.  After two days, I was very cranky and discouraged.  So I stopped writing down points and just paid careful attention to what I was eating and why.

This week has some great challenges:  running stairs at Mt. Helix, which is easy to get R to go do with me; reading something from the Church handbook every day (very interesting and educational); and sending someone a surprise present. 

The surprise present has been one of the funnest challenges.  I love to think about to whom I should send it and what I should send.  It's also fun to get the response back from the recipient and know that it has given someone joy.  Occasionally over the last few months, I have had the inspiration to send something special to different people just because, and that has been really neat.