And It Goes On!

Sometimes (I think you’ll find) that things in your life seem to be balancing. They aren’t really great, but they aren’t really bad either. I am really starting to get that feeling right now. There are some good things, some not so good things. Right now things are starting to feel better.

One interesting thing that happened was my Dad getting into the Bay City Times AND The Saginaw News.

What he nor I were expecting is that it would be front page news. He had been unemployed for well over a year, and sent out well over 400 applications and never received so much as a call back let alone an interview. He’s actually going back to school to learn a new craft (which I commend him for, but it makes me sad that he should even have to). Everyone (including the writer and the photographer of the story) was hoping that this would result in work for him. Fortunately he found a part time time job at MBS Airport. He can still collect unemployment and go back to school, and knowing the hard worker my Dad is he will be back on his feet in no time and kiss that unemployment goodbye!

In other good news, Spring Training has begun in Florida and Arizona! Of course this means I get to watch my beloved Tigers take the field again, it also means Opening Day isn’t far away!

Seeing Johnny Damon in an Old English D is going to take some getting use to, but I think I’ll make it. I watched their first televised game on the MLB Network. It was a 9-5 win for the D and it was very cool to see Maggs ripping the ball again. I was also really impressed by the youngster Austin Jackson. It should be a really interesting year!

That being said, I am also eagerly awaiting the arrival of MLB 10: The Show. I didn’t think they could improve upon what was already the best baseball game I’ve ever played but it looks like they’ve done it! Hell they even have Verlander’s proper wind-up this year~!

I also recently watch Up in the Air with George Clooney. I learned something from this movie. I need to stop judging a book by its cover.

Upon seeing trailers for this movie I was totally uninterested at first. I read a lot of great reviews, saw that Clooney was up for an Oscar, but still it didn’t make much difference to me weather I saw it or not. Out of sheer boredom I decided to give it a watch, and boy was I surprised. This movie deserves any and all hype it got and Clooney deserved the acting nod that he was given. Go out and see it! It’s rare to see such a great dramatic film that manages to mix in comedy but keep it serious.

Glaringly Bad Plot-Holes

This is as good a way to describe things lately. A good movie or television script would have its writers trying their hardest to make sure there weren’t any. Such can not be said about my world lately. Things should be going good, in fact much better then they are. Jenny and I have a new baby on the way, I am getting some web work on the site to earn a little extra money for us, but things still feel pretty bad.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is most definitely some kind of  negative vibe-ish/karma-y type things lingering around. It could be that I am nowhere close to losing the kind of weight I was hoping for, maybe its that my Dad has been unemployed for over a year now, I don’t know.

Either way, I am trying to keep busy. I recently watched the new Sherlock Holmes movieand The Men Who Stare At Goats.

I completely loved “Holmes” I actually enjoyed some of the Sherlock stories long before I knew there was to be a new movie made. I was easily suckered into this because of my love for House MD, and as soon as I heard they tried to update Holmes with more House like banter (House and Wilson obviously modeled after Holmes and Watson) I was on board for this one and it didn’t disappoint.  Don’t let the trailer fool you, it’s not a balls-to-the-wall action as it makes it seem.

“Goats” was funny and had its moments, it also had a stellar cast, but at the end of the movie I never really felt all that connected to it. I would say that it is woth a watch though.

Speaking of watching things, the new season of House has been quite good. I stopped watching Heroes all together this year. Things went down hill following the first season (which was awesome), but after that things turned sour a bit, and each season got worse and worse to the point where I just stopped watching. However I was pleasantly surprised at the new season of Scrubs. I am loving the new cast, and it keeps the right balance of old characters in there as well to make it still “feel” like the old show.

Hopefully if I go to bed right now, I can sleep until spring training starts. Yeeeesssss, the Tigers traded away Granderson (my favorite player) but I will in fact keep watching them despite that last factual nugget.

It seems like forever!

Short and sweet is how we will do it. During the holidays we moved our computer desk upstairs. However we did not have a way to connect to the net up there so we left the CPU in the living room and we had the Laptop feed off the WiFi connection. Today I finally got the PC upstairs and running.

In my down time using the laptop I wasn’t privy to all of my stored passwords, but now that I am back on the ol PC things are working just fine for me (hence the blog update).

A happy new year to everyone albeit a bit late.  I am actually swamped with work as of late so no time for a longer entry.

Trying To Pull It Together

I would consider today a pretty momentous day. Jenny and I finished up 99.9% of all Christmas shopping a good month before Christmas! Thanksgiving is next week, which means the beginning of the busiest part of the year for us. I may have mentioned it in blogs past but I’ll bring it up again.

Jen and I rotate our Thanksgiving locale every year. Some people prefer the insane method of visitng everyone and having six different dinners. I love Thanksgiving and all but no thank you. We rotate between going to Jen’s parents, my parents, and having it here at home with my parents. To sort this out out you might need a flow chart but I’ve managed to simplify it pretty easily.

Jen’s parents place on Thanksgiving is the ground zero for all family activity on her side of the family. Jen’s Mom has a good 25 or people over year (not including us). They also live a good 10 minutes away from us, so we figure we are giving them a break on the work load to not have to feed three extra mouths, plus we seem them on a pretty regular basis. My parents live out a bit farther away and we don’t see them as often so inviting them over when we have dinner here always seems like a nice thing to do.

After Thanksgiving we are re-arranging  the living room to make room for the Xmas tree and all other Xmas related decorations.  So it’s going to be a busy few weeks leading up to the 25th O’ December.

Jen and I check out Funny People from one Judd Apatow who was behind 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked, ect ect.

Real good movie! Laughed my ass off at a lot of stuff. I thought Eric Bana was really awesome in this, and Adam Sandler works so much better mixing comedy and drama then he ever did with just the comedy in my opinion.  If anyone has not checked this out yet then I highly suggest a viewing or an extra addition to your Xmas lists.

Also watched Drag Me To Hell from Sam Raimi and I was less impressed. Most horror movies do not earn high critical praise and thi one most certainly did. I was told to expect cheese, but that it would be of the good to great variety and I guess I just didn’t see it. I certainly saw in parts of the movie but most of what I saw was the bad kind of cheesy.

On a totally unrelated note I am getting a little worried about my classes. I knew the math classes were coming down the road and I thought I’d be ready for them when they did but so far it is not turning out that way. I have always been a terrible numbers person and it doesn’t help that I find pretty much everything above basic math to be pointless in everyday life. I’m hoping (as the title indicates) that I can pull it all together sooner rather than later as not only do I have to pass these classes but I have to maintain a decent GPA in order to continue my grants.

A little too much slack…

Oh Gods its November!?! It looks like I snoozed on the blog a little bit too much. Not to worry though, not a lot has really been going on. I have been in what seems like a perpetual holding pattern for most of the year.

To catch you up on what has happened: I paid another visit to Ann Arbor and got a good report card on my foot/ankle. Nothing broken, nothing rejected, I go back in 2010 to have another look at it but so far, so good. Oh! I passed the two classes I was taking, just started on my Algebra class and my Marketing class last Monday. Algebra will be a challenge considering I haven’t so much as thought about it in nearly a decade.

The Tigers kind of faltered in the final weeks of the season and they ended up on the losing end of a one game playoff with the Twins. It was a hell of  a game, one for the ages if you’re a Tigers fan despite the loss. The Twinkies got destroyed by the Yankees in the first round. It ended up being the Yankees and Phillies in the World Series with the Yanks taking it in six games thus pushing by World Series prediction losing streak to four years running. WORST!

We did a lot of our Christmas shopping for Kayla already, hopefully we will get some extra cash soon to get a few more things for family as well.

And September Smiles On Me

Things are looking up….kinda…sorta… We still aren’t doing the best financially but that is not to say the situation isn’t improving at all. We’ve started saving for Christmas, which we at first thought might end up being a sparse one but I think we are gonna be okay in that department.

I spent the majority of last weekend working on my Early American History and Economic Theory finals. Needless to say I passed both finals and I passed both classes and I am now moving on to International Business and Religions of the World. Two electives in a row is mighty nice I have to say…..anything to distract me from my core classes 🙂

The Tigers continue to hold on to the first place spot they’ve held since May! Being that it is now September the race for the AL Central is officially on! And it is nice to once again the Tigers contending for a playoff spot following the debacle from last year.

I recently saw Inglorious Basterds and while I enjoyed it I just wasn’t all that blown away by it. LOTS of dialogue heavy scenes that dragged on for what seems like ever and most of it is in French, or German.  The most interesting characters had the least amount of screen time. The fellow playing Landa should receive an Oscar nod however.

I also saw District 9, a movie that I was blown away by. It is  featuring a talent pool from South America and a strange documentary/actual film kind of style that really sucked me in.

WETA and Peter Jackson once again delivered stunning and subtle special effects. They blend in so well that you just buy it. The story isn’t all that uncommon but it is told from a different perspective and it was just done so good. For me it does what a good movie should and that is that it should suck you into the narritive to the point where you are almost living in the story for a while. Great movie!