Wooden Playset

One of the things that kept me pretty darn busy for the first half of this year, was our new wooden playset. We wanted to put one of these in for the kiddies and right after the new year began, we starting shopping around. The design we wanted would have two towers, a princess one for Wonder-pea and a pirate one for Lil Pumpkin. The towers would be connected by a bridge. That's not too much right? But to get what we wanted would have cost upwards of $10 thousand dollars; and no I'm not exaggerating.

So we considered getting a playset not as elaborate but were unhappy with what we could get for even $3 thousand. There was a vision of what we wanted and settling wasn't an option.

Around this time a friend at work, Aja Bogdanoff, built a pretty awesome gazebo around her desk. It seemed pretty complicated but she researched it, drew up plans and made it happen. With that in mind I told my wife that I would be building the wooden playset....she concluded that I was insane...I agreed and began planning.

I looked at a lot of store bought sets and even bought a plan for a smaller, single tower one, just to deconstruct it and figure out what I wanted to do. I've built stuff in the past, pirate cove, a fish tank table etc, but this project was well beyond anything I had ever done.

This is what I came up with. Ah to be insane. It seemed so little and cute and doable in Maya.

Ground breaking! Lil Pumpkin inspects the site for his pirate fort. And then its time to frame! I used 4X4 cedars posts...strong and sturdy and they smell good too.






It soon became clear that my cute, little playset was in fact huge and monstrous. I started to feel slightly overwhelmed. The first modification to the original plan was losing the small princess tower all the way to the left. I need to step up construction and it wasn't that big to be of any real use. We may put a tubular slide over here next year.



The building inspector lends a hand.

Ramp time! The second modification was the length of the ramp. On the original plan it just wasn't long enough. We wanted something that Lil Pumpkin could get up fairly easy and the orginal plan would have had him practically climbing rather than walking.

The building inspector approves the ramp.

Time for some floors and slides.

The building inspector spots a mistake.

Shame on me for not being better with the pictures. My Dad said I should have taken pictures every step of the way, which was my intent...but alas...I sorta didn't. Soooo, rails, spokes and 2 roofs later it was done.

I tried to trim as little as possible off the trees. It fit pretty well into our "forest"; the princess tower is mostly hidden by the foilage.

View from our back porch.

It took a loooooot of time, much longer than I anticipated, but it was worth it because we got what we wanted and the kids love it. HUGE thanks to my Dad who made two trips from Florida to help me out; I couldn't have gotten the framing or roofs done without his help.

Amazingly I only had three major plan modifications and only a couple minor screw ups; the original plan for the princess roofs was for them to be pyramid/gazebo-like..but I couldn't quite get it to work.

I estimated that I spent under $3 thousand for the whole thing which is not bad. Man hours..I couldn't even guess. Many a weekend, I was out there from 8am-8pm, but it was actually pretty fun so it didn't feel like exhausting work.

There is more I need to do to it; put floors in the bottom sections, add a ships wheel, telescope and post caps on the little deck as well as some pirate and princess theming elements to both towers. Once the weather gets cooler this fall I will be back out there for phase 2.

My wife was so impressed with how it turned out, she is making a small list of things she wants built. Compared to the wooden playset, entertainment build ins and bookcases should be a breeze.

Oktapodi

I love everything about this short; very well done.



The official web site: Oktapodi

Genie

This weeks DrawerGeeks...

Poor Neglected Blog

Yes blog I am sorry that we haven't been spending much time together. This year has been busy, busy. I have pictures...I have posts, but I have been too darn busy to get them up here. Don't cry blog..I still like you.

I will get back to you soon blog, but right now we are getting ready to head to San Antonio. Tomorrow is our ten year wedding anniversary and we are leaving town with the kids for a few days. We'll do some River Walk...maybe some Sea World...because nothing says love and romance like a giant killer whale.

So hang in there blog...dry those tears and maybe I will bring you back a picture or two.

Results..finally...from the poll: What Did You Think of Indy 4?
So awesome my face nearly melted
from the awesomeness (26%)
The Holy Grail of the franchise (0%)
Better than a bowl of monkey brains (43%)
I would have rather been covered in snakes (13%)
It was so bad, I wanted to rip out my heart (17%)

And...what is that...is that a new poll...might be....

Barry the Bee Interview

We did this awhile back and I hear that it's on the DVD, however this is the first time I have seen it cut together with human footage. It plays pretty well.

Preview of Pixar's Presto

Looks super fun!!!

David's New Snail

I thought this was pretty fun....at some point I may do this with my kiddos..

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Let us begin: overall I really liked Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; whew..I thought the Pirates movies had long titles. It felt like an Indy movie and was mostly on par with Last Crusade and in that regard: expectations met!

Some giant crystal skull sized SPOILERS ahead...toss me the idol and run away!!

Things I dug. I dug the kid...Shia is rather charismatic and I thought he worked great. The interaction between him and Indy felt good and not a retread of the Ford-Connery team up in Crusade. Great seeing Marion again, although they introduced her so late in the movie (or so it felt to me) I had almost forgotten she was in the thing. Then of course there's Indy. Ford is obviously older, but I think he looked great as Indy and was just as fun to watch as in the old films. In fact I didn't want the movie to end because I was enjoying hanging out with the "ol gang" so much.

I was a bit skeptical, as it was becoming more apparent, that the aliens were going to be real. When we got a good look at one in the body bag I became a little uneasy as to where the movie was going. But then I thought "hell its the 50s...aliens, A- bombs, Elvis and communism..its reflecting the times". Plus if you can buy off on a box filled with killer ghosts and that a guy can get his heart ripped out and lives...if you can talk to a knight that is 100s of years old and drink from a healing chalice....why not aliens influencing early man? And it plays off the idea that aliens built the pyramids and that monkeys hate Russians...wait..what? more on that later..

Some fun references to other films. Indy mutters "I have a bad feeling about this" a nod to Han Solo. We get a glimpse of the Ark, albeit unnecessarily. Nice hat tips to Marcus Brody. And the one I was proud to figure out right away...when Indy is telling Mutt about riding with Pancho Villa, that was actually an episode of the Young Indiana Jone Chronicles. Indiana Jones NERD right here people..

At the very end, I loved how the hat blew to Mutt and as he picked it up, the cries of a million fanboys yelled out in horror and then were silenced....when Indy yanked it away. Nice. Honestly I could see a Mutt Jones spin off, .although hopefully he will change his name to Dakota or something. I feel that they need at least 1 more film with Indy headlining before they can truly hand the baton off. If they indeed do a Indy 5 (and the buzz I have heard is that it is a possibility) the Jones family could go on another adventure, Mutt, who is now calling himself Dakota has been back in school and learning the ropes from Dad, thereby making a better spring board for a spin off.........Lucas, call me.

Now it wasn't a total Indy 4 love fest 2008. The things I didn't like are great and small...lets start with the small..

This film felt smaller and more contained, like Temple of Doom. Raiders and Crusade felt more exotic with far more globe trotting. KOTCS felt like it was all in the jungle and in caves...like it was an episode of LOST.

While it was great seeing Marion again, there wasn't much for her to do. The reason I liked her so much in Raiders and why her and Indy are such a good match, is that she goes toe to toe with him. She's a very strong character. But, since she shows up so late, she doesn't do much other than drive... a lot.

At the end of the film I didn't feel that Indy had much to do...he seemed to easily get into the chamber...then there is a lot of standing around, bad feelings are had, things go awry and they run away. I wanted Indy more involved somehow. Of course this may have been a choice by the filmmakers to make the ending more like Raiders where Indy and Marion stand there tied up the whole time, and less like Crusade where there is stuff breaking, people falling, ground opening....chaos.

Which brings us to the silliness. My chief complaint with Last Crusade is that its too jokey. Brody somehow turned into a complete boob. Sallah is a wacky sidekick. And gags happen. Like a flaming plane passing Indy and Dad in a tunnel. Hey road runner...where's the coyote?

So I was expecting goofiness in Indy 4. Surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a fridge..ok...get propelled in said fridge and surviving...well...he would be dead from the impact if nothing else....but ok.. exciting fridge and seeing CG prairie dogs....why?..is this needed....ah lordy we're getting cutesy now. But I enjoyed him running around the test site and even thought "how in the hell will he get out of this one"...so I bought it all.

But during the jungle chase...when Mutt is up in the trees..swinging with the monkeys, my eyes rolled a lot. My suspension of disbelief turned into complete disbelief. He's freakin Tarzan all of sudden....really? My buddy Ernesto pointed out that it wouldn't have been so bad, it could have even worked, if he was awkward doing the swinging...like Parker when he first became Spiderman. No no Mutt is apparently a natural at this. Ok whatever...maybe you could swing from those vines...I wouldn't have put it in MY version of the movie..but ok.

Oh we're not done though, because once Mutt, Lord of the Jungle, exits the forest with his army of monkeys, he apparently commands them to attack the Soviets. Honestly this moment bothered me more than the swinging. On the humor/gag/silly meter it comes in under Crusade...but before Temple of Doom. Why has silliness been injected into the franchise? Raiders is the stand out film....straight action adventure..no gags no silliness...just greatness.

Over the weekend when I thought about the movie there was a lot that I really liked about it. The good and the great out weigh the silly moment or two. Bottom line: It was great fun hanging out with Indy..it was like watching your Dad kick ass again. If they do try to make a go at Indy 5 (originally there was to be 5 films total in the series) here's hoping they don't wait 20 more years.

Dr. Jones

Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens today. Woohoo! In a few hours I will be heading to the theater to enjoy "the adventure of a lifetime" with the "man in hat"...and other tag lines that have been used with these films.

I am reasonably excited, but not overly so. I waited 20 years to see some other movie sequels from a franchise I enjoyed as a kid only to walk away with a feeling of "meh". Thank god the guy responsible for "those" sequels isn't involved with this new Indy movie......oh wait...

My expectation is that it will be on par with Last Crusade, which was a good movie but had too much humor/gags in it for my taste. When I learned that Indy would have a tweenage companion I thought "crap..Short Round". Now I liked Short Round just like I liked the Ewoks....when I was 12, but now..not so much.

I've also been a little concerned that KOTCS would be too Crusade-like, but in reverse. So instead of clueless Dad along for the ride we have clueless tweenager asking dumb questions and chasing seagulls on the beach.

But...I am excited. It will be fun to go on one last adventure with Indiana.

Poll results for: Bad Jobs for Donald Duck...and we have a tie!!
911 operator (21%)
child care worker (5%)
english teacher (26%)
motivational speaker (11%)
opera singer (5%)
brain surgeon (26%)
yoga instructor (5%)

New poll is up!!

Meet the Real Wall-E

We do a pretty good job with Wonder-pea, telling her that what she sees in movies and TV, is not real; it's just pretend. I showed this clip to the kids last night and she asked "Daddy is Wall-E real?"..........."uhhhmm well......yeah...it uh..looks that way".

This is totally cool....I want one.

Having Computer Issues?

This could be the problem.....

The Simpsons Ride

The Simpsons Ride is now open at Universal Studios Florida (it should be opening in Cali later this spring). ReelFX did a couple minutes of the ride film which was pretty fun to work on. Being a big theme park geek, I have always wanted to work on a theme park ride.

I can't really say what I did on the ride because A. Mr. Burns would have me killed and B. it would give away a semi important part of the show. My scene does involve Maggie, Sideshow Bob and a panda, and occurs towards the end of the ride.

Hurry down to Florida and check it out. Free donuts and beer for the first 500 riders!

Digital Grunt

So hilarious........so true...

Home Alone

This week my wife took the kids up to Maryland to visit her parents, so it's just me and the fish. Woo..hooooo.........hoo sigh. I started missing the kiddos right away. While eating dinner and looking at the empty chairs, I must admit I got a little blue. Fortunately Wonder-pea has a lot of stuffed animals so I populated the table with Elmo, Mickey Mouse and the like. It was like when Cartman had the tea party. "Would you like some more tea Polly Prissy Pants?.....Yes please".

It became clear that playing with stuffed animals was no way to pass the time. Instead I focused my energy on doing stuff around the house. First thing was to rent a Rug Doctor to clean the carpets. Two little kids are hell on floors let me tell you. As I moved all the furniture I found Cheerios at every turn. Even in places you wouldn't expect to find them. I would like to know the ratio of Cheerios eaten by Lil Pumpkin, to how many he throws on the floor. My guess is he's not eating many.

Cleaning the floors didn't take long and with every fan in the house going full steam it was time to head outside....yay I love working outside! The big project was fixing, what we affectionately call, Shrek's Swamp. One side of our house gets little to no sun and it stays wet over there pretty much all the time. Over the years the grading has slowly flattened out and water just pools. Lots of mud, moss...lovely.

While I'm schelping around in the mud my foot feels way wet. Yanking my foot from the mud I see that my crappy outside shoes have stepped it up in terms of crappiness. The sole of my left shoe, about 90%, had come completely off. If my shoe and a flip flop mated and had a baby, it would look like this. Awesome I'm practicaly working outside in my socks.

With Shrek's swamp kinda, almost...most likely not entirely fixed, it was on to planting roses, flowers, jasmine and my much anticipated money tree; I hope it blooms $20s. When it came time to re-mulch around our trees, I found fire ants around most of them. At first I was like "yikes..stay away"...then the ghost of Steve Irwin appeared and said "Crickey mate I used to wrestle 10 alligators at once." By god your right...gloves on..and in I went and wouldn't you know...I didn't get biten not once. It was a Christmas miracle!

When I was finally finished with everything, I headed up to the Walmart because I like to hang out there...and I needed light bulbs. After two days of doing stuff around the house, morning to night, I was starting to feel pretty beat, almost to the point where my body was refusing to move. "We have decided that you have done enough, and if you won't stop moving by your own choice then we, being your arms and legs, will simply refuse to function."

Moments later as I was laying on the floor of Walmart, light bulbs clutched to my chest, I wondered what the kids were doing..


Poll results for: What do you think of the Indy teaser
Woohoo!!(45%)
May 22...get here NOW(17%)
I shed tears of joy (10%)
Looks great...but where is Jar Jar? (7%)
Meh(17%)
It's no National Treasure(3%)

And amazingly...a new poll is finally up!

She Took My Eggs

Are ya like me? Do ya like to color eggs at Easter? Well I don't actually color them, but my daughter Wonder-pea does. This year she graduated to official "dunker and retriever of the eggs" and for the most part she did a great job. Only one or two eggs met their end prematurely.

Now while it is true that Wonder-pea handles the egg decorating I do color one or two a year.... the cracked ones. I looooove dying me some cracked eggs. I like to dye them to look like some weird dinosaur or alien egg. I have made some neato ones in the past but never recorded them for posterity....until now! Behold..my single contribution to Easter.

I hope it hatches soon.

Horton Hears a Who

In theaters today...yes it's true....it's Horton Hears a Who. Many friends worked on this movie up there at the Blue Sky; watching the credits will be extra fun, yet challenging, as I scramble to check off everyone's name.

Why not take the family and enjoy the work of these fine peoples? Here is a fun clip in case you need convincing.



The movie looks super fun!! Go...GO NOW!

Let Me In

Very funny....

Indy One Sheet

Looks spiffy!!

Knight Rider

This past Sunday NBC ran the 2 hour movie-pilot-series relaunch of Knight Rider. I admit that I was looking forward to watching. When I was a kid I was a big fan of the show and after some weak attempts at relaunching over the years, it looked like they might have finally gotten it right.

Or not.

There is a brand new K.I.T.T. voiced by Moses himself, Val Kilmer. All new K.I.T.T does is drive fast. No turbo boost, no pursuit mode, no super pursuit mode.....just ZOOOM. Everywhere. A 2 hour commercial for a Ford Mustang with many, many MANY shots of the car zooming through the desert. "Experience the new 2008 Ford K.I.T.T."

K.I.T.T. can analyze a persons body tempurature, can detect heat signatures in a building, you know, the kind of stuff that's been going on in movies and sci-fi for the last 10 years. Amazing. What K.I.T.T., your using onboard GPS to plot a route to Vegas.....neato!! Maybe I'm driving K.I.T.T. because my car can do that too...

The single cool thing K.I.T.T. can do is morph its appearance. No, it can't turn into Optimus Prime but it can morph into cars of similar mass. This was cool....the first time. Three times later it seemed clear this was the "big" trick the car did....sigh..... couldn't Viper do something similar?

In one scene that made me laugh out loud, the bad guys start to hack into K.I.T.T. to take control of the car. Wow, never saw THAT happen on the old Knight Rider. Worse yet, K.I.T.T. made no attempt to stop them. Is the car running Windows 95? Enough about the car...

The new driver is a guy named Mike, because only name variants of Michael can drive the car. A John, Dave or Joe would just not work. When we meet Mike he is in his garage which looks like a set from Growing Pains. Apparently he is some sort of loser race car driver, who was raised by mom cause dad left...tears. Mike spends much of the movie "acting" badly and threating to punch K.I.T.T. in the throat; zero charisma. After K.I.T.T. saves its inventor's daughter they pick up Mike and lots of familar conversations are had about how K.I.T.T. doesnt understand human emotions......yawn..

At a crucial point near the end of the movie, Mike, his mom and inventor guy are trying to allude bad guys when mom decides its time to tell dear Mike about his father. Yes son I was waiting for just the right moment to tell you this...what better time then when we are jumping out a window. She tells him that dad is none other than Michael Knight. And she makes this revelation in a "ta-da" sorta way like Mike is supposed to say "Michael Knight??!! Really!! Holy crap!!! I used to love that show!! I can't believe he is my dad!"

Moments later mom is shot and killed and Mike has to "act" and its painful to watch. Show some emotion...anything...I would take a laugh even...a inappropriate emotion would be better than the stare.

The Hoff shows up at Mike's mommy's funderal. Did he have this kid while he was driving the original K.I.T.T. or before when he was Michael Long (remember he was a cop that got shot in the face)....was he married...one night stand? They never tell us and at this point I didn't care, I just wanted it to end. Hoff tells Mike that "one man can make a difference" and then walks off into the woods. These words from the father he never knew convince Mike to leave the Seavers garage and to sign up with the new Foundation for Law and Government, drive K.I.T.T. "offically" and continue to act badly.

Apparently the show got huge ratings and will most likely become a series, which is fine. Recast Mike. The original show "was" about Michael Knight..."a man who did not exist". For all the cheesy acting and yelling into his watch Hoff was fun. The new Mike....not so much.

Get better writers. I swear this script was pooped out minutes before the strike started. Don't recycle old show ideas from 20+ years ago and give the car some neato aspects we've never seen before.

Then and only then..the show *may* be fun to watch.

Indiana Jones and the Teaser Trailer

Woohoo!!!!



Results from the poll: the New Years resolution I have NO intention of keeping

eat more vegatables (20%)
learn french (30%)
to exercise 3 times a week (0%)
no more milkshakes (20%)
to not worry about work (30%)
play less Team Fortress 2 (0%)

And its true. I most likely won't be learning French this year. Aaaand try as I might I will probably be worrying about work...it's in my nature. New Indy poll is up!!

Georgia Aquarium

A few weeks ago, while in Atlanta, we visited the Georgia Aquarium. It was without a doubt the coolest aquarium I have ever visited.

In the main area there is a ginormous video screen showing fish and rainbows.

Inside this area resides the biggest damn viewing area I have ever seen. It measures 63 feet long and 27 feet high. Each panel (6 total) is 2 feet thick. It was like sitting on the ocean floor. Super cool. I want Home Depot (the sponser) to build one in my house.



Whale shark!!!

The River Scout area had some pretty unique fish displays.

One of the ballrooms was open so we took the opportunity to take a break. There were a few nice viewing areas there as well.

Whale shark!!!

What's that in the distance???

WHALE SHARK!!!

This area had lots of hands on activites for kids as well as a kiddie play area. The next two areas we dimmly lite so the pictures were pretty grainy....so the entrances are all I have to show.

Those are video displays and not actual tanks.

Nemo!!! Actually this guy, who has his own 3D movie up stairs, is named Deepo. Now I am assuming that since Home DEPOt is a big sponsor...and their store color is orange....that was what inspired this character. Nevertheless I amused myself several times asking Wonder-pea if she had seen Deepo. No? Then we should go Find Deepo....come on everyone....we're Finding Deepo.

We had a great time and the aquarium is pretty awesome. The World of Coke is located across from the aquarium but we didn't have the time this trip. Next time...oh yes....

Kung Fu Panda trailer

Looks like the Disney lawyers yanked the new Wall-E trailer off YouTube. Free publicity whaaaaa??? Here's some fresh and legal Kung Fu Panda instead. Looks way fun!

Wall-E Trailer

Super Bowl WallE

There more little bits I see with him, the more I'm looking forward to the movie.

Back in Time

A local Back to the Future super fan brought his tricked out Delorean by ReelFx. Justin Barrett braved the cold to take pictures of us staring at the car. Once powered up...the flux capacitor was fluxing..oh yes it was.

Sarah Connor

The other night I checked out the new Terminators series, the Sarah Connor Chronicles, which picks up about two years after Terminator 2. Yet again those pesky terminators travel back in time to kill John Conner and yet again a terminator is sent back to protect him. But instead of Ah-nold, John's protector is the lovely fembot, Cameron.

The thing that struck me immediately is that no matter how many times they blow up Cyberdyne or destroy Skynet, those damn terminators will continue to exist. What would be an interesting twist, is if John Conner is somehow responsible for Skynet, thus making him the disease and the cure.

Now if you were going to travel back in time and kill say....Hitler. Would you do it when he is a teenager? Seems like the killer robots from the future should be traveling back to the day John was born and.....asta la vista baby. Get it!!...cause he'd be a little bab-nevermind. Better yet go back and kill Sarah when she was a kid. But terminators aren't cold blooded like that. They want to give their victims a sporting chance.

Ok fair enough. But why send back one terminator? You want John Conner taken out, send back ten of those bad boys. Likewise for the resistance. One termi might be a good defender but 20 would be better.

Regardless of logistics and some silliness, I did enjoy the pilot and will continue to watch for now. But it could go down hill. If John takes fembot to the prom.. I will most likely stop watching.

Go Rudolph you red nosed freak!!

Favorite Rankin/Bass Holiday Show
The Year Without a Santa Claus (15%)
Frosty the Snowman (15%)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (62%)
Santa Claus is Coming to Town (8%)
Rudolph's Shiny New Year (0%)
Pinochio's Christmas (0%)
Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (0%)

New poll is up!

LOST in the New Year

Christmas Is Coming...

...the goose is getting fat...and I along with it. My lord there has been no shortage of holiday goodness around the studio. It would be rude of me not to sample each and every one. And so I have.....several times.

I had been doing pretty good. I was watching what I was eating...working out a little and loosing some weight but from Thanksgiving to New Years its just a hopeless cause. To hell with trying to do good....bring on the cookies!!

Results from the poll show that people hate the lemon pie....me too!! I put it on there for my wife and she didn't even vote for it. Take that lemon pie!! Pumpkin and apple will fight to the death to determine the true winner.

Favorite Kind of Pie
pumpkin (25%)
apple (25%)
banana cream (20%)
lemon (0%)
chicken pot (10%)
pecan (10%)
blueberry (10%)


And just in time for the holidays and new poll is up!!

Christmas Time at Chase Manor

As December was approaching this year my wife proposed we get a 2nd tree for our game room. I immediately checked to see if she was ill. Our existing tree is quite a job and combine that with 2 Christmas villages and lights in the backyard and front, I already had my work cut out for me. But she insisted that it would be a smaller tree on which we could hang all of our cartoon/kid ornaments.

Secretly I suspected that this was her way of getting rid of Spiderman. I have a Spiderman ornament and he is in a cool web slinging pose. Each year I put it in the center of the tree and each year she asks "Does it have to go in the center?" to which I reply it most certainly does. But now Spidey, Jimmy Neutron and all our Disney ornaments have been cast out, to a tree of their own. Spidey front and center.

Putting up a 2nd tree was not as much work as I thought and has added Christmas cheer to the west wing. That was a good thing....but then..

With the Christmas lights, I put those barely moving deer and a snow man in the backyard so the kiddos can look out the kitchen window and ooo and ah. Out front I usually just put lights in the trees and bushes. This year my wife suggested putting icicle lights on the house. With most houses around us having lights up on their houses I figured this would help make our street a powerhouse of Christmas cheer. Her suggestion of a 2nd Christmas tree worked out well, so what could possibly go wrong.

First thing was locating the lights. I went to a Lowes, Home Depot, Garden Ridge, France, Target and three Walmarts before finding them. But I got em so SCORE.

The guy who takes care of our yard offered to put up the lights. You silly fool!! I can do that myself. No problem...its just lights..its not like its hard or anything to hang lights. I continued to laugh at him until he drove away. As he sped off I remembered that the last time I tried to get up on the roof I had a panic attack and peed my pants. My laughter turned to a pained look. The kind our President gets before speaking..

But I had a plan. I would put the lights up.....at night!! That way if I freaked out and started crying OR if I fell off the roof and landed in a bush, no one would see me......or call 911, mmm yeah it wasn't a well thought out plan.

So out I went. Dark. Cold. Perfect. I started with what I thought would be the easy part of the roof line....the part that I could get to from the ground. Of course all the bushes and plants were in the bloody way, so much creative maneuvering was in order. With that string of lights mostly on it was finally time to get on up on the roof. Woohoo lets go!!

My yard is sloped so it took some time to find a nice stable spot for the ladder. I trotted on up with lights in hand.....looked out on the vast, dark, cold roof. Here we go. I put my left foot on the roof...aaaaaaannnnnnd decided that there was no way in hell I could do this. Maybe if I sorta...turned around...no no that's even scarier. Well why do I need to put the lights on the gables anyways...I mean.....sigh...YOU FAILED.... I would call yard man the next day.

After two hours I had put up one and half strings of lights. I suck.

The next day yard man put all the lights up. My wife called to tell me how beautiful the house looked. I got home and saw no lights and none of the outside plugs were working, which is always a good sign. Quick trip to the circuit breaker box and sure enough the outside circuit tripped. Well we will just flip that back on an....POP-a flash of orange-smoke....FLIZZLE FLAZZLE!!

The electrician comes out the next day and sure enough the circuit overloaded. Yes the POP-FLASH-SMOKE was my first clue. The backyard lights (3 amps) were on the same circuit as the front house lights (18 amps) and the circuit is a 20 amp circuit. Damn you 1 amp. The GFI outlet had a short in it which caused the main circuit to fry, but with some plutonium adjustments to the flux capacitor and proton pack....we were back in business. A lesson in how electricity works for only $270.

Light problems aside, I'm glad we got em. And now at last, Chase Manor is ready for Christmas. Bring it on.

It's a Wonderful Bug's Life

Results from the poll:

Favorite Animated Insect Movie
The Ant Bully (19%)

Antz (14%)

Bee Movie (5%)

A Bug's Life (62%)

People love the life of bugs......bee movie?....not so much.

A new poll is up just in time for the holidays!

Thomas the Expensive Tank Engine

Christmas is approaching...there it is....right behind you!! And so begins the shopping. Now both my daughter, Wonder-pea, and my son, Lil Pumpkin, dig the Thomas the tank engine. When visiting any Barnes and Nobles much time and fun is spent playing with these little trains.

Wonder-pea has been a Thomas fan for awhile and has a few engines and some track, all provided by family members at previous birthdays, christmas etc. We've been thinking of expanding the collection, maybe even getting a train table like they play with at the book store.

As it happens, I found myself in the Toys R Us and decided that I would pick up a few things. Ya gotta start the shopping early before everything is gone and you are left with giving your children scotch tape and beef jerky. So here is me...beating the rush.

This first thing I took a look at was a Roundhouse where Wonder-pea and Lil Pumpkin could store all their trains after a hard day of training around.

How much is this thing........hummm oh here it- $80.00!!! HOLY POOP!!! I dropped it like it a hot biscuit. Once I finished shaking I turned it over with my foot and looked at the price again... and again...and again...and again...

I quickly walked away.

Maybe another little train with a coal car would be good. $20.00!!! OK train with no coal car $15.00. My Pirates of the Caribbean figures from NECA, which are pretty detailed, run $14.00.....why in gods name is this thing $20. And then I saw that the Thomas line boasts: Made from Real Wood. Damn you real wood.

How about "Made From Something that Won't Make This Stuff So Expensive".....like paper or feathers. The more I explored the wonderful toy world of Thomas, the more it become clear that Learning Curve, the makers of this cash cow, are rolling in the freakin dough. Sure it's "official" merchandise and then there is the "real wood" thing. But come on. A little 3 inch train should not be $20.

After my mind stopped spinning, I though, o-k maybe we can just get the table. It's just an average looking table with a scenery image on top. We will get the table and trick- uh-CHECK...to see if other family members want to buy the crazy expensive trains, track etc.

Tables run: $250-400. My.....god...

I hope the kids enjoy the scotch tape and beef jerky.

Sith

I finally had some time to do a decent drawergeeks submission.

Ninja Parade

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

Bee Movie

Bee Movie opens today. Yes its out right now!! Go....hurry.....time is running out!! ReelFx did some promotional spots for the film. I have a couple shots I did up in the animation section. Enjoy.

A new poll is up as well. Here are the results from the previous:

Favorite Team Fortress 2 DEFENSE character

Demoman (33%)

Heavy (33%)

Engineer (33%)

A three way tie!! You're all winners!!

Kung Fu Panda

**UPDATE movie is working again**

I'm super excited for this one. Go Panda!!

Spiderman 3 on DVD

Not gonna buy it. Not gonna rent it.

Look at him over there, sitting in the rain, looking all depressed. What went wrong with my movie? Too many characters? Too much dancing? Too much crying? Yes, yes and hell yes.

Have you forgotten dear Spiderman why your 3rd outting sucked so bad? If so, reread what I wrote about it here and then here.

Eagles Scream

Tonight I hit a steam rating of 10 after spending about a week bouncing around in the 9.somethings. Woohoo!! I have no idea what this rating means but woohoo!!

I've been playing TF2 a lot and by a lot, I mean A LOT!! I need to ween myself down on the game play so I don't burn myself out. I've been telling myself that over the past two weeks. Apparently I'm ignoring myself.

Peace Love Frankenstein

There is a new shirt design in the My Shop area.....hard to believe? Tell me about it. It's the first new anything to go into My Shop in months. One wonders how long My Shop will stay in business.

Team Fortress 2

TF2 is out!! Yes its true. I have been playing the Beta Orange Box release for a few weeks now and its a lot o fun; I'm actually doing pretty good...who would of thunk it possible. Now you can join in on the fun by going HERE.

Big congrats to my buddies up at Valve: Andrew Burke, Hamish Mckenzie, Karen Prell and Matthew Russell.

Poll results...for: Of my 5 shows, which will rock the hardest this season

HEROES (40%)

The Office (47%)

LOST (7%)

24 (7%)

Smallville (0%)

..damn you NBC

Technology is pretty awesome when it works but when it doesn't, its really really annoying. Take our dual tuner DVR for example. Recording an entire season of a series...wonderous...recording two shows at once...a miracle of the modern age. The only problem is that one of the dual tuners is flaky and must only be able to hold 6% instead of 100%.

We discovered this when the disk space suddenly jumped from 56% to 100%.

We discovered this last Thursday when we had premieres of The Office and Smallville scheduled to record at the same time.

Smallville recorded but The Office did not, even though we were at 56% full at the time of the recordings; 100% after. I jumped around like an angry monkey...hit the DVR with my club and threw a rock at the TV, but to my dismay The Office was still not showing up in my playlist.

Then I remembered that NBC had just announced that they were pulling out of iTunes making episode available for FREE, the day after they aired. Awesome. The next day I happily went to nbc.com to download The Office premiere.

The kids are in bed, the wife is ready to watch and.....why isn't it working? Let's try again...nothing. Glad to see they tested it out. Reboot..nothing...try Firefox...no.....curse at it unmercifully...nope. There is nothing NOTHING on the page that says anything about "what you need to view the shows". Brilliant. Does it use some fancy new Java plugin or magic...who knows. Also nowhere does it say "having trouble viewing the show?". No support!! Fan-freakin-tastic.

Fortunately there is a forum on nbc.com and a thread for Tech Support. Sure enough, many folks are having the same problem. This is Friday...NBC's new season launched on Monday...their player is not working and no one from "support" is telling people anything in the forum. NBC you are upsetting me.

I check iTunes, maybe just mayb-NO...no Office season 4, which the more I thought about it the dumber this seemed. People use iPods to watch their TV..to take it with them. Pulling out of iTunes completely alienates that market. But I guess NBC doesn't like making money.

So I turned to Google. For the love of god Google tell me where I can find this episode. Google returns some options but what a surprise the content has been removed...most likely by NBC. No no consumers...you will watch our shows on our broken player or you won't watch them at all!!

But then I see it...my salvation....Amazon.com. Apparently I can pay $1.99 and download the episode from something called Amazon Unbox Video. Wow sorta like ITUNES! You would think that with the problems NBC was having with their own FREE player, that they might point people over to Amazon....make a little cash and keep people happy. Insanity!

In the end The Office premiere was pretty funny...making the journey worth it; Amazon I have feelings for you...call me.