LONGWALKABOUT

Here is my definitive list of the the five Best Keanu Reeves films.  Why, you ask.  Well, because I’m a little under the weather, and this is what I felt like doing.

Mr. Reeves has done a lot of films, so doing a top five is fun.  I would have done a Paul Hogan top five, but that have looked something like this.  1. Crocodile Dundee.  2. Crocodile Dundee part II.  3. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles.  4. Subaru Outback commercial.  Etc. etc.  No disrespect to my hero Mick Dundee, but Keanu has a lot to choose from, and he was Johnny Utah, who was also a hero of mine.

5.  Speed.  You know that you love it too.  If it’s on tv some lazy Sunday afternoon, you’ll sit there and watch the entire thing while you eat Doritos and fall in and out of sleep.  Clean the cheese of your hands before you touch the couch.  Originally the roles of Jack and Annie were written for Jeff Bridges and Ellen Degeneres.  I can’t even picture that.  Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Serenity, The Avengers)  rewrote the script, but was uncredited.

4.  The Matrix.  Just the first one, ok, not the last two, which got kind of convoluted.  That first one, though, that one is a classic. I think I saw it twice in the theater.  That’s a lot for me considering that I make it to the movies about five times a year.  Even less now that I have kids.  At the time The Matrix came out there was nothing else like it.  Will Smith was approached for the role of Neo, but turned it down to do Wild Wild West.  Things seem to have turned out okay for him though.  Keanu and some of the other actors went through four months of martial arts training before filming the fight scenes.

3.  A Walk In The Clouds.  I am a sucker for a good romance. There are a lot of things to appreciate about this movie.  It’s formulaic, but beautifully shot.  It also has the whole time period thing going for it.  They needed a third act for the movie, so one of the writers, who happened to own a vineyard, thought, what is the worst thing that could happen to my vineyard.  Fire.  His home and about a third of his vines burned shortly after the movie was released.

2.  Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  I am going to watch this with my kids this summer.  What better way to teach them about history, and the effects of messing with the space/time continuum.  Pauly Shore originally auditioned for the role of Ted.  My childhood thanks whoever made the decision not to cast him.  Keanu said in the past that he had nightmares that “He played Ted” would be the inscription on his tombstone.

1.  Point Break.  Let’s run down some of the things that make this movie great.  Patrick Swayze.  Bank robbing surfers who wear president masks.  That foot chase through backyards and houses in L.A.  Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers playing a punk surfer.  The fact that the villain is so likable.  Keanu played the the Johnny Utah role.  Matthew Broderick, Willem Defoe, and Val Kilmer were offered the role, and Johnny Depp auditioned.  Bullet dodged there.  I can’t picture Ferris Bueller surfing and sky diving.

Honorable Mention.  He also starred in the music video for Paula Abdul’s Rush Rush.  How bout that for range.

Summer is almost here.  Time to finalize your vacation plans.  You could book your family into an all-inclusive resort.  OR……….  You could hop a plane with a guide book, rent a car, and have an adventure.

FOUR REASONS TO WING IT ON VACATION

1. If you travel to an unfamiliar destination, you will probably get lost.  Sounds like a bad thing, but it can be a great thing.  Every time I have gotten lost on vacation, I have met someone cool, or found something that I would have never seen if I was riding in a bus full of sunburned tourists.
2. Self reliance.  It feels good to plan things out yourself.  Sometimes things even work out the way you want.  Other times not so much.  I like to wander.  Six months after our first son was born, we took a trip to Puerto Rico to see family.  I decided to take us to a somewhat remote beach that I was familiar with.  We drove out, had a nice day,,,,, and then I locked the keys in the car while it was running. I broke out my inner Macgyver and took a spoke from our beach umbrella to try to break into the car.  I know I said self reliance, but in reality we ended up relying on two park rangers and three cops who took turns trying to pop the lock while my father-in-law and wife took turns holding the baby and giving me dirty looks.  They got it eventually, but I’m sure that given enough time, I would have gotten it,,,,,,,,,or we would have run out of gas.
3. It gives you a chance to interact with people in their own environment.  Traveling to a tropical country to spend time on a resort makes little sense.  You might as well just go to Florida.  You probably wouldn’t know the difference.  It can be kind of intimidating to step out of your comfort zone.  Believe me, most of the time I’m as introverted as they come.  It’s a character flaw.  I saw something on the internet recently that said, “My first instinct when I see an animal is to say hello.  My first instinct when I see a person is to avoid eye contact & hope it goes away.”  I realized with both amusement and dismay that my brain operates just like that.  When I travel, I make an extra effort to be social.  It always makes the experience more worthwhile when you participate in your surroundings.  As an added plus, it reminds me that people in other places are much nicer than people from the northeastern US.
4. Guidebooks will take you to some unusual places.  Every travel guide book will help you get to the major attractions.  But, if it is a good one, it will help you get to some out of the way places.  Lonely Planet books are good for this.  Last year when we went to Puerto Rico, we took the book’s advice and tried to find a trail to the Bahia de Jobos marine estuary.  We ended up parked in a farmer’s field under a tree.  We picked up the trail there and didn’t see another person the whole morning.  But we saw bunches of lizards and birds, and we even found a hummingbird nest.  It was memorable.

LINKS

• Some cool video of a lightning storm in eastern India, as seen from the international space station.
• B.B. King died yesterday.  Here is his Rock n Roll Hall of Fame bio.
• The forty best quotes from the Simpsons, according to the UK Telegraph.
• Summer travel can be cheap, especially if you’re willing to rough it.  Budget Travel has listed their best places to go camping.

I’m going to a Pirates game with my dad this week. It should be a lot of fun. I have a lot of memories of watching sports with my dad. Not all of them are memories of actually attending the games, but the best ones are. That got me thinking of how much I’m looking forward to watching sports with my own kids. They really aren’t all that into it yet. My oldest is a little younger than I was when I fell in love with baseball. I would stay up nights, trying to tune into the Pirates games on my clock radio. I figure that it is my duty as a dad to properly induct the boys into sports fandom.

I started both of my kids young. We have pictures of them in the hospital, shortly after they were born, wrapped in Terrible Towels. If they grow up to be anything other than Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates fans, I think a paternity test may be in order. I was prepared when my oldest asked me why all his other friends were fans of our local teams. “Well, son. Unfortunately for them, they weren’t born into our family. Remember, you are American by birth, and a Steelers fan by the grace of God.” I am also ready for the whole second favorite team question, if that ever comes around. “Son.  Real sports fans don’t have second favorite teams. Let me explain it this way. If we are watching a movie, and the hero dies, do we then start rooting for one of the villains? No, we get a little bit sad, and then we wonder why we are watching a foreign film.”

Sports is a great thing for dads and kids to share. But it is more than that. When you enter the world of being a sports fan, you become part of something bigger. You enter a fraternity of sorts. A group of people from all walks of life and cultural backgrounds, who are emotionally invested in one common thing. It’s kind of remarkable. I want  my kids to be part of that. I want them to feel what it’s like to celebrate at a football playoff game in zero degree windchill. To jump up and down, and hug the guy next to you, even though you have no idea who he is and he smells like the whiskey that he snuck into the game. I was driving down the highway shortly after the Steelers won their fifth Superbowl, and the driver in the lane next to me started honking. I looked over, and there was a guy I had worked for a year previously. I hadn’t seen him in a while. We were both Steelers fans.  We rolled down our windows and proceeded to have a shouting conversation about the Superbowl while driving sixty miles an hour. I want my kids to be part of that. Well, maybe not exactly that. That was actually kind of dangerous. Two years ago when the Pirates made the playoffs for the first time since the early nineties, I got to go to one of the playoff games with my parents. They won. The place was electric. I want my kids to be part of that.

It doesn’t matter who your team is. (Unless you are Patriots fan) Sharing sports with your kids is special. It’s timeout from everyday stresses. It’s three hours of bonding and group therapy.

Voltaire said, “I have begun to be somewhat merry because I have been told that that is good for one’s health.”  While “being merry” is more or less a choice, it’s nice to have a little outside help.  Here are some little things that have made me smile.

1. Hearing and seeing the birds in my yard.
2. Pushing my cart around the supermarket while my five year old rides underneath (on the part where you put the jumbo packs of toilet paper).  I get a lot of, “he’s a horrible parent” looks.
3. One time I was at a small zoo where the squirrel monkeys were allowed to climb in the trees outside of their cage.  There was an annoying family there harassing the monkeys, and a monkey peed on one of their children.  Made my day.
4. Using Q-tips.  It’s very satisfying.
5. Swimming in a natural swimming hole.  Creek, lake, river.  Doesn’t matter.
6. Watching an unmanned shopping cart roll across the parking lot.  (Extra points if it hits a BMW)
7. Dr. Pepper.
8. When a really aggressive driver gets in the left lane to pass me and then gets stuck in traffic.  And I get to do the whole head-turn long stare while I roll on past.
9. Sitting down after everyone else has gone to bed.  That way I know that no one can ask me to get up for anything.  (Extra points if I don’t have to get back up to find the remote.)
10. When one of my children says something thoughtful and kind.  A lot of the time I think they’re just tiny vikings.
11. The New England Patriots getting caught cheating at anything.  Hearing that Tom Brady cheats at checkers would not surprise me, and would also make me happy.
12. One lady at our gym.  She’s probably in her sixties.  She slowly gets onto whatever machine that she is going to use, and then frantically pounds out like twenty reps.  It’s hilarious.
13. Post Honey Graham Oh’s.  They’re delicious.
14. Whenever the one magazine I subscribe to arrives in the mail.  Usually I’ve forgotten that I actually have a magazine subscription, so it’s like a gift to myself.
15. Realizing that I am one year younger than I thought I was.
16. Whenever the Pirates win.
17. Hearing my wife say something that makes absolutely no sense when she wakes up from a deep sleep.
18. Laying in a hammock.
19. Combining coupons with the Cartwheel app and the Red card at Target.  I am singlehandedly driving them out of business.
20. Reading a book that has a great twist that I didn’t see coming.
21. Picking my kids up from school.  (Unless they got in trouble.)
22. Free food.  Even if it’s just a sample at the supermarket.  Still a win.
23. Tripping and falling, then looking around and realizing that no one saw me.

LINKS

• I don’t watch a whole lot of soccer, unless it’s the US national team, USA, USA.  Even I know this goal is pretty awesome.
• Today is the 7oth anniversary of VE day.  Here’s a cool write up from USA Today.
• Forgot to add other people falling to the list of things that makes me happy.  This is Shaq falling on TV during a halftime report.  You know it was a good fall because he lost a shoe.
• I mentioned swimming holes.  Here is a website with a countrywide list of places to cool off.  Some are even clothing optional.  Wink wink.

You know those guys that hold the signs or flags at construction sites?  The ones that tell you when it is safe to proceed on past them.  Well, I’ve always thought that job would be one of the most boring jobs you could have.  Some people say that when you’re in a coma, you are actually aware of everything that is going on around you, but you can’t participate in anything.  That’s what I think being a flag man is like.  Unless.

I had just picked up two friends that I was working with in college, and we were headed to our job.  On the way to the job, we had to drive through a neighborhood that was a little rough around the edges.  I was driving my parent’s Oldsmobile station wagon because my car was in the shop.  As we rolled along down the road I was chatting away with my buddy.  I guess the conversation was interesting, and I guess I wasn’t paying attention to the road like I should have been.  When I looked forward,,,,,, there was a flag man.  If this guy’s day had been boring, it wasn’t now.  He was jumping up and down and waving that flag like crazy.  I’ve never seen someone from a road construction crew move that fast.  I realized that probably meant he wanted me to stop, so I slammed on the brakes and my tank of a car lurched to a halt.  Whew.  The flag guy settled down and regained some of his composure.  Eventually it was our turn to go and he waved me on.  Crisis averted.  Except that one of the cars behind me had a light bar on top, and he had seen the whole thing.  When I got through the construction zone, those lights came on.

I dislike being pulled over by the police.  I really don’t need that kind of stress in my life.  The officer approached my window and asked me some questions.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?”

“I believe I almost ran over the guy with the flag.”

“License and registration please.  If I search this car, will I find any drugs or weapons?”

Me nervously laughing, “No.”

Like I said, the area was not great.  This was about the time that backup arrived.  Yep, backup.  I’ve seen myself in the mirror plenty of times.  I never thought, “wow that’s a dangerous looking dude.”  I usually think things like,  “Yeah you can get away with not shaving for another day.”   Or, “I wonder if this t-shirt is dressy enough for going to dinner?”  Apparently, this officer saw me and my friends and thought.  “Oh, I’m gonna need some help to keep these guys under control.”  We were all asked to exit the vehicle.  We were all patted down.  Then we were all asked to sit on the curb while the other officer searched my car.  Aside from being embarrassed, I didn’t mind my time on the curb all that much.  The weather was nice and it was a relatively comfortable seat.  Eventually they let me go with a warning.  I really appreciated that.

I learned one thing from all this.  I must have the look of a criminal.  So, I’ve had to take that into account since then.  Now when I look in the mirror in the morning I think things like, “Do these cargo shorts make me look more or less dangerous?”  Or,  “Will this sweater help to soften my image?”

 

 

My five year old eats three things.  Chicken, grilled cheese, and fruit.  Oh, he also loves soup.  All the rules change when it comes to soup.  You could put anything in a pot with some broth and he would probably eat it.  His brother, on the other hand, will eat anything.  It’s kind of a pain.  One kid wants chicken nuggets, the other wants sushi.  At times I wish the the little dude was a little less picky.

The other day I was thinking about this and I realized that when it comes to food, I am almost as much of a pain as he is.  I’m going to have to cut him some slack the next time he refuses to eat a perfectly good bowl of macaroni and cheese.

Marc’s Food Rules

• The first and most important rule of food is, if Mexican food is available, always eat it.  Given the choice between 5 star anything else and a taqueria, I will always choose tacos.  I believe I may have personally paid off the local Chipotle manager’s car loan.
• Fruit and bread should never be together.  No peanut butter and jelly.  No Apple pie.  No cakes with fruity fillings.  No cakes that even taste like fruit.  This is an unholy union and must be avoided at all costs.
• I’ve heard it said that even bad pizza is still pizza.  This is not true.
• I’m a vegetarian.  I’m going to lose my mind the next time someone hears this and then asks me if I eat fish.  Sure, the fish that grow on trees, those are delicious.
• Soda and milkshakes are the best desserts ever invented.  Therefore, a root beer float is a near perfect dessert.
• Tater tots go with any meal.  I’ve done the research myself, and it holds up.  Chinese food and taters.  Sure.  Italian and taters.  Why not?  Indian food and taters.  Absolutely.
• My kids may love soup, but to me it’s just a bunch of food that got too close to the water and accidentally fell in.  There are exceptions to this rule.  Tomato soup is a good compliment to grilled cheese, and broccoli and cheddar soup, wellllll, it’s basically a melted block of cheese, so you can’t really go wrong there, can you?

LINKS

• I became an instant Jeremy Renner fan this week when he sang this Hawkeye song on the Tonight Show.
• Recently they found one of these rare pocket sharks.  I would love to put some of these in my bathtub.  Then the villainous Lego guys could threaten to throw the good Lego guys into the shark pool.
• Forty years ago yesterday the Vietnam war ended.  As a Steelers fan, I’m pretty familiar with the Rocky Bleier story.  For those of you who aren’t, it is an interesting story about the intersection of war and professional sports.
• Here is an article about IKEA being dangerous to your marriage.  I knew it.

Did you know that tickets to most of the late night shows on tv are free?  Letterman, Leno, well I guess not Leno anymore, Conan, and all the new guys.  I figured this out when I was in college.  Free things were very important to me in college.  I developed a certain radar.  Free breakfast, I’m there, perfect stranger invites me over for lunch on a Saturday afternoon, sounds great.  My appreciation of free things extended to entertainment.

Somewhere around the turn of the century, my buddy and I got tickets to see Letterman in New York.  Saying things like the turn of the century sounds cool, and also makes me seem old and wise when I’m not really either of those things.  Okay, maybe a little old.  The guests for that episode were Charles Grodin and Edward Burns.  Not really the most star studded line up.  What I want to focus on, though, is the musical guest.  They were a three man alternative band.  Their hit song was about hanky panky and sugary snacks.  That should be enough of a clue for some people.  For the rest, it’s really not all that important.  That was their only hit.

We arrived early to the studio to get our tickets.  The Ed Sullivan theater is on Broadway in New York between 53rd and 54th Streets.  If you walk around the side of the building, the stage entrance and exits are right there.  On this day, the other thing that was right there was the tour bus for the musical guest.  It was early so the band was still on the bus.  We could see people through the open windows.  My buddy was the talkative type, and I was the easily entertained type.  He got the attention of someone inside, and asked a couple of questions.  Instead of answering the questions, out through the open window came a blowup doll.  The adult kind.  The guy in the bus held on to the doll and started telling my buddy to bark like a dog.  My friend proceeded to tell him in impolite terms where he could go.  This cracked me up to no end.  Not the doll part, but the part where my friend advised the guy what he could do with the rest of his morning.  I looked to my right and saw a stage hand from the Letterman show standing by the side entrance and laughing.  This was going nowhere, so we spent the next four hours wandering Manhattan and looking for a soda called cola champagne.  For some reason my buddy wanted one, and me, well I’m easily entertained.  We came back for the show.  After it was over we exited back onto that side street.  The tour bus was still there.  Together we decided to wait for the band to come out of the building.  We had some critiques of their music to offer.  We waited and waited.  I didn’t have any problem waiting for a while.  Waiting was free, and there would be good entertainment value in the confrontation.  Eventually we gave up on them, though.  I think we may have been hungry.  I like to think that we looked super intimidating, so they chose to stay inside the theater and play with their doll.

If I ever see them on the street,,,,,,, absolutely nothing will happen,,,,, because, you know,,,,,, one hit,,,,,, I’ll have no idea who they are.

Over spring break, we took the kids to a National Geographic IMAX movie about great white sharks. It was long.  It was really long.  In fact, if I ever do see a shark in the wild, my natural reaction may now be to just get drowsy.  Since it was made by shark nuts, they spent the whole time explaining how wonderful these animals are.  (In an Australian or South African accent.)  “We as humans are much more dangerous to the shark than they are to us.”  That’s all well and good, but when those nutballs went free diving with the sharks they were like, (again, Australian accent) “We always go into the water in groups of three, so we can maintain eye contact with the animal at all times.”  As funny as that is, they are right about your chances of being eaten by a shark.  They are virtually nil.

Summer is almost upon us, and it is almost time for our family to go somewhere warm, where I can spend the majority of the day in the water.  I may have mentioned that the movie Jaws scarred my wife for life.  I have been trying to undo that damage for a while now.  Before we had kids, we took one of our almost annual trips to see family in Puerto Rico.  While we were there, we took a boat ride to a small island called Caja de Muerto (Coffin Island)  off the south coast.  I dragged my wife to the end of the main island so we could snorkel in the channel between it and another small island.  You may ask why I couldn’t just stay at the beach where everyone else was.  Because,,,,,,just mind your business.  We really didn’t see much of anything out there except for sea urchins with spines that were twelve to eighteen inches long.  We didn’t stay long either.  My wife freaked out like she saw the kraken, which in turn scared me, so we swam back to the beach.  She told me that the whole time we were out there, she felt like she was in the middle of a shark highway.

So, to prepare her and everyone else for beach vacations, here are your chances of getting killed by stuff other than sharks.

1. Bicycle accident.  1 in 4,535
2. Pedestrian accident.  1 in 704
3. Falling off a building.  1 in 6,115
4. The cold.  Not only is it awful, it can kill you.  1 in 7,399
5. Falling from some kind of furniture.  1 in 4,238
6. Dog bite.  1 in 116,448
7. Lighting  strike.  1 in 164,968
8. The flu.  1 in 63

Shark attack.  1 in 3,748,067.  The most important thing to remember is that you have a 100% chance of eventually kicking the bucket, so get in the water and enjoy yourself while you’re still here.  Chicken.

LINKS

• Mila Kunis is being sued by a childhood friend for,,,,,,,,,   wait for it,,,,,,,,,,  stealing a chicken.
• We were visiting some friends recently, and they were telling us all about their trip to Sri Lanka.  Add another one to my travel wish list.
• If you lived in north Jersey or New York in the 80’s, then you remember Crazy Eddie’s.  Here’s the story of the chain’s rise and fall.  Click it just to see the hair on the Federal Marshall in the picture.  Legendary.
• Cool photos of the volcanic eruption in Chile.

When one of my sons was around two years old, we were finishing the good time that is also known as potty training.  He was doing really well.  It was fall, time for hayrides and bonfires.  One weekend we decided to get together with some friends of ours to visit a local orchard where they helped grease the wheels of commerce by having a huge fall festival.  There were the obvious things like apple picking, cider, and a corn maze.  They also had a small scale train for the kids to ride, a playground with an impressive number of wooden structures for the kids to climb around in, and they actually put on little shows on Saturday and Sunday.

It was busy on the day we went.  We found a parking spot in the large dirt lot and walked down to the main attractions.  The kids got ice cream and took a ride on the train.  Then we let them loose on the playground.  This is the point where I need to explain something about my little guy and his bathroom habits.  He was not what you would call regular in the number two department.  Sometimes I think that he just didn’t want to take the time out from what he was doing, other times I just think that he thought that it was gross.  He’s a little bit of a clean freak.  Needless to say, this created a backup.  Like I said, we had set the kids loose on the playground.  I saw my guy across the way.  He had that thousand yard stare, the one you get when you are having battle flashbacks, or are about to make a deposit.  I recognized that look and I ran to him to ask if he needed to go potty.  I was too late.  So, we ended up in the bathroom cleaning him up.  The bathrooms had seen some heavy use on that day and when we left it, I decided that he may have had the right idea about pooping outside.  It looked like a Woodstock bathroom.  Doesn’t matter which Woodstock, they were all disgusting.   Luckily the damage had been mostly contained, and I was able to send him back to the playground commando style.  Bullet mostly dodged.  The kids got back to playing and I sat down on a bench.  My wife was following the munchkin around.  It was about a half hour later when my guy stopped in the middle of the play area.  My wife saw him.  I saw him.  There was nothing we could do.  He stood there in his shorts with that same look on his face.  In slow motion two poops rolled right out of his shorts and landed in the mulch.  My wife stood there in shock, looked at me and said, “It’s like having a pet duck”.  Well, now it was time to go home.  No one had realized what happened.  We took a bridal shower invitation out of my wife’s purse, looked around to make sure we weren’t being watched, and I bent down to pick up after our son.  I’ve had dogs since I was a kid, but this was my first time picking up after a person.  I put the loaded invitation into a slurpee cup that we had and put that in the trash.

I’m saving this story for his fiancé.

Like most people, I have a bucket list.  Every year in January, I take that list out, and say “I think I could realistically knock five things off of the list this year.  You know how many things I actually do?  Two, if I’m lucky.  It gets a little depressing.  I know that the reason that I don’t accomplish some of these things is because I tend to set the bar a little high.  I mean, I’m not sure if I’ll ever get around to riding a sea turtle from the Galapagos Islands to Esmeraldas, Ecuador, or beating Sir Richard Branson in an arm wrestling competition.  There is nothing wrong with aiming high, but if you really want to have a list that you can eventually finish, I suggest a second one.  One with goals that you actually may accomplish.  I made one for this summer.

1. Learn to speak Spanish with my kids.  Mommy is a super-cute latina.  She is also the only one in our house that can speak good Spanish.  This is something I have needed to fix for a while.
2. Build a killer treehouse for my boys.  We are blessed enough to have some good places in our yard for a treehouse.  It needs to have at least these three things to make it awesome.  (a)  A rope ladder. (b) A trap door.  (c)  A pirate flag.  My oldest son keeps asking if his treehouse will have indoor plumbing.  He’s probably going to be disappointed.
3. Get some arrows.  Someone I know was cleaning out there garage and asked me if I wanted an old bow that they had.  I said, “sure, my boys will love that”.  This may sound like a bad idea to some people, but I had a bow and arrow when I was a kid, and I never hit anyone.  The only thing in danger will be my neighbors cat if it keeps pooping in my flower beds.
4. Take the kids to the Statue of Liberty.  I haven’t been there since I was a kid.  My memories of that day include lines and being hit by spit from someone who was in line on the stairs up above me.
5. See a movie in the park.  They show movies outdoors at one of our local parks.  This sounds lovely and kind of small town charming.  In reality, mosquitos love me.
6. Attend Reggae in the Park.  Toward the end of summer they hold a large all day reggae concert in Fairmount Park.  Because when people see me, the first thing they think is, I bet that guy is super into reggae music.  This is not one for the kids, because let’s just say that the air will probably be thick.
7. Spend lots of time at the local library.  It’s free and the kids love to read.  If only the good people there would not sell candy in the lobby.  Last time we went, I ended up chasing my five year old around the stacks and under a table because I said we weren’t buying any.
8. Take the kids to two movies in one day.  You know what I mean, two movies, one ticket, wink wink.  That’s right, we’re going to spend the day at the theater.  We might even bring a picnic.  You may say, “Isn’t that a bad lesson for your kids’.  No, charging four dollars for a soda and eight for popcorn is a bad lesson.  I really wouldn’t feel bad if we found a way to take one of the theater seats home with us.
9. Keep the car clean all summer.  Most days it looks like a miniature tornado hit a miniature trailer park inside my car.
10. Finish my book.  Yeah that’s right.  I’m writing a book.  I hope all three of you will buy it.

I think that all of these things are attainable this summer.  Well, maybe except for the car thing.  I will do an update in September.

LINKS

• Cool story about a WWII treasure that has  just been recovered.
• A neat way to cut mangoes.
• New Star Wars teaser trailer.  Han Solo.  Enough said.
• Since it’s the wet season now, (unless you’re in California, sorry) here is a DIY way to waterproof all your gear.