Random Thoughts for Sunday, June 10th

Sorry for the lack of updates. I spent Wednesday through Friday in training on a new piece of software at the office. It is really cool and I am excited about getting the chance to use it, however this left me with no time to screw around and therefore I am a little behind in my slacking.

My brother has decided it is time to take the plunge into the marriage pool again. For those of you keeping score at home this is his second wedding. His first marriage lasted approximately five months and from what he has told me it fell apart really through no fault of his own. So here it is a new year and a new wedding for Charlie. Now hot on the heels of his bitching about Anne getting married in New York when she lives just north of Dallas, he and his fiancee have decided to get married in Hawai'i. That's right boys and girls. even though they live in Austin and both her family and his family live in Texas, those two crazy kids have decided to go about half way to Asia for the wedding. Apparently they were going to elope to Hawai'i however the fiancee started to get cold feet about bailing on her parents. Her father is a Baptist preacher and they are Hispanic so pissing of the family is pretty much something you do not do. Once she told her parents Charlie felt the need to inform us. He told Anne and I while we were in New York and finally broke the news to our parents about two weeks ago. My initial thought was, "What the fuck are you doing, Charlie?" but I know him well enough to know that if I tried to advise him to take it slow that would just cement this idea in his head. Therefore I took a deep breath, smiled, and told him that I am happy for him and that I want my mojo back once he is married. Olivia is definitely an upgrade, although close to the same size as May. I am honestly happy for him and I am excited about going to Hawai'i, even though it means my vacation budget for next year is gone. (What can I say? I am a patriot and believe in deficit spending!) What I am not excited about is that my mom is going without my dad and this means what could have been a pleasant week long visit to paradise with nothing planned but a SCUBA trip or two and my brother's sandy nuptials, is now going to be about a week of dealing with my mom. I love her but sweet Christmas I need to have a vacation where I get away from the family. I am still going to go diving for one or two days as long as I can get certified before I head out, which should not be a problem considering the number of friends I have who are certified. I started this wanting to bitch about the trip and everything but what is really bothering me about the whole thing is my mom's penchant for whipping guilt trips on us kids. Tonight I told her that I was going to go ahead and find a hotel room for myself rather than sharing one with her and the guilt trip started immediately. I am very frustrated.

I just stabbed my thumb while opening one of those two-gallon water jugs with the spigot et al. and have come to the realization that I do not have any band-aids in the house. This means that for what is little more than a pin-prick, albeit a rather deep one that was bleeding profusely, I now have my thumb bandaged up like I split it from stem to stern. I kind of feel like a jackass and it has made using the remote challenging.

Since I did not have decent reception on my TV until I moved into the new apartment, or Spam Can* as I like to call it, I missed this whole season of Smallville. Fortunately they have started rerunning the episodes on Thursday nights and I have been recording them. I would just like to say that Justin Hartley, who plays Oliver Queen/Green Arrow, reminds me of Top Gun era Tom Cruise, and this is a good thing. It looks like he is going to be a complete badass in the series, which makes me happy because I like Green Arrow. If you have iTunes you should check out Justin in the pilot for Aquaman, a series which sadly did not get greenlit. I think it is definitely worth the $1.99 for those of you who like Smallville.

I got distracted by a run to Wendy's for dinner and then starting the pilot episode of The West Wing. Moira Kelly? Hot.

I am thinking about doing a This Week in Geek type column where I recount all of the nerd things I did during the past week. What movies I watched, books I read, etc. etc. etc. Any thoughts?

* This is funny because my nom de Tuba in college was Spam and this got leaked to the general populace in the dorms and the Honors College. I am certain that there are people I went to college with who do not know my real name.