Movie Night ....

So...Tonight we actually finally started our trek to watch EVERY movie on the AFI Top 100 list. Mr Lucas picked a great one ...GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER. Spencer Tracy ,Sidney Poitier,Katheryn Hepburn....What a good movie ...

Anyway ....If you have not seen it ...Find a copy and watch ...its a good one.

The scene where Sidney Poitiers character has a talk with his dad about things is so powerful....The topic of a black man and a white women getting married in 1967 was taboo and its still a powerful topic today ...

Spencer Tracy, in his last role, was amazing.

Thats it....

Strings and Ceiling Wax and other Fancy Stuff.......

So....It was 98 degrees in Montgomery today. We have still not had the heat that we had last summer....of course we have had a good bit of rain this summer also so that is great. But still, it was 98 degrees today and that just sucks.

I have this habit of checking the weather in places all around the country. I normally once or twice a week check the local weather in Asheville NC. Its almost like I am stalking Asheville in some way .....Going online to check out local webcams of downtown,checking the weather, checking on the progress of the new Pack Square,seeing whats going on at the Malaprops Bookstore...etc. But back to weather....

I am fascinated by it ....I love a good thunderstorm during the summer..one of those storms that you can see coming and you can feel the air around you changing. Then the rain and thunder begins and soon its cooler and you feel as refreshed as the environment around you. I have always wanted to experience a hurricane while at the beach ....Not some big huge Katrina style hurricane but a small one or even a strong tropical storm. I know its nuts ...many people have died over the years because they could not leave when a hurricane was coming and here I am wanting to be right in the middle of one. Call me crazy.....

Other things ....

I was asked tonight to go see The Dark Knight again ....I did not go. I am not a big fan of seeing movies twice in a theater. I can maybe count on one hand the ones that I have seen twice in the theater. For me the excitment of seeing a new movie is gone ....plus I am just weird about stuff ...My closest and best friends in the world still embrace me. I am the odd man out in the group and thats cool with me ....

I watched this dvd the other night about people who had experienced discrimination on their jobs based on the fact that they were gay or lesbian. A friend had suggested it.....

One story really stood out to me ....This women in Asheville NC was fired from her photography job at Wolf Laurel Ski Resort north of Asheville. Her former employers said that her lifestyle did not mix well with the "family,christian " atmosphere at the resort. Now, we have to understand that this women was not having sex with her partner on the ski lift...she was not conducting drag shows with her gay friends....she was not selling sexually explicit photos of her having sex with her partner...She was taking photos of people skiing and selling them at the resort. To be fair here ...calling Wolf Laurel a "resort" is using the broadest definiton of the word....I have been there and it aint a resort. But she had a decent job and they fired her....Thats discrimination. Plain and Simple. What if she had been a man and black and they fired him?

"oh sorry man we have alot of people come up here from Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi and they are still living in the 1950s down there and they dont take too kindly to seeing a negro working the lifts, youre fired" Thats the same thing ...right ? You are firing someone based on who they are....I believe it will take a federal measure to make things right ....

Stepping off my soapbox....

I go to Alaska in 20 days and I am pretty damn excited to be going ...Until then I have youth week,a trip to the World of Coke museum in atlanta,a trip to the beach with the youth, youth sunday and another trip to a new heart doctor.

Hurry up and get here Fall....

Thats it for now

$7.00 BUCKS FOR THIS ???

So...The Dark Knight is all the rage right now in America and across the globe really....and for all you poop heads out there I am not referring to Senator(stop acting so damn presidential) Obama's great visit to the Middle East and Europe!! I am talking about the new Batman movie. I am not going to make this a post about TDK but more about going to the movies in general.

I have said it before that I used to love going to the movies....and still do for the most part but maybe its part of my getting older and becoming more like my Dad ..More and more I dont enjoy going !!

I went two weeks ago to see TDK and what follows is a description of my afternoon. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE ---STOP READING NOW---

I spend $7.00 bucks to see the movie....get into a fairly crowded theater about 20 minutes before the film starts. Right before the credits begin a large family enters and sits behind us....There is what appears to be a dad,mom,grandmother and four kids. Two of the kids are way too young to be in this movie...one is a toddler maybe 2 years old and the other is a baby.

The movie begins with a bank robbery....lots of guys in creepy clown masks being killed right and left....the toddler behind us starts crying telling everyone in the theater how much he hates clowns. He is very upset about this but settles down after they are off the screen. The baby is making a constant 'ugh,ugh,ugh,ugh' sound....I dont think he ever was quiet..but he is a BABY and hey they do make noise....

The Joker makes his first appearance on the screen and again the toddler goes nuts with crying and screaming that he hates clowns. I never once noticed or heard any adult in his group tell him to be quiet or try to get him to be quiet or God forbid LEAVE the theater with the child.

Add to this all some strange odor coming from the row behind us...By the point I have directed my steely gaze to the row behind us a few times and finally I snap and leave my seat to go complain. Thats right I got up and went to the front concession stand and asked the nice young girl who I needed to speak to about people being loud in the theater. She yells for Cedric...YELLS I say !!! Cedric asks me what the problem is and I tell him and he radios for a manager who looked to be about as old as my nephew but hey at this point any port in a storm will do right ??

He follows me to the door of the theater and stops me to ask where I am sitting ...I tell and he says nevermind he will just watch me and then come up...I tell him he can follow me up if he likes but he says thats not a good idea. Whatever.

I sit and he comes up and tells the folks behind me that there have been complaints about the noise and if they cannot keep the kids quiet they will have to leave....

They all stand and leave.....pushing and bumping us as they go and for good measure some form of liquid fell on my head and right shoulder .....I am saying it was soda or water of some kind and not any type of pee or spit of any kind ...So we will say it was water....just to protect my sanity .

The movie was enjoyed from there on out .....

My question is this ....when did it become acceptable forople to take small children to a movie like that ?????Or any movie like that ??? For that matter when did it become ok to take a BABY to any movie?? Hey Nick and Laura ,Pack up Harper and Lily and go watch the afternoon showing of TDK on Saturday....Brian and Stephanie ,yall should take Asher and Silas to a midnight showing of Hellboy 2!!!

I dont have kids....and I dont see kids in my foreseeable future. I love kids, I really do. I am blessed to have two wonderful nephews in my life and two adorable little girls that I can hold and spoil for the rest of my life.

I hope that that family did not get a refund on their tickets when they left.....Not being a jerk here but they made that bed .....

It frustrates me that people just grab their children of any age and head off to the movie....I think its selfish of them....its not fair to the kids and its sure as hell not fair to the other movie goers.

Am I a jerk ?? Am I asking too much of people to have some kind of respect for those people around them who want to enjoy a show?

I dont talk on my cell phone in a theater, I turn my ringer off like I am asked to do ...Its a shame we have to be asked to do things like that anyway but ok ....I was once told by management not to use my cell phone again that someone had complained!!! I use my cell phone as a time telling device and was checking the time but ok It bothered someone enough...fair enough
Again, I love kids but just wait till Pixar has a great show out to take them to or better yet wait for the DVD.

Chicken -A Whole New Thing!!

Here is my entry ....albeit a little late into the great chicken thing cook off ....

I followed the recipe but used regular brown rice since the yellow stuff Nick suggested is FULL OF MSG...Thanks for tying to kill me, AGAIN !!

I also used sliced Chipolte Chedder instead of the pepperjack cheese. I then added a small Green salad with sliced tomatoes fresh from the Montgomery Curb Market.

The watermelon was a cool slice of love.

Through the Looking Glass............

When I first started this blog more than two years ago I told myself and the lovely readers out there that I would treat this as an online journal. Of course I started it with the intentions of talking my way through my Dads death.....I have always tried to be honest to myself here and my readers... having said all that this post is gonna be tough!!

I found out Monday night that my Grandfather, my Ga, my dads father ,carried on an affair with a women more than 15 years his junior for about 8 years off and on. It seems to have started in the Late 70's and continued right up until his death in 1984 at the age of 68. Excuse my language here but WHAT THE FUCK???
This information has rocked me to my core ....I have spent the last 24 hours trying to make heads or tails of it....here are a few things about the whole situation.

• They met in AA.
• They would meet at a local hunting lodge in Macon County and AHEM go from there.
• She was also married
• The other women would stay at the hospital with him after family had left for the night.
• My Nana knew about it and had tried to get him to stop seeing this women and thought he had....the other women came to the funeral .
• The other women died this past sunday morning.

I dont know how to comprehend this ......this was my grandfather!! Not that it would be any better or worse if it were my Dad but we hold our grandparents in a different light and now that light is shining in a whole different way..... the other thing--I was the last person in my family to know this had happened ?!?!?!? My mother knew,brother, aunts, uncles...but I find out when my mother shows me the obit in the paper. She assumed that I knew everything....WOW!

What am I upset about ? The fact that he had this affair? The fact that I did not know? I dont know but it has upset me more than anything in my recent memory. As I do with lots of things I tried to find the humor and wondered if we should perhaps send flowers to the family ??? HA I mean no disrespect to this women by calling her "the other women" but that seems to fit....

I am angry, pissed, hurt and more than anything feel terrible for my 88 year old grandmother who was married to a man who was not faithful to her. My grandmother who for the past 24 years has never to my knowledge said a bad word about her husband. My respect for her is tremendous !!

Anyway ...thats my post tonight

211/108

I have always known that I had to be careful about my salt intake and I do a really good job of watching how much salt. ....I hardly ever salt my food and if I do I typically use only a small amount. I also have to be VERY careful about eating any foods that contain MSG.....a fact that was brought home to me in a pretty alarming way this past week.

On Wednesday night I ate some red beans and rice that I had made the night before....It was in a box and contained a LARGE amount of MSG of course I did not know that at the time....I did not eat that much the night before so I had no problems but on Wednesday night I had a good bowl full and a grilled cheese sandwich. Roughly two hours later I was FLYING!!!

I was dizzy, had blurred vision, my heart was racing and my blood pressure was 211/108....THATS HIGH!! After taking another dose of my blood pressure meds I finally settled down and started feeling better and went to lie down ...

I have mentioned this before but sleep does not come easy for me ....and it did not that night.

Add to all this a massive case of heartburn Friday night and feeling very lethargic and worn out since my blood pressure incident....It has made for a pretty crappy week. I told someone Saturday night that I felt like you do when you get the flu...except not the first days but the following days when you are just worn out....thats me this past week.

I complain about this ...I moan about not feeling good and trust me I am trying my hardest to get things in my life going right ....

I love my job, I really do but lately it has been pretty dang stressful for some reason....the mission trip was nice but on some level I did not enjoy it like I thought I would. Usually on trips with the youth I can find time to have a good time....I can let go and enjoy things but this years trip to DC/Balimore found me stressing and worrying about everything.

I try to please people as a whole....

I want my youth to be happy, I want my adult sponsors to be happy, I want my friends to be happy, I can typically handle stress but lately its been hard for me to let things go and just enjoy things .

And lately when I am stressed out I tend to take it out on the wrong folks ....I am sorry to everyone for my being a jerk lately.

Others things that bother me ....

The Economy-I really think we are one small step away from a depression. Not recession but a deep depression that it might take us years to get out of .... former senator Phil Graham said this week that its all in our heads when it comes to the economy problems....WOW.

My grandmother-88 years old, frail,confined to a chair or bed most of the day,confused,weighs 90lbs,slowly slipping away ....its real tough to call her and realize that she has no idea who she is talking too....

I am whining ....there is so much in my life that I should be lifting up as a praise but I am human....

Thats it for now

Around the World in 72 days 6 hours......

I am home .....

The youth trip to the Washington DC/Baltimore area was a whirlwind of activity that started at 5:30am Saturday June 28 and did not end until about 5:30pm on Saturday July 5. In addition to working at two Salvation Army centers in both Washington DC and Baltimore we had a chance to see many of the sites and sounds of these big cities. While the main reasons for youth mission type trips continues to be our desire to help others they also provide the kids with a chance to see cities they might not ever see.

The kids were so excited to see places they have on seen on TV or in books and magazines. A few of us had travelled to the DC area before but about 15 on the trip had never been and of those 15 about half had never left Alabama before.....It was a great trip. I ahve included a few pics of the sites that week ....for some weird reason I never took a picture of The White House ?!?!?

Prayer has also been on my mind for a few days .......

Why do we pray ? I dont always pray on a daily basis......sometimes I will actually go days without doing it and then boom ...I will lift something up to God. I will say that I used to pray more before my Dad passed away ....and while my love for God and Jesus Christ is still strong my act of prayer is not....Its hard to put into words actually but I just dont pray alot anymore....

One of my favorite authors is CS LEWIS and I turned to him recently on this matter....here are some things he said that I found interesting in regards to prayer.

He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers; or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to co-operate in the execution of His will. “God,” said Pascal, “instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.” But not only prayer; whenever we act at all He lends us that dignity. It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God's mind—that is, His over-all purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures. So at least it seems to me. But what I have offered can be, at the very best, only a mental model or symbol. All that we say on such subjects must be merely analogical and parabolic. The reality is doubtless not comprehensible by our faculties. But we can at any rate try to expel bad analogies and bad parables.

When he says that "the reality is doubtless not comprehensible " he is right I think....we are so stupid and dumb with it comes to fully understanding Gods will in our lives and when it came to Daddy dying it made me just sit back and realize that I just dont get it.... and I could have decided to spend the rest of my life figuring it out or I could say I love God and am growing closer to him and Jesus Christ through this tragedy.

Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctu­ary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.

anyway just a thought or a form of a thought here on my end ....good to be back in Montgomery