O-Dark-Thirty

We went to San Antonio for the weekend, a trip that was hosted by our Wyndham Getaway people and we (mostly) had a very nice time. The Hotel (Sheraton Gunter) is beautiful and in the heart of the old city of San Antonio. The interior of the hotel is absolutely lovely, and over the years hosted such celebrities as Roy Rogers, John Wayne and Mae West. The historic Gunter Hotel was dedicated in 1909, the same year the Lincoln penny was first minted. Coincidence? (Yeah, I think so.) A murder in February of 1965 occurred in room 636 and the hotel is said to still be haunted . "Since this terrible incident, staff and guests have reported strange occurrences in the vicinity of room 636. The seemingly restless spirit has often appeared with her arms outstretched. Strange sounds of hammering have also been reported coming from an unoccupied Room 636. Others have reported the image of a blonde woman inexplicably appearing in photographs." We didn't see the ghost. Thu...

Summary: Are you kidding? If you only see one movie this summer, this is the one. (Well, except that Thor is coming out soon.) If you're a fan of the Wolverine, this is a must-see. If you aren't a fan of the Wolverine, but you love movies with action, this is a must-see. If you don't like movies with action, then go ahead and watch old I Love Lucy re-runs. You don't even need to be the Wolverine's biggest fan. Spiderman is still my favorite of all the superheroes, and as far as the movies go, The Avengers is the most awesome movie made. I am a fan of Wolverine, so I really looked forward to this movie. Let's face it, Hugh Jackman was born to be the Wolverine, and he's been awesome in all the previous incarnations. This is thirteen years down the road from when we first saw him in X-Men (2000). We then saw him pop up in the rest of the series as Wolverine (arguably the best character in the movies) X2 (2003), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), X-Men Ori...

Let's take a trip back in time, to when we were small and our parents didn't know what to do with us, so they took us to the zoo. Okay, that never happened. Darling and I had an amazing weekend away in San Antonio, and one of the things she wanted to do was go to the San Antonio Zoo. So Saturday morning, before our 2:30 appointment in the afternoon, we headed off to the Zoo. I'm pretty sure he had bad ideas Monkeys. Monkeys still smell bad, but they had a large selection of frantic little beasties that jump and ran and chased each other. I'm just glad they didn't throw poo at us. I think one of them was thinking about it, but we moved on. We saw some bears. Bears in cages make me sad. Darling said she liked the Fishing Cat best. I don't know what the real animal name was, but she got to see it dive into the water and snag and eat a fish. How cool is that? I am and always have been partial to the zebras. If I could raise an equine, I'd wa...

I just finished reading Wil Wheaton's newest book, Just A Geek and I liked it, so I added his website to my list of favorite blogs. I don't always appreciate his language, but I'm more sensitive to foul language than he is. It's probably a recovery thing, but that's another story. Wil's book is really a compilation of his blog posts with some linking discourse added in. I don't mind that style, so it worked for me. He's entertaining, and insightful (at times), though you have to get a little bit past his "pity me" writing. In all fairness, that's really what the book is about - his journey from self-pity to self-actualization and it was easy to read. It's a good look at who Wil Wheaton is, and those stories are (mostly) refreshing. It isn't that long a read, not much longer than my book  My Mother-in-law Misadventures   and is in the same sort of writing style (Cory Doctorow, actually, ha!). Hmmm. Maybe Wil would like my book ...

Just so I don't lose these links, and maybe so you have them too. Half-first Cousin Five Times Removed George Clooney is related to Abraham Lincoln. Yes, it's an advertisement, but still interesting. One App to Rule Them (Trip Journal App) I didn't create this one. I wish I had. I wish my Darling Daughter had this for her trip to England - we'd get more information! This is a Mashable review from last May. One Source for Investing (What the Bible Says About Money) All about Sean Hyman and his biblical investment strategies - that work. TWO Pyramids found using Google Earth Now someone has to put boots on the ground to confirm the possible find. Nine Best FREE Image Editors Pixlr is right at the top, of course. Seven Thousand (Dollars) for a Master's Degree from Georgia Tech's MOOC That's a good deal. I might check it out if I want to get a top-rated technology degree. Eleven Reasons Why YOU Should Publish an Art Boo...

There's a very cool website that analyzes your writing style and tells you who you write like. I went back to an old story of mine, Psychic Toll Call  and pasted the entire short, short story into the analyzer. This is what I got: Though it is very cool that I wrote this story like Vonnegut ( a literary hero of mine ) I had to wonder if I still write the same way. After all, I wrote that story years and years ago. So I pasted what I've written of Zombie Apocalypse: Vampire Raiders of Las Vegas into the analyzer. Now I get a different badge: That's cool, too. I might never sell anything, but at least I write like people who do. Sort of. According to a computer web page analyst. In case you're interested, here's the current text for  Zombie Apocalypse: Vampire Raiders of Las Vegas. Zombie Apocalypse: Vampire Raiders of Las Vegas The year is 2028. The zombie movies were eerily prophetic. The virus mutated, whether in the wild or in the ...

Summary: I liked it. Though it seemed to wear a little thin on the jokes, and we got relationship advice from Marvin (that's just odd), it was still fun to watch. Yeah, there are a couple spoilers. I'm not bothering to white them out. It just doesn't matter, really. If you want a decent review of RED (2010) then go read the one at Dan the Man's Movie Reviews . I don't disagree with his review of RED, though I think I probably liked it a bit more than he did. The original RED relied on the quirky introductions of the team, and that supplied a lot of the level of fun. This one tried to do that with a couple of the characters, most notably Katja and Bailey, but I think it failed in that. There is only a certain amount of eccentricity you can take with movie characters and I think we already reached our limit. I certainly liked RED 2 more than Dan did (he rated it as 2.5/Crapola). I suspect that is because he is only twenty years old and in his prime, so a...

These look like ours, but they aren't We have asparagus growing in our garden. Darling planted some tiny little plants at the beginning of last week. We pulled weeds on Tuesday evening and I noted the little stalks. Now they are over a foot long! Who knew asparagus grew that fast? Well, I'm sure some people did, but I sure didn't. Maybe it's really a weed. And where does asparagus grow in the wild, anyway. Stalking the Wild Asparagus - good name for a book title, isn't it? This was actually the first book by Euell Gibbons, published in 1962. According to Wikipedia it was an instant success. Well, no wonder, with such an amazing title. I still don't like asparagus, but it looks like I'll be eating some. The taming of the kitten progresses, albeit slowly. Darling managed to snag the little beastie and brought him in to hold him and pet him and speak sweet things to him for almost half an hour. He then bolted when she took him back outside...