Over a month has passed and I haven't been inspired to say anything. I'm sure some of my readers have an RSS updater that lets them know when I post again, but others, I'm sure, just stopped checking. Oh well. Here are some things that happened over the last month that were of some interest, but not enough to write about at the time.
1. What I saw at an amusement park. I saw a guy, bald head, wife-beater T, lots of tattoos. He was with a woman and some kids. What you might call white-trash, but he seemed nice enough. He was joking around, was in a good mood. Not that unusual a site where I live, or anywhere, probably. Then I realized what the tattoo was that covered the back of his head:
A true skinhead neo-nazi, just chilling with his family at an amusement park on a sunny weekend. I know that there are lots of skinheads in America, and the White Supremacist movement is growing, but I was bowled over at how shameless this guy was displaying his tattooed head like that in a crowded, family place. Wow.
2. Indoor Soccer. I signed up to play indoor soccer a long time ago, like in the Fall, but there wasn't enough interest for the night I signed up for, so we never played. I got a call a couple weeks ago that they were making teams for the summer. I went to the first game, and everyone was a LOT better than me. I ended up switching to a different night's league that's allegedly a lower skill level. I guess it is, but everyone's still way better than me. It's also tiring as hell and works different muscles than running, so I'm sore in new, awkward places. But it's fun, and hopefully I'll get better and also meet some new people.
3. I went on vacation. Part of the reason I've been so silent lately is that I was on vacation with limited internet access, so I hadn't even been reading blogs. I went to my hometown and brought my family. While there are beaches in and around my hometown, and the weather was nice during the trip, we didn't do much beachgoing or swimming because the water was cold. We did do a lot of cool stuff, though, and I have two awesome videos from one of our activities that I will upload and post later. You can't wait.
4. Summer TV. I know, it's supposed to be the TV-free "Summer of S. Reed" and so far that's going okay, but I've made some exceptions to the TV blackout. First of all, since NBC is dumping the rest of the unaired "Studio 60" episodes, they're grandfathered in. And WTF?, the show is actually pretty compelling now! It's still a liberal gasbag account of improbably intelligent and witty characters working for an unfunny comedy sketch show while dealing with REALLY unlikely crises, but it's well acted and the current interlocking plotlines are pretty interesting.
Also earning a variance from the viewing restrictions is, of course, reruns of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" I haven't seen yet. I caught one with my DVR net the week before my vacation, and had two lined up to record while I was away. But, as you can guess, Nickelodeon screwed me again and changed their schedule! Motherfuckers! One of the episodes I've tried to record 5 times, and 4 times it was changed. The other time I had it, but my satellite receiver was acting weird when I tried to play it, so I thought it didn't record properly and I deleted it.
There are 2 new shows that have creeped past the integrity of my TV will power. One is my wife's fault: "So You Think You Can Dance". She was watching last week's recorded episode in the other room while I was studying, and I got sucked into watching some of it. Last night, after my wife said there was some good stuff on it, I planned to skim it. I skimmed, but it still took an hour, and I watched all the dances. Crap. The second show is one I wasn't planning to watch, but because I had read good things about it I set it to record for my wife. I decided to check that out last night, too, and Oh My God, is it good! It's "Creature Comforts", by Aardman, the animation studio that did the Wallace and Gromit cartoons. I was dying, it was so funny. I was trying desperately to contain my laughter so I didn't wake up my family. It's just audio of interviews they've done with humans, but put into their classic style of clay-mation of animals. It doesn't sound like a genius combination, but it works so well. Check it out, if you get the chance.
5. Work. Surprisingly, that's been kind of busy and engaging lately. But I try not to talk about it much here, so that's all I'll say.
So that's it, my last month in a nutshell. Maybe something will happen in the next month that will make me write again sooner. I guess we'll see. Stay tuned for the vacation videos, though!
