I hope everyone had a good Memorial Day Weekend

   Patti and I had our annual visit from our friends Beth and Dana and their boys, Liam (5) and Asher (3).  The weather in Paducah was beautiful on Saturday and Sunday.  We all went to the Lowertown Music and Arts Festival on Saturday.  They had twice as many visiting artists there, including an old favorite of Patti's and mine, Tim Weber.  Tim had taken an administrative position for several years that took him away from the festival tour, but he's back now.  Anyone interested in seeing some of his art can check out the following link:  https://www.guild.com/artist/7008.html.  We bought two large mugs (red and teal) and a very large serving bowl (teal) from him.

    There was also an artist we had bought from a couple of years ago who was back again.  She makes decorative art by sprinkling powdered glass in patterns onto copper plates and then baking them to fuse the glass.  We have a celtic inspired, blue glass piece by her in our family room.  Saturday, we bought a green glass piece with patterns of various leaves.  It looks great against the cranberry colored walls of our dining room and complements the leaf art pieces Aunt Pat had given us.

     There were several artists exhibiting who made jewelry, so Patti bought herself some earrings to match a bracelet she had been given recently.  Beth also bought herself a nice Star of David necklace and several necklaces for her boys' teachers.  Poor Dana only got himself a festival t-shirt.  The kids got what all kids want from a festival - sugar!  That evening we invited some local friends over to the house for a cookout on the back deck.   

     Patti took our guests to the public pool on Sunday.  We hired a sitter for Sunday evening and the adults went out to a nice restaurant and the local casino.  Beth, a craps fanatic, won enough to pay for all her necklace purchases, the sitter and her husbands losses.  I, on the other hand, was only able manage to keep my losses at the blackjack table to a minimum.  It was one of those weird nights where even if I knew what the next card ws going to be for my hits, I don't think I could have made much money.  Oh well.

     After two plus days of having small kids in the house, Patti and I spend most of our rainy Memorial Day cleaning and resting.  Maybe tonight we will go see Indiana Jones and the Nursing Home of the Crystal Hips.

     That was our Memorial Day weekend.  What did you all do?

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Good News for People who Love Wine and/or Ice Cream!

  And we all scream for ice cream, don't we?  A recent study found that adding wine lees (the sediment left in the bottom of the wine barrel) to ice cream made the ice cream melt slower and higher in anti-oxidents.  Yea!  This is science everyone can enjoy.  No word on whether eating a cone a day will have the same benefits as a glass of wine a day, but here's hoping.   Good job food scientists, now look at bourbon mash still bottoms. - Glen 4/7/8

http://www.foodnavigator.com/news/ng.asp?n=84476-lees-grape-ice-cream

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Tomorrow is Lynn (O'Brien's) Birthday

Happy, happy Birthday to you, you lunatic (lunar eclipse also scheduled for tomorrow)! - Glen 2/19/08

Have an awesome Birthday, Lynn.  I'm sure you are going someplace fabulous for dinner to celebrate! ~ Patti

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For all those of you sitting on the High Definition DVD Fence...

...(and I have no idea how many of you that is), it appears that Sony's Blu-Ray format has won the High Definition DVD War.  Look for the prices of DVD Players and Discs to start to decrease.  Next Christmas shopping season will probably be the time when they really start to come down a lot. 

Kent is probably getting tired of me posting and e-mailing about this subject, but I personally feel that this is big news.  I have gotten addicted to HD TV's improved picture quality and have been waiting for the format war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD to settle out.  I wonder how long it will be before my collection of standard definition DVD's becomes as dusty and seldom watched as my collection of VHS tapes. - Glen 2/19/08

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Happy Birthday Jen!

Jennifer's Birthday is Friday.  Everyone, please send her a card, E-card or email.  Happy Birthday Jen!!!!! ~Patti

Happy Birthday, Jennifer.  May all your wishes come true. - Glen

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Looks like a Martian to me!

Pretty impressive photography, I agree.  Is that a B-52 modulator that he is holding out in front of him, or am I just being pareidolic?

Randal

Word for the Day - Pareidolia

I just discovered a new word and thought I would share it with everyone, pareidolia.  Pareidolia describes those occurences where people ascribe significance to some random input.  Examples include Jesus appearing on toast, seeing a form in a cloud, hearing words in a recording of static, the "face" on Mars and Rorshach test results. 

What makes this word apropos for today?  The media abetting stupid people who think that a rock on Mars, photographed years ago, is evidence of "life."  Someone found a bit of an old photo from the Spirit rover on Mars where an oddly shaped rock resembles Bigfoot or something like that.  Of course, the rock is tiny compared to Bigfoot.  And a rock.  And exists.  But other than that, it is exactly like Bigfoot.  Except for the hair.  And ambulation.

Here is the rock:            

Which is a blow up of this image:

Which is a blow up of this image:

Really, this shows the incredible quality of the imagary taken from the Mars Rovers more than anything else.  (Unlike my poor job of re-sizing these photos to save space.)  But some of the media jumped on the tinfoil-hat bandwagon and reported this as if it were actually evidence of something monumental.  Which led me to adding a new word to my vocabulary and thus to this entry.  Pareidolia

Hey, where did this soapbox come from??

Glen 1/24/08

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2007 Archived

Since the front page was starting to get so long, I decided to archive everything from last year.  If you want to go back and re-live those halcyon days, click on the link in the Sidebar =>

Glen 1/23/8

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Finishing the Movie Review

We have been so busy lately that I haven't had time to mention that, yes, we did finally go back and see the rest of Sweeney Todd.  I don't really have much more to comment on it from what was said earlier.  The rest of movie gallops along (so much was cut out from the Broadway production) to a satisfying ending.  Probably the biggest complaint anyone could have with the film would not be with what was in it, but what was left out. 

On a related note, has anyone out there seen "Cloverfield"?  I thought it looked interesting, but was concerned about the shakey-cam technique.  I would hate to miss the end of such a short movie because I had to go get some air due to nausea. - Glen 1/23/08

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We're out here!

Glen, if it makes you feel better, Lynn and I actually do check the site regularly.  Unfortunately, we still can't "log on" from home, so can't comment. 

Thanks for all of the birthday reminders.  I don't seem to check the calendar as much.  Daniel had his sixth birthday on the 8th - after a gathering of the Timm and Olsen cousins on the 4th, complete with the pummelling of a pirate pinata, we broke down and took him and two of his friends to Chuck E Cheeses on the 8th (a request he's had since we moved 2 years ago!).  Fun was had by all.

Also, Dad (Bo) was one stroke off from shooting his age in golf this week.  He double bogeyed the 17th hole and ended up with a 73 for the round!  An impressive feat, for any non-golfers out there.

Hope everyone's enjoying the new year.

Randal

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Partial Movie Review

Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

     I was looking over this page and noticed that it had become practically all just me wishing people "Happy Birthday", so I thought I would contribute something else for a change.  Last night, Patti and I went to the movie theater to see Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.  What we ended up seeing was Sweeney Todd, t e De...  The power to the theater went out briefly, came back on, and then went out for long enough that the theater gave up and issued us rain tickets.

     What we did get to see, we liked.  The movie is a fairly straightforward presentation of the stage production (as far as I can recall, since I haven't seen the stage production in many years, and even that was a TV broadcast of it).  The mood of this film is set through the use of a washed out color palette, which emphasizes the color of the blood when it pours (and it does).  I understand that the barber chair becomes almost a character in and of itself, but we didn't make it that far into the film to where Mr. Todd has modified it.

     I was a bit apprehensive as to the casting of the film.  I like Johnny Depp a lot, but I wasn't certain he could pull off a character like Todd.  He can.  From the previews, it appeared that Helena Bonham Carter was reprising her role from the Harry Potter films.  She isn't.  Both carry off their acting and singing duties admirably.  Sacha Baron Cohen has a nice small role that he plays very well without trying to dominate his scenes.  Allan Rickman plays the villain (what else?) with his standard excellence and depth of character.  The other roles played by actors-I-don't-know-the-name-of are fine, too.  Patti especially enjoyed the singing of the actress playing the ingenue.  

     For those who aren't familiar with this story, you may have picked up on the fact that this is not a family friendly musical, ala The Sound of Music.  The movie is rated R, I assume for violence and dark themes.  In the parts we did got to see, there was no nudity (darn!) and very little bad language, other than a single curse word repeated several times (but far less than the 300 times on an infamous South Park episode).  If the words "arterial spray" put you off, don't go see this film.  If you can accept it for what it is, then do.

     How will the movie end?  I don't know.  Well, actually I have a pretty good idea having seen the stage production, but I am looking forward to going back and seeing the rest of the movie.  Until then!

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Today is Abbey's Birthday

Tommorrow is Uncle Bo's Birthday