finished with all of harry potter

yesterday morning, bright and early, in a hurry to get on to class, i finished the entire 4000+ page series of harry potter. a great ending to a wonderful final book. that's all for now, i may write more later. for fun, let's look back at what i wrote right after i finished the sixth book of seven.
on snape
on horcruxes

oh yeah, so ... birthday weekend events

well, i went and reflected on my birthday, but neglected to mention what we actually did for my birthday.

on friday evening, we finally got to see a movie at the movie tavern. we wanted to see knocked up, but it had left the theater the night before. lindsay didn't want to see transformers or die hard (i had resigned to watching them on dvd anyways) or harry potter 5 (i totally would have been up for it again) so we (she?) decided to watch license to wed. her sell was "it has robin williams and the guy from the office in it!" i still wasn't too hyped, but i rationalized that i would like to see the movie for at least pastoral reasons. you know - things not to do. anyways the movie was bland with cheesy dialogue and set upon some outlandish pretenses. the food wasn't great either - seemed to be frozen food items that were just heated up quickly. however, even though it may not sound like it, it was a very fun date night evening with my wife. always need more of those...

L's parents came up and hung out with us most of saturday. bob and i messed with the garden and went to lowe's for some supplies while the rest of the gang ran some errands to wal-mart and such. we went for an early delicious dinner to malone's. ranked the #9 steakhouse in the country by tom somebody. i've had the filet before and it was very good, but i wanted to try a different cut this time. i got a ny strip and the flavor was palpable - absolutely delicious. their salads are great, we got the fried zucchini again (yum-o!), and we also got this dessert that had crushed oreos on the bottom that hit the spot to cap a great birthday.

i don't know if i'm looking forward to the next birthday or not! well, i guess i am because i'll be done with school at that point (Lord willing) and i think i'm over the whole getting older thing. now, the one after that, we'll have to see.

the foe of my garden

so this ugly thing called a squash vine borer just destroyed all my (yellow and green) squash plants. it might even be in my cucumber plants as well. they're gross. read about the weekend's garden overhaul here please.

28

i was looking back on this post and i thought it was really darn nice to have such a little crystallized post of my life and outlook from one year ago that i decided to do it again this year.

i'm writing this mainly because i feel like i'm in a completely different place now with a completely different outlook now. maybe not 'completely different' as much as more positive and hopeful. of course, that mainly revolves around tentatively graduating in around 10 months and looking towards whatever is next in life. whether it be planting a church or taking a church or what, i'm excited for whatever is next. as i see it, that unknown will include continuing to work full-time at lexmark. this is another big difference between this year and last - i have a great job that i love.

that age keeps getting higher, but i think i'm fully transitioned out of the 'hey, wasn't i just in college' phase and into the 'accepting adulthood' phase. well, as best as can be hoped. :-)

what a movie!

so i'm looking for a reason why harry potter & the order of the phoenix wouldn't be my favorite of all the harry potter films and i can't really find one. the first two ended up a little too sappy in parts. hey, chris columbus meant well. the third was really good for its visuals, history, and true sentimental moments and the fourth was good for some great action scenes. take the pros of the third and fourth movie and you have this, the fifth movie. cons? i hear it can be choppy and tad unclear to those (few!!) who haven't read the books, but haven't all of the movies been a tad hard on those who haven't read them?

anywho, i was bouncing with excitement all afternoon to see the movie and i'm still on a rush after seeing it. i could see it again right now. in fact, i'd really like to go see it in imax because the whole final fight scene is in 3-d !!

first salad from the garden

i made my first salad from my new garden last night. i think I’ll wash the (mesclun) lettuce a little better next time (i should be fine, i have a strong stomach). i have my first tomato turning red so it will be nice to use my own tomatoes next time. i threw a bit of basil and parsley in (both from the garden as well) and topped with some mixed shredded cheese, croutons (just a few for some texture), and a small can of tuna. i forgot to slice some of my first picked cucumber. then i added balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and salt and fresh ground pepper. it was actually pretty good, but I kept worrying whether i had cleaned the lettuce enough.

i also sauteed some fresh picked yellow and green squash. i threw some extra onions (not from the garden) in both the salad and the squash.

cool news

lindsay has been working at the new danville office for around 14 months now and business is going great for them down there. in fact, she found out today that they are hiring a part-time assistant for her! L currently has patients in the office two days out of the week and works 9-5 on the other two days and then 9-1 on fridays. now, the assistant will be there on the patient days to help with all the craziness and will work a full day on friday so that lindsay can have fridays off! all the other office managers get one day off per week since the patient days run so long. to recoup part of those four hours, L will now work 8-5 on non-patient days.

what does this mean? well, it revolutionizes our week so now L can have all of friday to take care of any kind of errands or those little things that pile up and steal the weekend. she'll have the full day to herself to gain some sanity and rest. also, if we want to go somewhere for the weekend and i have enough time to take off, we can just leave on thursday night. a 3-day weekend every week for lindsay. holiday weeks are the only exception - one patient day still flips over to friday.

busy weekend

quick recap of a busy weekend:
- after we got home from work on friday, we ate dinner and dad headed on home to nashville. it was a pretty fun week, but it's hard to hang out as much as you'd like when you're still working every day.
- i think we just hung out friday night.
- saturday morning (11am), we cleaned house a bit and then the gals from small group met at our place to venture out and shop for a baby shower.
- one of the guys (matt) came over and our boys played and watched movies while we played ... wait for it ... axis and allies. it's been years since i've been able to actually play it over the board. such a fun game. risk on steroids.
- tim, the pastor from arkansas who has stayed with us twice while taking a week-long intensive class at the seminary, called and we finalized plans to cook out at our place that evening since he was in town with his whole family.
- the gals got back from shopping and then matt's wife (jenna) just hung out with L while matt and I continued playing since they were all staying for dinner with tim and his family.
- everyone left around 9:30 - 10:00pm and we crashed in bed and watched flicka. well, i mainly just slept.
- on sunday, we got up shortly after 6am and finished cleaning the whole house since we were hosting the baby shower that afternoon.
- we got ready, went to church, and got home a tad before noon (10 am church service is nice like that).
- our small group mates arrived shortly after and we grilled out for lunch and set up for the baby shower.
- the baby shower was nice and it was good to see our friends get some stuff right before they move away from us.
- around 4pm, the house was quiet and we all napped for 2-3 hours.
- then we ordered a pizza for dinner because we didn't want to cook any more.
- we watched a few of our favorite shows and fell asleep early.

in the end, don't read this as being negative. it was a fun weekend. we've learned that doing these types of things are a part of who we are as a couple. as i've explained to others, i push community forming events to happen and lindsay makes sure the events happen correctly and are done right. it's a cool way that i've seen Lord work our gifts together as a couple.

happy 4th of july

i hope everyone had a restful day in the middle of the week. it was actually kind of nice to have such a mid-week break. kg tells me it has only happened that way twice in the past 17 years (07/04 on a wednesday). the day felt like a saturday and so it wasn't fun to remember yesterday evening that i had to go to work today, but today it's nice to realize that tomorrow is already friday.

dad has been in town taking care of jake this week and we had a fun day out of the house yesterday. we got a bite of breakfast at hardee's and then went over to wilmore for the small town parade and a craft festival. then, we ventured towards lexington to have lunch at red robin. next, we went back to the house to let jake (and everyone) nap a bit. around dinnertime, we ventured to the mall area and had dinner at the pub - still very yummy british food. the torrential rains began as we were eating and so after dinner we just went home instead of looking for a fireworks show. we watched a couple on tv while playing cards instead.

tomorrow's already friday! yay!

ratatouille

i started this a few days ago, but neglected to post it:

yeah. far below cars, nemo, and the toy stories for me. down at the bottom with bug's life (speaking of just pixar movies). three things:

1) in the beginning there was a crazy granny shooting a shotgun at the rats all over the place. an extended scene that showed her reloading the shells and stuff too. couldn't she have used a frying pan or something ? i'm not keen on jake seeing very much gun violence yet. i may take him to the woods and teach him some gun safety some day, but it sent chills down my spine the first time he came home from preschool and pointed his finger and said "bang!" you may have a different view.

2) at one point, the mean chef running this restaurant says in a very dramatic and angry voice to the red haired not good chef on his first day "welcome to HELL!". just totally unnecessary.

3) later, the same mean chef gets the not good chef (who the rat is helping) drunk on wine. again, just unnecessary for a movie i'm bringing my 3 year old to. i didn't mind wine being the drink of choice all thru a foodie movie set in paris, but this was kind of annoying. sure jake didn't get it but an older kid would. i dunno maybe i was over reacting on that part - i don't remember all the tom and jerry and bugs bunny stuff we grew up on. i know they used that occasionally.

also, this movie was the first pixar to use humans prominently as the main characters. i just don't know that they pulled it off. also, jake still gets pullups with buzz and woody on them. nemo and cars merchandise sells like hotcakes. from a business standpoint, what did they do to set themselves up to sell merchandise? they didn't really try hard to make the rat fluffy and cute such that it would sell a lot. also, ratatouille ends up being a dish they make near the end - it's not even a character's name.

to further illustrate all this, around the 90 minute mark of this 110 minute film, both jake and the similarly aged kid in front of us asked if they could go home.

in the end, it was worth seeing and i might even buy it, but i'm not sure when jake will see it again.