Un-Convention-al

We're going to have to do something different for next year's District Convention. We've been fortunate enough to get the hotel across the street consistently each year, thanks in no small part to my wife's due diligence in reserving rooms early. But as evidenced by this last weekend's Convention, location is not enough. Habits need to be changed.

For one thing, while walking from the hotel to the convention center is still the better option to driving such a short distance, we still have to drive all over creation just to find something to eat in the afternoon. I'd much rather walk to one of the eating places by the hotel and grab something real quick, rather than struggle to find parking at the hotel later that night. Plus, any way to limit the number of times the wheelchair has to be lugged in and out of the trunk is a good idea.

Another thing we need to work out is making sure the wife and I can get in touch with each other when the baby has to be changed in an emergency. There's no Father's Room at the convention center, so when Miranda was away from her seat, I had to try and change baby in the grass out back behind the building under the blazing sun. Not really the most comfortable, nor private place to change a five year old, not to mention having to deal with curious insects and other curious little children. I don't like sitting in the grass as it is, much less in my good suit.

We also need to stop unpacking everything we bring just to end up repacking it a day and half later. There's some things that we can just pull from the suitcase when ready to use and some stuff we can take out. But packing and repacking the entirety of our luggage in such a short period of time just wastes time and energy that could otherwise be conserved.

Add to all that, we need to stop eating so much. I think Miranda subconsciously realized that before we even left for our trip, as she only packed snacks for lunch. It took me a couple of nights with severe heartburn to realize that breakfast at 8:30 and lunch at 12 noon is just to close together for me. I never even used to eat breakfast before I got married, and I still only do so when out with the family such as on trips like these. By the last day I had sense enough to just skip lunch and was fine until ready to eat that afternoon. I was overfilling myself and paying for it come nighttime. Didn't think to bring any Mylanta.

Overall, I'd say we do better then we used to. I'll never understand why we used to show up at the hotel with five Wal-Mart bags and ten suitcases. I'm glad we didn't do that too many times. But baby is only going to get heavier and ganglier the older she gets, and we can't presume that she will walk during a given year, even if that is our goal for her. We, of course, need to work on our own health and strength in line with that reality just generally speaking, as well as for assemblies and conventions. But aside from that, we also need to consider just how inefficient we're being in the meantime. While my wife has done a good job learning how to pack fewer bags over the years, I think it's time we start learning how to pack better bags for our trips. Sometimes two mid-size bags are better then jamming the contents into one giant, cumbersome bag that requires a back brace and winch to get out of the trunk. Conversely, the baby doesn't need both jumbo plush Nemo dolls, when a couple of compact rattlers will do.

Next year will be different. It always is. We always learn something with each passing year. One day we'll get it almost perfect. Then maybe, we can have enough energy to stay alert for the session, and have enough strength to keep baby from chewing on the back of the head of the people in front of us.

The Eleventh Doctor

Just so you know, the wife and I have been starting the Doctor Who saga over. And I mean over. As in William Hartnell over. Most Americans were introduced to Dr. Who during the Tom Baker years, but once it gained popularity here, they threw a few of the Hartnell/Troughten episodes on the air and that was pretty much it. Since I'm a completest kind of person, I've been putting the cursed Blockbuster account to good use and playing catchup on some stuff I've been wanting to see. So with that said, I'll probably be caught up with the current series sometime around 2015. (That is, provided Blockbuster starts filling in the missing DVDs they don't have. It's bad enough most of the Hartnell stuff is missing, much less having to skip through what little does exist.)

Here's the thing. I was looking at an article about the new guy. And I guess it was an American website, because the nimrods in the comment section of this site kept making jokes about how they were going to crossover Doctor Who with Twilight and 90210 and some such nonsense.

As I said, here's the thing.

They were insinuating that the show was coping to the teen/Twilight crowd because they picked this real handsome young guy.



Yeah.

Young, surely. Bloodless, maybe. But handsome? Twilight handsome? Is there something about the "leave a comment" button that just turns on every dim bulb in the world and forces them to say something, even when it doesn't make any sense?

It's Just Another Manic Friday?

Baby has not been having a good two weeks. She's constantly been having her sleep disturbed by what we could only describe as small crying seizures. It's tough to sleep when you seize the whole night. And you can't stop having seizures if you can't get a good night's sleep. Ever seen the movie Catch 22?

Since we've been running to the doctor and calling Wake Forest over and over again, her neurologist started getting a little concerned and had us run to Winston-Salem for an EKG at Brenners. Short notice, otherwise I would have tried to sleep last night, which I didn't do, which I wish I had, which I made up for later. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

At Brenners they attached a bunch of electrodes to her head, drugged her up and then expected her to go to sleep. That went well... Baby doesn't like sleeping in public. She's too nosy.

After having to pin her down to get the electrodes PROPERLY attached we wrestled with her for what seemed like an hour to get her to go to sleep. Lots of screaming ensued. Lots of electrodes did not remain attached properly. Finally I took her and laid down on the bed with her over my shoulder and she could no longer resist. She had one seizure during the scan, which was a good thing, as they were able to rule some things out. And, well, it was a pretty comfortable bed and I hadn't slept in 24 hours, so...

I felt like I was there to have this baby-shaped tumor removed from my chest. Remember that movie with the little dude attached to the other dudes chest with all the wires sticking out of his head? Yeah...

In any event, the doctor ruled out what she was afraid it might be. Infantile Spasms Seizures I believe was the correct name. She figured she was too old for them, but just wanted to be sure. As it turns out, we just need to put baby back on the Keppra, which we had just weaned her off of prior to my Grandma's funeral, and was right about when all the trouble started. Right when I started blogging regularly again. We figured as much, but she has a good neurologist, so we waited to see what she thought.

Baby is asleep now, thanks to the sedative they gave her and she's been sleeping all day and night. No crying. The wife's been asleep since this evening, and I slept till about 2am. I got hungry. Plus I closed City of Gamers last night to do some much needed maintenance and upgrades, so I'm really behind on that. I'm sure Maruno would like back into the Wiki at some point. Not to mention, those extensions I keep promising him...

Mouse Ears

On the subject of parents who force their kids onto rides, I brought up a few points that I thought were being overlooked over at the Mousestation Podcast. My email got read on the air, about 30 minutes in if your not interested in listening to whole show (which was a good show by the way) and seemed to be received positively, even if I did come off a little snippy in retrospect. http://ping.fm/uiiQW

Sorry, But You Don't Like Movies... Bub

Saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine yesterday. As usual, the internet and all it's sages are atwitter with just why the movie sucked. Tomorrow it will be Star Trek. And after that Transformers 2. And after that, everyone will say how the Wachowski Brothers can't make movies anymore. And after that, someone will call M. Knight Shyamalan a one trick pony. And so on, and so forth, etc, et al.

After many years of consideration and consternation, I've come to one inescapable conclusion. The vocal majority of people who go to see movies, don't actually like movies. I mean it. I think people have gotten so accustomed to the culture and tradition of going to the movies and renting DVDs that they don't realize they actually hate them.

It's one thing to have an opinion and to even have the right to voice it. Why, however, do you feel the need to inundate the internet with expressionless, pointless, redundant articles that to read are more painful and time consuming then watching Superman IV: The Quest for Peace...in Spanish? Are you adding something that the hundred other bloggers, who hated the movie six months before they even saw it, didn't? Are you contributing anything to the vast repository of human knowledge that is the internet, other then gathering people who hate anything and everything around a rallying cry?

If you're going to critique something, be articulate as to why. Do you're research before you say ANYTHING about the special effects or the director or the actors or, well, ANYTHING. And please, for the love of all that's not repetitive or redundant, stay away from these phrases, as they're essentially meaningless and only diminish your credibility as a "critic":

"It sucked." - Easy there Shakespeare. Wouldn't want to go over my head now.

"That's two hours of my life I'll never get back." - I'm sure your work on the Nobel Peace Prize will still be there when you get back.

"Don't waste your money." - Yes, in a struggling economy desperate for consumers to consume product, this is great advice. While you at it, why don't you elucidate me on how spending quality time with you family by going to bad movies will cause cancer.

"Over-hyped" - Really, stop watching the trailers already. Over-hyped means the advertisers went way beyond the pale trying to make you think the movie was going to be great, even though it wasn't. You discussing it with your friends whilst playing Halo 3 for six months does not count as part of that advertising system.

"Cheesy special effects" - I don't care if you can tell it's CGI. You've never seen a ten foot, 1000 lbs green indestructible behemoth. So how do you know he doesn't look "real"?

"drek", "crap", "steaming pile" or other clever epithets - Yes, there was a pile of dinosaur crap in the movie, and you comparing the movie to the crap scene is utter genius. As is your imaginary conversation about the movie execs sitting around the table and conversing about how to make the movie suck. You're a regular Seinfeld, er, without the humor part.

Stop going to movies, already. I mean it. You're only causing yourself unnecessary pain and cluttering up the already cluttered up internet with ACTUAL meaningless drivel. Think about it. You and everyone who agrees with you just spent hours of time and thousands of dollars worth of bandwidth just further bringing attention to something that you don't think people should be wasting time and money on. Is that not the definitions of irony?

Movies are a billion dollar industry, and they don't seem to be changing anytime soon. You're not seeking the improvement of the movie making industry and you're not offering any tenable suggestions or solutions of you're own. So what the heck are you doing?

Really, you're a lactose intolerant Ice Cream taster. Re-evaluate why you even bother doing something which is bringing you so little joy. You've assumed that the millions of people who go see these movies are just brainwashed into liking anything. Maybe you've been brainwashed into thinking that you have to watch movies, because everybody else does. Just because you like a few movies is no indication that you like the whole. You can love Calzones and still hate Italian Food. You can rave about IE8 and still think Microsoft is the Antichrist. But when you hate the larger part of a whole, you don't immerse yourself in the experience every time the opportunity arises, just because everyone else does. Then blog about how much you hated it later. How much sense does that make?

I hate to tell you this, bub. But on the whole, you hate movies. And if that's the case, the movies will only hate you back. Actual paid movie criticism is barely journalism as it is. Ask yourself what you're contributing to the world, or to yourself in the pursuit of interests that only seem to be causing you physical pain and outbursts of clich�d humor. Try taking up a hobby. I hear their doing some interesting things with tea bags in the Midwest...