Weekend Recap and a few odds and ends

I'm writing my recap of the weekend and a smattering of other random topics on Monday night since the storms yesterday kept causing power surges and kept knocking out our internet service.

Friday afternoon I felt like I saw Elvis. There I was, driving along near the Makalapa gate when I saw a guy walking along in khakis. He has a very distinctive walk, and I said to myself, "Self... could that be Wild Bill?" Bill was a sub school classmate of mine last year. I was sure he was stationed on a boomer out of Bangor, so I figured there was no way he was walking down the street here in Pearl Harbor. But as I got closer, I said, "Self, it IS! It IS Wild Bill!" Bill is a true steely-eyed killer of the deep - a true submarine warrior (sorry, can't tell ya about it). I felt really blessed to have Bill in my group at sub school. He's one of those guys that just doesn't get pissed off. No matter what happens, he rolls with the punches and gets the job done - and he does so without being a jerk about it, either. That's a challenging balance I have seen few submarine officers master. (As for me, I think I tend to tip the scales toward the "jerk" side and don't do such a good job of rolling with the punches).

Wild Bill and Rich at AUTEC in Nov '06.

Anyway, I was right, Bill really is on a boomer out of Bangor. Poor Bill cracked a tooth and had to be BSP'ed off here in Pearl to go to the dentist. When I saw him there on the street, he hadn't been off the boat for two hours yet and was wondering to himself, "Self, I wonder who I might run into here during my brief visit to Pearl Harbor?" I managed to go out and grab a cup of coffee with Bill last night before he went to rejoin his boat this morning. It was great to see him and swap some sea stories.

- Friday night, we went over to the Ala Moana center so LW could return some stuff and look for a glass pitcher at Sears, and so we could get some dinner at Islands. I will forever be in debt to my college roommate, Ryan, for introducing me to Islands. Back then, we would go to Islands whenever we went to visit his parents around Hermosa Beach or Santa Monica. Since then, Islands has spread across southern California, and we went there frequently during my previous sea tour in San Diego. Now we've been blessed with an Islands here in Honolulu - close enough we can go every once in a while for a little indulgence, but far enough that we don't go often. Islands serves absolutely awesome, enormous burgers and tacos. The one here in Honolulu has great service, too. (Not to imply that other Islands have lousy service, just expressing my pleasure with the service here).

- Family Movie marathon. We frequently like to have a Family Movie Night and rent some movie to watch together as a family. It was awesome in our home theater back in Virginia. But it's not the big screen that matters, it's the spending time together as a family, right? So since it was going to pour rain all weekend and we had two coupons for Blockbuster that were going to expire, we went for two movies instead of one.

First we watched Transformers. That was, wait for it... legendary. Okay, the plot was a little on the weak side, but better than I expected, and the special effects and the action were just amazing. Great movie - highly recommend it! That's one we're going to buy because the boys and I will watch it over and over and over again.

Second up, we watched Surf's Up. It was okay. It was done as sort of a spoof on reality-TV shows, like interviewing the main character and having him tell the story of what happened, interspersed with video clips of what happened. It was kind of funny the way they made fun of reality-TV, but that humor went over the boys' heads. I think the boys lost interest in it before the end. Probably won't watch that one again.

- Speaking of reality TV, a favorite show of both LW and mine just started up again - The Amazing Race. Unfortunately, with all the problems of power surges and satellite reception coming in and out, the DVR missed the first half of the show, so we missed the introduction of who the contestants are this time around. Luckily the website has lots of good info so we can catch up. I always like watching the polls on the website week by week of who the viewers think are going to win the race. I think it'd be way cool to go on the Amazing Race someday.

- Thanks to our friend Corey for giving us a heads up! There's a new Lego Star Wars video game coming out this week!
I really like Lego Star Wars. It's very simple to control and very forgiving of mistakes, so it's great for small children to be able to actually play the game. It's not overly gruesome or violent (when you "kill" the bad guys, they break up into Lego pieces - no blood and gore). Two people can play at the same time, which sometimes helps alleviate fighting over the XBox (except when ES wants to go one direction and YS wants to go another direction - your characters have to stay together on the screen). Plus, there's a lot of adult humor written into how they tell the story of Star Wars with these mini skits that are actually pretty funny. I found this video that shows there's an Indiana Jones character you can use in the new game - complete with a bull whip and pistol.

- I wanted to change the song on my blog to my favorite new song on KLOVE, but I can't find it on the project playlist website. If you go to Phil Wickham's myspace page though, his song "After Your Heart" is the first song that starts playing in the background. You can also check it out on the KLOVE top-songs list. I really liked his comment on his myspace page, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

- BTW, have I mentioned how much I appreciate my absolutely awesome wife? She puts up with so much. She's "on the job" as a busy mom taking care of me and our boys 24/7. I know she gets tired of the never-ending piles of laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, cooking, and playing taxi driver to take the boys to school and swimming lessons and piano lessons and everywhere else. I know it seems like she's got a thankless job, but I really appreciate everything she does for me and the boys. You're awesome, Sweetie!