Well, Thanksgiving went great! Andrew and I had a great trip down to TN to visit with Lee and his family. There are also a large number of things going on that I realize that I haven’t filled anyone in yet. Also, I am sorry I haven’t gotten around to posting much, I have been pretty busy with all of these things. Now that the torrent of stuff is starting to die down I may have a little more time.

One main thing that happened recently is that I have gotten glasses. I have joined the ranks of those who have issues seeing crap when it’s not right in front of his freaking face. Amy finally talked me in to going to get my eyes checked and the Dr. gave me a halfway decent prescription. I don’t know exactly what the eyesight is (I.E. 20/20) but I have problems with distances. I have now had my glasses for about 2 weeks and I have really gotten used to them. Sadly I don’t think I have any pictures of me in them just yet so you will just have to check back and see if I post some. I really like them though and they are very stylish. When I first got them I sat there for like 5 min putting them on and taking them off. I was astonished to learn that I had bad eyes! (Funny, I thought the stuff far away was supposed to be blurry!)

One of the Thanksgiving events that I hadn’t reported on was that Amy got to go home to TX for her Thanksgiving! She spent the whole time there with her Dad and her kids. From what I have heard (and seen on video) they are doing wonderfully well. The main reason I didn’t say anything is that it was a surprise to some of those people back in TX and I didn’t want to ruin it.

My trip, however, I can give much more details about. Wednesday morning was a rough start for us. We woke up at 3am (ugh) so that we could get Amy to the airport on time for her flight. We really did try and get to sleep early on Tuesday but you all know how that works. We dropped her off and started out on our Father Son road trip. This trip took us down I66 to I81 to I40 to I440 to I65 then to Lee’s place. Most of it was I81 and I40 as they are a straight shot to Nashville. The excited start to the driving petered out around 8:30am as I started getting sleepy. So sleepy in fact that I made the intelligent decision to pull over and take a 30 min nap. It’s amazing how much that will help you on a trip. We finally arrived at around 4:30pm Nashville time. Thankfully we have XM in the truck for those long drives. It’s nice not having to channel surf through areas.

Thanksgiving Day was interesting to say the least. We started the day with a nice cup of Chai and went about helping Missy with thanksgiving dinner preparations. Andrew and Damon got to play games a lot over the few days. We had a lovely early dinner with Lee’s parents and after diner many of Lee’s extended family came by for desert. It was kind of awkward for me because I really didn’t know many of them at all. I let Andrew hide upstairs. I did my best to fit in and follow along in conversations. To round out the evening we sat and watched Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow on Lee’s giant 50 inch TV.

Friday we had quite a number of plans. We started out with lunch (yes, lunch) at Sonic. This was ½ because Andrew had never had Sonic before and ½ because Amy always wants sonic. Problem was, if you remember, Amy wasn’t with us. So to involve her we took many cell phone pictures and sent them to her so that she can enjoy Sonic as much as we did. (Yeah, she wasn’t that amused). After we finished off our Coney Specials, we headed to the theater to catch Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire. Overall it was a good movie, but very very very long. I think the movie started at 3pm and we got out at 5:45pm. Next stop was a little pub named McCreary’s in old town Franklin. We took the whole clan with us so they could get the chance to eat, but the overall feeling from them was that they wanted to go home. Missy was nice enough to take them back (with their fish and chips) so Lee and I could stay and have a few Ciders. They had what had to be double pint glasses of Woodchuck Cider on tap. It was glorious! We each had 2 and finished off Missy’s. Needless to say we were feeling quite happy. The sad part came when we decided to go home and drink some more while playing a little bit of WoW. Thankfully Saturday was a light day.

When I finally dragged myself from my bed and poured about a gallon of water into my stomach, I started feeling somewhat normal again. We took this opportunity to venture out to the local comic book shop. I have been searching for some past issues of stuff and thought a whole new state might have some of it. No big luck. We also did our gift exchange for Christmas. Lee was nice enough to go through all of his old Magic the Gathering cards and give some of them to Andrew. We rounded the evening out with lee and I going to TGI Fridays for dinner.

Sunday meant back on the road again. We started out at 6am this time and the trip sucked! We were on the road for a full 13 and ½ hours. We managed to stop a few times to stretch and rest and eat. The most memorable one was a small Antique store. They had an interesting stock of stuff. Most of it was Nascar, but I figured that was because of where we were. The last part of the trip was filled with the sound of yester-year as we found the Old Time Radio station on XM was playing The Adventures of Superman! This had to be from the 40s to 50s time frame. It was fun to listen to how dramatic the actors get. We got home and around 7:45pm and were thankful for it! Amy met us at the door with lots of hugs and I think I fell asleep early because I was wiped out.

There is one other surprise coming, but that will have to wait for the next post.

Ok, so apparently I haven’t been updating as much as I really should. Mostly that’s because of all the stuff I have going on. Ok, well, that’s not all that true either. I just haven’t gotten around to posting. The sad thing is, it’s not going to get better right now. The holidays are coming and there is a lot to do! Lets get you all caught up before that though.

Last Wednesday Amy and I decided to have a hooky day. We haven’t had all that much time with just her and I. She has her classes after work and I have been taking care of Andrew (and probably gaming a bit much). So we scheduled to have Wednesday off and just enjoyed the day. That is, until we realized that we had a bunch of errands to run. Isn’t that always the case? Amy had some paperwork to fill out and an eye appointment. I had some things I had to pick up at the store. So we did a lot of running around, but we did it together! Doesn’t that count? We did manage to get over to the comic store and pick up the latest batch of addiction. Amy is really hooked on Birds of Prey and Super-girl. Meanwhile, I have been getting more and more into my Green Lantern. I also have picked up a few of the latest Batman issues. Good timing too, it would seem that someone is back in play.

This weekend wasn’t all too terribly exciting. Saturday Andrew and I stayed home and did some more deep cleaning of the house. By the afternoon time we had the house looking great! Of course, I was feeling like crap again (I had caught a small head cold over the last few days). Andrew had a friend come over to do some homework and that’s about the time I handed things over to Amy and just went to lay down. Hooray! The migraine fairy has come to visit again! After a good medicine induced nap (read 2 ½ hours) I was feeling much better. So what do I do at this point? I game of course! Lee and I got in and ran a few missions to help him catch up in levels. I only did this until about midnight.

On Sunday the unprecedented happened. I woke up at around 8:30am. I know, I was amazed too! I just wasn’t tired so I woke up! We had a few plans set but I didn’t plan for anything that early. We mostly just curled up on the couch and watched some TV until around 10:30ish. After that we went out for some Christmas shopping and to get Andrew and new pair of shoes (he tears through them quick!) After all of that, we up and went out to Georgetown in DC. It’s actually a nice little shopping district with a few cool things to see. We walked along the canal there and also along the Potomac River walk. Paul met up with us and we visited two local comic book shops (go figure). I hope that very soon I will reach the point where I am caught up as far as stories go and can just go on the normal release schedule for comics. I have been buying a few Trade paperbacks to catch up on the current stories and that gets a little pricey if it keeps up. One book that I was happy to pick up was “Red Son.” It’s an Elsworlds title about Superman. The basic premise is what if Kal-L’s ship crash landed in the Ukraine on Joseph Stalin’s farm. Think about it, Superman is an “All American Hero.” What if he were suddenly a Communist Hero instead? It’s an excellent read and I suggest you go get it.

The next few days are going to be nucking futz. Andrew and I are taking a father son road trip down to TN to visit with Lee and family. This will start at Oh god early on Wednesday morning. This means an early night on Tuesday night, which means, everything needs to get packed up and ready tonight. The trip itself is going to be great fun though. With us leaving so early means that we will arrive fairly early in the evening. Granted that I will probably be pretty tired, it still gives us some time to recoup and visit. We will be there all day on Thursday, all day Friday, and all day Saturday. The drive back is scheduled for early Sunday morning. I know Lee has a lot of thing set that he wants to do so I am pretty sure that there will be lots of fun. If I get the chance to blog while I am there I will. If I don’t, Happy Turkey Day!!!

As I have stated in previous posts, I have gotten back into comics. As we all know all too well, when I start getting into something, I go full boar. I have been debating with myself about getting a reserve box at the local comic store (Phoenix comics). The problem is, they want you to select 10 monthly titles to start your box with. Every week when new comics come out, they pull the titles from your list and reserve them for you. I can understand why they want you to have 10 titles thought. This is because it’s not feasible to only pull one or two titles for people. It’s too time consuming. The benefit of course is that by having a box there I get 10% off everything (not just the 10 titles). Now, the question lies in what 10 titles? Obviously I have been reading a lot of Green Lantern and Spiderman, but what else? After conferring with Andrew and even Amy I came down to this list:

1. Green Lantern
2. Green Lantern Corps
3. Amazing Spiderman
4. Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman
5. Marvel Knights Spiderman
6. Batman
7. Infinite Crisis
8. Flash (For Andrew)
9. Green Arrow (For Andrew)
10. Birds Of Prey (For Amy)

Yes, that last one on the list is a comic just for Amy. We have been talking about this for a while now. She knows that I really like comics and such and was trying to find a new way to relate to me. On her own she started looking at some of the different comics (all be it that I steered her towards some I thought she might like) and she decided to try out the Birds of Prey. This one deals with Barbara Gordon, AKA Batgirl, AKA, Oracle, as well as some other famous Gotham women. Suffice it to say, she loved it. She has already read through two of the trade paperbacks for the title and one of the issues.

Andrew decided to contribute to the box with Green Arrow and Flash. He had read a little about GA in some of my Green Lantern books and picked up on him. I know Andrew really likes Archery so it was a natural fit for him. The Flash title kind of came from left field, I guess I will find out more about that as we go along.

So there you have it, I am back in the comic book world! Of course, this comes at a point where one of my favorite characters has the choice to evolve or die and DC comics is apparently pressing the reset button! There will certainly be more to come! (And yes, I did pick up Batman: Hush. It was awesome and one of the main reasons that Batman is on the list! Thanks of the referral Erin!)

This weekend I went into over drive and took everyone with me. The house had gotten to be too much of a mess. It was really dragging me down when I would walk in and just feel down. So Amy and I talked about it and we tore through the place like madness! I even had Andrew doing some deep cleaning. Speaking of Andrew, I have another great store for the Tales of Teenage Years.

Let me set the stage. It’s Friday night. I have to go into work Sat. morning because of a special project. Amy had just bought me (and Andrew) Battlefront II, the new star wars game. We were up pretty late playing like usual. Around 11ish I decide to go to bed because I have to get up early. Not want to take away his fun, I stop by his room and tell him “Don’t stay up too late.”

“Ok dad” come back with shouts of “cover my position” from the pc speakers.

I head to bed and, since I was pretty tired, was out like a light. This is all well and good until my eagle ears hear someone walking to the bathroom at 5am. “No biggie” I think, it’s not like I haven’t had to go sometime in the middle of the night. Wafting in and out of sleep I look up and notice the light on outside my room. “Hmmm its 5:30, did he forget to turn off the light?” I get up and walk out there to find that the dining room light is on, Andrew’s door is wide open, and his light is on. Why? Because he is still playing Battlefront! “What the heck are you doing!” This is where one of his best lines comes in…

He looks at the clock and exclaims “When did it get to 5:30?? Last time I looked it was only 2!”

“2AM IS TOO LATE!” I screamed. At which point he jumped out of his street clothes and into bed hitting the power button on his PC in one fell swoop. It really was impressive. We made a point of waking him up around 9am for cleaning day. He knew it was coming. The whole day he kept trying to convince himself that he wasn’t tired. Needless to say he was out fairly early sat night.

Sunday was an easy going day. We had a great (somewhat late) breakfast cooked by a wonderful woman I know. Andrew and I made our way out to the Game Parlor (local gaming store). He wanted to play Magic the Gathering with some other people. We soon learned that Sunday is not the best day for this. Ah well, we might try again on Friday or Saturday. After that we did a little geocaching. We actually found two of the local caches and it was great to get out of the house and see some of the surrounding area.

I finished off the day playing some WoW of course. I do have to say that I was really proud of myself this weekend and last weekend. I avoided getting sucked into the game and playing all day long. This week looks to be a short week as I am off for Veterans day on Friday! WhooHoo!

So here we are, on November 1st again. It’s getting close to 2 whole years that I have been blogging. Amazing huh, yeah I thought so too. The cool thing about it is that I can look back now and see what I was doing last year and compare it to this year. I should probably step back and go over the whole weekend. Believe me there is certainly a lot to cover.

Friday: When I got home we decided that it was time to carve the pumpkins that we bought. This year we each had our own pumpkins and set out to carve our own designs. Andrew picked a basic jack-o-lantern face, Amy actually drew her own pumpkin face, and I went with (of course) a Green Lantern symbol. At first we were going to do all this outside but it just got too cold. So instead we opted for the kitchen floor. After getting all of our basic designs down I remembered a trick that I had learned a while back. I had seen someone who had carved out a really cool Haunted house. In the back of the pumpkin they carved a few ghosts. When you put the light in, the ghosts would be projected onto the wall behind the pumpkin! So I decided to try this trick on mine. What’s the best comic symbol to be projected? The BAT SIGNAL! Andrew and Amy both liked the idea so they did projections of their own. Amy did some hearts and Andrew tried to do an S for his old baseball team. (He forgot about the reverse projection problem) You can see pictures of all of them in the gallery of course.

Saturday morning: Yes, I will need to separate out Saturday because of all that happened. We woke up very early (well, early for a Saturday) and grabbed all our gear. You see we had a parade to attend! The Annandale Fall Festival parade was going on and the 501st was asked to march in it. Andrew had never seen us do something like this so it was a new experience for him. We were meeting up at Lori’s place at 8ish to coordinate. When we got there, Lori offered to let Andrew mach in the parade dressed in a Spare TIE pilot outfit that she had. Andrew was very excited. We had close to 20 total troopers to march the 1 mile parade route. All along the route we were encouraged to toss out candy to the kids along the street. Lori had this roll around R2D2 which worked great for carrying all the candy, except when it started getting off its wheels. I was at the back so I grabbed R2 and kept going. Andrew had an absolute blast marching along in his Helmet. He sat and talked with some of the other TIE pilots afterwards as well. All in all, a good troop.

After the parade was over we darted home to take care of some other things. We had the annual Patton’s Halloween party that night and needed to prepare. I started making some of my world famous chili, Andrew took a break and played around on the PC, Amy took care of some school things. After I got the chili done, Amy and I curled up on the couch for a much needed cuddle nap. (Told you Saturday mornings are early for me.) After our little nap, we got up and started getting dressed. Amy got a really cute 50’s girl outfit, withy poodle skirt and everything. I got into a 50s Greaser costume, with the leather jacket and the rolled up jeans. And lastly, Andrew was dressed in a Grim reaper costume. To set the mood, on the way down to Fredericksburg we tuned into the XM channel 5 which is all 50s music.

The party was hopping already so we gladly joined in. Marc had set up quite a few things for the party. His house is always very well decorated. We of course had a wide array of costumed folks. Little Red Slaughter-hood came by, as well as HBO’s own Ali G. There were the ever popular Ghetto costumes. Marc got the chance to show off his latest creation, a total home theater in his basement! Andrew loved it, he got to sit down there in total darkness and watch a few movies that he hadn’t seen. The pinnacle of the party came with Marc’s, ever famous, Haunted Woods walk. Last year it really just consisted of a bunch of drunken people wandering lost in the woods trying to scare one another. This year he actually threw some effort into it and had the trail all laid out and decorated! We partied till close to 1am and about that time I was spent. This, of course, meant the hour long drive home. We had debated about staying the night there but decided to just head out instead.

Not too much to remark about for Sunday. Woke up late and tried to find a new comic store. Amy had an errand to run in Manassas so we thought we would find one of the comic stores down there. No luck of course. Apparently some of the smaller stores are just turning belly up! The rest of Sunday was spent recovering. I am not sure why, but I was exhausted all day on Sunday. For a special Halloween treat, Sunday morning we watched Nightmare before Christmas, and to round out the evening we finished with Hellboy. Sunday was an early night.

Halloween!!! Monday was Halloween. Since I normally dress in jeans and a polo for work, and they don’t really let us dress up in costumes, I decided to spice it up a bit and threw on the ol Suit and Tie for Halloween. I don’t know how many people asked if I had an interview lined up. The evening time was a little more hectic then usual though. Andrew had asked earlier in the weekend if he could go Trick or Treating with one of his friends from school. I was excited that he was making friends around the area so I thought it as a great idea. The problem was that I needed to pick up Amy at around 6:15. So I started the run around of trying to buy some candy for the trick or treaters, get my Son out the door around 5:30ish and then at 6ish go get Amy and be back in time to give candy out at the door. Amazingly I got it all accomplished! Not only that, but this year I had TWICE as many kids at the door as last year!!! (Yes I know that means only two people, but hey, improvement is improvement!)

One last bit of good news before I wrap up this post. I got my ring!! The Green Lantern costume is finally coming together! I believe it was Friday that I received the mask in the mail and then yesterday evening I got the ring. Only thing missing now is the actual costume! The mask is amazing! I picked it up from Xtreeme Design FX. It’s a very thick latex type material painted a bright strong green color. It fits really well. The ring was purchased from one of the Ebay sellers. Apparently they deal in a lot of silver type stuff. It came out really good. As soon as I get the full costume you can bet there will be pictures here.