2014 Tommy Keane Invitational At Dartmouth College's Hanover Country Club

Later today, my July entry for the Cephalopod Coffeehouse will go live.  Right now, I am teeing off at the Tommy Keane Invitational in Hanover, NH.  Past posts about the TKI can be found HERE.

I am a late comer to the sport but thoroughly enjoy playing.  Once again, this year, my brother and I are joined by our cousins Marc and Lars.  We will be matched up on day one!  I am looking forward to this incredible weekend!

Last year we finished 4th in our flight, a single hole behind Marc and Lars.

You can check in on our progress HERE or HERE!

You can also click HERE for a previous post about golf and why I play in the TKI...

R is for Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders of the Lost Ark is currently # 8 on my flickchart list.

I remember being at "Lums" in Rutland with my brother, Justin, and probably my dad having lunch with Nana and Grandpa in 1981 after "Raiders of The Lost Ark" (the correct, true title) had come out.

Gramps had recently seen this with my cousins Marc and Lars. I clearly remember him telling us about the Swordsman scene, reenacting it and laughing, deeply and honestly, at the scene and his own retelling.

To this day, I try to buy all the toys based on the scene...

And, Dean at Springfield Punx made both of these. He had the Indy done and I asked if he would ever consider creating the Cairo Swordsman...and he did!  I need to ask Lee sometime if Gramps had any real "Simpsons" knowledge.

 

And the fan made posters....

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I am using my flickchart list and blogging about the highest ranked movie for each letter of the alphabet.  

Click HERE and become my flickchart friend!

Why not jump around the Blogging from A to Z Challenge and find some new blogs to read!

Weekend Recap 3-24-13

I spent all of last week disturbingly obsessed by the Taco Bell Cool Ranch Doritos Taco.  I can't explain the fascination.  Regardless, once school was out on Friday (and my teaching partner and I had our monthly debriefing beer), the family and I headed out to the mall and had the taco.

meh.

I think we were all underwhelmed by the experience.  After dinner, we wandered into a collectible shop.  I have a list of movies I've been hoping to find and FYE had none of them at a price I was willing to pay.  We hit the jackpot...at 3 for $10 I couldn't pass these up...the numbers are my flickchart ratings...

#1

#98

#113

#280

#103

#392

#343

#336

#829, 735, 894, 186

The four pack made it an average price of $2.50 per movie!  Cheaper than renting them again!!  We did "Spies Like Us" once we got home.  Most of the movie seems to have held up and the one or two borderline jokes ("What's a dickfer?") seemed to go over the kid's heads.

Saturday was...interesting.  I drove to Rutland (about 2 hours south) and met Marc for lunch and "Olympus Has Fallen."

#146

We had a fun time.  The movie was over-the-top, gratuitously violent and jingoistic.  Marc provided my two favorite moments....First, there was a on screen "18 months later" graphic...Marc paused just long enough and leaned over and said "That's a year and a half."  Second, as the end credits rolled, Marc summed the movie up as "So, the whole movie was about a guy trying to get his job back."

I left Marc to meet up with my folks.  We went to the memorial service for the man who performed my brain surgery all those years ago.  His wife was the head nurse and the first person who got me out of bed and started me on the path to recovery.  I got word of his death last week after dealing with some other rough family stuff.

I stopped at a local video store near our house on the way home and picked up a few more movies.  At four bucks each I got...

#688

#341

#245

I passed on Dredd....which I am regretting, even though it was $7.....  

I also hit the local comic book store and grabbed a few things....which made me realize I need to do a proper comic post REAL soon!

Last night we watched "X-Men: First Class" and today the weekend is ending with a handful of "Law and Order" episodes before everyone woke up and then viewings of "Jurassic Park III" and "Journey 2 The Mysterious Island".

So just some babble....

Film Festival Friday, December 28, 2012

I had a longer post prepared for this in my head.  However, the need to clear the driveway every few hours as well as pack for a trip this weekend has cut down on my time!

I also have not watched as many movies as I thought I would this break.  The biggie, however, was seeing Jack Reacher last Saturday with my three cousins (we think the last movie we all saw together was Return of the Jedi in 1983!)

Subbing in for my absent brother was The Armchair Squid.  He missed lunch (which was packed with shared recollections and a whole lot of Reacher talk) but met us at the theater.  He has not read any of the books while the rest of us had.  He claims there was a lot of giggling and chatter among the four of us.

All in all we agreed it was a good movie and Tom Cruise did a fine job.  We are eager for more!!

Currently #90 on my flickchart list

Wild Card Wednesday: July 25, 2012

This is my last "live" blog of the week.  The next three days are already "in the can" and ready to go.  The reason for this is that tomorrow morning, we head out to the 2012 Tommy Keane Invitational Golf Tournament.

I am a late comer to the sport but thoroughly enjoy playing.  This year, my brother and I are joined by our cousins Marc and Lars.  We will be matched up on day one!  I am looking forward to this incredible weekend!

You can check in on our progress HERE or HERE!

You can also click HERE for a previous post about golf and why I play in the TKI...

Another 30 Day Challenge!

I am not sure when I last posted "live" as the month of May was a blur.  I spent most of the month ill, had a brief stay in the hospital, suffered some flooding of our house and have rapidly moved towards the end of my first (and perhaps only) year of teaching 6th grade.


As the title of this post states, it is time for another 30 Day Challenge.  The Challenge was inspired by this tumblr list.   Both The Armchair Squid and Marc (Marc Whitman's Blog) have also taken up the challenge. We're kicking it off on Friday.  


I will admit to some fear, as both The Squid and Marc are not only music teachers, but far more adept at blogging.

Blogging From A To Z: G is for...

...golf....a sport I just picked up last year after my father died.  My great-grandfather was the first golf pro at Dartmouth College.  When he retired, they started a yearly tournament in his name.  My grandfather and father played in it for as long as I could remember.  When Gramps died in 2000, my father invited my brother to play with him.  When Dad died last year, my brother asked me to play with him, despite the fact I had NEVER picked up a club, much less played before.  I got clubs and played through out last summer to get ready and played in the tournament in August.  I LOVE IT.  I have played more with these three guys pictured than anyone else.  And the best part is....my daughter already loves it.  I think she will become my number one partner before this summer is up....

Busy Planet: World Air Traffic in a 24 Hour Period

This is so cool. Marc shared it on Google Reader on April 8, but I forget the original source.

From Marc...

Marc sent this to me on the 23rd of June. He entitled it "Golfing with Pete." He definitely made his day...actually, he probably made his whole summer...

What I'm Reading....earlier this week

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw by Jeff Kinney

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was the first book I read while out sick from school recently. The first in the series was a DCF nominated book. If you liked that one, you will like this one. No new ground is broken here. Inventive blend of pictures and pre-teen humor. A good series to try to hook a "non-reader".


View all my reviews.

**So Marc has convinced me to trade one on-line addiction (i.e. "Tribal Wars") for another (i.e. "Good Reads"). Something tells me this one MIGHT be a little more worthwhile. This was my first posting. Since I hadn't posted anything here in a while, I thought I would cheat with this cross post.

The Joys of Home Ownership

Now, I am nowhere near as articulate as Marc in general, nor can I upload photos like Lee, but I want to share this weekend's home improvement project horror story.

Nancy and I decided that it was time to replace all of the outlets in the house that were near a water source with GFCI outlets.

It seemed relatively straight forward. I had already replaced about a dozen standard outlets throughout the house, several light fixtures, and three ceiling fans. I felt confident that I could do this.

Our first obstacle was determining which switches in the panel shut off which rooms in the house. We had found out over the years that some of the wiring is a little bit squirrelly.

We figure out how to shut off the kitchen and we get to work on the first outlet, which shares a box with a light switch. We had bought new outlet covers to deal with the larger size of the GFCI outlets. It all goes well until I attempt to attach the new cover. I give it one turn too many and crack the casing.

I yell and unlike Marc, I curse a whole lot (as Logan is asleep) and then move to the other side of the sink to work on a single outlet.

I remove the old outlet cover and I hear some skittering down the wall...it turns out that this box was sort of floating with a minimal attachment to the drywall and the two small clips holding the box in place fell off as I took off the cover. And instead of using any sort of electrical tape, the wires were taped with masking tape...brittle, decades old masking tape.

I do my best to fix the floating box, but this, coupled with the change in the size of the GFCI outlet gave us this wonderful, non-flush look...

So I quit for the night as this project took way too long and I decide to tackle the bathroom in the morning.

The plan in the bathroom is two-fold. Where we have two switches and one outlet now, I am going to tie off one switch (for use as a venting fan this spring), move the other switch, and add the GFCI outlet.

I wish I had taken more pictures because the wiring was insane. I finally figure out which wire goes where (including one that goes way out to the foyer!), move everything around, get the box looking pretty good, when it becomes obvious to us that the tile around the box will not allow the outlet cover to fit snuggly. Nan spends about an hour chiseling away pieces and finding some extra long screws, but this one...this one came out pretty good. I changed over to a flat switch, blanked out one slot and put the GFCI in rather nicely.

Bottom line, a project that should have filled me with pride and taken about an hour, ended up leaving me ashamed and took up the larger part of two consecutive days...and I still have one outlet to do!

This will always make me think of my grandfather...

I remember being at "Lums" in Rutland with Justin and probably my dad having lunch with Nana and Grandpa in 1981 after "Raiders of The Lost Ark" (the correct, true title) had come out.

Gramps had recently seen this with my cousins Marc and Lars. I clearly remember him telling us about this scene, reenacting it and laughing, deeply and honestly, at the scene and his own retelling.

I've been recently buying the toys based on this scene and found these two on clearance at WalMart in Plattsburgh yesterday:

They join these guys I got for Christmas:

And these I got at Disney two years ago: