"I've Been Published!!

Yes, one of my wonderful pictires of the Fort Worth Zoo was selected by someone to be featured as part of the photographs! I think they selected maybe 20 or so from people's Flickr account. Pretty neat if you ask me! Here's the link: Ft Worth Zoo.

And now, from the happy to the sad:


Say it ain't so!! One of my favourite comic strips ever is closing the doors forever (assumedly). I posted about Bloom County a while back and actually haven't read the newer stuff since our paper doesn't print it(it sure prints Marmaduke though! Dumbest strip ever) but I hope to collect all of his books via Half Price Books. I LOVE this place! Why didn't I come here sooner? Anyways...Opus, you'll live on forever in my imagination and half price books I bought because I left the originals at the park in 1995.

So check this out. I have this dream Wednesday night where I meet my mom and my sister at this incredible movie theater where "Saw V" is playing and there is seating all around, high and low, and the screen is in the middle. We're all sitting down together when my sister all of a sudden gets up and sits in a higher part of the theather. So, looking puzzled, we follow her and sit down. Well, the movie that comes on is just frightening! I mean, it was just awful! Dismemberment images, people's heads exploding, etc... Woke up with it still very vivid in my mind. So I come to work and bust out the crossword puzzle (as I always do) and I see Six Across. "Recent Horror Film Franchise". Three letters. What are the odds!! I've mentioned before how dreams I have the night before tend to come to light sometime the next day. Doesn't make me want to see any of the Saw movies though ha ha.

Dad turned 56 on 10-7. I left him a message on his cell phone where I sang "Happy Birthday" in my best Robert Goulet voice. Haven't heard back if he appreciated it as much as he better. I got him a present and who knows when I'll ever be able to give it to him.

Halloween is coming closer...closer...I think we're going to go get our pumpkins this weekend. Then we'll carve them at some point around the 28th. This is a tradition we've always done ever since we bought our house. I always try to come up with the most unusual carving but usually make something that never turns out quite right. Last year I did a Batman theme (shocking right) but I made the buildings with little windows and then had the Bat signal coming from the roof. Was pretty great actually. I don't know why I didn't take a picture. I definitely will this year. When it comes to artistic endeavours I always seem to want to do more with what I have. I'm not content to just leave it alone. Always making little adjustments, never being truly satisfied. I see a lot of that in Emmy. Right now she is in that "I hate school" mode of thought. She'd rather be doing anything else, and who can blame her right? Her grades haven't been anything great but ever now and then she gets some good ones. Esp. her spelling tests. Just like her old man ha ha. Problem is, I don't get home until 7 at night so I'm not as involved with her school as I want to be. I tell myself not to get upset with her (or me) for helping her when she needs help. When I was 15 my dad tried to help me with algebra and almost gave himself a stroke. Plus, I felt like I wasn't living up to some kind of mathematical standard of intelligence, so I never asked him for help with that again. Somehow, someway I got through it. I was told by Mom that he was a whiz with anything math and it made me feel a little inferior that I was not. I guess I was more on the creative side then the analytical. I guess Zach and Emmy and I will learn (or re-learn) algebra when the time comes. In the meantime, I bet there are a few websites that feature algebra tutorials that I can bone up on. We all need to know algebra, right? It is so integral to everyone's career, whether you're an algebra teacher, woodcutter, stone mason, brick layer, claims customer service for an insurance company, I could go on all day. Feels like I already have.

"Just A Penguin..."

...or was he more? My answer has always been: yes he was! Opus the Penguin first came into pop culture in 1983 (give or take) and has managed to hang around for almost an eternity. He was prominently featured in the "Bloom County" comic strip and is now in his own strip (which the Star-Telegram does not feature argh!). Suprisingly, YouTube had a clip of him, so here it is:



Good stuff eh? Well, when I was about 11 or 12 my dad had two of the books published by the author Berke Breathed and for some reason I thought they were hilarious. Now this was kind of adult humour. Not the raunchy kind, but the kind where if you didn't know who they were talking about you were in the dark. But not me. I saw the forest for the trees and laughed away. Christmas 1986 I got an Opus of my very own:



He used to have a Christmas hat (just like in the clip) but being a curious kid I just had to see what was underneath, and if you think I was more then a little disappointed, you are correct sir. But I have hung onto him for more then 20 years, so you can probably guess he means a lot to me.

So anyways...I took Dad's books with me one day for whatever reason and actually left them where I was! I didn't realize for like a week and by that time there was no use in trying to reclaim them. But I never forgot about them and swore I would get them back.

Fast forward to August 8, 2008 (08-08-08 for you math majors). I get off early from work and on the way to my mom's house, I stop by Half-Price Books just to 'look around'. I make my way to the humour section and there they are...the books I had lost years and years ago. Not the original ones, mind you, but the exact same ones! And better yet, they're cheap as heck. So I get them and when I started reading them it was like being a kid again.



There's too many story lines to get into specifics, but they have entertained me for the last three weeks in my own...personal...office. What's funny now is, Dad claims that they were Mom's and Mom claims they are Dad's! Makes me wonder how they got into our house exactly. Something a bit...thought provoking for yours truly yes? Maybe I should head to the office to figure this one out...