I picked up the kids at karate tonight.  We got home about 8:30.  I hadn’t had dinner yet and everyone else had.  I got a couple of burger patties out of the freezer and headed to the grill.  The sun had already gone down and it was just starting to get dark.

I looked over toward the big tree in the back yard and saw the coolest thing ever.  Fireflys.  A gagillion of them.  It was like fireworks.  It was like freakin’ lazer Floyd in the back yard grass.  I called everyone out to see.  The kids came out to the grill with me.  Jen watched through the garage door.  They all agreed it was awesome, and then they went in.

Just after they went in I started hearing rustling noises in the trees to my left.  It was a lot more than the squirrels usually make.  Could it have been a deer?  A bear?  A coyote?  A fox?

Nope.

It was a skunk.

Not a big one.  I’ve seen skunks that were easily twice this guy’s size.  He nosed around in the grass on the edge of the woods for a few and then he did something that disturbed me greatly.

At this point I was thinking… do I go inside and forget the burgers on the grill?  Do I stand my ground? Do I shut down the grill and walk away, so as not to burn anything and risk a back yard conflagration?

That’s when the little bugger started walking toward me.  I stopped thinking about what to do about the grill and started thinking about ways to remove skunk smell.  Does tomato juice really work?

The skunk actually hopped up onto the patio.  I was on the patio too, but as far from the house as it gets.  The skunk stayed along the edge of the house.  The back door to the garage was open and the light inside was on.  Could the skunk be planning to go inside?  Damn, I hope not.

Nope, he kept his nose to the ground and waddled off the other side of the concrete.  He actually climbed up onto the cellar window for a second and then headed off, sticking close to the house.  He ended up crossing into the neighbor’s yard.

So I guess the moral of the story is that living in a house that has wild kingdom in the back yard can have super wonderful moments, and some potentially smelly moments too.

This week and next week I have to be at work at 8:00am instead of 9:00am.  It’s only one hour, that’s not so bad, right?

Right?

Oh my goodness it’s soul crushingly awful.  To look at the clock and see 5:40 and have to get out of bed or risk being late to work.  It’s killing me!  My stunning wife gets up that early most days.  I should give her a medal.  I do not know how she does it.  Just knowing that I have to do it six more times is destroying me.

My kingdom for a 9:00am start time!

Highlander is the greatest movie in the history of the cinema.

Wait… let me rephrase that…

Highlander is bloody awful.  The writing, the acting, the everything.  It’s horrible.  It’s just mind blowingly bad.

But it’s still the greatest movie in the history of the cinema.

Larry, Mike, and I could watch it every night.  We’d tear it to shreds, laugh at all the worst moments, and still want to get up and cheer like fanboys when Connor gives that last, “There can be only one.”

Then they made Highlander II, and that really is the worst movie ever.  It took all the bad parts of the first movie and made them worse, and then left out all of the good stuff, and added in the single dumbest plot device in the universe… they are aliens?  What the hell?  Did that just happen?

Then they made Highlander III and that should have been better because they just sort of pretended that the second movie hadn’t been made.  It was better, but still pretty awful.

Then there came the television series.  What ever happened to the whole there can be only one thing?  I don’t know.  I didn’t watch it.  A couple of my fellow fanboy friends did.  They said it was good, but I never even gave it a shot.

Then came Netflix.  The series is available for streaming.  I thought about watching it, but never really wanted to start.  A couple of weeks ago I put on the pilot and stopped before the opening credits ended.  As soon as I heard Queen I shut it off.  I didn’t want to get pissed off at a 20 year old television show.

Tonight… I watched the pilot.

Oh for heaven’s sake… Bull from Nightcourt was the bad guy?  What the hell were they thinking?

Urgh, indeed.

I made it all the way through though… maybe I’ll watch another one.  Maybe not.

There can be only one, after all.

(I heard a rumor they were remaking the original.  Go ahead and add insult to injury, you hollywood douche bags.  The key word here is, “one.”  Assholes)

Another drive that seemed real crummy until I realized I was in the parking lot at a shade under one hour. Still…

After lucking out like crazy in the morning, I got traffic screwed in the evening. The traffic reports did not mention the jams I was stuck in, and the jam they did mention (and I went way out of my way to avoid) didn’t exist.

Urgh.

On Sunday I looked out the window and saw a mama turkey and a bunch of little turkeys.  I snuck a few pics.

Well, I listened to the traffic reports and got burned again, but in a good way.

I’m taking a two week training at work and each class starts at 8:00. One hour earlier than my actual shift. Urgh is right.

Anyway, I was up very early and hoping to hit the road by 6:30. Then my wife heard the 5:53 traffic report on the radio. 128 South is closed in Woburn! Guess where I have to go. So I take the fastest shower ever and hit the road at exactly 6:16. The plan is to take route 3 South as a detour and brave the normal gridlock combined with what was sure to be a massive detour traffic…

I got to work at 7:10. 20 minutes before they unlock the doors.

I’m not complaining… This time.

Brand new and going flat already? Stupid jerk tire.

This is really sad news for me.  Deep Purple keyboardist Jon Lord has passed away.

I can’t overstate how big a deal his music has been to me.  The first working band I ever played in did a slew of Deep Purple songs.  We tried to emulate their knack for mixing complex structures with sick improvs.  They were awesome, and Jon Lord was most of the reason why.  His organ playing just did it for all of us.  We used to try and copy the way he bashed away on Hush, but also danced across the keys on things like Burn.  Damn, he was awesome. 

He retired for live performance about 10 or so years ago.  Larry and I went to see Purple once with Don Airey in his place.  Airey is pretty freakin’ awesome himself, but without Jon Lord it was just wrong.  I used to think that without Ritchie Blackmore the band couldn’t exist, but both Tommy Bolin and Steve Morse proved me wrong.  (more so Tommy Bolin, for me at least.  I consider him a guitar god).

Without Jon Lord though… it was just sad.

Rest in Peace, Jon Lord.

There was only one thing that sucked this weekend, and that is the weekend ended.  Mostly it was just quiet kinda stuff.  No big trips or huge events or anything.  We finally visited Forrest Lake, although we just looked around.  The kids and I played some cribbage at my parent’s house.  We finally got the chance to replace my step son’s defective Skylanders game, although we went with PS3 this time instead of Wii.  In general, there were a lot of console games played, which is fine by me.  Not great, but better than TV.  My step son played catch… with a football.  He’s teaching me to throw a spiral.  I need all the help I can get!  We went up North to a mini-golf/arcade/go-cart place that Jen knew about and shared the trip with her parents.  Then it was home for a little ice cream and AC repair (which was not a good thing about the weekend other than the fact that the fix was simple and it didn’t cost a fortune).  A good weekend.  A simple one, yes, but a good weekend all the same.  I just wish we had 50-100 more days.