Tropical Storm Edouard is threatening to become a hurricane before hitting Texas Tuesday morning. I am threatening to sleep in and not go to work. We'll see who wins that battle Nature!

By the way, what is with that name? Who spells Edouard like that? There's Edward, and I'll even give you Eduard (like Eduardo). But no, some one said we CAN spell a straightforward name weirdly, and they succeeded. Personally, if they are on the letter "e", I would have much preferred Tropical Storm Epinephrine.

Everything is closing around here. JSC closed so I can't do any work. Instead, I will be forced to watch Days of Our Lives and Maury Povich. Is Judge Joe Brown still on TV? Judge Hatchett? Lord knows I can't get enough of those paternity tests.

My So-Called Life - The Complete Series (w/ Book)

Happy Birthday, David!

I am so behind that I have about 20 movies I need to review, so I may have to do some short reviews and just get it all out in one or two posts. I'll try and crank that out this week. :)

Sometimes it's just nice to be able to decide on our own, on the fly, what to do for our weekend, even if we don't do anything special.

Friday I couldn't think of what to do with my short Friday off. I ended up getting some money from the bank, mailing out my passport renewal for our fall trip, and perusing the 99-cent store. I bought a jar to collect funds for optional excursions for our trip, some more painting supplies, and a few other things. I spent the rest of the afternoon watching movies on TiVo and Roku, including Five Easy Pieces (good), Last Tango in Paris (odd), and Number Seventeen (old but good Hitchcock). In the evening, Ric and I went to Lowe's to buy new shower fixtures for our downstairs bathroom, then got some Chik-Fil-A (I really hate spelling that name) and went home to watch tv together.

Saturday I slept in for a while and then got up to start work on the house. I put it off all afternoon on Friday, so it was time to get cracking. I stripped off tape around the trim of our upstairs hallway, did touch-up on the walls of our upstairs bathroom, and got started on the trim of the bathroom and the rest of the hallway. We had a plumber come over to assess how much it would cost to put in the new handle mechanism (where you set the temperature and volume of your shower water flow) in each of the bathrooms. Of course, it's never easy, and he said he would have to go through the walls behind each bathroom, and as a result, would charge around $1500 for it all. Since we're just prettying-up the place and not actually fixing a problem, we decided not to make the change. So right now, we've got new shower heads and bathtub faucets, but old-fashioned handles. We're thinking of leaving the existing mechanism, but changing out the back plate and knobs to make them match with the new fixtures better. I spent some time online in the evening, and then Ric and Jenny and I went to see the X-Files movie in uptown Whittier.

On Sunday we went to church and then went out to eat at Del Taco with the Andersons. They're in escrow with a house that needs a decent amount of fixing up. I'm hoping that everything will go smoothly. I worked the entire afternoon on painting a couple of layers of trim and doing a little bit of touch-up. My sister and I went to Brea, ate a meal at Fresca's (which I think is why I'm a little sick today) and then went to see Brideshead Revisited. We didn't know it, but at 8:30, the city was having a little fireworks show. From our theater, it sounded like gunfire and our whole audience was confused. Jenny and I were actually so scared that we were planning our exit strategy. So I missed some significant points of the movie. Whoops. I finished off the night drinking mudslides and watching Sledge Hammer with Ric.

Up this week: Today we begin the 100 pushups challenge with Josh (in 6 weeks I should hopefully be able to complete 100 consecutive pushups). I've also got some grocery shopping to do. Wednesday I'm driving the Hutchinses to the airport for their yearly birthday/anniversary getaway. Thursday I may be seeing Ferris Bueller on the Fox. It looks to be a quiet week, but we may drop in at the cheap theater one or two times (repeat viewings of Son of Rambow and Iron Man). AND Cyndi found me a Wii Fit, so that can help keep us occupied as well. So far, I'm not sure I believe that little machine, because it tells me I have good balance!

Danny is 28 today. Although we are now separated by a considerable distance I consider him among my best friends. If it wasn't for him this site would have been borked a long time ago. He also helped keep me sane in Missouri after the displacement of the Legion of Doom. Raise your glasses for the real brains behind brendoman.com, Mr. Danny Ferguson.

So awhile ago I bought the new Shout Factory edition of My So Called Life. I had quite a backlog of unwatched DVDs so I just now got around to watching it. I got sucked in again immediately. This time around though I noticed a few things I hadn't before. I always said Jordan Catelano was a jerk but now I've come to realize that Brian Krakow is kind of a jerk too. I honestly don't think either of them deserve Angela. I think I ignored some of Brian's jerk tendencies (constantly badgering Angela, his arrogant attitude in class) simply because I could relate to him in some ways and I always tend to root for the geek. Maybe if the show had continued, Krakow would have grown into a more mature person. Unfortunately he never got that chance.

I'm aware many of you have no idea what I'm talking about. That's cool. I highly recommend giving the DVD a chance. Sorry I don't have anything else to blog about. I went to a party Friday night and then the rest of the weekend did pretty much nothing. My Xbox is still dead, remember?