Category Archives: Movies

Runaway Jury

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We didn’t do much today. We started out with a trip to Peach Valley Cafe for breakfast and then came back to the house and did chores. It’s finally turned cooler here in Florida. High temperatures only got up into the 60’s today. All last week we were in the 80’s.

This evening Jennifer and I watched the film Runaway Jury. This movie was on my Netflix list because while developing Madden 2005 I heard that they had a reference to our game, actually The Madden Challenge, in the movie. That aside, the movie was very good. John Cusack plays a juror on a ground breaking case against a giant gun manufacturer. I turns out that he wanted to get onto this jury so that he could influence it either way to the highest bidder. Both Jennifer and I enjoyed the movie thoroughly and recommend it.

Only six more days until we leave on our big Christmas trip back to Texas.

The Shoeless Wonder

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The day was dominated in the search for shoes for our child who doesn’t like shoes: Emily. The kid has the magical ability to repel shoes right off her feet. We will put shoes on her before leaving the house, I buckle her into her car seat, get in my seat, glance back to make sure I really did buckle her in, and she has no shoes on. How is this possible? I’ve even tried putting her shoes on one extra notch in the buckle, but it is no use. They still pop off. When we were looking for shoes, there was a perfect pair, but they were laces instead of buckles. Jennifer and I were in agreement that there was no way we were going to get a shoe with laces. It’s just more work for us having to tie the shoes every time they pop off. We found two good pair of buckled shoes at the mall today which should suffice for the fleeting moments when Emily is actually wearing shoes.

We watched Moulin Rouge today. For those of you who don’t know, once you have kids, you’re time of going to the movies on a regular basis ends. That’s why we have a subscription to Netflix. We alternate each week on who picks the movies. This week was Jennifer’s movie. Anyway, that was definitely an interesting movie. The look of the film was unique and the use of modern music’s lyrics in a traditional musical format was different. It was a little jarring because you were sitting there trying to play “Name that Tune” instead of paying attention to the movie. Jennifer didn’t like it. She thought it didn’t live up to the hype that was going on about the movie when it was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

Today’s picture is of the shoeless one hanging ornaments on the tree. If you could see her feet in the picture, they would not have shoes on.

Friday Night Lights

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Today started out the morning with the whole family sitting in the new Sequoia watching the first part of Toy Story. We wanted to give the new TVs in the truck a test run. While watching the THX intro to the movie we realized that we have a better sound system in our new truck than in our living room. The sound moved from speaker to speaker and sounded really good.

Today at work we celebrated Tiburon’s Tenth Anniversary with a happy hour at the end of the day. We had drinks and appetizers and they had all of Tiburon’s old games setup so that people could play them. I was able to meet one of the founders of Tiburon, Jason Anderson, who I’ve only talked to over e-mail. He left Tiburon to start his own company, Budcat, right before I joined Tiburon. They’ve been one of our external developers and I help field some of their questions as they worked on the PC version of Madden NFL 2005.

Finally, Tiburon paid for us to go see Friday Night Lights, a high school football movie that takes place in Texas. It’s the story of Odessa Permian High School and their fight for the football championship in 1988. I didn’t really think it was a very good movie. The characters were pretty weak and way to stereotypical. The only good thing about it was it’s portrayal of football in a small Texas town was pretty accurate.

Making Room for the Sequoia

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The Texas Longhorns defeated the Baylor Bears 44-14 today.  They are looking pretty good, but it’s hard to say against such weak opponents. We are only one week away from the true test: #2 Oklahoma.

We spent the afternoon cleaning out the garage to make a little more room for the new Sequoia. The last owners of our house left a ton of paint in the garage. We went through them and loaded the ones we want to throw away into my truck. I’m going to take them to the dump tomorrow.

Tonight we watched Ocean’s Eleven. It was pretty good. It has some slow parts in the middle, but seeing the plan all come together at the end of the movie was cool.

Happy Star Wars Day

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George Lucas finally released the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD. Before today you could only get the moves on VHS. George Lucas still isn’t finished tweaking the movies. The ones that are on the DVD are not the original movies. They aren’t even the ones that were released as “The Special Edition” back in the 90’s. They are pretty much “The Special Edition” movies with even more tweaks by George Lucas. One of the tweaks, which is pretty controversial, is the removal of the original actor who played Anakin Skywalker at the very end of Return of the Jedi. He’s been replaced with Hayden Christensen, the actor who portrayed Anakin in Attack of the Clones and the upcoming Revenge of the Sith. Oh, well. I guess George Lucas can do what ever he wants to do with his movies, but it seems a little bit like he is revising history. It’s a shame that you can’t get the movies in their original form.

Madden Wrap Party

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Yesterday we attended the Madden 2005 Release Party at a bar, Rhythm & Flow, in downtown Orlando. Jennifer finally got to meet a friend from work and his wife, Tom and Tina Carbone. It was good to get away from the kids and go out for a drink downtown. Meanwhile, Abby and Emily went across the street and stayed with one of our neighbors. Jane is a single mother with two young boys, five and four years old, Connor and Lucas. Abby often plays with them in the evenings after dinner. Jane reported that Emily was the best behaved of all of them. She had her blanket and milk ripped away from her, but she didn’t cry or put up a fuss.

This morning I went and played flag football with some of the guys from work again. This time I came prepared, I had Jennifer buy a water jug the other day. One of the main problems last time was warm water. This time I had nice cold water the whole time I was there. It was still extremely hot and we didn’t last very long, just over an hour. I came limping home, I fell twice jamming my knee into the ground and somehow I hurt my ribs. I’ve come to the conclusion that if I was in a little better shape, I wouldn’t come limping home each time I play.

We watched the movie Matchstick Men this evening. It was a good movie starring Nicholas Cage. He plays a conman with an excessive compulsive disorder, who discovers he has a fourteen year old daughter, he’s never met. I thought the movie dragged in a few places, but was overall good. It was a little predictable and I had the movie figured out about half way through.

Today’s picture is of Emily from last summer right after she started crawling. I chose this picture because she is playing with Dora the Explorer, which is one of Abby’s favorite shows. Lately when Emily sees Dora on the television, she says, “Dora!” Now that I’ve seen this picture, I realize that Abby’s has been training her sister to like Dora all along.

Weekend Catch-up

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Trying to get caught up with what all has been happening over the last few days. A lot of resting a relaxing, except for Saturday morning. I went and played flag football with some of the guys at work. They play on a regular basis and I’m going to try and make it when ever I can, so I can get some sort of exercise. Even though we played 10 a.m. until noon, it was sweltering hot. Near the end I was dragging my feet before and during plays. Had lots of fun and have been very sore and sun burned for the past two days.

To relax the past few days I’ve just been playing Jak II and Jennifer has been working on Emily’s baby scrap book. We go upstairs and work up in the office. That has lead to trouble with Abby sneaking out of her room and getting into trouble. Friday she snuck out and got into Jennifer’s make-up. She spilled it on the floor and then blamed it on Emily even though Emily had been asleep for a couple of hours.

I saw Kill Bill, Volume I this weekend. Quentin Tarantino is an amazing director. Some of the shots are astonishing. The way he blends the music to what is going on in each shot is perfect. Can’t wait until Volume II comes out on DVD next month. It’s already in my Netflix queue.

Today Jennifer and the girls started attending Vacation Bible School up at church. Jennifer is doing games with the kids while Abby attends the classes. Emily is staying in the nursery. Because of the problems we are having with Abby about getting out of her room at night, she hasn’t been getting a good night’s rest. This morning, she was tired and kept crying at Vacation Bible School. She had to sit up with Jennifer for a while until she calmed down and then she joined her class later.

Today’s picture is from the set of pictures that my grandmother sent me from when Jennifer and the girls visited them in East Texas last month. Abby is showing off the new purse that MaMaw made for her.

Day Off

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It was a nice quiet day off from work. Hopefully I won’t get a call and I will have a great four day weekend. Here’s to hoping. It was a nice lazy day. I mainly just played video games all afternoon. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t play video games at work all day, so I haven’t had a chance to play anything since March. I downloaded the trial version of Rise of Nations after seeing a review for it on XPlay. It was pretty fun. Much like any other real time strategy game, but more like Civilization in that you move through the ages from a wandering nomad tribe to modern era equipment. I also played Jak and Daxter, which I’ve been trying to finish and MVP Baseball 2004.

As a family, we didn’t do much either and it rained all afternoon. We’ve hit the Florida rainy season when it rains every afternoon and it has rained every day for at least two weeks.

Our first movies from NetFlix arrived and I watched The Last Samurai last night. It was a very good epic film. I recommend it to those of you who haven’t seen it.

Here’s another picture from our redecorated living room. Jennifer bought some metal wall plaques and some new potted plants. It helps break up the giant wall that the television set sits on.

The Reunion

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Abby and Emily had a fun time at Nana and Poppy’s house this week. They went swimming and played at a park. Abby and Poppy went to see Shrek 2. Abby’s review of the movie was that Shrek “drank a potion and tooted”. So, obviously, the movie must have been funny.

The week ended with Jennifer driving back up and meeting everyone at my grandparents’ house in Lindale. The girls were very glad to see their mommie.

Then, today was the family reunion for my mother’s side of the family in Grand Saline. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, but it sounds like everyone had a good time and Jennifer reported that my grandfather seems to be doing real well since my grandmother passed a couple of years ago. Jennifer said she took several pictures so I will have some of those for the web site when she gets back.

I actually did get a picture from my dad from the trip. Today’s photo is of Abby climbing a jungle gym at one of the parks that they visited.

Alone with the Kids

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Abby and Emily are still alive. Everything went quite smoothly watching the kids all by myself. But we didn’t just stay at home. No, that would make the day quite easy. We went shopping for Mother’s Day gifts for Jennifer. That was quite an adventure. We took the double stroller up to the mall and we were off and running. I’ve found as long as you can keep them distracted with food and drink, they will stay in the stroller, but once they are done or if you stop at any time, they start getting restless and then it’s time to go. This particular mall has a merry-go-round in it and so, of coarse, we had to ride the horses. We stopped for a cookie which just ended up as a mess by the time we were done.

On the way out, I bought the movie School of Rock. I’m a Jack Black fan and Tom, from work, suggested that if I’m “such a fan”, I should just buy the movie instead of waiting until it’s available to rent from work. It was quite a cute movie and JB was quite good in it. I definitely recommend it.

Emily has started doing something that Abby always did at her age. If the refrigerator door opens, Emily is instantly under your feet sitting on the little area at the bottom of the fridge. This is depicted in today’s picture.