June 13

Well, today was the day. My daughter left for boot camp. We woke up early to take her to the recruiting station. From there, they were going to take her to the airport. We stopped off at McDonalds to make sure she got something to eat. Everything was going fine. We arrived with four minutes to spare. Everyone said their goodbyes. My youngest daughter cried. It was hard seeing her go, but she is doing something toward her future. I’m very proud of her. So, the day goes on, I tried texting her during the day, but she was in the air and her text didn’t go through. When I picked up the wife, she said that my little soldier girl called her. She was in Washington DC and her connecting flight to get her to the army base was canceled. So, she was stuck in the nation’s capital. There were several other army recruits that were also stuck there. The airline put all of them on standby, but none of them got a flight to South Carolina. So, the airline put them all up in a motel. (Probably because they were in the army, I bet if it was me, I would be sleeping in the terminal) She called this evening and everything was ok. She ate at the airport restaurant so she isn’t hungry. She sounded sleepy, even though she said that she slept on the plane. I asked her if she was going to do anything, but she was just going to go to sleep and get up early in the morning to see if she could get a new flight. I assumed she would be in a army cot tonight, but she’s in a motel bed. At least she’s safe.
I went to visit my mom today. We decided to take in a movie. That’s two weeks in a row. Last week, we went to see the X-men movie and today we went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean. Now, to get a little history before we get into this. I am a comic book guy. I have 13,000 comic books in my collection. I haven’t collected in like ten or fifteen years and I haven’t kept up on any of the storylines. But, I still like them and I like the continuity to be accurate. I know there is license in movies. I know they change things when they make movies. You can’t read a book and then watch a movie, because they change more than half of the content. But, keeping all that in mind, I liked the X-men movie. Yes, nothing was historically accurate. Angel wasn’t a girl and didn’t have little dragonfly wings. Havoc was in there instead of his brother. The Beast was the only original X-man that was in the movie. But, it was still a good movie. Now, the Pirates on the other hand, it was an awful movie. The storyline didn’t make sense. They had some good action in it and they had some good special effects. If it wouldn’t have had Jack Sparrow in it, it would have been an ok pirate movie even with the bad storyline. But, they completely changed the Jack Sparrow character. In the other movies, he was a swashbuckling pirate. His only concern was his ship, his drinking, his wenching, and his treasure. In this one, none of that mattered to him. In this one, he was self-sacrificing for a woman and they tried to turn him into a hero. They should have kept the Will Turner character. (Orlando Bloom) It would have worked and made more sense for him to play the scenes Depp played. Then, they threw in a love story between a mermaid and a Christian trying to save everyone’s souls. It didn’t really have too much to do with the movie unless they are going to make this a trilogy like they did with the first three and have that part of the story line continue. But, it didn’t really fit. Then, to top everything off, they had the Spanish catch up to everyone at the Fountain of Youth. Instead of capturing it, they destroy it. That didn’t make any sense at all. In the movie, to access the fountain, I don’t want to give away the story, but they had to get some things from Ponce De Leon’s ship. Ponce De Leon was commissioned by Spain to find the fountain in the first place. Why would the Spanish come in there and destroy it if they were paying to go looking for it in the first place. And, even if they did, what king would give up eternal life. I don’t think so. So, to make a long story short, go to X-men First Class instead of going to Pirates of the Caribbean if you have the choice.
The Rockies split a series with the Dodgers this weekend. We took the first two and they took the last two. The two we lost were really close games even if the scores didn’t reflect it. On Saturday, we had the bases loaded with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and when the hitter slapped it out into left field, the Dodger made a miraculous diving catch to get him out. If he wouldn’t have gotten it, we would have cleared the bases and won that game. Then, we had a slow start yesterday even with the three run homer in the first. We were rallying late in the game, but our pitching wasn’t helping us. They kept allowing the Dodgers to get hits. Ubaldo, who hadn’t allowed very many home runs this year allowed three in the game he pitched. It wasn’t pretty. But, at least we heated up our bats. Today, we had a game delay because of the rain. At the moment, it is the bottom of the ninth with two outs and two strikes on Jason Giambi. We’re down a couple of runs. We need Jason to hit right now. Or a walk. That was good. I’m going to stop here and listen, because it is getting good.
-Thom