June 21

Let’s see if this will work today. I was halfway through pounding out a blog entry when the computer crashed. It wasn’t very fun. We spent half the night without music and all of the night without the internet. Of course, I probably don’t remember what I said and now I’ll have to come up with an entirely new blog.
So, let’s start with my daughter. She started boot camp last week, but they didn’t begin training until yesterday. The previous week, they just filled out paperwork, received their uniforms and waited until all of the recruits showed up. The only good thing about that was that she was able to keep her phone. She called every day and let us know what was going on. But, Monday morning, I received a call from her saying they were getting ready to collect the phones and she wouldn’t be able to call for about three weeks. When I was in boot camp, we didn’t have cell phones. They let us call once at the beginning of boot camp and once about a week before it ended. But, that was the Marines and twenty some years ago. Since she is on the east coast, when she called, I was still asleep. My wife was up, but she was in the shower. That’s very important, because I was still half asleep when I answered the phone. Looking back, I should have gotten up and taken the phone into the bathroom so that my wife could say good bye to her. But, I’m not that quick that early in the morning. I just told her that she was in the shower and I talked to her for a while. I let her know that I loved her and missed her and was very proud of her. But she didn’t get to say good bye to her mom. Well, next time I’ll be more prepared. I wrote her a letter yesterday. As soon as she sends us her address, I’ll send it. I don’t know how slow the mail is these days, but she should get it before she has a chance to call us again.
I didn’t get to see the Rockies play Sunday or Monday. Sunday I worked the whole day and Monday I was asleep. We lost on Sunday, but took the series from the Tigers. We took Monday’s game against the Indians and then we won again today. We are back over 500 baby. Woo Hoo!!! Today’s game was really close. Chacin pitched a great game. He got into a little trouble walking three straight batters in an early inning, but then bounced back. They took him out when we were up three to one. The Tribe battled back and ended up tying us. Then, Seth Smith smacked in his second homer of the day. The Tigers came close in the ninth, but our closer Street struck out the last batter giving us the win. It was nice. We play one more game with the Indians, then a day off, and then we take on the Yankees. That’s going to be a good series because we have a Yankee fan here at work. It’s going to get interesting.
I went and saw the Green Lantern movie on Monday. It was awesome. There was a storyline quirk in it, but the special effects were amazing. They were the best I have ever seen. Since the movies started all coming out in 3D, I’ve only really seen two, Avatar and Clash of the Titans. Avatar’s effects were great, but Clash of the Titans sucked. I hope that means that the next 3D movie I see is going to be bad. Because, there are some really good movies coming up. I don’t know if they are 3D or not, but I’m looking forward to seeing Cowboys and Aliens, Transformers, and Harry Potter. There are some more out there, but those three are the only ones I can remember on the spot like this.
I had to work from 6am to 6pm Sunday on Father’s Day. It sucked. My wife’s side of the family had a barbeque that I couldn’t go to. It was also the Gay Pride Festival downtown. So, they closed off Broadway, which is the major street running through town. So, it was difficult to get to work and even more so leaving. At least at six in the morning, all of the partiers weren’t out and all over the place. Nothing bad about gay people, I know several actually, but I have never seen so many of them all at once all crowded together. Most of the guys were wearing practically nothing. I’m not sure what it is about very short white shorts and suspenders, but that was what a lot of them were wearing and nothing else. There were a lot of people dressed up in costumes. Some of them were pretty good. My youngest daughter and my oldest daughter’s boyfriend spend the day at the festival. They got pictures of themselves as both boys and girls. They didn’t dress up or anything. They were using those cutout things where you place your face through the hole. The pictures came out pretty nice.
My granddaughter came over several times this weekend. She even spent the night on Saturday. She really likes playing on the trampoline. There are also a lot of little cousins hanging around over here for her to play with. She likes it so much that she doesn’t even want to stop playing in order to eat. We keep getting her food, but she only eats a few bites before she is out the door playing again. I bet the kids are thinking we are starving her because she is always hungry when she gets back to their house. She also doesn’t really want to go home. Lately, when it is time to go, she starts crying. It’s heartbreaking, but it doesn’t last. After we get her into the car and start driving, she is mad for a few seconds and then she is back to her normal self. She invited me to come stay the night next weekend so I can take her swimming. But, only me, grandma wasn’t invited.
I was helping my daughter and her grandpa move some stuff today. We were at her school and we had to take it across the soccer field. The soccer team was practicing and my eldest daughter’s boyfriend, who is one year behind her, was out there practicing. I didn’t expect to see anyone I knew, so I wasn’t really paying attention. I don’t know how long he was waving at me, but I suddenly spotted him and waved back. I hope he didn’t think I was ignoring him. I was just focused on what I was doing and not paying attention to anything else. He’s coming over tomorrow about five to show me some of his drawings for the graphic novel. My daughter said that he has been working hard on them and has quite a bit for me to see. I’m going to get him to make something that I can put up on the website. I’m going to devote a whole page to the graphic novel. It’s going to be nice.
Well, either nothing else happened over the weekend or I can’t remember it. So, I’m going to put Boston, Journey, and Rush into the playlist for tonight. I will work a little bit on Gremlin Planet, but I’m also going to start a sequel to the Great Detective. When I was in the Corps, I used to write short little detective stores from Japan and send them home to my brothers. They knew it was me sending them, but I would only put the Great Detective as a return address. They liked them, and now that my daughter is in the Army, I think I’m going keep it alive. I collected all of the other ones into the first Great Detective novel. It’s out in book and ebook forms for anyone that wants to read it. I’ll keep the ones I’ll send to my daughter and put it out as a sequel.
-Thom