Sliding Into Winter

Currently Reading: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Yeah it's getting a bit chilly out there. Woke up yesterday and I was FREEZING to death. Ok, not LITERALLY freezing but you know what I mean. See, when CC woke up, she found it a little but stuffy in the apartment so she opened up the window in the bedroom, one in the living room and the door to the balcony. Great, fine, yeah, so long as she's quiet and I can keep sleeping, no problem.

Woke up and imagined the headline: Wife Attempts To Kill Husband By Freezing! or perhaps Man Saved From Frosty Demise By Loyal Canines. Either way would have been accurate I think. I woke up to find myself covered in dogs (all mine thank you) and snuggly warm so long as I didn't get out of bed. Decided right then that was the way to go and stayed right where I was. Hell I even turned on the TV and watched a movie for a change. Just did things a little different.

Naturally I couldn't stay in bed ALL day and the dogs were getting a bit antsy. They'd been patient long enough and wanted OUT so I got up, quick-stepped over to the dresser and put on some warmer clothes then went about closing up the apartment again. I looked at the thermometer on the wall in the hallway, it was all the way down, down as far as it goes which means somewhere below 50 degrees.

Here's what happened. After CC left, the wind started to pick up. It was already a bit chilly out there but when the winds came in it got downright COLD. The worst place was in the hallway which was acting more like a wind tunnel than anything else. Warmer in the bedroom and living room, yes, but still pretty cool.

So . . . Hello Winter!

And what better way to greet winter than with Shaolin monks? Ok, Silly question. There are LOTS of better ways to greet winter but I needed to pull this all together and I'm not in any mood to come up with something more creative :-)

Sunday night we went to see the Shaolin Warriors show. It's a group of performers (monks?) who put on a live display of the Shaolin style kung fu type stuff you see in movies all the time. Fabulous show. Had a GREAT time. There were just too many individually cool things for me to list them all but here are a few that come to mind:

• The guys breaking bands of steel on their heads
• The two little kid monks
• When they invited kids to come up on stage for a little bit of training and at the first demonstration one kid got so scared he ran off the stage
• The guy who used suction and REALLY good abdominal control to stick a metal bowl to his belly that no one could pull off
• The weapons display that was like something out of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

If you get a chance to see these guys, if they stop through your city on their tour, get tickets and go because it's a really great show.

Oh yes, almost forgot. I finished up Beowulf again. Don't look impressed, it's not really that long and when you read it in translation, it's actually a quick read. Anyway, Grendel's mom is NOT hot. Ok? Little bit of a diversion from the source material there in the new Beowulf movie. Just keep that in mind if you go see the film and wonder how she produced something as hideous as Grendel :-) Hmm, then again, now that I think about it, she was dating (married?) Billy Bob Thornton right? That was pretty nasty there so I suppose it's POSSIBLE in reality but in the poem, she's a hag ok?

Just stuff on my mind.

Currently Reading: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

We've just passed Labor Day so that means Fall is right around the corner. I'm happy to say that the heat wave has also finally passed. In fact, last night it was actually cool enough for us to sleep WITHOUT using the window AC unit in the bedroom. Let's hope it stays that way. I've had enough of the heat for a while.

I had to work on Labor Day though. Nothing sinister about that, I just work on Mondays. It was REALLY dead. Kinda of makes me wonder why we bothered to open up. It's Labor Day right? That means those of us who LABOR aren't supposed to work. Somewhere along the way we got that all mixed up. Now it's the people who manage who get the day off along with all the office workers. But if you're tied to retail like I am, you probably had to go to work like it was any other Monday.

We're also coming up to the end of baseball season. Looks like there might be a little bit of action going into the final stretch. The Yankees and the Mariners were slugging it out for the wild card slot over in the American league so that might develop into something. We've still got plenty of time to go though for one of the leaders to have a major meltdown and change the playoffs. We'll just have to wait and see.

CC and I are going to see the Shaolin Warriors in November. There's a group that tours the country putting on a show and they'll be stopping here in Memphis. That's going to be a great one. Can't wait to see it. We've already got our tickets and the show is on a Sunday night so there won't be any problems with the schedule. CC will be back from her October training in Florida, it's well after our trip to California at the end of the month. Perfect :-)

Speaking of the California trip, we still haven't figured out all that we're going to do. We're for sure going to Disneyland and we'll be seeing CC's relatives but other than that, we're still open. I told CC I'd like to visit the beach at some point. It's been an awfully long time since I've seen the ocean from the ground. So at some point we'll stop by one of the beaches out there. What else? Who knows? We may not even decide until we actually get there.

Football season opens this week! WOO HOO! It'll be great to have the regular players back in for the whole game and the games will actually have some meaning again. On the other hand, it was nice being able to watch football from Thursday through Monday instead of just on Sunday and Monday. Maybe if the ratings were good they'll spread the schedule out a bit more. Then again, once the regular shows start popping up again on TV there probably won't be as much of a demand for fresh entertainment. We'll have to wait and see.