The Trials and Tribulations of the not-so-New Bear Icon

Tomorrow it's off to the East Coast again, probably for the last time for a while. Airline ticket prices are rising, and once I see the two stadiums I'm going to see next week, I will have seen all the east coast ballparks. I'll need to start getting out to some other parts of the country!

It's been nice to have my sister Laura and her fiancée (still a fiance after 7 years) living in Baltimore that has made it an easy way to travel the upper east coast. It's been a good jumping off point. Over the last few years I've seen Boston, Washington DC, and Philadelphia, and now finally, New York City. I'll get to finally say that I've walked in the city, not just taken an AMTRAK train under it!

I leave for Baltimore early tomorrow morning (apparently no one wants the early flight on a Saturday), and then take the train up to New York City on Tuesday. Laura will join me there on Thursday. The only things I have planned are the Yankees game on Wednesday, the Mets game on Thursday, and Frank DeCaro is going to let us watch him do his radio show at Sirius on Firday. Hopefully our New Jersey boys, evilcreamsicle, njbearcub1, and Texas ex-pat txredneck will join us on Saturday. It's a good long trip.

I decided not to book any Broadway shows as it's cheaper to play your luck and try to get tickets the day of, also, who knows what you might decide to see. I do need to find out more about the water tour that Dan (musicbearmn) told me about a few weeks back. I know Chris will think it's not true, but this is about as unorganized and unscheduled as I get on vacation. Still, I know once I hit the ground, I'll be running like mad trying to see everything I can!

Now I'm getting excited. I'll have camera in tow, of course, and I'd love to meet other people up there! Is there anything you guys say I HAVE to do while there?

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On the home front, since I haven't posted in a while, things are good. Chris has been getting into the summer pool party season, and I've been opting out more times than not. The circuit seems to call for a more trim man than myself, so I feel really self-counsious about it, and it makes me a miserable guy to be around, so I tend to stay home. Not all of the pool events have been this way, and I've been pleasantly surprised by some new friends this summer.

Still, work has been taking up most of my time, and it's been going well. If there's one thing that's bothering me is that I'm often more of an operator than someone who can get something accomplished. I hate getting an issue and having to document it and give someone else an order. I want to be able to resolve it myself, especially since I have little confidence in others at the company to do it.

The sales aspect of the job has been going better than expected, so maybe it's not the problem I thought it was going to be. Still, being tied to a call center schedule is very annoying. Here's hoping I shine and I can eventually move up to other jobs in the company. for now I'll just have to pay my dues.

Hey, but a week of vacation just may get me through the rest of the day!

There's a couple of things I've always wanted, but in my life have not been able to achieve.

The first one is a backyard pool. I've always wanted one, but the parents would never go for it. For most of my years we lived in neighborhoods that had a pool for all, or at least those that paid the membership dues, but never one just for us. There's also the apartment pools, some were better, and cleaner than others, but still, anyone could come use it.

Here at the townhouse, there's a neighborhood pool, and last year it was closed for most of the year because of problems with the homeowner's association. I find that I haven't thought about it much this year. It's not the best pool, as the people stone around the pool is coming apart, and it hurts your feet. I've also gotten spoiled with the people who have pools cleaned with salt, rather than chlorine. It's so nice swimming in water that isn't bleaching you as you go.

I know, keeping the damned thing clean would be one of the biggest problem. I'm a lazy procrastinator and I know I'd have to be pushed to go get the leaves, but then again, I hate swimming with leaves, so there's definitely and incentive.

This would mean a new house - so you see the charges are mounting up here. There's obviously no quick fix here, but since I love to swim, and love the water, it's still something I want. There's always the advantage of hosting an occasional few friends to come swim, too.

Heck, right now I'd be somewhat satisfied by having a hot tub, but there really isn't room for that here, either. I guess we'll have to work on getting some money together and getting a large whirlpool tub when we decide to make over the bathroom.

Another thing I'd love to have is a convertible. For years I wanted a soft-top VW Rabbit (later known as the Cabriolet) or a Jeep Wrangler. I eventually decided that neither one were practical for me, as I needed a solid car for long distances, but I knew if I ever was able to buy a second car, it would be a convertible.

The only problem is, there's pretty much two kinds of convertibles tiny two seaters, and large whales. I can't fit in the former, and I don't need the bad gas mileage of the latter. It's a moot point as i can't aford it anyway.

In more reasonable news, We've booked everything for our Alaskan Cruise - trying to bargain shop, but not totally go on the cheap. I write this to see if anyone else would still like to join us on the cruise...come on, you know you want to!

I finished up Harry Potter tonight, and no one spoiled me on the ending. Very good! it was interesting reading it as Chris played songs from the Wicked soundtrack.

Oh, one more thing I want - I want to be rid of my acne! Hasn't it been long enough? I keep clean!

Over the weekend Chris and I actually went out and were social. We skipped the True Colors tour on Saturday, though we knew people would would be there. I was a little wary of going out on Saturday night to the Denton County Bears pool party not only because I didn't know too many people who were going to be there, but also because i was a little mad from not being able to get a haircut. Yep, good old vanity. Seems like all the cheap ass haircut places were full of people, and after working yet another saturday morning, I really didn't want to have to wait around reading stale magazines waiting for the one or two people to finally get around to me.

Sadly, our friend the stylist has left the haircutting industry to pursue other interests. Good for his wallet, though. Good for our hair too, because although he's a friendly guy, he gets a little attention-deficit disorder when he's cutting and kind of forgets spots.

We made it out to the pool party fashionably late, but not so late to chow down (are we not bears?). I met some nice folk, didn't freak out once I got warmed up, and had a good time. On sunday our little neighborhood had a get together out by our pool. Again, it was tough to meet people I didn't know. Even after living here a year and a half, I really don't know any of the neighbors. Only one of them recognized me from walking Joey occasionally. Still, it was good to put some faces to townhomes around the area. People started to bring their dogs and eventually the dogs were swimming in the pool - and none of the people were. Joey stayed fascinated by the water, but didn't jump in. I'm not so sure she really cared for the other dogs, except for the big lab puppy who she felt needed to be put in his place.

I think it's both Chris' and my goal to be a little more sociable and get out more often. Over the last few months we've been homebodies and really haven't gotten out much. We do know people, people that haven't moved away, and maybe it's time we started calling a little more often around here.

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Otherwise, in one of those looking back themes that will crop up from time to time in these 40 days, I find that I don't watch old movies. Pretty much anything prior to Star Wars (1977) is out, and certainly anything in black and white. I know this leaves a ton of really great films out, heck, most of the AFI top 100 are pre '77, but there's just something about old movies that makes me want to go do something else.

This isn't the same for old television shows. I'll be happy to watch a black and white episode of My Three Sons, or Bewitched. I love watching reruns of The Monkees or Green Acres. Perhaps it's just the timeframe involved, 30 minutes vs. 90.

It's not that I've never seen an old movie, there's plenty of old Disney films I've seen, animated and not, say, the Computer Wore Tennis Shoes? There's also Song of the South which I saw on one of Disney's re-releases sometime in the 70's before they pulled the picture for good in the US. I wouldn't make a big effort to go see them again.

that's another part of it, I rarely re-watch movies. I see them once, maybe twice, and that's it. I don't buy many DVD's because I really don't re-watch them. Even my Kevin Smith movies sit in a box, unwatched. The movie I've likely seen the most is either Airplane or Sixteen Candles because they ran on Showtime all the time in the summer during high school. they seemed to show The Wiz a lot, too.

Part of this may be due to my Dad. He's such a fan of John Wayne and WWII movies that he'll re watch them over and over. I don't know how many times I've seen parts of The Fighting SeeBees or The Searchers or Force 10 From Navarone. I never saw Saving Private Ryan because it seemed like it would be the same thing all over again, just with Tom Hanks.

There's something about needing to move forward in movies that's bigger than my need to move forward in music listening. I love to find new music, and listen to what others of you are listening to, but I like to mix that in with favorites across the last 60-70 years. Movies seem to be more of an in-the-moment thing. I caught a few minutes of Deep Impact on cable the other day and I was already thinking that the movie looked dated.

I'm sure I could ask for, and get a hundred different classic movie selections, but really, I'll stick to trying to see new stuff and the movies i've missed over the last few years...like over the weekend watching The Italian Job, which was fun. Of course it's based on a classic Michael Caine movie that I really have no desire to see.

Of course that doesn't mean I want to see every remake, either. At this moment, I'm still thinking of skipping Hairspray.