Help

Kids and I have had a good weekend. Friday we ate this chicken sausage lasagna thing I bought from our local specialty grocery store--layers of polenta instead of noodles. Tasty. Watched a few episodes of the first season of Heroes. Today was Trevor's last soccer game of the season and he scored a couple goals. There was a little trophy ceremony on the grounds rather than a party at a pizza place. Low key but I'm glad we didn't have the extra expense--both money and time.

My phone is fucked up--this week I found I couldn't open up texts. When I tried it with the trackball on the phone it would highlight without opening. We went to the AT&T store and the kid there just said to call 611 for customer service, and then I realized I couldn't do that, either--it would only type letters. He directed me to another store nearby, where we discovered the keypad was just dead but they couldn't replace it there. I could call to get a replacement in 3-5 days or drive to another location, which is 45 minutes one way--it's near my work. So rather than subject the kids to it, I'll go tomorrow at lunch or after work. I tried to use the included Blackberry software with my Mac so I could back up my phone numbers, but it's only formatted for Windows. Why does this crap still happen? How many Macs have to be sold?

After lunch Saturday, the kids and I took a San Diego County road trip, making some democratic turns to try to explore areas we'd never been through before, which took us through some nice woodsy roads where there were many multimillion dollar houses, golf courses, equestrians. We drove for a couple hours before getting home, though the kids fell asleep the last half-hour or so. We were on one road where the fires had definitely been through, and it was kind of eerie, with some houses levelled next to others unscathed, and you could see where some pine trees were burned halfway up, as if firemen were able to stop the progress at that point.

We watched The Beatles' HELPt, which I'd never actually seen more than a few clips from. I've seen Hard Day's Night a few times. This was pretty cool--several amusing bits but it's hard to make out what they're saying at times, and the music sequences are all pretty great. It was fun to see Leo McKern as one of the bad guys, and Patrick Cargill as the Scotland Yard inspector--Two Number Two's in one movie! Read some more of this Operation Red Jericho book, which is sort of LOEG meets Hardy Boys, with submarines and evil Chinese warlords and cool inventions--lots of cool charts and diagrams and fake newspaper clippings. I began Terry and the Pirates last night (speaking of evil Chinese) and it's pretty terrific. Kudos to IDW for a great presentation of a classic strip. I also began the Schulz book. I have to say, the frequent use of strips throughout the book that contain biographical info is a great way to convince the reader the author has Schulz figured out, whether he does or not.

Sunday we had breakfast at Starbucks, where I gave my daughter a photo assignment to take cool pictures with my camera. Dropped kids off at grandma's and had a long conversation with ADD, which ended up being more about jazz and Sting than comics, which was cool. I guess we must be old men.

Cold, gloomy day for a baseball game, but Trevor did well with a couple nice plays at second. They lost but it was a good game. Then I watched the Chargers in perhaps the most disappointing, frustrating WIN I've ever seen. A 23-7 lead at halftime to barely winning 23-21 courtesy of a missed chip shot field goal by the Colts' Vinatieri. Even then the Chargers weren't able to get a first down in the last minute and a half and gave the Colts another chance to move the ball down to possible field goal range. Unbelievable. Weird feeling to win a game and feel like your season is pretty much over.