smacky and bucky

When my wife's aunt died, all the boxes of family genealogy stuff came to Laura. She's been scanning them to discard paper and such, but she still has boxes of photos and the like. The other day, Henry walked into the room carrying something. I asked what he had and he handed it to me. Never mind the random photo that was in the envelope... this was the envelope holding the photo:

Going with a new acquaintance from the neighborhood to a Caps game tonight. He has tickets. But with Backstrom and Green out with injuries and Ovi suspended for three games, they're going to have a tough game against the Stanley Cup champs Boston Bruins. Ah well, it's just one game, and it will be fun.

Full disclosure: The point of going (beyond seeing the game) is to, in the words of my wife, "make a friend." My wife is friends with the wife of this guy, they have a daughter a few months older than our kid, and they live two blocks down on our street, so it makes sense. Plus he likes the Caps, plus, as I've mentioned before on this blog, most of my friends are now just Facebook friends, since they live so far away. I can count my nearby friends on a single hand (or cough*finger*cough). So I'm letting the fact that the seats are in the 400s (the highest tier; I've never seen a game and not sat in the 100s) slide and not be a snob (or a knob) about it.

The Manos restoration is underway (background here: www.manosinhd.com/why-im-saving-manos-the-hands-of-fate/), and for a movie shot on a crap camera on a shoestring budget over 40 years ago... it looks amazing!

Manos: The Hands of Fate (Clip #1) from Manos in HD on Vimeo.

Can't wait to get a copy of this on BluRay when it's ready.

We just watched Mars Needs Moms on Netflix streaming. If the boy had been six months older, I think it would have scared him. But man, it's a great movie for adults. I may have teared up a little a few times. Shut up!

...you have a great evening with the kid: You feed him dinner, watch an episode of Backyardigans, give him a bath, and play with trucks before Laura asks what the score of the Caps game and you realize the game started an hour and a half ago and you forgot.


YAY!

We had our first snowfall of 2012 on Monday afternoon. It was unremarkable, not too much more than a dusting, really, except for one thing: Snow is the most absolute favorite thing in the world for our dog Kirby! He loves shoving his face into it. He's had back leg issues for the past year, but all that is forgotten when he sees snow. He becomes a little puppy again, frolicking like mad.

This pic is for Kate. I decided after my birthday that it was time to stop bringing a backpack to work. I've been at this company nine years this month and I had just turned 40, for Pete's sake. I wasn't in college. I decided a briefcase still wasn't me. I'm no businessman. But a nice messenger bag would be a good compromise between the two. So that's what I got from Laura for Christmas: a very nice black leather Kenneth Cole messenger bag.

But I also found this and couldn't resist adding it to my Amazon wish list, and my father-in-law gave it to me for Christmas:

Officially licensed by Sun Records. It's a mixture of vinyl iron-on (the logo) and stitching (the record grooves. Isn't it awesome? I decided the black leather one would be my work bag and this one would be my play bag. Right now it's holding all the DVDs I got for Christmas... but that's the subject of another post!