Bitter Sweet B-Day

So I sit here at work on my 28th birthday and I am exhausted having worked the worst set of turnarounds a schedule could offer! In the period of five days I span from working until 3 AM to coming in at 4 AM, having to do 8 hour turnarounds leaving me with little time to myself, with Amanda or even to sleep. You know there is a period in Job's life when he was being tested where he just pretty much had nothing left and just sat in his situation (in my own words) and I am closing in on that in my period of trials. I carry around with me a scripture that I read and pray over everyday and it seems to make me feel better and it reads: (Note: I took out the middle part comparing faith to gold which even with it's value can be changed by fire)


"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a while you may have suffered grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Chirst is revealed." I Peter 1:6-9


I figure that at some point God will reveal his plan and my purpose for all of this and I will not be able to contain my joy! Until then I pray that he moves quickly and for His will to be done, I even have stopped trying to influence it which is big for me. To fully let go...maybe that's why this is happening?!

So to the sweet part (no more bitterness)...I have a mortgage and it isn't that bad. I fought hard on this, one thing about it with lack of sleep I am pretty much straight to the point with people and I had to be for this to happen. So Amanda and I are ready to start down this path...we can't wait but it will be hard to see the comforts of our parents' homes go away. Did we live at home too long...no doubt but was it bad...no way. Our parents are terriffic people and we both are very fortunate! So it's happening, I have a mortgage and a wife coming within weeks of each other!! Wow! Happy Birthday to me!

I am very excited about it all, I am just sorry that my job situation clouds my happiness at times as I miss Amanda a lot and I hate to call her or my parents and they are having fun or doing anything really without me. Family means the world to me as does church and I miss both every week and that is hard! I have job prospects each week and I know that this time will pass and I will be blogging on here about nonsense again soon but I thought I would share this as a kind of thearopy...thanks for listening, I will get off of the couch now and let someone else get on.


Oh by the way, I saw today that I share my birthday with Gene Roddenbery and Jonathan Frakes which is really cool as I love Star Trek!! So RIP Mr. Roddenbery and "make it so, number one!" Engage... (cue music)

Heroes in a Half-Shell...

TURTLE POWER!! So the depths of my dorkness hasn't bottomed out yet! I recently purchased the TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) movie that came out in theaters last March. I was not able to see in the theater because Amanda sometimes is hard to get to see "kid's movies" as she refers to them. I can't complain too much, see did see Transformers with me and she liked it a lot so that was cool. I love seeing movies with her but sometimes I need to go with friends or on my own, I get it as I do have a broad taste in what I want to see.

Now for TMNT, I was so excited to see it but got worried because they chose to make the cover look like a cartoon from the original series. But the movie was far from the hand drawn cartoon of my past. It was CGI and very well done! They used a company that is like Pixar but from Japan which made the fight scenes turn out very realistic. They chose to keep things like fighting realistic as they knew that jumping 30 ft in the air wasn't too realstic for a 5 foot tall, talking turtle trained by a rat to be a ninja! Seriously though it was cool. They even had a fight scene that many of us wondered about, I won't spoil it. The bad guys were cool, no Shredder this time but they brought in Patrick Stewart (Capt. Picard/Professor Xavior) to be the lead villian. They also used a lot of Men in Black type aliens to round out the fun. The Foot Clan were also involved with a hint of a sequel with Shredder mentioned...

TMNT is cool for everyone, they deal with being different, being excepted and being a family which I think in today's times and the fact the nuclear family is as unstable as it's namesake, it is good to show kid's that they are special, should be proud of that and stay with their family no matter what the world says! And be kind to animals...

Birthday Time

I was reading Amanda's blog entry regarding her birthday and who she shares it with and it made me wonder who I share mine with that is famous. It seems that the 19th of August has an eclectic mix of people who celebrate on this day.

Here are a few:

Bill Clinton, John Stomas, Kevin Dillon, Kyra Sedwick, Lee Ann Womack, Matthew Perry, Fat Joe, Ahmed Best and many more.

So I was born on the same date as Jar Jar Binks, a rapper, Chandler Bing, a country singer, Mrs. Bacon (the Closer), Johnny Drama, Uncle Jesse and a former President (by title only).

Well happy early birthday to all my 8/19ers we are a strange bunch!!

1st Day at Hogwarts

The Sorting Hat says:

Which house are you in??

http://www.thealmightyguru.com/reviews/harrypotter/Docs/Quiz-House.html

Greatest Movie EVER (Transformers), HP5 & My Job

Well, if you know me you know that I have been with Disney for close to 11 years. I haven't worked anywhere else and I have been around long enough to not have the "pixie dust" and I have been called "old Disney" by many of my peers, friends and those that report to me. "Old Disney" means that I can turn the "Disney" on and off depending on the situation and that I realize that to do business you can't be successful by always being "Disney". So it is no surprise to me that I am at the end of my career rope and I finally have an interview for a potential promotion which would mean more money (nice to have, just look at Amanda's blog to see why), better schedule, a step up to a senior leader (I would have salaried leader's reporting to me) and I could be able to build my own team which I would love to build a team the right way and kick the crap out of every other team in existence!! I would hire like-minded people with my philosophy and work ethic...we would bring the "old Disney" style. They would not be clones because I love to debate, argue and get push back...it makes me better! Now I leave this in the public realm on my blog and I ask that everyone prayer for me on this Wednesday at 4:00-5:00 pm. I want and need this job, it may change my life!

Less seriously...I can not review the Harry Potter movie because I thought it was excellant and it reminded me of the "Empire Strikes Back" piece of the Star Wars Epic. It was a great story and I am amazed at the level of acting that Daniel Radcliffe has grown to. I guess naked plays in England help...not sure. But it is nice to see him grow as an actor because he could easily just ride this out and not get any better. I can say this, I wish that Ron would've had a little more to do or say as he at times is the comic relief.

Transformers was amazing. It was sexy, funny, action packed (they blew everything up!) and the CGI was the best ever. Michael Bay must've learned how to make a movie or Spielberg had a lot of influence on this. I actually got in my truck and thought..."am I driver a Transformer?" I hope they make this a franchise but continue to use the same amount of cutting edge movie making. I want to have this in writing: I predict that Shia Labeouf with the next Tom Hanks. This guy has great comedic timing, amazing depth and he has a great amount of momentum right now carrying him into Indiana Jones 4. Who would believe that he was once on "Even Stevens". Add that to the list of names from the Disney machine... I will do more on Transformers after I see it in IMAX.

Oh yeah, I want a H3...no way to work that in, so I just said it.

Catching Up...

Well...what friggin' crazy month this has been and it won't stop...yet! My job is in limbo, not that I will be fired or anything but my current role (Disney term) is up as I was in a temporary position. I have a good amount of prospects (finally) and hope that I will get the one that pays more and allows me to go to church again. My Ox not only got into the ditch but I think it fell into a ditch made of quicksand but I guess until then I will continue to go to my parents church via their CD ministry... Amen! Oh yeah, did I mention that I signed papers for a house...that could be THE most anxiety ridden process I have ever been through. All Amanda wants to do is talk about furniture and paint but I just want to watch the ink dry on the first mortgage payment so I can breathe again. Anyway, if you want to see it go to Amanda's blog she has posted a link.

What else did I do? Well, not too much we saw Pirates and Fantastic 4... Pirates was a good ending to that story path and I hope if they do more that Jack Sparrow [CAPTAIN] I mean "Captain Jack Sparrow" will have new adventures with new side characters and villians. What an amazing character. F4 was pretty good and would've been great if it didn't seem like two movies into one. It was like the director said "I don't like the Fantastic 4 characters...let's do a Silver Surfer movie" and then he remembered that he was doing the F4 movie so he made it good when they were on screen too. Not complaining, I will get the DVD, watch it again and probably love it. Silver Surfer movie will be interesting if they can keep Larry Fishborne as the voice actor. Now I am anxiously awaiting the Transformers Movie (seeing it tomorrow) and then HP5 which looks amazing!!! (and don't forget the Simpsons Movie)

Finally for this post I wanted to show some pics of when Amanda and I went to Disney MGM Studios for Star Wars Weekends. What a crazy event! It is 200 degrees out there and people are in full Jedi/Sith attire sweating the force right out of them. THEN there were the people who just a strange because it was dress up day... But we saw Ray Park (Darth Maul EpI & Toad X-Men I) and some other cool things... I am attaching a few of the characters we were able to see.

Mish Mash

After a few weeks of drama, the wonderful Google Support Team were about to get me back to the world of blogging! Thanks Google Support Team!!

Anyway, it's been a while since I blogged so I thought I would just catch up on all that has happened lately, in no real order...just what I remember first.

Amanda and I went to see Spiderman 3 and it was pretty good, much better than any of the Batman Sequels (post Keaton and before Batman Begins which was awesome) and any of the Superman Sequels, I & II were good but III was bad and Returns was decent. I thought that it had too many villains and they should've really done more with Venom, including not have Topher Grace's voice and face appear when he had dialogue. Sandman was cool but more of an afterthought to me, it was like "oh yeah we have this sand guy who is doing bank robberies". BTW, no movie villain should just do bank robberies because that is lame...at least Doc Octopus did it fund his plan and it gave Aunt May a chance to meet Spiderman. But I think that the next one will feature more of Venom (hopefully) and maybe let Peter's Professor evolve into his alter ego.


I finished all of "the Batman" Seasons 1-3, it is a very cool animated series (okay it's a cartoon, deal with it!) that has an anime feel. They do a great job of making the characters new and fresh while taking a little from each of the past versions and adding those traits to the character as well. And for the record, I want the original Season 1 & 2 Batmobile to be used in a future movie, it is FRIGGIN' AWESOME.

All of my shows are done for the season, we just finished Lost and it is now more confusing and intriguing than ever before!! Grey's Anatomy made Amanda mad and she will not watch it again...sure. Boston Legal, Battlestar Galactica and other shows that I watch are all done and now I wait for House to end (can't wait, I love that show) and Entourage and Sopranos to end and then I am bored for the Summer... Idol was pretty good but it is on a downward slide, the best singer didn't even make it to the end but Jordin will do well. My Dad bought Bones Season I and it is actually really good, I have been watching it as he finishes discs. It's like a newer version of X-Files. I just caught the 1st showing of "the Lot" and it was really cool...but I am a uber-nerd so you may not like it as much!


I wished I could think of more but I have been working a lot lately and watching lots of TV and listening to lots of music. I will go see Pirates this weekend and then it becomes movie mania with Harry Potter, Simpsons, Transformers, Bourne, F4 and so many others I can't wait!!