In late August, we spent a week with my mother-in-law and her boyfriend at Bethany Beach in Delaware. I hadn’t ever considered going there but we started to get some good recommendations for that area and Robyn did a lot of research to find the best place. We thought about Ocean City, Maryland but now that I’ve driven through OC, I’m really happy that we went with Bethany. It’s a beautiful, quiet and more upscale area with plenty of families who are enjoying time together instead of just looking to party. Since our condo was right on the beach, the view was perfect and we spent more time on the beach and in the water than we have since the kids were born. Mostly overcoming their fear of the water and the waves (which were huge for a couple of the days we were there!), both kids enjoyed the beach time as much as the time spent on the boardwalks of Rehobeth and Bethany.
Bethany Beach
Looking hot!
The whole group
View from our condo
We had a great time and, if we can afford it, we’re contemplating going back next year.
It’s been a busy week for us. Last weekend, we traveled to Massachusetts for Crystal and Paul’s annual cookout. We left on Saturday morning and arrived at our hotel in Auburn around 1 PM. After dropping off our stuff, we headed over to their house. The kids wanted to go right into the pool so they were definitely busy. We all ate plenty and enjoyed the company of my cousins. As the day passed Chloe started to feel ill. This was probably due to the all the water she swallowed while swimming. So, she sat and played on my phone for a bit while Gabriel and I played badminton and chatted with family. After the majority of family left we sat in the screened-in tent and listened to music with the Clarksons and the Crossmans. I had a few beers and we had a great time just being silly while the kids played inside (the mosquitoes were crazy-bad!). We returned to our hotel (Robyn drove!) around 11:30 and all promptly fell asleep.
The next day, we planned to visit Vinny and John in Malden but we actually had some time to kill after eating breakfast and packing our stuff up so we stopped by Deb and Bruce’s place for a bit. It was a quick visit but it’s always nice to catch up and see everyone.
Then it was off to Vinny and John’s. Chloe was so wiped out that she slept for most of the 75 minute ride. Once we got there, the kids were enthralled by their three dachshunds and John’s vast array of electronic gadgets while we caught up and chatted. After some snacks and a late lunch/early dinner and dessert, it was time to hop back in the car for the long ride home. Since we had an extra hour of travel back from the Boston area, we didn’t pull into the driveway until about 11 PM. Robyn and I got the kids to bed and unpacked our stuff. I had work the next day and the kids had their swim lessons in the morning so we hit the sack ourselves.
Monday turned out to be a beautiful dry and seasonably cool day so I figured it would be a good night to set up the tent and camp out in our back yard. After work, I pulled out the sleeping bags, extra pillows, comforter and blankets and my new sleeping pad and put the tent together with help from Chloe and Gabriel. They were super excited since we had so much fun last year. Robyn wasn’t going to be staying in the tent and she had some errands to run so the three of us went out to the tent right after dinner and stayed there as the sun set and the night grew darker. We must have played 20 rounds of 20 Questions. Robyn eventually came back with some snacks and dropped them off to us. As I had expected, it was a beautiful cool night with bright stars visible through the ceiling flap. Chloe and Gabriel crawled into their sleeping backs and I covered up in mine. Listening to the chorus of cicadas made us tired and we were all asleep by 10:30 and didn’t wake up until almost 8 o’clock the next morning.
Ready for some outdoor sleeping!
After a day of work, Wednesday looked like it was going to be a light workload and a good day to head to the beach for some fun. I worked until noon and we got ourselves ready to go after lunch. After getting to Point Pleasant around 3, it was obvious that the cool weather wasn’t keeping anyone away because all the parking lots were full. We managed to find one a little out of the way and then had to fight with the municipal parking machine to make it work. The kids love most of the rides but it was sad to see Chloe not want to go on any of the “baby rides” anymore. Gabriel could not have cared less and enjoyed the ones he’s always loved in the past while Chloe went with me on The Moby Dick and the “big” roller coaster twice! We always have fun at Jenkinson’s boardwalk and the weather was perfect – slightly overcast with a nice breeze from the ocean.
After dinner we played some more games and walked down to the water for a bit.
After knocking the sand out of our shoes we took a long walk down to the northern end of the Point Pleasant boardwalk. Sometimes we focus so much on the games and rides that we forget where we are. That stroll reminded me of all the things I like about the beach. Now that we had burned off some calories, it was time for the end of the night ice cream. The kids wanted to get into their pajamas for the ride home so they changed in the back of the CR-V and we were off!
It’s almost the end of March and we’re still bogged down in cold, wintry weather that would probably be more at home in February than March. We got a few inches of snow about a week ago but we managed to avoid a storm on the 25th. The low temps aren’t the only thing that have kept me from walking and running as much as I would like; an ankle injury kept me out of the gym and off the roads for almost two weeks. At first I thought the pain in my foot and ankle was a stress fracture but what I read about them indicated that these types of fractures tend to be painful for a while and my foot seemed to get better relatively quickly. Since the pain came on in the middle of one of my Thursday night classes, I now believe we did some stuff in class that may have caused me to twist my ankle. In any case, it’s better now and I spent two weeks doing the elliptical machines at the gym to lessen the strain on my foot. The rest seems to have done the trick because I was able to run without much tenderness beginning late last week. When you start to get older injuries that wouldn’t have bothered you 15 years ago start to weigh more heavily on one’s mind.
Although I like the gym a lot for the machines, I’m really looking forward to getting out and doing some running in the slightly warmer weather that is surely just around the corner!
For our 11th wedding anniversary, Robyn and I decided to head into NYC again this year. I made a dinner reservation at Bond 45 for 7:30 but we had Gram come watch the kids at 3 o’clock so we could leave early and walk around. Here’s Robyn showing off her hot little dress on her “new” body. Amazing!
All dressed up with somewhere to go!
The first thing we noticed right after we parked the car was that it was much more windy than we had expected. Robyn did wear smart shoes this time but she was also wearing a dress so she was freezing. The first place we went was a store so Robyn could get some pants. After trying on a few pair, she purchased one and put them on under her dress. She’s so ingenious! We headed back out and walked all over Times Square. For a place that gets so much attention from the world, there’s not a whole lot to do in Times Square unless you want to shop. We went into a bunch of different places and bough the kids some stuff from the M&M Store.
Dinner was pretty good – not great. There was no comparison to last year’s feast although we did have a delicious meringue cake for dessert and I had a tasty Malbec with our meal. After dinner we walked south to the Empire State Building where we looked up and saw the full Moon overhead. It was a beautiful sight that’s definitely not fully captured in the photo above. We headed back to the car since things were closing up for the night. All-in-all, we had a good time out on the town.
I went with John and his son to see Rush at the Prudential Center on October 20th. It was Evan’s first real concert. The show was great. Those guys never fail to entertain.
I was 7 years old in early 1979. I guess that would have put me in second grade. My interests were probably limited to Star Wars – drawing Star Wars spaceships, playing with Star Wars action figures, reading Star Wars books and listening to the “movie on tape” version of Star Wars. When not doing any of those things, I was probably reading about space exploration or drawing pictures of fighter planes and tanks. Although I can’t recall many details from that time, I am sure about the Star Wars stuff. I was obsessed. And from the sales figures, I wasn’t the only one. Action figures and toys from Lucasfilm were selling like crazy and Hollywood was trying to follow the success of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a spate of sci-fi films to be released within the year. Battlestar: Galactica, The Black Hole, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Moonraker were all soon to be relatively well-received in theaters.
For most kids my age, straight up science fiction films were one thing but most of my peers weren’t seeing horror movies yet. I guess I wasn’t most kids because I was pretty preoccupied by shit that scared me. I LOVED watching those black and white horror movies on Saturday’s Creature Double Feature even though they sometimes gave me nightmares. In the summer of 1979 my mother even took me to see Prophecy in the theater (more about that in a bit)!
So, into my world comes this trailer:
Spooky, right? Imagine me watching Diff’rent Strokes with my sister and that comes on…. I thought something was coming out of that egg and whatever it was, it was going to scare the crap out of me. Eventually, I was trained to just cover my eyes and yell “lalalalalalalalalalalala!” at the top of my lungs every time that commercial aired.
Fast forward to May or June of that year when my older-by-a-decade sister tells me that she went to see Alien. Now, this was a long time ago so I don’t remember her exact words but it was probably something like “scariest thing I’ve ever seen”. The sentence “I almost tossed my cookies” may have also been uttered. She assured me that there were spaceships in the story but it was nothing like Star Wars. After putting up with my repeated asking, my mother made the wise decision not to take me to see Alien. However, as I mentioned above, she did take me to see Prophecy. I think she thought the movie poster bore some resemblance to the egg in the trailer for Alien and as anyone who has kids knows, if you can’t get exactly what the kids want, you settle for the next best thing. I got about 4 sleepless nights out of that experience and my mom got several hours of sitting on my bed while I tried to fall asleep.
Sometime not long after, I ran across the novelization of Alien and I guess I figured, since I couldn’t see the movie, I could at least read the story.
You have to remember, these were the days before everyone had VCRs and if you missed a movie during its theatrical release, your next chance to see it was probably going to be the “television network premiere” about 5 years later. I couldn’t wait so I got the book. This was a serious undertaking and probably the longest book I had attempted. Somehow I managed to take the book with me to school so I could read it during quiet time or indoor recess when it was raining. Not wanting to dissuade a student from reading, my teacher glossed over the potentially inappropriate content. The story was slow and I’m sure I didn’t really understand most of what I was reading. I just kept wondering when the scary stuff was going to happen and I never did finish the novel.
During this time, I was also a big fan of the sci-fi and horror movie magazines that were out at the time – Starlog, Fangoria, Fantastic Films, Cinefantastique. I used to go to the comic book dealer who set up shop at the Auburn Flea Market and read through all of them to while away the time as my mother, grandmother and great-aunt tried to sell all our old stuff. These magazines all had advertisements for mail-order (remember, this was way before the Internet!) companies selling books and other movie memorabilia. At some point, I don’t recall whether it in one of these magazines or in person at our local Beacon pharmacy that sold comic books and magazines, I ran across this:
The comic adaptation of the movie looked amazing. Printed on heavy gloss paper, the art was pretty stunning for the time. Googling for this will turn up lots of pages to get an idea of the quality. The dialog was straight from the movie and I think it even included some scenes that were cut from the final release. Finally, the plot of the film was clear to me! On top of that, I got to see the artist’s rendition of the Nostromo and the refinery and all the technology that appeared in the background and added so mcuh realism to the whole movie. I read the graphic novel over and over until I took the next steps down the road to my Alien obsession.
I’m not sure if I got the Alien Film Novel from a book store or if I convinced my mom to order it for me from a mail order company but when I got it I was fascinated. With over 1,000 color frames from the movie, this really was almost as good as seeing it in the theater. Looking at the stills, I could see what the characters look like and really get a feel for the atmosphere of the film.
My next acquisition was the Book of Alien which is basically an “art of…” book by today’s standards. There is some background on the formulation of the story and the creation of the film but it doesn’t go into much detail. The coolest thing from my perspective was the conceptual art – especially Ron Cobb’s amazingly detailed and technical designs that I have already seen from books like The Star Wars Sketchbook. I can recall looking at the photos of the bridge of the Nostromo in this book and the film novel and being inspired by the level of detail.
There were other tie-ins too: alien action figures, trading cards, patches and hats, shirts, etc. Although not as heavily merchandised as the Star Wars franchise, Alien was a pretty big hit and it also struck a chord with me from many perspectives.
I don’t really remember when I finally did see Alien. It may have been on VHS in the mid 80s. I’m not even sure if I had seen Alien prior to seeing Aliens in the theater. It may have been when the Alien Collector’s Edition laserdisc set was released in the early 90s. I really can’t recall. Obviously, I was not let down by the film’s presentation since I have seen it many times since and I still enjoy that the first installment more than any of the others in the series. I even enjoy multiple viewings of the making-of and behind-the-scenes supplemental material on the DVD and recent Blu-ray sets and Dennis Lowe’s very cool Alien Makers series.
There was some unique magic that was created with this film that sparked something within me as a child and still remains as an adult. I’m still obsessed!
Since the stories about Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien series started coming out about two years ago, I’ve been looking forward to seeing whatever it was that he released. I’ve been a big fan of Alien since I was a kid so the wait for this movie has been long for me. I saw Prometheus in 3D this Tuesday afternoon (free movies for Optimum subscribers!). I went alone because Robyn and I had planned to go on Saturday night but her mom wasn’t able to babysit due to a fall she had taken at home – she’s fine but was sore.
Having been in theaters for a few days, I was seeing reviews about the film that didn’t seem to be very positive so I went in with high hopes but not expecting too much. Even though I tried to stay pretty much spoiler-free, I had seen a few reviews that hinted the movie was only distantly related to the existing Alien franchise and that it was much more of a philosophical debate than a full-on horror/action film that we had come to expect. I was cool with that since I had always favored Alien – the first film in the series over the others due to the dark tone and relatively slow pace.
I think the reviews were mostly right on. The overall theme of the story was great. I enjoyed the movie and I find myself still thinking about the questions that it poses. But there were some plot holes that needed patching and scenes that I could have lived without. My biggest annoyance was seeing an elderly Peter Weyland played by a young Guy Pearce – the makeup looked bad and completely broke me out of the movie. Why not just hire an older actor? There was also some bad dialogue and some unbelievable decision-making by the characters but these are mostly things I can live with. The visuals and aesthetics, especially in 3D, were amazing – as one would expect from Ridley Scott.
Friday, February 24th was our 10th wedding anniversary and we had a fantastic night. We drove into New York City and had dinner at Del Frisco’s Restaurant. The food was really good, as it should be, since it’s the most expensive single meal we’ve ever ordered. But it was worth it! We never go out and this was a special occasion for us. At the beginning of our meal, we had two glasses of Moscato that was very sweet and quite tasty. I think mine was gone before we were finished ordering dinner! I ordered a delicious 16 ounce steak and Robyn got a steak trio that included a little foie grois which I thought was delicious. I’ll definitely have to try that again some time. In addition to the main courses, we ordered a cauliflower au gratin made with brie and an order of sweet potato casserole. I started with a crab cake and Robyn had shrimp cocktail.
I’m glad that I had mentioned it was our anniversary since, at the end of the meal, the waitress brought us some complimentary champagne and banana bread pudding with ice cream and a candle on top.
We walked around the Times Square area for a while after dinner since we had some time to kill before our comedy show at 10:30. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been to Times Square – it’s really a pretty amazing place – so many people from all over the world taking photos and looking at the scenery.
Robyn in Times Square
After grabbing some coffees and a cab, we headed uptown to Comic Strip Live. The show was a lot of fun and they even invited the whole audience to stay for the late show for free. But it was getting late and we had stuff to do on Saturday so we opted out and took a cab back to get our car to drive out of the city. We got home after 1:00 a.m. and didn’t get to sleep until about 3:30 or 4:00.
When I type that out it seems much more serious than I had anticipated. I was not very worried about turning 40 and there wasn’t much to-do (at least, not from me!) about it this year. I was looking forward to my birthday, actually. I knew it was a “big one” as far as milestones go and, to be quite honest, I was just hoping to get a nice gift. Little did I know that Robyn was planning something behind my back for the last few months. Every time it came up, she would just say something like “So, what do YOU want to do?” or “I am so bad. I don’t have anything planned.” All the while, I was telling myself that it was no big deal – just another year. But inside, I think I was hoping that there were at least some plans brewing. Oh, she was quite sneaky!
Thinking back on the whole thing, I should have known something was up because there was a “cluster” of unusual happenings. The Saturday before my birthday Robyn was (supposedly) scheduled to work. On those days, my mother-in-law and Harvey come to watch our kids and I take one of their cars to class while Robyn takes our car to work. On that Saturday, Harvey wasn’t coming because he had “something to do” so Alise came alone and I took her car to class. We had a nice training session with a rare Saturday appearance by Jason and Doug who usually do not attend on weekends – but they said that they had to leave a little early from class to do something later in the day. After training I hung out and chatted with Max and Sal and then went to Quick Chek to get a drink. I didn’t rush home by any means. After I pulled into our empty driveway Chloe and Gabriel were trying to get my attention by shouting out of our windows to me. I just waved and grabbed my stuff and got the mail. It was a rainy, dreary Saturday and I wasn’t looking forward to being stuck in the house of the rest of the weekend. Walking inside and putting my training stuff away, the kids were still trying to get my attention and I noticed that Harvey’s coat, hat and shoes were in our living room but I didn’t think much about it because Alise had mentioned that they were thinking of going to Atlantic City later in the day to see his nephew’s band perform. I assumed that he had come by our place to pick her up in order to save time but I didn’t think to ask where his car was.
As I walked up the stairs, Chloe was saying “Daddy, come up! Come up! We have something to show you!”
As I got near the top of the stairs I could see some kind of decoration on the little table between our chairs and I began to think that something was going on.
A little further and I saw a camera pointing up over the back of one of the chairs and I knew it was Jay and that I would turn to see others there too.
From my face, you can probably see that I was pretty surprised.
Okay, now I know something is going on....
Robyn did an excellent job of keeping things under wraps until the party. This is something I did not think she would be able to do without the kids knowing and with all the other stuff she does so it really contributed to me not expecting anything on that day. Great job, babe! I had a really fun time at the party and was happy to see so many people there including Jason and Doug who had, of course, left class early to beat me home for the surprise!
In addition to being a great day of fun this was an interesting lesson in how our minds can work to fill in the blanks of unusual circumstances to create order from random changes to our environment. Or maybe I just unconsciously pushed these little clues out of the way because I really was hoping for a party? It’s hard to say but I was definitely unaware of all the planning and scheming going on around me. It’s a good thing that it was all being done by people who love me!
