What a kid will put himself through for a dollar...

Ben wrecked on his scooter this afternoon and chipped his front tooth. He was pretty nervous at the dentist, but was very brave and handled it well. He chipped off about 25% of one of his front teeth. We took it with us to the dentist, but they were not able to "glue" it back together so they used "play dough" to fix the front tooth and gave Ben his original tooth piece back in a baggie. Now he wants to put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy. Somehow, that doesn't seem fair. He's already been paid for that tooth.

Who dey, baby!

Each week, ESPN releases their "power rankings"--their rating of every NFL football team. In past years, the Bengals have been at best a middle of the road team--maybe 15th to 20th if they were lucky. This week, the Bengals are ranked as the 4th best team in the NFL!

I'm trying my best to keep my expectations to a minimum, but it sure is fun to have a good team in town! Marvin Lewis for president!!!

I'm attaching a screen capture of the rankings, just in case I never see them up that high again.

Almost Famous...

I was surfing around the Web this evening, reading a bit about the upcoming Harry Potter movie. HP & the Goblet of Fire is my favorite book of the series, and I'm really looking forward to the movie. Anyway, I was reading about how the HP books are some of the most censored books around right now--I guess people think that if kids read them they'll try to become evil sorcerers. One of the sites provided a link to the Censorship Center at the National Council of Teachers of English Web site. At the NCTE site, they provide a couple of samples of teaching rationales--which are papers that explain the reasons for using a particular literary work, film, or teaching method. And guess who wrote the rationale they use as a sample on their site? Yours truly! It's a paper (not a particularly good one, mind you) I wrote back in college about the novel A Color Purple (excellent but disturbing book, by the way). It was fun but kind of bizarre to run across it.

Amazing Race & Supernatural

The new fall season of TV is here, and one show I like to catch is The Amazing Race. This season they are doing a family edition, with teams of 4 instead of just 2. There are some interesting personalities--it should be a good season. There are also some really annoying families that need to lose quickly.

The family from Cincinnati, unfortunately, was very annoying and immature. As much as I like to root for the hometown crew, they didn't impress me in week 1. There was also a team of 4 sisters that all talked over each other the entire time that I didn't appreciate, and a family from New York that has two sons that really need a good beating. Unfortunately, the family that was eliminated seemed to be one of the nicer ones.

My favorite moment was when the family with the 2 little kids passed another family in their buggy while the kids were singing "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain."

I try to catch The Amazing Race, Survivor, and Lost every week. I've also been hooked by a new show this season called Supernatural. Of course, it's on the same day and time as The Amazing Race, so the VCR will be busy this fall (no TiVO for me). The show is kind of like a serious version of Ghostbusters. So far it's been good, but I have a feeling it probably go the way of Earth 2, Space Above & Beyond, and the many other shows that I enjoyed that got cancelled after one season (or even less).

dafont

Recently discovered a handy Web site...dafont.com. It contains hundreds of free fonts, many of which are very cool. Many of the fonts are based on familiar themes and logos--Disney, Coke, PS2. Others are based on movies and TV--Matrix, Lord of the Rings, James Bond, Alias, Pokemon, and even Charmed. The fonts appear to be legal and are available for both Windows and Mac.

YPOPs

Discovered a cool little tool this evening for anyone using Yahoo mail. YPOPs allows you to configure your e-mail client to send and receive Yahoo mail (instead of using Webmail). Plus, it works with just about any e-mail client (including Thunderbird, which I highly recommend).

Saturday night's alright for blogging...

Annette and Ben are off at a Cub Scout campout, Chris is spending the night at a friend's house, and Maria is in bed...so I am just hanging out messing around on the computer. I thought I would free up some hard drive space by copying some old digital photos to CD, which has ended up taking quite a while as I take a trip down memory lane looking at photos. The thing that strikes me most is how time is flying and how the kids are growing up so fast.

Survivor 11

Tonight was the premiere of Survivor--season 11. As Dianne mentioned, the show has absolutely jumped the shark many times over. I like people watching, though, and Survivor tends to find some pretty interesting people, so I'll keep watching.

In the FSC Survivor Pool, where we randomly draw a Survivor and if they win it all we get the dough, I drew Brian. My first impression from the picture/bio on the Survivor web site was that I wouldn't like him much. And, as usual, first impressions don't lie. He will probably last because he is on a good team, but he is pretty obnoxious and doesn't have a prayer of winning it all.

First impressions: I liked Brooke, Margaret, Morgan, and Brandon. Bobby Jon got even dumber than he already was (which is saying something).

Early prediction: This will be the first season where it will be all women in the final 4.

Top 5 Movies

By special request: After seeing my list of my bottom 5 movies, someone asked what my top 5 were. So here we go...

5. The Usual Suspects: Several of my bottom 5 movies were all character development, but no plot. This one has great characters (I especially like Kevin Pollack and Benicio Del Toro's characters), but also also has a great story with a nice twist at the end.

4. The Shawshank Redemption: Great story! I laughed, I cried, it moved me. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman's best roles ever.

3. Dead Poet's Society: This movie was the main reason for my original career choice. Maybe if a few of my students had stood on their chairs and called me "Captain", I'd still be teaching.

2. The Sixth Sense: I know of only one person who claims to have figured out the twist in this movie before it actually happened, and they're a liar.

1. Field of Dreams: James Earl Jones' speech about baseball is one of my favorite movie moments of all time.

Honorable mentions: Pulp Fiction, Twelve Monkeys, Dead Again, Gattaca, Forrest Gump

Special citation goes to Armageddon, which is my "go to" movie on any rainy Saturday when I want to be entertained and don't want to think too hard. And since Bruce Willis made four of the movies on my list, he is my winner for favorite actor.

Easter eggs

Ben and I are enjoying some of the easter eggs in Age of Empires, thanks to the information we found at eeggs.com. Our favorites are the laser troops and Corvette with a cannon mounted on the roof. The middle ages will never be the same!

The site also has interesting easter eggs for other software, movies, and even music CDs--which I didn't know existed. For example, in David Gray's "White Ladder" (an excellent CD, by the way) if you hold the scan backwards button while on the first track you find a hidden track that is actually hidden on the CD before the first track.

And by the way, Earl, there are hidden features in the Ali G DVD :)

Renaissance Festival

Visited the Ohio Renaissance Festival today. We had a great time watching the interestingly-dressed people as they participated in dramas, comedy, pirating, jousting, etc. If you've never been, I highly recommend it! Click the picture to see more.

Slang for $200, Alex...

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=6899

Personally, I think he deserves credit for the answer.

Which fantasy/sci-fi character are you?

Take a quick quiz to see which sci-fi character you are. I was hoping for Harry Potter, but I ended up Aragorn...you can call me Strider.

Ask and ye shall receive...

In my first ever blog post, I mentioned that I was always behind the times. As an example, I mentioned that my video game system was a Nintendo 64. Ironically, a couple of days later I received an X-Box as a gift.

Just last week, I mentioned in my blog that my Peter Warrick Bengals' jersey is obsolete because he was cut from the team. Then, for my birthday yesterday I received a new Carson Palmer Bengals' jersey as a gift.

I sense a pattern here. Just in case it holds true, I'd like to mention right now that my car is very old. It is a 1998 and has well over 100K miles on it. Just in case...

Happy birthday to us...

Monday was my and my mom's birthday (103 combined years). We had almost the whole family over our house for a birthday/Labor Day picnic. The weather was beautiful, and we all had a good time. Lisa and Danny kicked our butts in cornhole, and then Bob and Lillian kicked our butts in Scene It. Click the photo to see more.

A specific age has never really bothered/concerned me. However, turning 35 somehow feels like a big one to me. For example, I am no longer in the Neilson ratings "18-34" age group that watches "The Simpsons." I'm with the group that watches "20/20" and "Matlock." OK, maybe that is a stretch...but still, for the first time I don't really see myself as a kid anymore. Now I'm depressing myself...I'm going to go play video games.

WEBN Fireworks

Working downtown definitely many perks, one of which is our location down at One Lytle Place on the Ohio River which gives us a wonderful view of the annual Toyota/WEBN fireworks. This year's display was one of the most impressive I can remember. In past years, half of the fireworks were right in front of us and half were over to the left where they were partially obscured by the bridge. This year, the entire display was right there in front of us! Also, the kids seem to have gotten over their fear of loud noises (the fireworks are VERY loud) and enjoyed the show, which allowed Annette and I to enjoy the show more as well! We had a great time hanging out our guests the Hampton's, Blake's, and McClary's (as well is with with the Lewis's, Sod's, and the rest of the crew from FSC)!

I tried my hand at photographing the fireworks this year. None of the photos are anywhere near professional quality, but a few are kind of interesting. If you're interested in seeing the whole group, click here or on the picture above. You can also view a brief clip of the finale by clicking here.

On a sad note, a man died falling from a 25th floor balcony at One Lytle a couple of hours before the fireworks.

Stick Bug Invasion

The kids just came running into the house yelling for me to come outside, QUICK! Usually this means someone is hurt, but in this case they were just excited because a family of three stick bugs was hanging out on our front porch and we just HAD to take a picture. It took me seven tries to get a decent, focused picture of a non-moving stick bug. This makes me even more amazed by some of the cool action photography Earl links to on his blog.

Sacks in the City

Here's the team I drafted, along with the round and pick number in the draft. Hopefully, they'll take me to the championship!

1.	(9)		D. McAllister
2.	(16)		C. Portis
3.	(33)		M. Bulger
4.	(40)		N. Burleson
5.	(57)		I. Bruce
6.	(64)		J. Arrington
7.	(81)		F. Taylor
8.	(88)		D. Stallworth
9.	(105)		S. Moss
10.	(112)		L. Smith
11.	(129)		R. Longwell
12.	(136)		B. Griese
13.	(153)		S. Davis
14.	(160)		B. Watson
15.	(177)		Chicago Defense
16.	(184)		F. Gore