What the %$#@!?

Since last night, I have realized a few things that have been a little annoying to me. They're not enough to ruin my day, but they're still annoying. I figured the best place to vent about these things would be right here on the great big world wide web. Heck, maybe even someone will read this.

First up on my list of annoyances is the dinner I attempted to make last night. Every Tuesday I have a couple of friends over and I make dinner. Last nights main dish was to be stuffed pork chops. I've made them once before and they turned out well. I thought this time would be just the same. I placed the pork chops in a brine over night, made the stuffing, and was ready with my cooking plan of attack. When I went to get the pork chops out of the brine, I discovered the salt for the brine hadn't dissolved. I didn't think too much of it, and kept going. I then struggled actually getting the stuffing into the pork chops, but eventually succeeded. I was ready to cook them up. I placed them in the pan and began cooking on medium heat. When they were golden brown and delicious I figured they were done. I checked, and they still were a little raw on the inside. I kept cooking and eventually they became blackened stuffed pork chops. And here is the kicker, they still weren't cooked all the way. How in the world can you burn something and still have it raw at the same time? So frustrating.

Next I was watching SportsCenter and found out the quarterback of the Denver Broncos will get the trade he wants. He got his feelings hurt and now he doesn't want to play anymore. What a whinny baby. He's such cry baby that he won't even answer calls from the team offices, coach, or owner. Choosing to ignore them instead. That sounds real professional to me. I'm sure that makes a wonderful statement to any other teams that might want him. I hope Denver trades him to Detroit and he's stuck on a bad team for the rest of his career. On a side note, now my team needs a new quarterback. It'll take a while for a new quarterback to learn a new offense and we'll probably miss the playoffs for a fourth straight year. Thanks for nothing Mr. Whinny Baby quarterback.

This morning I woke up to see an overcast sky. I checked the weather and it said the high today would be 39 degree. 39 degrees! It's April. It's supposed to be spring time. Two weeks ago it was a warm sunny 70 degrees. Now it's freaking 39 degrees. It's not supposed to be close to freezing with a chance of snow. I'm a warm weather person and this cold cloudy weather is really starting to suck.

The weather leads me to my next annoyance. My car heater has decided to crap out on my again. For the fourth time. I've flushed out the heater hoses and even had the water pump changed. Still, my car heater's favorite pass time it to blow freezing cold air from outside. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to replace the heater core. There's another couple hundred bucks that will be sunk into the money pit also known as my car. Lame.

Speaking of cars, I went to fill up on gas this morning on my way to work. It was such a pleasant surprise to see that gas has gone up to $2 a gallon. Not. I don't know about anyone else, but during these lousy economic times, rising gas prices are not something I want to see. Do the oil companies not have anything better to do than to stick it to Joe Public? I am so not excited to see what gas prices will rise to when the summer comes. Looks like I won't be taking any road trips.

George Lucas Ruined My Childhood

What is George Lucas thinking? Seriously? Does anyone know what's going on in his head? Does he think that the movies that he is making now somehow enhance the wonderful movies he made in the 70's and 80's? Hasn't he done enough damage to my childhood movie memories?

I just read that he is mulling over a 5th Indiana Jones movie. Did he not see the last one? Did he think it was actually good? Not only that, but he has a new animated Star Wars movie coming out in a few weeks. Did anyone see that movie trailer and get super excited? I for one, did not. After seeing the Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith I no longer have any desire to see any new Star Wars material. I'm not sure why I was so surprised at how lame these movies are. I mean Lucas did attach himself to such cinematic gems as Howard the Duck, The Ewok Adventure, Captain EO, and Radioland Murders.

I'm not trying to pick on Lucas or say that he is a lousy film maker. Okay, maybe I am saying that he is a lousy film maker. But he hasn't always been. I mean as lame as the movies that I just mentioned are, he has also given us American Graffiti, the original Star Wars movies, the first three Indiana Jones movies, Willow, and even The Land Before Time (before it had 20 sequels). In fact, I thought that Lucas was such a great film maker that I even convinced myself to pretend to like the Star Wars prequels.

It wasn't until I watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that I came to the conclusion that he no longer has any film making talent. After Crystal Skull, I came out of the theater let down because he ruined a character that I enjoyed since childhood. He doesn't seem to have any more original ideas. For the last 20 years he has been doing things involved with either Indiana Jones or Star Wars. The only exception was in 1994 when he co-wrote Radioland Murders. Everything else has been some form of spin off of work he has already done.

Jim Emerson at MSN Movies said in reference to Lucas, "He's a mogul, not a director." He re-released the original Star Wars movies in the 90's and made a bunch more money. Then he re-re-released them on DVD and made some more money. Then he re-re-re-released them on DVD again, this time without the digital enhancements he made in the 90's. Now he plans to re-re-re-re-release them again in 3-D. When does it stop?

I'm sure he still has some good ideas for new stories and films. And I would love to see some of them once he tires of tinkering with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. I think that he is worried that any new material that he comes up with will not be well liked or as profitable as those two franchises. He's right, but who cares? At least it would be new and fresh and that's what a film maker needs to be in order to stay successful and relevant.

Road Trips = Road Rage?

I had the opportunity to travel back home to my home town of Montrose, Colorado for a family reunion this past weekend. Seeing the family was great and I enjoyed spending time with some relatives that I hadn't seen a while. But in order to get home to see all of these relatives, I had to drive for six hours to get there. Now a six hour drive normally isn't that bad. In fact, I've driven for 14 hours straight to get to a destination. So six hours doesn't seem like it would be a long time. Except that my car doesn't have AC and it's the middle of July. Not a fun experience. The nice thing was that I didn't have a car trouble, so that was a definate blessing. The drive down to Montrose was really nice. There wasn't anything to slow me down and I made really good time.

It was the trip back that was a little more irritating. While driving along I-70 into Denver, traffic just decided to slow to a crawl. There's no feeling quite like that of going 10 mph on the interstate. I'm still not even sure what caused traffic to slow down. There wasn't any road construction or an accident. It was like some people just decided to go 10 mph and slowed everyone down behind them. So lame. I couldn't believe that I was stuck in a traffic jam on a Sunday afternoon. The same thing happened on I-25 from Denver to Fort Collins. More traffic and going slow for now apparent reason. Argh! So frustrating.

The nice thing about the drive back from Montrose was that I drove over McClure pass on Highway 133. What a beautiful drive. I love going that way. It's so quiet and the beauty of Colorado is so apparent. I love that drive. It's even better in the fall when all of the leaves are changing colors. I included a few pictures from the drive yesterday. Hopefully I'll be able to get over that way again in mid-September to get pictures of the fall colors.