Rocky

I have to brag on my wife a little bit. For Father's Day she bought me the Rocky Collection which consists of the first five Rocky movies. I believe they put this DVD set together before Rocky Balboa was made. Anyway it was on sale at Target for 18 bucks so she got it for me.

But come to find out she had never seen any of the Rocky movies. She did however remember watching some of part 4 with her brothers.

So we had a Rocky marathon for the next two weeks. My wife watched all five Rocky movies with me and we even rented Rocky Balboa to finish the story.

She even agreed that Rocky 5 was stupid. And she added Rocky to her favorite movies on Facebook.

What a great woman.

I can't believe that our ten year anniversary is next week.

Part 3

Ok, so here is another installment of my favorite cartoons from my childhood. Check this out:



What can you say about the Superfriends? It has to be one of my all time favorite cartoons. I think it speaks for itself.

Even the Wonder Twins couldn't bring it down.

My favorite cartoons Pt. 2

Here is another one of my favorite cartoons from my childhood. And remember, these are in no particular order.

Today I'm going to feature He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Again this was a great cartoon back in the day. My mom still has a lot of my He-Man toys at her house and my son gets them out while he's there.

I remember there being a lot of controversy in the church over He-Man because of the title "Masters of the Universe." And of course any good person couldn't watch that cartoon because God is the true Master of the Universe and He-Man was evil.

I'm not so sure about all that. I just thought it was a cool cartoon.

So check out the intro here:



Can't wait until tomorrow. Let me know your thoughts on He-Man!

Something New

After my Transformers post the other day I started thinking about all the cool cartoons that I watched when I was a kid. So I decided that over the next few days I am going to feature one of those cartoons here.

And I want to hear from you. Leave a comment and let me know what you think about each of these great cartoons.

Up first is one of my favorites. G.I. Joe. A real American Hero.

Check it out:



I not only loved watching the cartoon each day but between my friend and me, we had most of the toys. We'd set up huge battles in his basement between Cobra and G.I. Joe. It was great.

One thing that has always bugged me about the cartoon is that no one ever got shot. They had these laser gun things and couldn't hit anything. If they actually hit a plane while it was in the air you would always see this little parachute shortly after the explosion.

Anyway, what do you think about G.I. Joe? I even heard they're making a live-action movie.

Bibleman

Well tonight is the big night. We're heading to Bibleman Live.

I thought this would be a great thing for the family to do together. Now my daughter is sick. It could get interesting.

The kids are really excited about going. Now I just have to convince the parents.

And the sad thing is, this was my idea.

I'll let you know how it is.

Transformers

My favorite movie this summer has to be Transformers. If you haven't seen it you need to get out there and check it out. Why was it so important to me? Because Transformers is something that is from my childhood. I had the toys, I watched the cartoon and even read the comic book.
If you grew up in the '80s Transformers were huge to you. Along with He-Man, GI Joe, Thundercats, Silverhawks and more.

But for those of you who didn't know, this isn't the first Transformers movie. The original was made in 1986 and had a really shocking and controversial ending. They killed Optimus Prime.

So take a look at the clip below. But it gets pretty emotional, you may want to grab a kleenex first.

Great Job

I talked about customer service in my last post so I thought I would share a positive experience I just had.

Last weekend I purchased a new iPod case at Best Buy that will help while I'm working out at the Y. I wore it for the first time on Monday. Last night I noticed that the straps were starting to rip. Not good. So I headed home to look for the receipt to take it back.

But wouldn't you know that the one time I clean up after myself was Sunday night? The trash was coming Monday morning so I walked around the house picking up stuff that should be in the trash. And one of the things I picked up was the bag and receipt that this iPod case came in.

So now I'm a little upset with myself. I know that the policy at Best Buy is that you need your receipt for all returns and exchanges. Without it I thought I was lost. But then I had an idea, what about looking up the receipt through my Rewards Card? (Which by the way is the greatest thing EVER!) So I called up the Best Buy store where I made my purchase and talked to someone in Customer Service.

And I have to say, it was a very nice and pleasant experience. She helped me out and found the record of my purchase. She told me to just bring the reward card with me and someone would be able to help me.

So today I did. And they did. And now I'm happy. Thanks Best Buy. Another reason you're my favorite store.

Wings

I had an interesting experience yesterday at lunch. I have been meeting with one of my friends here each week for lunch to just hang out and talk. Well yesterday we decided to head over for some wings. We also like to play the video poker. Which I dominated by the way. That's right, I'm great when I'm playing with fake money.

So we're done with lunch and we give our server our cards to pay for lunch. But she doesn't come back. Finally she stops by to tell us that they're having a problem with their system and that they're on dial-up so it should just be one more minute.

That one minute turns into ten and we're starting to get a little frustrated. We walk to the front where our cards are being held "hostage" and talk to our server. She says there is nothing she can do and that her manager is on the phone right now trying to work this out.

We stood in the front waiting for several more minutes before the thing was resolved. As I was leaving of course I'm feeling pretty upset. What poor customer service that was. The manager was keeping two of us there for over 20 minutes for less than 20 bucks combined. Making us late getting back to work and leaving us feeling pretty negative on the restaurant.

And we never spoke to the manager personally. She stayed in the office trying to take care of the situation.

Crazy.

So then I thought about our "customer service" each week here at church. How do we treat people that come into our services? Am I a manager that stays in the office trying to take care of "problems" or am I out there making sure that everyone is doing ok? Am I making people feel welcome and at "home" here at our church?

Maybe its a weak comparison but that's what I am thinking about this morning.

Time Alone

Tonight Crystal and I were able to spend some time alone. My daughter was with Grandma and a movie and my son was with Grandpa playing miniature golf.

Guess what Crystal and I spent our time doing?

We did what any parent would do when they have a few minutes without the kids.

We went to Super Target.

What? You were thinking of something else?

Last Game

Tonight is my daughter's final baseball game of the season. And it is my final game as the coach. I have to admit I've had fun coaching the Rhinos. Yep, we're the rhinos, and that's a cool name! At first I wasn't too sure I wanted to get involved with the team but I sure am glad I did. I still think I'm out of my element when I'm dealing with a group of 6 and 7 year olds but I really liked getting to know all of them.

And I have to say that Alexis has really improved since starting T-ball last year. I'm impressed with her skills! She's probably one of the best players on the team. And I'm not just saying that because she's my daughter. You should see her hit the ball. I think she likes hitting from the machine more than the T.

Anyway, we close the second year of baseball with Alexis tonight. Next I think we're on to either basketball or soccer. We'll see.

Car Trouble

Can I have any more bad luck with my cars? Well I guess one is a mini-van. Anyway, can I have any more bad luck with my vehicles?

The check engine light has been on forever in my little Mazda. It's an O2 sensor or something. We had some problems earlier with a "random cylinder misfire." Crazy.

Now it's the van's turn. Sure enough the check engine light came on last night on the way home from church. I had it checked this morning....cylinder 3 misfire. Great.

And we're driving to Indy in a few weeks. More stuff to work on.

Comments

Now I've heard from several of you that read this blog. Would it hurt you to comment once in a while? I think I'm getting a complex here.

Ok, then let's make a deal. You comment on a post and I'll try to post incredibly insightful things!

Deal?

Updates

I promise....I'll update this thing tomorrow! It's late now and I need to get to bed. It was my day off today and I'm tired. You're not supposed to be tired after a day off but it seems that's the case.

More later.

Post 4th Update

So I hope all of you had a great 4th of July holiday. Since it is Friday I thought I would give everyone a recap of the past few days.

First Crystal's family was here for the 4th. They are on their way to San Antonio and they stopped for a few days. The kids really loved having them here. They're stopping by again in a week on their way back to St. Louis.

Alexis and Crystal had a mother/daughter day yesterday. They went to play miniature golf in the middle of the day. Let me tell you it was over 90 degrees but you couldn't wipe the smile off of Alexis' face. She had such a great time, just her and mommy. The best part for her....a hole in one.

I spent the 4th of July at a city-wide event put on by several AG churches here. Our church had a booth where we handed out free bottles of water to everyone and these things called "koozies" which keep the bottle cold. It was neat to see 3,000 people with our little red koozies. I'm not sure how the vendors liked us giving away free water while they were selling it for 2 bucks. But around 8:15 during my dad's prayer over the event it started raining. I'm not sure what he was praying for up there but the rain started coming pretty good. So it made for a short night for me, which wasn't too bad. My family was all at home.

And last night Crystal and I went to see Transformers. Let me just say that this movie is GREAT! If you've ever watched the cartoon or played with the toys you have to see this movie. Even if you haven't, you still need to see this movie. Maybe I'll post a review later.

Well, now its time for me to get some work done. I'm playing golf later today and I need to get stuff done fast!

Fourth of July

Well tomorrow is the 4th of July. Do you know how I know? Because outside right now I hear the popping of fireworks all over the place.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love the 4th and what it stands for. I'm really excited about our independence.

But I don't like the fact that I have to hear "Black Cats" until midnight. Especially when my kids get freaked out when they hear loud noises at night. That means they end up in my room in my bed.

Not cool.

So could we just celebrate on the 4th and get it out of our system? Or just think about others in the neighborhood when we're lighting the fireworks that could blow our hands off?

Yep, yesterday I saw kids lighting them and trowing them at each other. Crazy.

Wow, that was pretty random.

Happy 4th of July!

Borders

I had a pretty good day today. I was up pretty early this morning and went to the Y to work out. I've now met with my trainer for the third and final time. I have my complete workout. Today the final aspect was to add stuff for my abs. Its pretty brutal right now.

Then I was able to spend about two hours in Borders. I just found a book I wanted to finish and sat down to read. And I actually finished it.

Then I finished the day playing the Wii with the family and Duck Duck Goose with my son. It was great.

See you tomorrow.