The Ugly, The Bad, and The Good

Another weekend has come and gone. Today was a nice day. Mondays are always fun because I spend the whole day with Evan since I don't have to work until Monday evening. We took my car to the garage to get it checked because we thought the transmission was going. Turns out that it is just a misfiring cylinder and the car just needs a tune-up. Good to hear. Then we had lunch with Jam and then we went to the train station to get a ticket for grandma who is going to visit next week.

Though today was a fun day, tomorrow will not be. The ugly. Evan is having a minor surgery to have tubes put in his ears. Evan gets ear infections and the fluid doesn't drain correctly into his sinuses so he has to have this surgery to help. It is very common and will only take a few minutes but Jam and I are not looking forward to it. I'm sure it will be fine but I am not looking forward to him having to go through with it and being grumpy for a while afterwards.

The bad. Comic book writer and artist Michael Turner died on Friday night. He had been fighting cancer which was diagnosed in 2000. He died at the age of 37. It is so sad to hear of someone dying so young of such a horrible disease. Michael Turner is best known for being co-creator of Witchblade, creator of Fathom and Soulfire and for starting Aspen Comics MLT.




Also sad is the passing of comic genius George Carlin who passed away last week June 22 of heart failure. I forgot to mention him last week. George Carlin is a legend as far as comedians go and helped pave the way for many of today's stars. He truly is a legend. He was 71.







The good is that I went out to see Iron Man last night at the West Shore Theatre in New Cumberland which is becoming my favorite place to see movies. The movie was great. Robert Downey Jr was the perfect actor to portray Tony Stark. I never read Iron Man comics but do read the current Avengers comics. It is one of the best comic book movies in a while and highly recommended.

-Special C

Believe it!

July 25, 2008. One month from today! Four weeks from Friday! X-Files: I Want To Believe I can not wait!



























-Special C

Just Another Manic Monday

It was a heck of a Monday. I wouldn't say it was good, I wouldn't say it was bad. It wasn't great, it was just kinda... eh. Actually, it leaned towards the bad side but nothing new. I think Evan is still somewhat adjusting to life back home from vacation so he has been a bit rowdy. He wasn't bad this morning but was fairly ornery this afternoon. It didn't really start until I tried to put him down for his afternoon nap which incidentally did not happen. I can't blame him though, he's just a kid. Then Logan seemed to be edgy and growled/barked at anyone and everyone who drove or walked by the house. One of the cats peed and shit on the couch in the basement. I thought it was Cleo. We always think it is Cleo when bad stuff happens. However, I took a nap this evening and Cleo layed on the other side of the bed with me the whole time and somehow more crap appeared on the basement couch during this time. So it was Sherbie. But did Sherbie pee and crap? Did Cleo pee than Sherbie crap? Has it always been Sherbie pissing and shitting on the couch upstairs too? Does Cleo not really have a grudge against Evan? Does Sherbie have a problem? So now I have to figure out what the F__K to do about the cats. They were all fine and dandy for five years but now they are being @$$holes! ARGH!

Now I am at work. It is slow as all heck! I actually have enough to get through the whole night (not sure how based on how it looked when I first got here) but nights like this are becoming more and more common. I need to get a new job and get out of this sinking ship. Don't we all need new jobs though?

Just another manic Monday.

-Special C

Back From The Beach

We are back from our trip to Bethany Beach. It was a lot of fun, so nice to get away for a week. We were gone from Saturday to Friday. Evan had a great time playing at the beach, even though he wasn't too sure about it at first. He loved playing in the sand but didn't want anything to do with the water. I can't blame him because the water was cold. I did get in it a few days though because I love swimming in it. The house we stayed at was nice. It was right on a canal so we would occasionally see boats or kayaks or canoes go by. We even had some crab traps to catch crabs. We caught a few but let them go. Since we were so close to Rehobeth, I finally got to check out the Dogfish Head brewery which was cool. We also had Evan's first time at a playground. He liked the swings and slide but loved riding on the springy lion. We also took a trip to the Jolly Roger amusement park in OC Maryland where I rode some go karts which I had not done in a long time. Otherwise we just did some short trips up and down the coastal highway and hung out at our house and at the beach. The week went too fast!

We came back on Friday night to go to a wedding on Saturday. Congrats Emily and Dave.

Well, below are some other pictures from vacation. Enjoy!

-Special C

What an exhausting week this has been.

The title to this post says it all. This has been an exhausting week. Still one more day to get through before the weekend. I have been getting over the cold that I inherited from Jam and Evan. I had a doctors appointment because of some back pain I have been having. I had another doctors appointment for a CAT scan to make sure my back pain was not due to kidney stones (it's not, though we do not yet know what it is from). Evan had a follow up appointment due to his previous ear infections and is going to have to have tubes put in his ears. Poor kid. And as all of this is going on, we have been trying to get on with normal day to day stuff and get ready for our upcoming trip to the beach. I need a vacation. Thankfully it is coming soon.

-Special C

S L O W

Slow night at work. Just finished my lunch so I thought it was a good time for a quick post. My weekend was nice. It was hotter than hell out so we spent most of the weekend at home. We went to the mall on Saturday for a bit just to get out. We ended up getting new phones which are pretty nice. We needed new phones. We hit Walmart on Sunday to get a few things for our upcoming beach trip. Not much else. It was a typical weekend.

Here is a quick video that I came across. Had me laughing out loud at work.

-Special C

MySpace, the final frontier...

I decided to finally start a MySpace account this week. I figured I may as well since I am pretty much the only person not to have given it a whirl. So far my page is pretty plain. I've added a profile song player and a picture. I have not updated my favs for movies, tv, etc because I love that stuff and I am anal so it will take me a while to do so and the only stuff I have done so far is during breaks at work. Anyway, the pages is at myspace.com/cjtruett. Please check it out when you have time and if you have a MySpace account, let me know and we can be "friends".

-Special C

A really good day.

Today was a really good day. Typical Wednesday for me. I woke up, picked Evan up at the sitter, bought some books from the comic book store, then came home and relaxed a bit. Since it was payday, Jam, Evan, and I went to the grocery store for our usual every-other-Wednesday grocery trip. I think we were there for about 10 minutes when I heard a familiar voice say "I knew I wanted to come to this store for a reason". It was our good friend Leona whom we had not seen for a long time. Leona and I went to Ship U together and is one of our favorite people in the world. After I transferred to Millersville U, we still stayed in touch but never hung out. We really only see her if we bump into her at the grocery store because she has a friend who lives near it. It was great to see Leona and for her to meet Evan. Leona has a little boy too who is almost three now that we have yet to met. We all decided that we have to get together soon, something we always say but honestly mean this time. It is so ironic that we bumped into Leona because Jam and I were just talking about her. We were talking about people from Ship because I got an e-mail from another friend, Robyn, that I had lost touch with after I left. Robyn and her sister Sara had posted some pics of their trip to Egypt on the ComixConnection blog and I happened to see it and commented for them to see and get in touch with me. A day or two later, I had an email from Robyn. My life has been a Ship U reunion lately. I should really do a myspace page because I know a lot of people who keep in touch that way but I never got into it. I guess I was turned off by how ugly some peoples myspace pages are (sorry, it's the graphic artist in me) but forget how it is a good tool for communicating. Guess I'll have to get on that soon. After dinner and putting Evan to bed and taking out the trash, Jam and I watched Ghost Hunters and I got ready for work and Jam got ready for bed. All in all a busy but really good day.

Oh, and to top it off, the second trailer for X-Files: I Want To Believe is online now. Enjoy!

-Special C

A cool image from 1991.

I recently found this image online and wanted to show it here. This was inside of the four-page cover version of X-Men #1 (vol. 2) by artist Jim Lee. It had all of the (1991) members of X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force, and Excalibur. The X-Men books have always been my favorite comics. I was first introduced to them by my friend, Mychal. The only comics I had read prior were G.I. Joe and Transformers. Uncanny X-Men had me hooked from the start. When I started college, I quit buying comics for a few years. Later I would occasionally buy one here or there but no X-Men ones. Then I met Nudie Mike in college who was an X-Men fan and he told me some of the stories I had missed and it got me interested so I started collecting again and the X-Men are again my overall favorite books.

Anyway, the comic which had this image came out soon after I was first introduced to the X-Men comics. It has always been one of my favorite X-Men images. I remember seeing a door poster of it once at Columbia Mall but didn't have enough money to buy it. I never saw it again. Anyway, just thought this was a cool online find.

-Special C

Nuke The Fridge

Another weekend come and gone. My weekend was okay. I started to catch the cold that went through my wife and son. I wasn't too bad until Sunday and Monday was the worst of it. I actually called off sick from work which is something I rarely do.

Since I was not to bad Saturday, I went with my dad to see Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. SPOILERS ahead for anyone who has not seen the movie. Before I get into it though, I want to say that I really enjoyed this movie. This is one of the most fun at the movies I have had in a long time. If you have ever seen an Indy movie, you know that there are some ridiculous things that could never happen in them. Like the mine cart chase where the carts not only do not fall off but jump from track to track. Or when they fall from the airplane and take a mid-air life raft ride to safety. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had many of these moments, especially the nuke the fridge moment, which apparently the new term for jumping the shark. I was lucky enough to sit next to a couple who repeatedly exclaimed "yeah right" or "like that would happen". Boy that was fun. I wanted to ask them if they had ever been to the movies before. Because I am pretty sure that movies are supposed to (for the most part) be an escape from reality. I wonder if they said "yeah right" last summer when they saw Spider-man or Transformers. Probably not because I shoot webs and drive around in a sentient camero all the time. Anyway, Indy 4 was really good. Lots of action, laughs, great performances, interesting story, etc. And of course it was only a matter of time before a franchise helmed by Lucas and Spielberg had aliens thrown into the mix.

The rest of the weekend, due to feeling like crap was pretty much spent at home. I read some comics, played some Mario Kart Wii, and Jam and I watched the 4th season finale of Lost from Thursday.

In true Lost fashion, we were left with another cliffhanger with numerous unanswered questions but honestly some of the best Lost there has been in a while. SPOILERS again here. It was cool to see Walt again. I wonder how they will explain his aging. The freighter blew up. Jin isn't dead. He jumped off or was propelled away from the blast. Everyone just thinks he is dead. Just you wait and see. Michael however, dead. He was below deck. The island was moved (Lost just nuked the fridge... again). Where? Who knows? Guess we'll find out next season. Oh, and Locke is dead. If they take him back to the island like Ben suggests, will he come back to life? Not like Zombie Locke but like that crazy eyepatch guy? Hmmm. Anyway, it was a pretty satisfying episode (or three depending on how you look at it).

Well, enough babbling about my lazy sick weekend. Will post again soon.

-Special C