Myrtle Beach Day 8 - The long ride home

Today was the day we all were not looking forward to – the trip back home. We had to be out of the condo by 10am, so we have to get up and get moving. We packed most of the stuff in the cars the night before, so all we really had to do was pick up a few bags and make sure we did not leave anything.

We ate breakfast at McDonald’s and it was packed. This was a sign of things to come. The main highway (Hwy 17) out of North Myrtle Beach was fairly crowded. We took a bypass (Hwy 22) and it was smooth sailing until it merged with another highway. This highway was the main highway to go to Myrtle Beach. As you can imagine, if you put all of the people trying to leave Myrtle Beach and combine them with the people trying to leave North Myrtle Beach, it gets pretty crowded. I should also mention that the highway was 4 lanes, with 2 going east and 2 going west.

At this point it was bumper to bumper. Hwy 22 had 2 lanes and as it ended, one took you east on the main highway and the other took you west. Almost everyone got in the right lane, which took you west on the main highway. West on the main highway took you to I-20 and I-95, so needless to say there were a lot of people trying to go that way. What really irritated me was that the signs clearly showed what lane to be in to go each direction, yet there were people who went all the way where the road split and tried to jump in line in front of everyone. I think this is one of the most annoying things ever. I wish I could run some of these people off the road and into a wall NASCAR style. What makes your time so much more valuable than mine that you get to skip sitting in line for a few minutes? I tried to not let anyone over in front of me. No, you cannot get over because you pull up next to me with your blinker on and wave at me. One car managed to get in, but it wasn’t because I wanted them too. They basically came in my lane and forced me to slow down, thus creating space for them to get into. Jerks.

Other than that, the trip home wasn’t too interesting, which I suppose is a good thing. We somehow managed to stop for gas at the same exit we did on the way here, which wasn’t planned. The GPS tried to take us a different route home than the one we came here, which was weird. We went I-20 here and it was trying to take us to I-95 to I-16, which was definitely going out of the way. This didn’t really mess us up, but it caused us to take a wrong turn before getting onto I-20. I had a feeling it wasn’t right, but I was thinking the way the GPS was trying to take us was going to merge back up with I-20 shortly after a few turns or something. I quickly realized that wasn’t true and got off I-95 as fast as I got onto it and was able to get back onto I-20. That’s what I get for relying on the GPS too much. In case it wasn't obvious, I was the lead car. Mike and Debra were in their car while the rest of us were riding in our car. It was a little weird to be the lead since I'm used to following them, but it turned out good.

We made it home safely and know have to unpack our suitcases and do some laundry. Is there anything worse than unpacking your suitcase after a vacation? Every piece of clothing is a reminder that you are back home and the fun is over. I think Christi and I left our clothes in the suitcase for like a month after we came back from our honeymoon trip. That was a fun trip.

That wraps up our trip. I hope you enjoyed the daily blog. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Myrtle Beach Day 7 - Last full day here

Today was our last full day at the beach. The rain that came yesterday morning stayed away today and we were able to enjoy ourselves at the pool and on the beach. The ocean current has been pretty strong all week and the lifeguards won’t let you go any deeper than waist high. We were able to spend some time playing in the ocean, but the strong current makes you tired. We didn’t really take Landon to the ocean today because of the strong currents. He probably would have been fine in the very shallow section, but we felt like it was better for him to stay in the kiddie pool or sit in the big pool with his float. The majority of the day we were in or around the pool and basically just relaxed all day.

Landon has been whining more than normal the past few days. He is getting really upset if you lay him down to change his diaper or clothes. He also lets you know if he doesn’t want to do something, such as sit in the exersaucer. This is usually one of his favorite toys, but he wants to be held or be able to walk around the condo all day. We can’t do that, so he has been pitching some fits. After a minute or two he calms down and resumes playing, but we feel bad having to let him cry like that. He’s been teething for a while, but nothing has broken through yet. I’m hoping he will be ok on the way home like he was on the way out here.

For dinner, we ate a nice place called “Dirty Dick’s”. Yes, it actually was a nice place to eat, despite the name. The food was really good, but the service was pretty bad. Our waiter was nice, but his breath smelled terrible. I was sitting on the end of the booth where he kept coming up to, and it was about to kill me. Combine this with the fact that apparently they only had 1 person in the kitchen actually cooking food. Ok, so maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, but it took us over 2 hours to eat because the food took forever to cook. Needless to say, the waiter was coming to our table a lot to refill our drinks and apologize for the wait. I wish he had apologized for his breath.

The food finally arrived and everyone thought it was great. It could have been that we were all so hungry at this point, but it was good. I had a full order of crab legs and it was good. I also ate some of Christi’s crab stuffed grouper, which was very tasty. I probably would have ordered what Christi had if it wasn’t my tradition to eat crab legs at least once. None of the other places we went appeared to have good crab legs, so tonight was my last chance. The food was good, but it was overpriced. I guess that is to be expected while on vacation.

Landon ate his dinner while we were waiting for our food and passed out on the way back to the condo. This turned out to be good because we were able to lay him down to sleep while we were packing. He wasn’t in his bed, though. We took turns lying on the couch with him while the rest of us got everything packed. Speaking of packing, I need to put my computer up, so this is the end of today’s blog. Thanks for reading!

Myrtle Beach Day 6 - Rain

We woke up this morning with intentions of staying at the beach and pool most of the day. Mother Nature, however, decided that was a bad idea. Initially it was a light rain and nothing that bothered us while we were swimming. After a short while the rain picked up and we went to the indoor pool, which I mentioned earlier in the week was very cold. We ended up staying in the kiddie pool with Landon because the other pool was too cold. He really enjoys this pool because the maximum depth is 1 foot and he can run around the pool easily (with us holding onto him, of course.)

While he was running around he made a friend. A little girl, probably 1-2 years old, started following him around the pool. It was cute. She would just get close to him and he’d look at her and then keep motoring around the pool. At one point he tried to grab her swimmies and she didn’t like that, but she kept following him around. I took him back to the edge of the pool where Christi, Jason, and Lynn were waiting out the rain and sitting with their feet in the water. The little girl followed us over there and sat a few feet from me (I was holding Landon out of the water at this point). She was just staring at us and I smiled at her. And she kept staring like she wanted to play or something. I asked her what her name was and she said something very softly. I couldn’t make it out, but I said “Hi, this is Landon.” And she kept staring. Shortly after, her older, but still pretty young, brother came over and told her that “mommy needed her to come over right now.” Her parents were sitting across from us, maybe 20 feet away on the other edge of the pool. I had smiled at them while Landon was walking around the pool and they just looked back at me. I guess it is weird to smile at people these days.

Anyway, the little girl refused to leave and the boy looked at me and said “did you talk to her?” This caught me off-guard because it instantly sent tons of thoughts streaming through my head. Did her parents think I was trying to kidnap her? Did it look like I was trying to get her over to where we were sitting? Was I doing anything wrong? I mean, she was following us around right in front of her parents. They didn’t seem concerned then. Anyway, I answered the kid honestly. I said simply said yes. I was preparing for her parents to come over and say something about not talking to their daughter, but it never happened. Soon after, the rain stopped and we went back outside, only to have to return later because the rain started coming down hard. This whole incident made me realize that I wasn’t really prepared for any parent confrontations or anything like that. If that situation arises again it would be something new and strange. I guess I need to be prepared for other parents because you never know what parents will do when it comes to their children. I think parent-parent interactions might be another blog topic.

I was proud of Landon. He is already pulling in the ladies and he’s not even trying yet! On a more serious note, the rain continued through lunch and the weather report said it was going to settle in for most of the day. We decided we would head out to the aquarium and take in some other indoor activities. We grabbed a quick bite to eat lunch and then went to the Ripley’s aquarium. It was pretty crowded and we didn’t get to see all of the exhibits, but we saw most of them. There were some cool fish and they had a sea turtle, which was pretty awesome. Since we had recently been to the Georgia Aquarium, I was trying to not compare the two because the Georgia Aquarium was much larger and had a more diverse collection of marine animals. However, subconsciously I found myself critiquing everything I felt wasn’t as good as the Georgia Aquarium. Not that Ripley’s wasn’t good, because it was and I really enjoyed spending time there. It’s simply the fact that the Georgia Aquarium has the largest tank in the world (for the time being) and they have newer facilities. That being said, Ripley’s was very nice and we had fun there. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera, so I do not have any good pictures to show you. Also, Landon fell asleep shortly after we got there and did not get to enjoy the fish like he did at the Georgia Aquarium. He woke up toward the end while we were in the gift shop, but he did get to see some fish in the very last tank.

Once we were done with the aquarium, we stopped at a store in Broadway (where the aquarium is located) and then drove over to Barefoot Landing. There are two sides to Barefoot Landing and we had only seen one side, so since we were out we decided to walk around the second side. You might notice that we were walking around outdoor malls at this point. The rain that was supposed to be there all day had stopped. It actually stopped before we made it to the aquarium, but at that point we had already made up our minds to go to the aquarium. We are hoping the rain will hold off tomorrow so we can relax around the condo before we have to start packing for our return trip on Saturday. This week has gone by too fast. Time goes by too fast ever since Landon was born.

When we came home tonight we did our night-time routine of swimming in the lazy river and then the hot tub. We were supposed to come back and play some games, but everyone either fell asleep or decided to curl up on the couch with a book. Everyone except me, that is, because I curl up with my laptop. I don’t have any books I like to read, mainly because I’m not sure what type of books I would like to read and I don’t have the time to read consistently. Also, if I started reading, my writing time wouldn’t exist. It’s hard enough to sit down like I am right now and type out even a simple blog post, but this week I have been able to reflect on things and then write it all down.

Well, it’s almost time to go to bed. I need to put the computer down and get ready to fall asleep. That’s all for today.

Myrtle Beach Day 5 - Shopping and Mini Golf

Today we woke up a little later than normal and ate some Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I think I forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog that we went out after we got home last night to get some doughnuts. It was either doughnuts or ice cream, and doughnuts won because you can buy enough to eat the next day… and the next. That Krispy Kreme was the possibly the busiest I have ever seen. The drive-thru line was almost to the street. Something we have noticed is that there are a lot of Eastern European workers at all of the restaurants, and Krispy Kreme was no different. I am unsure if they are here for the summer or if there is a large population here that I never knew about, but they are here. Just an interesting note I thought I would pass along.

After eating too many doughnuts, we decided to do some more shopping. The post doughnut look is not pretty on the beach, so walking it off while shopping was decided to be the smarter move. We planned on going to an outdoor Tanger Outlet Mall, but extreme heat followed by the threat of rain put an end to that after a few stores. A quick lunch break and we were back on our way, but this time the plans were different. Mike, Jason, and I went back to Broadway to do the zip line and ropes course while the women went to a large indoor mall to finish up shopping. Jason and I had a great time doing the zip line. It was fairly high up, but nothing super tall. I would say it was maybe 60 feet in the air and ¼ mile long or so. It didn’t last as long as I would have liked, but it was fun. It was my first time doing a zip line and I really enjoyed it. The ropes course was fun too, but it was hard as well. There was a storm a few miles away and it had some frontal winds that affected the course. It still was fun, though. It was definitely pretty nerve racking because some of the obstacles were simply ropes and you had to walk spans of 20-30 feet with the wind blowing fairly hard (we had safety harnesses on, of course.) It was fun, but we didn’t get to stay up there as long as we wanted because the aforementioned storm blew in and the rain started. We didn’t want to be up there if it got any worse than rain, and it looked like it would.

We met up with the girls and went out to eat dinner. Landon drained his afternoon bottle dry while we were driving to the restaurant (traffic was terrible, again) and by the time we were there, he was done. Dinner was good (I had shrimp po’boy) and we left to play some mini golf. That is one of the things we always do – play putt putt. We get pretty competitive about it and this year was more of the same. I am proud to say that after a lot of tough holes, I came out victorious this year. Christi and her dad tied for 2nd, follow closely by Debra, Lynn, and Jason (in that order.) By the end of the game Landon was ready to go. He enjoyed playing with the golf balls, although he wasn’t happy when we wouldn’t let him eat them (those things are nasty!)

By the time we got home Landon was getting pretty restless, but we quickly made him dinner and he ate all of it very quickly. The kid can eat when he is hungry, that is for sure. After dinner we went to the lazy river to relax for the rest of the evening. We had hoped to be home earlier so Landon could swim more, but we were out later than planned and he stayed in the room with Christi’s parents so he could wind down, take his last bottle of the day, and go to sleep. Speaking of, it’s time for me to do that. Landon has been waking up around 7:30am this week and I need to go to bed so that when he wakes up I will be ready also. He is starting to roll onto his stomach during the night and he wakes himself up after his pacifier falls out. That means we have to get up and put it back in before he really gets upset and won’t fall back asleep.

Come back later for more on our trip to the North Myrtle Beach.

Myrtle Beach Day 4 - Beaches and Jousting

Just a reminder, these entries were written the during the trip

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Tuesday, July 13. Four days into the vacation; four days left until the vacation is over. Today was a low key day. Instead of going to the pool, we went to the beach in the morning. In case you haven’t noticed, this was the first we had really been to the beach. The reason was that it was so crowded there wasn’t much room for us to setup like we wanted too. There were literally rows of people on the beach and you couldn’t see the ocean unless you walked through the maze of tents, umbrellas, and chairs. It was Landon’s first time on the beach and he had a great time. The sand wasn’t too hot to walk in and he tried hard to walk in it, but it was tough for the little guy. The ocean was a difference story. Like the pool, he loved it. We were letting him standup in the water and when the waves would come in and hit his legs he would laugh and laugh. He was having a blast until a wave came in faster and higher than I thought and it splashed in his face some. He didn’t like that at all. Once we got him calmed down he was ok and he got back in the water.

Shortly after that though he got pretty tired and he fell asleep in my arms as we walked on the beach. Since it was so hot next to the water Christi and I went back to the pool to cool off while her parents, Jason, and Lynn continued to walk down the beach. The beach was packed with people as far as you can see in all directions. I’ve never been to Myrtle Beach, but I would venture a guess and say that it hasn’t been this crowded here in a long time. I say that because there has to be a lot of people here who were going to the gulf. I know at least 7 are here. In case it wasn’t obvious, that would be us. We had planned on going to Gulf Shores, but the wonderful people at BP cancelled those plans.

We are having a great time so far in Myrtle Beach, though. The traffic isn’t the best, but otherwise it’s pretty easy to get around to everything here. This afternoon we went to Medieval Times. In case you are unfamiliar with it, Medieval Times is a dinner theater type event where they have live horses and riders acting out a show set in, you guessed it, Medieval Times. It is located in Myrtle Beach, which was surprisingly a long drive from North Myrtle Beach (where we are, although I always leave the North off). The show was really awesome. We drew the yellow knight as the knight we were cheering and turned out he won. Awesome. I should mention they feed you and there are no utensils, so you must eat with your hands. The food was delicious, though, and they gave you a lot to eat.

I don’t want to ruin if it you haven’t been, although I may have by saying our knight won, but the show had a lot going on. There were horse tricks, riding tricks, medieval riding games, and jousting! Overall, it was a fun time. Landon did OK most of the show. He was really tired but with everything going on, he had very hard time staying asleep. Finally toward the end he gave up the fight, though.

Funny story after the show: we had to park on the back row of the parking lot because we were later getting there than we wanted due to some issues earlier in the evening. When we got done with the show we walked back to our car to see that traffic had started to back up some, which was expected. We saw a tractor-trailer in the parking lot close to where we parked, only we soon realized that it was minus the tractor – unexpected. We got close to our cars and realized we, along with about 12 other cars, were blocked in by the trailer because they dropped it off right in front of the cars. It was pretty frustrating, but it was also kind of funny. We had to wait a while for the truck drive to move another trailer at the facility and then he came over to move that trailer. He was a nice guy and apologized for blocking us in saying that they have trouble timing the deliveries, but you would think there would be a better spot to park than the aisle blocking people in. At least one of the middle rows would have allowed people to pull out into another aisle, but since we were on the very back row, we were pinned in. Just one of those crazy things that happens at random times.

Landon really has been a trooper this whole week. He hasn’t been able to get down and walk around like he likes, but he has taken it well. He has gotten pretty upset a few times and when he gets going it is hard to calm him down sometimes. He is definitely happy when we are around the condo or at the pool, but he finds ways to have fun while we are out shopping or doing other things around town. Overall, Landon has been doing great.

Myrtle Beach Day 2 & 3 - Poolside Fun and Broadway

The first morning at the condo and I woke up around 6am. I’m not sure why, maybe just general excitement from being at the beach and anticipation of many things we could be doing. I tried to fall back asleep, but at 7am I decided to get up and go workout at the condo gym. I was going to see if anyone else wanted to go, but everyone else was still asleep. Christi’s mom had woken up earlier, but she was asleep on the couch.

When I returned from working out about an hour later, almost everyone was awake. After a quick shower, it was time to feed Landon breakfast. While we fed Landon, Christi’s mom was preparing a breakfast casserole and homemade biscuits for us. It was delicious. We sat around and talked for a while after eating. Eventually we decided on going to the pool.

We ended up staying at the pool most of the day. The condo has indoor and outdoor pools as well as a lazy river, 2 hot tubs, and a kiddie pool. The water in the indoor pool was too cold to stay in for long, which was a shame because it is at least 3 times the size of the outdoor pool. We stayed in and around the outdoor pool most of the time and it was crowded, although the chairs had phantom people sitting in them all day (marked with towels but people never came around.) I don’t mind reserving a chair while you are swimming, but more than an hour or so is ridiculous. There should be a rule about how long you can reserve a chair or seat. This doesn’t apply to just poolside seats, but restaurants, movie theaters, ballgames, etc. I should start a petition or something. Anyway, we had fun swimming. Landon had a great time swimming. He LOVES the water. He was just splashing around in the kiddie pool and when we went into the larger pool he had fun sitting in his float and playing. It’s going to be hard to get him out of the water when he gets older.

Once we were tired of swimming, we went out to a large outdoor shopping mall / theme park / hang out spot called Broadway at the Beach. It has a lot of shops and restaurants as well as an IMAX theatre, zip lines and rope course, mini golf, etc. In short, there was a lot to see and do (and a lot of ground to cover). That night we went around a lot of the shops and stopped to eat dinner at Senor Frogs. We wanted to eat at the Hard Rock Café, but the line was too long. Senor Frogs turned out to be a disaster because it was one big party inside. Didn’t get that impression from the outside and it was still pretty early in the evening, but maybe we didn’t look close enough. This place probably would have been fine last year, but with Landon it doesn’t fly. He’s not a fan of really loud noises (scares him), so when the DJ started and they wanted us to dance on our chairs (literally) and do a conga line a restaurant, he didn’t like it. We ended up having to take him outside and we left as soon as we could. Side note: if you don’t stand up in your chairs, the guy leading the crowd tells everyone else to point at you and yell “BORING!” over and over in an attempt to get you up. I get that they are trying to make the place fun and all that, but really? I’ve got a kid crying in my lap and you want to point your stubby little finger at me and call me boring. Point it at me again and I’m going to break it off and shove it somewhere you won’t like. Ok, rant over. The worst part was the waiter/ waitresses had whistles they kept blowing during the “party time” and Landon hated it. I don’t want to trash the place, but if you’re looking for a place with marginally good food (at best) with a good atmosphere to have some drinks and let loose, Senor Frogs is your place. It would probably be a fun place with some friends, but it wasn’t a good fit that night.

After eating, we went back to the condo and swam in the lazy river before crashing around the TV. Landon had to eat dinner and we played with him for a while before going to bed.

The next day, Monday, was basically the same as what I just wrote about. The only difference was the sequence of events was the inverse of the day before. We finished up Broadway in the morning and went to the pool in the afternoon.

We went to a place called Amici’s for lunch instead of eating at Senor Frogs. The food was much better and Landon enjoyed not having loud noises in his ears. The only downside to the meal was our waiter. For whatever reason, he refused to split our check into 3 separate bills. He said he could do it in his head, which was fine except that we were all paying cash and did not have the change needed to pay the bill with tip. So he took our money in a way that ended up with 2 of the 3 parties giving him their bill amount and the tip and the 3rd party the remainder of the bill TOTAL. All they could do was leave $2 extra for tip, which turned out to be the total amount of tip since no one had the cash and he didn’t want to go back to the register. When we left the $2 he was pissed, but to me it was justified because he refused to split the check up despite us asking at least 3 times. It’s not like we wanted to leave a small tip, it just turned out that way because he didn’t do what we asked and it was all we had without leaving an now unjustifiable $18 tip (on a bill of about $35).

Apparently we haven’t had much luck with the food at Broadway, but otherwise it is a nice place and I would highly recommend going there and spending time if you are in the Myrtle Beach area.

That was days 2 and 3. More vacation stories to follow.

Myrtle Beach Day 1 - The trip here

This is the first post in a series of blog entries I wrote while we were on vacation at Myrtle Beach

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Day 1

After a lot of packing and double checking The List the night before, the day was finally here to leave for vacation to North Myrtle Beach. The List was our list of things we needed to bring, mainly for Landon. It was a pretty extensive list and the amount of luggage he had versus our luggage showed it. When I was able to get it all packed into the car, the back of the 4Runner was full. We had originally planned to take the Accord, but we realized quickly that wasn’t going to happen and had to use the 4Runner.

The time had arrived. The car was packed and everything was taken care of inside the house for our trip. The next stop was Jason’s house where we were meeting up with Christi’s parents, Jason, and his girlfriend Lynn. Because we had a lot of stuff to bring, we had to take 2 cars on the trip. Christi, Landon and I drove with Jason and Lynn in our car while Mike and Debra drove their car, which also had a lot of Landon’s stuff in it.

We had hoped to leave around 7:15am, but ended up leaving around 7:45am. This is important because Landon normally eats around 8:30-9am. The plan was to drive as far as we could before Landon had to eat breakfast. About 20 minutes into the trip, we had to make an emergency stop because Lynn was sick. We thought it was what she ate for dinner the night before, but within the next hour we stopped 4 more times because she was car sick. Thankfully she was feeling better after our last stop, which was right before we had to get onto I-20.

Around this point, it was time for Landon to eat breakfast. You wouldn’t know it, though, because he was passed out in the car seat. Christi, who was sitting in the back seat with him, had to wake Landon up to feed him his breakfast. This was a little scary because we had fed Landon twice in the car seat, but not in the car. That is, we had been out before and had to use his car seat as his high chair and the results were not great. We were prepared to stop somewhere and use the portable high chair, but we were going to attempt feeding him in the car seat while driving. Christi made his cereal and got his fruit ready to eat. I told her to let me know if we need to pull over, and she said she would. About 10 minutes later I asked how he was doing, because I had not heard anything. She responded by saying he just finished his breakfast and is taking his bottle. This was awesome because he did a great job eating his food and we were able to continue traveling while he ate.

After about 1 hour of playing in the backseat, Landon passed out. Soon after, the rest of the car (except me of course) did the same. Maybe it was the fact that I was traveling as the only person awake in the car, but that stretch of I-20 was possibly the most boring stretch of road I had driven. We got on the road around Eatonton and I couldn’t decide if I-16 or I-20 was more boring, so that should give you an idea of how boring it was. I mean, I even came up with pros and cons for the boringness campaign for each road. I-20 at least had a few big cities on our way (Augusta, Columbia) and some decent exits, but it was a much further drive that I-16. I’ll call it a tie.

After several hours traveling and a lunch and bathroom stop, we made it within 80 miles of Myrtle Beach. Unfortunately, the entire southeast had too. Traffic was terrible on highway 501, which goes directly into Myrtle Beach. After about 1 hour of bumper to bumper traffic without going faster than 30 (in a 55), we came to the bypass that took us close to North Myrtle Beach. This was great because we could finally get going again and we were all ready to get out of the car.

Finally, at around 4pm, we arrived at our condo. The place we stayed is called the MarVista Grande. It was looked very nice from the outside, but when we got into our room, we were amazed. The place was beautiful and we were all impressed with condo. Everything looked brand new and it was much larger than I expected. Once we were all unpacked and rested, we went out to eat dinner and explore the area some. We ate at a restaurant in Barefoot Landing and it was good. We didn’t last too long, though, because we all pretty tired from the trip. Overall, it was a great day because 1. Landon did amazingly well traveling since he did not fuss 1 time during the whole trip and we were able to feed him while traveling 2. We were in Myrtle Beach on a trip we have been looking forward to for a long time, and 3. We had a week to relax and unwind on the beach.

First Video Blog

I have not been updating the blog that great recently. I have been trying hard to stay ahead with homework and things around the house have been keeping me busy. I have tried several times to get Christi to write some posts because she is pretty hilarious, but alas she still doesn't want too. For some reason she likes to read what I write.

All of your waiting will pay off shortly. I have mentioned several times about wanting to post some videos of Landon, but I have never gotten around to doing it. Your wait is no more! I took the time to download some video editing software and play around with it. I'm still learning how to do it, but I think the first video is good. Really, it didn't require any work besides trimming down the length, but it is a start. I have plans for several other videos, but we will see if time will allow me to get around to them. Enough of the small-talk, I'm like LeBron James taking an hour on national TV to say in 5 seconds where he is going to play this year. Here is the video

Landon was typing a whole lot more that what we caught on video. Whenever we pull the camera out he freezes. I'm telling you, you can be behind him and he'll stop what he is doing and turn around to see why you are filming him. It's like he has a 6th sense for cameras. Anyway, Landon is obsessed with technology. Computers, cell phones, TVs, remotes, Playstation 3. He loves it all. He is definitely like his father in that regard. Hey, maybe I can get Landon to blog while I am busy doing work.

I hope you enjoyed the video. It's nothing much, but it is a step in the right direction. Stay tuned for more updates. I promise there are more videos and posts to come in the near future.

The Unlikely Fan: THE WORLD CUP, TRANSLATED INTO AMERICAN

The Unlikely Fan: THE WORLD CUP, TRANSLATED INTO AMERICAN

How dumb are we?

Quick thought for today. How dumb is the American public? Rather, how dumb does the news media think we are, or how dumb is our news media? Where is this coming from? Here's the story:

This morning I went to buy new tires for Christi's 4Runner. I was in the shop's waiting room reading a magazine and the news was on. I wasn't paying much attention because they were talking about grilling recipes for the 4th of July. They started showing highlights of the Uruguay-Ghana game. If you didn't see the ending of that game, it was incredible. While I am re-watching the highlights I notice the scroll bar at the bottom that displays random stories. Here is what went across.

Recent poll shows that 1 out of 5 Americans do not know who America declared independence from in 1776....76% of Americans know America declared independence from Great Britain....24% of Americans do not know who America declared independence from in 1776....survey results show the 6% of Americans who responded that America declared independence from a country but not England answered France, Russia, China, Japan, and Spain...4 out of 5 Americans know America declared independence from England

Seriously people? You think we declared independence from China? I'm surprised that many people don't know who declared independence from. I know I've forgotten a lot of history, but how can you forget that? Moreover, how many times is the media going to repeat the same thing? They said the same thing 4 times in 5 sentences! Also, I would say if 24% of the people surveyed don't know the answer, that is 1 out of 4 (25%) instead of 1 out of 5 (20%). I guess that is the engineer in me. Either way, maybe I'm incorrect, but I think if you say 1 out of 5 Americans don't know something, people can deduce that the other 4 got it right. No need to repeat it over and over.

Am I right or am I wrong? Am I giving the public too much credit there? Does the media have to dumb down everything because we are dumb (as evidenced by the poll)? What do you think?