Ten on Tuesday #21

My 10 Favorite Articles of Clothing

1. Mike Schmidt 1980 throwback Phillies jersey.

2. Atlanta Thrashers Home Jersey.

3. UCF Polo - received this Christmas.

4. Hard Rock Cafe Denim Jacket (London) bought in 1994.

5. My "work" socks. I buy Starter brand black athletic socks, great comfort for being on your feet all day.

6. PokerStars polo shirt - it was free from the site.

7. UCF t-shirt that says "Mess with one Knight, mess with all 45,000."

8. Black denim shorts. They have finally worn out after 8 or more years.

9. WHTQ 96.5 FM baseball jersey from when I interned with the station back in '99-'00.

10. Autographed Debbie Gibson "Dare 2 Dream" t-shirt, only worn once, it's another 10+ year throwback.

Dream Theater - The Spirit Carries On

Catching Up

I noticed today that I have barely done a thing here in the past month. I used to post about 25-35 times a month and so far I'm at 7 or 8 right now.

So what's up? Most of you know about our international adoption and it is coming VERY close to being complete. We started the journey about 27 months ago and suddenly (in the past 2 months) we have found ourselves about 7 weeks away from being in CHINA, bringing home an awesome baby girl. It's kind of like being 7 and a half months pregnant. Very soon, I am going to be a daddy.

Facebook is kicking in a bit. My 20th HS reunion is now just 6 months away. In addition to about 150 or so HS friends on Facebook, I have recently added 4 more family members and last night I started finding old Parrothead friends from Orlando, Dennis & Betsy, Lou & Pat, JT, T Scott, Laurie, & Doc. Some of them may be her ein Atlanta later this year for an Atlanta Parrothead club meeting.



If not for the Parrotheads and their concert for tornado relief back in '98, I would have never met Vaughn Rhea and his band and family. I know where he is, but have not been in touch with him since the band played at a Tower Records here in Atlanta to promote the release of the Soundtrack to the TV show Smallville back around '02 I think. He's a great guy and a great husband and dad to Jordan, Jacob, and Olivia.

When Love Takes You In

I know you’ve heard the stories
But they all sound too good to be true
You’ve heard about a place called home
But there doesn’t seem to be one for you
So one more night you cry yourself to sleep
And drift off to a distant dream

Where love takes you in and everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart
When love takes you home and says you belong here
The loneliness ends and a new life begins
When love takes you in

And somewhere while you’re sleeping
Someone else is dreaming too
Counting down the days until
They hold you close and say I love you
And like the rain that falls into the sea
In a moment what has been is lost in what will be

When love takes you in everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart

And this love will never let you go
There is nothing that could ever
cause this love to lose its hold

When love takes you in everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart
When love takes you home and says you belong here
The loneliness ends and a new life begins
When love takes you in it takes you in for good
When love takes you in

Ten on Tuesday #20

Ten Favorite Sports Moments

1. 1980 - The Phillies beat the Royals to win the World Series. Tug McGraw says "You gotta believe!"

2. 2008 - The Phillies beat the Rays to win the World Series after a two-day delay to finish game 4.

3. Tiger Woods wins anything.

4. Georgia Tech owns Georgia in the 3rd quarter and breaks a way-to-long losing streak by defeating the dogs between the hedges, 2008.

5. I attend my first professional hockey game and see the Atlanta Thrashers beat the New Jersey Devils in December 2006.

6. Cal Ripkin, Jr. breaks the Iron-man record by playing in 2131 consecutive scheduled games, beating Lou Gehrig's record of 2130. The game was stopped when it became official and Ripkin was recognized before play resumed. I cried.

7. UCF enters the Conference USA in 2005 and hosts the innaugural Championship game and plays in the school's first ever bowl game.

8. At age 40, Randy Johnson pitches a perfect game against the Atlanta Braves. 2004.

9. Clint Bowyer finishes the 2005 Daytona 500 UPSIDE DOWN AND ON FIRE!

10. George Steinbrenner fires Joe Torre, who is then hired by the LA Dodgers who leads them to the NL Championship series in the same year that the Yankees don't even make the playoffs, 2008.

The Not So Magic Kingdom

I was previewing any news and special info for our visit to the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World on Thursday and I found the following scheduled closings...



* Mickey's PhilharMagic : Closed for Refurbishment [January 18, 2009 to January 31, 2009]
* Splash Mountain®: Closed for Refurbishment [January 13, 2009 to January 18, 2009]
* The Hall Of Presidents: Closed for Refurbishment [January 13, 2009 to January 31, 2009]

The Mickey thing I have never heard of, but it closes after we will have been there.
Splash Mountain is fun, but I don't like getting wet while clothed and it will be cool weather on Thursday.
Hall of Presidents is closing 7 days before until 11 days after the inauguration.

A Cold Winter's Night

Jack is Back!

Horay for the American TV audience! Tonight was the return of 24 and the return of Jack Bauer, the man who got blackjack with only one card!

I totally forgot that Jeanine Garafalo was to be on this season. She has lost weight but she still annoys me to Hell and back. I have a hard time separating her politics from her art. From what we saw in the first two hours tonight, I fully expect she'll be the one to blow things for Jack by worrying about loved ones and leaking to the world what is going on behind closed doors at the FBI.

Aside from that, I like the idea of having Jack face a former friend as a new nemesis. I liked the pick-up on the assassin's shoes outside the Columbia building, and the female FBI agent he is paired with is hot, nice freckles!

American Idol starts this week. We are watching the Biggest Loser, and we are already behind almost 3 hours from last week needing to watch DVR'd ER, Grey's, and Private Practice.

Orlando Skyline c. 1999

The skyline has changed a great deal in the past 10 years. This shot was taken from aboard the Blockbuster Video blimp!

LynnMarie in Video

We received a tip from someone who had recently been to the Henan Province and we found this video on YouTube. This is my daughter!

Wordless Wednesday - Flashback

I started shooting pictures with an SLR about 10 years ago, and this was one of my first that I also developed and printed myself at a dark room at UCF.

The Bro Code

One of the gifts I received for Christmas was a book from my brother Peter. This book is titled, The Bro Code as "authored" by Barney Stinson and Matt Kuhn. Barney Stinson is a fictional character on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother played by Neil Patrick Harris. Barney is the ultimate guy's guy and lady's man. It's funny how well he plays the character considering the actor is openly gay.

According to the Bro Code...

If a bro gets a dog, it must be at least as tall as his knee when full-grown.

When wearing a cap, the Bro may position the brim at 12 o'clock or 6 o'clock, anything inbetween is reserved for rappers and the handicapped.

A Bro must always post bail for another Bro unless it's out of state or like, crazy expensive. (crazy expensive equals # of years you have known Bro time $100)

A Bro shall stop everything he's doing and watch Die Hard if it is on TV. The same goes for the Shawshank Redemption, Top Gun, The Big Lebowski, the first half of Full Metal Jacket, and porn.

If a Bro forgets a guy's name he may call him "brah," "dude," or "man," but never "Bro."

A Bro shall drop whatever he's doing and rush to help another Bro dump a chick.

Bros before Hos.

If two bros decide to catch a movie together, they shall not attend one starting later than 4:40pm.

If a Bro should pick up a guitar at a party and start playing, another Bro shall point out that he is a tool.

Travel

Almost 15 years ago I traveled the furthest I ever have traveled when I went to London, England for a week.

In about 3 months I should be traveling to China. It's something like 17 hours on the plane.

What's the farthest from home you have traveled and what was the purpose of the trip?

In my case it was London and it was as an unofficial chaperone on a trip with the high school I was student teaching at. We visited museums, historic sites and saw theatre shows. I remember we stayed in Hampton Gardens and visited Cambridge and Stratford-on-Avon. We saw An Absoute Turkey, Cats, Les Miserables and Macbeth performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. I fell asleep during MacBeth, but I fell in love with Les Miserables.

Thursday Thirteen - Christmas Expected/Unexpected

Thirteen Things about Mike's Christmas, the expected and the unexpected. 1. Expected - Bluejeans. I realized I last bought new bluejeans in the Spring of 1999 before going on a mission trip to TN with my college ministry group. I asked for 2 new pair of Wranglers. I received 3 new pair of Levis and a nice wool-lined denim jacket. 2. Expected - Boxer shorts. Last year I received 3 really nice pair of J.Crew boxers from my s-i-l and this year it was 3 pair of Izod. We'll see how they compare. Again they were from Kelly. Here's a tip. It is okay for your sister-in-law to buy you underwear. It for a guy to buy his s-i-l underwear (except maybe longohns). Well, that was all that I ASKED for, so the rest of these fall in the Unexpected category. 3. Number 3 in this 13, but number 1 on my list. A daughter. By early Spring I will be a daddy. Go to http://www.thechristopherfamily.blogspot.com/ to learn more. 4. An Xbox 360! I would have enjoyed a refurbished Xbox so I could continue to play the games I have for it, but Amy got me the newer one and it should play some if not all of the older games. 5. A Jeff Dunham DVD. Jeff Dunham is probably my favorite comedian. Granted, he's a ventriloquist, but I have been watching him for over 10 years and even got to see him live back in '98 or '99 at the UCF Homecoming Week Comedy concert. "Peanut, you lost a shoe." "No I didn't. I FOUND one!" 6. The Bro Code - from our favorite sitcom, How I Met Your Mother, authored by Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) a copy of the book The Bro Code. 7. An itunes gift card. I hope that it works for downloading songs I can use on my mp3 player because I don't have an ipod. 8. The Dark Knight - in my opinion the best movie I saw this year. Now I own it. 9. A new UCF hat, white with the UCF logo. 10. A new UCF polo shirt, primarily black with gold and white stripes and the UCF Knights logo. 11. Whatever is coming from my brother and his family (it didn't arrive yet). 12. A book on being a daddy (from Amy). 13. Step-brothers (the movie). We have not seen it, but we generally like Will Farrell and the ads looked funny. Merry Christmas to those of you who read my blog. I found out there are a lot more of you than I realized. make me happy and leave comments sometimes. I'll find out who some of you are and some conversations, discussions and relationships might just begin!

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A Very Special Announcement

Please visit http://www.thechristopherfamily.blogspot.com to meet..... my DAUGHTER!

Merry Christmas Y'all!

Cold & Cold

A few days ago, like Friday, it was in the high 60's here in Atlanta.

Today it is currently 21 with a "feels like" temp of 16. Ouch

Add to this I now have a cold.

Bleh.

I had yesterday off from work and today too.

On Saturday we had a couple from our small group over for dinner and a movie and we watched Love Actually by my reccomendation. I totally forgot that one of the subplots involved a couple who meet on the job, which happens to be working as stand-ins on s movie set so they can fix the lighting before the stars come out to act. Well, they work on a porn set so they have to keep getting undressed and simulate sex acts and here I am showing this movie to people from church. I reall was embarassed. Aside from that, it is a good movie, with a fair bit of dry British humor.

Sunday we went to church which was really good. I found the sermon intriguing and wanted more of it when it was over. We hit the grocery store on the way home for things needed for dinner and sandwiches for lunch. We then watched the 2nd half of the movie Juno. It was good, not great, not one I need to see again.

Later last night we had some friends over again, another couple we know through adoption. We had chili and grilled cheese sandwiches and we watched Christmas Vacation and part of the Jeff Dunham Christmas special.

I wasn't necessarily wired, but I sarted looking for elementary school friends on Facebook and found a couple who I have not seen or heard from in 25-30 years. It will be interesting to see if they remember me at all.

I went to bed after 1am and it was COLD upstairs. I awoke just before the 8am alarm and made it to the doctor (I had an appointment arranged al;ready). I did a few errands on the way home and am now just killing time until Amy takes her nap so I can go do some Christmas shopping for her.

If you make it over to my 80's music blog, www.rockingthe80s.blogspot.com I think I am going to scrap the daily theme for a while and just post videos at random.

A meme stolen from Frigga

Do you like blue cheese salad dressing? Yes - not my favorite, but yes.

Favorite late night snack? Popcorn

Do you own a gun? Not yet (this was Frigga's answer and I like it too)

What’s your favorite drink at specialty coffee shops? Bottled Water

Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? No - anxious about the time I have to wait, yes, but not nervous

What do you think of hot dogs? Good for any meal and most snacks.

Favorite Christmas song? Christmas Eve Sarajevo by Trans-Siberian Orchestra

What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Coke Zero, Unsweetend Iced Tea

Can you do push-ups? Can I? Yes. Do I?

What’s your favorite piece of jewelry? My cross. My Nana got it for me on her last trip to Athens before she died.

Favorite hobby? Poker

What’s one trait that you hate about yourself? Being void of willpower.

Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment. - I like the movie Iron Man, I have to dress for work in about 30 minutes, our adoption is making progress.

Name 3 drinks you regularly drink. Coke Zero, Unsweetened Iced Tea, Jaeger-bombs

Current worry right now? Finances

Current hate right now? Bills

Favorite place to be? On a cruise

How do you ring in the New Year? Same as any other day of the year. New Years Eve/Day has never been anything special to me.

Like to travel? Sure.

Do you own slippers? Not in the last 30 or so years.

What color shirt are you wearing? Currently? I am topless.

Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? I think I would, but I don't believe I ever have.

Can you whistle? Yes

Favorite singer/band? Jimmy Buffett/Casting Crowns

Could you ever make it 39 days on the show Survivor? I'd like to think I could physically, but I know I would be booted pretty quick either for being a Christian or for being a smart-ass.

What songs do you sing in the shower? None.

Favorite girl’s names? Margaret, Jennifer, Rebecca, Jordan, Sarah, Elizabeth.

Favorite boy’s names? Michael, Steven

What’s in your pocket right now? Nothing

Last thing that made you laugh? Barney's perverted Christmas Carols on last night's How I Met Your Mother.

Like your job? Most of the time.

Do you love where you live? Love? maybe a bit of a strong word, but I like it.

How many TVs do you have in your house? Three

Do you drive the speed limit or speed? I speed.

Does someone have a crush on you? Yes :)

What is your favorite book? Where Is Joe merchant

What is your favorite candy? Nestle Crucnch

Favorite Sports Team? UCF Knights, Philadelphia Phillies, Atlanta Thrashers

What were you doing 12 AM last night? Watching TV

What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up today? 10:30? Did I sleep 9.5-10 hours?

Casting Crowns - I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day

Questions

What are the differences between things like a CD-R, DVD-R, CD-RW, etc?

What the crap is a 3G network and does it have any bearing on a non-tech-geek like me who actually uses a phone to make phonecalls?

To the lady in the school bus renamed a Toyota Sequoia, did it make a huge difference rushing and swerving around the pedestrians in the Target parking lot so you could get stuck at the traffic light?

Why does my dog ONLY bark at my brother, who lives in this house, when she does not bark at anyone else?

Why do I own 3 unopened Monopoly games?

What Christmas Movie Are You?

Your Christmas is Most Like: A Very Brady Christmas

For you, it's all about sharing times with family. Even if you all get a bit cheesy at times.

What Movie Is Your Christmas Most Like?