WildFlower

So my dad, age 74,  has a gall stone and has been in the hospital for three or four days. I went by to see him today with Bradley. I get to the lobby and call up to my step mom's cell phone.

She says they are waiting for us in the elevator lobby of the 5th floor.

So we go up in the elevator, accompanied by three total strangers who appear to be old as the Parthenon. One gentleman informs us he is the great grandfather of a one year old and a three year old. I would have believed a 10 and 13 year old as well.

...anyway...the fifth floor opens up and what are the 5 of us greeted by?

My father's naked ass crack.

Yay, hospital gowns.

We sit on the bench getting all the unnecessary details of the illness and hospital stay. Suffice to say you do NOT want to know about your fathers explosive bowel movements, even it if DOES mean he will indeed be living to embarass you further for an additional unspecified number of years.

Eventually, a surgeon assigned to asess whether he needs to have the stone surgically removed comes by the lobby and asks my dad to step into his room. My dad says, why can't we talk out here and the doc says, "I'd like to examine you and well..." I'm thinking, he's about to say "no one wants to see THAT!" but he doesn't...he says, I'm sure you'd like privacy for that. My dad complies. Even though he shares the room with 4 other patients, this seems vaguely reasonable. At least they have the bedsheet-curtains between them.

He'll be getting a drain inserted surgically, then staying a couple more days, then leaving for home with the drain still intact for I don't know how many days after that.

My dad hasn't shaved, or had a proper bath for days. His hair is a bush of silver thick bristles that only lay down because they are greasy. His cheeks are puffy, but he keeps laughing at my jokes and then wincing because it hurts to laugh. He was near tears with simultaneous pain and laughter for the whole hour i was there. He sent me off with step mom to buy me lunch - at Carl's Junior, cuz that's how we roll in our family.

Best laugh of the day was when he told me, " You should see the sign above my bed - No food or Drink." My response was, 'So don't feed the bears, huh?" He loved that. So we took a pic of him with the sign. He was still too tickled by the bear imagery, he couldn't growl for the picture.

Since Thursday was just check in and meet up with friends day, and Friday I spent all day locked up in panels with one of my favorite nerds on the planet and 500 of our fellow..well...geeky, smelly, costumed and uncostumed nerds, I had Saturday left to bring the boy (Age 8) to the Con. Lynette, my new girlfriend from New Zealand (she's married to one of my other favorite people, and now he says he's been replaced by her)
 

We took the car to our nearest trolley station, in Santee, and got on a trolley that took us right in front of the Convention Center, arriving at about 11:30 am. Trekked (pun intended) into the ConCenter immediately in search of food after getting Bradley his Child's Badge (very well executed method of identifying parents on badge and not the child's first name. Parent's cell phone on back of badge.) 

Pretzel Dog and soft pretzels with cheese was the food we settled on. Lemonade.

And off we went to the Exhibit Halls. All of the halls were opened and filled with every kind of geekspasm inducing merchandise, advertising and personality you could imagine. Costumed Con goers and booth workers (usually hot chicks in skimpy costumes to draw in the sex starved yet vaguely oblivious fan boys who roamed in search of recently released comics, hard to find props and princess leia costumes. There were an amazing number of slave princess leias and poison ivy firls. There were superfriends, and costumed villains, monsters and robots, Princesses and Austrian yodelers (ummm WTF???). 

.
 Bradley's mission, to wander in an increasingly chaotic fashion, driven only by the next shiny object or storm trooper costume that he spotted. Our mission (mine and Lynette's) was to have pictures of as many costumed characters as possible. At first we tried to get either one or both of us or Bradley in the pic, then we decided it would be fun to just crash other peoples photo ops and have pics of random geeks with costumed characters. Fun! 

Two funny encounters: 

One was the Robin character who apparently thought I was lighter than i was when he unexpectely swept me off my feet. I'm 5'0" of muscle (ok...120 of muscle...30 of fat...I flatter myself) so he must have been surprised to feel 150 lbs of me come up off the ground and i felt like I was gonna go over with him but he steadied himself and as my son zoomed the camera on my still contorted face and limbs, he muttered through clenched teeth, "Take the picture...Take....the...picture." LOL. He put me down and when i looked at the picture and saw that i resembled the late Terry Schiavo, I asked for another. He passed on picking me up (duh) and knelt down next to me, prince-like and when the photo was done, kissed my hand and called me a beautiful lady.

The other was as I was accosting the very impressively costumed Mrs Lovett from Sweeney Todd ("These are the worst meat pies in London!"). A character I didn't immediately register nosed up into my personal space and said, "Do you know who I am?" I had to look at him and say...I don't think we've met. Then I laughed and said, you look familiar but I can't quite remember your characters name." He said look at my face." which was a white sack with ink blots on it..."Rorshock!" then this little exchange happened:

R: Do I frighten you.
Me: ummm.... you do now! 
R: Have you done something bad for you to be afraid of me? 
Me: Ummm no, do you want me to do something bad?
(laughter from standers-by)
R: stutters...thrown out of character..."Ummm...no i'm a good guy and I punish bad people...errr..."
Me: Oh ok. Just checking. Wasn't sure where this conversation was going is all.



We got our pics with lots of good characters, mostly Bradley did, but I go my picture with the cute Robin above and then two of the Monarch's Henchman.

We took a break for coffee and met up with my friend Dan Silver to bring him a cup as he waited for the BSG panel (lucky bastard, no panels for me on Saturday) and give him a late birthday present. I prompty spilled my giant iced coffee in front of him (so embarassing) and then we went back to the expo room where I'm pretty sure we spent an hour in the Pokemon booth while Lynette looked in the Marvel booth. 

Decided we'd better eat something so we went to eat at the neaby Horton Plaza mall (by now I was confident how to got back and forth, too late to save me the embarassment I suffered on Thursday.)  

Then we returned, and wandered a bit in the collectibles section where I drooled over some wood carved Tinkerbell figures. I've become quite fixated on the tiny, sexy, mischievous fairy. Hmmm... then we headed out.

Then the second best thing of the entire con weekend happened. Lynette pointed out William Katt, the former star of Greatest American Hero standing by a booth. He looked pretty damned good. When the show was on I think I was 14 and had a giant crush on the happless, accidental, alien-suit powered superhero. So I walked up to him and touched his arm timidly to interupt his conversation with one of the people working his booth.

"Excuse me, Mr Katt?"
"Yes...hello, sweetheart, what can I do for you?'
"I'm sorry to bother you Mr. Katt, but I loved your show. You rock!"
"Well, thank you very much." 
"Are you signing today?"
"No, I'm sorry, not until tomorrow."
"oh...I cant' come tomorrow. (pouty face) Couldn't you please sign for me today? I love you!"
"Well, I really shouldn't...oh well since you're such a sweetheart, what's your name?"

While he signed the little mini GAH comic special, I said, you look great....you aren't much older than me though..and he protested he had to be ages older than me. I still love that guy.

We got to the trolley just in time to catch a departing car and I think I was the happiest geek on the planet...well one of the three happiest...

ComicCon starts today!

i'm going Friday and Saturday at a minimum. Lots of friends here to see for it. Visiting friends from NZ going as well as doing other touristy and crossfit (http://crossfit.com) things. 

Also, I feel pretty.



And I like kissing.

•  Lunch with an old friend today. Girly talk, and giant plates of fajitas. Then icecream! 
  
• Working on a book publishing thingy. Partners with the author. Agreed on the 20 percent agent thingy. Mailed off a package today to Bleakhouse Books. *crossing fingers* 
• My office mate is laid off and I have the office to myself...I'm lonely. 
• New music interests: Celtic Punk/Irish Pub music. Faves: the pogues - hell's ditch, tuesday morning, a pair of brown eyes, the boys from county hell. Flogging Molly - Laura (duh), black friday rule, if I ever leave this world alive.
• I'm 42. Thanks for the birthday wishes on the Ruckerl2k username. LOL. I need to update there too. ;P

Asked if I saw Jumper and my opinion, I replied:

I found it deeply unsatisfying...Firstly, Hayden Christenson continues his tradition of wooden performances and whining masquerading as emoting. Secondly, the ending is too abrupt. And I can't stand the thought of a sequel.
 
The execution of the main premise is thrilling because the characters go everywhere on the planet in shocking fashion, but the story goes almost nowhere. 

Upsides: Samuel L Jackson and Jamie Bell. Jackson because he's as bad ass as ever,even though I had to cringe at the line he delivers twice: "Only God should have that power." And Jamie Bell because of his brilliant British delivery of smart comments. He should have played a much bigger part in the film.
 
Also the female lead is nothing better than a plot device and her presence adds nothing whatever to the film.
 
hah

The Best Parts of the Worst Amusement Park Ever 
 

This is soooooo long...put it behind a cut.

Touchtyping for free

Touchtyping for free