Tehanu

I love Earthsea. This book was hard to love, but the ending was strong and beautiful.
The first 3 Earthsea books are fantastic. The sort of thing I could pick up and read from any point and enjoy. This one feels almost like an 100+ page epitaph for the world of Earthsea. The Earthsea you knew is dead, long live the new Earthsea. The very last chapter changed tone a little and felt a little like the old magic that I want to hear more stories about... With 2 books left in the "cycle" I guess I'll just have to read them and find out which direction the head down?
That said, I would recommend the first 3 Earthsea books to anyone. But be prepared for something VERY different if you choose to read the 4th.

3 out of 5 times that I wondered if I would enjoy this book more if I were a woman?

How long could you survive?

Dexter (season 1)

I finished watching this (again) the other night. Somehow I talked Deb into watching this with me, even though it isn't really her type of entertainment (She considered breaking up with me when I applauded at the end of Mr. Brooks... but that's a different story). That said this obviously isn't for everybody. BUT if you can enjoy a story about a Miami police department blood spatter analysis specialist who just happens to be a serial killer... The Showtime version is definitely "R" rated, but because of the writer's strike season one was edited down to air on CBS (in case anyone in Utah county wanted to watch it).

4 out of 5 chick flicks I'll now have to watch before I can convice Deb to watch season 2.

Spider in the street

Deb, Zack, and I were headed away from my parent's house on Sunday when we saw this guy walking down the street. There is a teacher at Zack's school who has a few tarantulas so we decided to catch this one to add to that collection. The only thing I can add in defense of my less-than-manly behavior during the process of capturing the spider is that while you probably can't see it during the video, the spider is pretty aggressive and at one point jumps at my hand (but is stopped by the plastic container).
video

Ender's Game Comic

I'll be picking up my copy tomorrow!

Castle Crashers

So, Emmalee and I like playing video games. In particular we enjoy games that employ some form of multi-player cooperative play. Because of this we have found countless hours of satisfaction playing the Star Wars Legos video games. This weekend we found what looks to be our new favorite coop game.

Without going into details on the tight controls, excellent art, appropriately complicated RPG elements, ... let me just say that the game is FUN. A whole bunch of fun. My only warning for anyone considering playing it with kids is that there is a little bit of gross humor. The comedic well of "animal poop" is drawn from more than once in this game.

The other thing that I personally dig is that Castle Crashers is the gaming equivalent of an Independent Film. While the finished product was moved to release by many people, The Behemoth (the company that developed the game) was started by 2 guys. One programmer and one artist... the relatively inspiring story can be found here

Short weekend with Em

Em had to get back to her mom's house because she had a church program on Sunday. But we managed to make the most of the truncated weekend.
-dinner with Gram and Poppa
-played The Force Unleashed (basically the first 3 chapters)
-played a little Rock Band (I had to include the picture of Em playing the Guitar AND singing... too funny)
-went to the theater to see Igor
-watched the season 6 finale of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine together (she can't believe there is only one season left... after that we'll have to find something else appropriately geeky to watch together)