24 hours to go

Well, it is 8:08 and in 24 hours I will be getting off the plane in Los Angeles. It will still be two hours before I crack open the Empire Magazine. To tide me over I will read a scary Bentley Little book.

Flying Out to New York This Week

Got my Empire Magazine twentieth anniversary edition guest edited by Steven Spielberg to read on the flight and I've washed all my knee length shorts. So I'm more than ready. Now I just need to wait the two whole days before I fly out.

The doctor recently said the baby probably wouldn't be born for another couple of weeks. So, knock on wood, I won't be in New York during the birth.

My flight leaves Thursday 6:30 am. I layover in Los Angeles and arrive at New York at 8 pm. I return home Monday at 1:30 pm.

New Library Opens Tomorrow Night

More about that later. I might be doing a fifteen hour day tomorrow.

A message from Deborah

Deborah decided she wanted to do a blog post also. I will be typing for her. I will also write what ever she tells me to. (Warning, she has a surreal sense of humor.) (When there is random letters it is because she wanted to type for a bit.)

Deborah: I love myself. bbbbbbbdhros. I'm going to clean up toys. ninnl. I'm going to go hug my mommy. I'm going to go jump in the laundry basket. I'm going to go jump into the computer. I'm going to go jump in the chair and hide. I'm going to jump in the fan.

A message from Eli

I promised Eli that I would let him write a blog post. I thought that meant that I would type. But no. He wanted to type.

So here we go.

im in my house playing tag with deborah it is fun .do you have fun playing tag i have fun. did you no that i went to the beach and the waves chast me and my dad. it got me. i did this By my self thank you grama and grampa summers and routson. :) (Bryan here. He asked if he could put on a smiley face moticon. I wonder where he found out about them.)

Twilight/ World's best visual illusions/ Twilight

1. This is a wonderful Twilight themed WikiAnswers exchange. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Do_vampires_skin_realy_sparkle_in_the_sunlight

Question: Does vampire skin really sparkle in the sunlight?
Answer: Unfortunately, vampires don't really exist.

2. Please, please, please take a moment to look at the three best visual illusions of the year. The winner is a doozy. http://www.aip.org/isns/reports/2009/051309visualillusion.html

3. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n06/turn03_.html I enjoyed this essay on Twilight.

Pixar movies in the order of how much I like them

1. Ratatouille
2. Toy Story
3. Monsters, Inc.
4. The Incredibles
5. Finding Nemo
6. Wall-E
7. Cars
8. Toy Story 2
9. A Bug's Life

I love 1-7 and I am lukewarm about 8 and 9.
I don't know why I'm not crazy about Toy Story 2. It seems to be everybody elses favorite. It doesn't do it for me. I can't wait to find out where Up falls in the list. (I think Incredibles might have been higher except for the fact that I've seen it so dog-on many times. I've worn that movie out.)

Baby Monster/ Paleface

1. New favorite game at the Summer's is Baby Monster. It's when I chase Eli and Deborah around the house, while holding Robin in front of me, Robin growling like an ostrich.

2. Watched Paleface, a Buster Keaton short, yesterday. Probably too racially insensitive to show at the library but it had a jaw dropping stunt - Buster Keaton rolls down a hill like Princess Buttercup in Princess Bride. Only, instead of a lot of edits and cuts, it is one shot. He starts at the top of the hill and we watch him go to the bottom. The camera is forever away and Buster Keaton, who is just a tiny speck, rolls and bounces down the hill.

Camp out/ Dead catfish

1. Took Eli on the father son campout. It was too hot to make a fire, so we sat around an empty fire pit. One of the fathers caught a huge scorpion and put it in a bucket. Eli and I did a little fishing but we didn't catch anything. But they were biting. They bit the worm off the hook 12 times. I think I'm putting the worm on the hook wrong.

2. Around the corner, half a block from our house is a giant dead catfish on the sidewalk. It has been sitting there for 4 days. I wonder why nobody has complained. Probably because it is too hot to walk, so nobody is on the sidewalk, nobody has smelled it and the only people that see it are in air-conditioned cars. It's easy to forget about till you drive by it again. And again. And again. I should call someone.

Why I want to see Drag Me to Heck/ campout/ food art

1. In a comment thread yesterday my friend Ben wrote:

"So you have talked about this movie so much I went and watched the trailer. I'm just wondering why you want to see it soooo bad. I mean it doesn't look any different than any other scary movie. Are you joking when you say you want to see it so bad?"

No, I am not joking. Drag Me to Hell is the movie event of the year for me. (Besides Pixar's Up. Which I want to see almost as much.) Here are the reasons:

a) Sam Raimi is directing. He directed the Spiderman movies, which I like a lot. But even more exciting, he directed Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. Two horror movies that I love. They are the perfect mix of funny and scary. Especially Evil Dead 2. If it's ever on TV, I watch till the end. I can't help it. (I was slow in my appreciation. The first time I saw Evil Dead 2 I thought it was just okay, but I kept thinking of parts and the next time I saw it I was hooked.)

b) A lot of horror fans were very worried that Drag Me to Hell was rated PG-13 and thus lame. They like their horror rated R. But when it played at the South by Southwest film festival, the fans thought it was amazing. The right mixture of scares and roller coaster ride. So even though it is PG-13 it is still loved by grizzled horror film fans.

c) It's PG-13 so I can screen it at the library next Halloween.

2. Tonight is the ward father and son campout. I don't think I will be able to sleep because Yuma is so dang hot. Will bring a flashlight and a book. I couldn't sleep last night in my house with a fan and air conditioning - had to watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers at 1 am.

3) Of this food art,
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2009/04/pasta-monster-and-other-strange-food.html
my favorite is the eggs http://nocturnalmoth.deviantart.com/gallery/#EGGS-and-PILLS .
But all the pictures are good.

Will Drag Me to Hell be the greatest movie of all time? Or just 2009?

1. Only 23 more days till Drag Me to Hell.

I'm excited about a few other things this month. Only 15 days till the new library opens. Exciting because when the library opens it means only 8 more days till Drag Me to Hell.
And only 22 more days till I fly to New York which means one more day till Drag Me to Hell.

Tonight I'm going to make myself a Drag Me to Hell advent calendar. I will post pictures later this week.

I'm scared the baby will be born on the day I'm supposed to go see Drag Me to Hell. What will I choose? The hospital or the theater? Melissa and I probably could have planned the timing of this child better.

2. Postscript to the list about Melissa. Melissa, when I gave her the list after church, made some compelling arguments.

a) You, (meaning me, Bryan), eat plenty of chocolate chips, since every time you pass the freezer you get a hand full. (She's right, I probably shouldn't complain about a lack of chocolate chips in my life.)

b) Liver tastes soft and squishy and weird. (I can't argue with her. Liver is real soft and squishy. (So is dove by the way.) We just disagree on whether that is a good thing.)

c) Scary movies are scary and I (meaning Melissa) don't like being scared for free. Why pay someone to scare me? (Again, hard to argue with. I hate being scared in real life also.)

Book Expo of America/ Three un-interesting things

1. This will be my second year at Book Expo of America. Last year I was there for six hours and got to meet Paul Feig and see, from a distance of twelve feet, John Hodgeman and Alec Baldwin. I also got about 150 advanced reader copies of books.

This year I will be there for three days (still missing Chuck Klosterman and Stephen Tyler - AAARGH) and will have to ship whatever goodies I can't fit into my suitcase. And at Book Expo of America there are a lot of goodies.

There will also be a lot of interesting interviews and panels and celeberaties. Do you guys remember Al Franken and Bill O'Reilly screaming at each other on C-Span four or five years ago? That was a Book Expo of America panel.

The advanced reader copies I want the most are the sequel to The Hunger Games, the new Richard Russo book, the new AJ Jacobs book and Terry Teachout's biography of Louis Armstrong.

2. Here are three things about my family that aren't interesting to anyone but myself and even I have nothing to add by way of comment and yet I want people to know about them.

a) We have a hummingbird feeder. And lots of hummingbirds.
b) We went swimming at the Colorado River yesterday. Eli stepped on a bee.
c) Tile floors are real slippery when wet and also hurt when you fall on them.

Eli and school/ wife / Swine Flu in Yuma

1. Eli hates school. I can tell because Sunday night he becomes tense. I know that feeling. The gloom that descends before a week of work. (I don't have it with this job, but I've had it with other jobs and with certain school years.)

2. Yesterday in priesthood they asked us to write down what we wished our wives did better or things we don't like about our wives. The goal of the lesson was to help us realize how petty our dissatisfactions are. But I stand by my three.

a) When she makes chocolate chip cookies, she only puts in a half a bag of chocolate chips. She likes more of a cookie taste. Where as I like more of a chocolate chip taste.

b) She doesn't like liver so we never have it for dinner.

c) She doesn't like scary movies so I either have to go see Drag Me to Hell alone or hope that Kyle, Nathan or Clin move to Yuma before May 29th.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable. Melissa, the ball's in your court.

3. One confirmed case of Swine Flu in Yuma but the authorities are refusing to give the name, age, address and telephone number of the sick person.

One more Swine Flu post/ Neverending Story/ Scorpions/ Drag Me to Hell

1. It's a bummer of a time to feel any aches, pains or flu symptoms. For instance, I ate a bagel the other day that made me feel a bit icky, and all I could think was, hm, I've got the swine flu real bad.

A few people we know have had the flu this week. Normally when you get the flu, you just think, "Ah well, I'll be better in a couple of days." Not this week though. The Swine Flu makes being sick even less fun.

2. Went to Melissa's doctor this morning for the pregnancy. Signs on all the doors said that if you have flu symptoms feel free to reschedule. I kind of wish we could put up signs like that at the library. "Sneezing people will be asked to leave." A lot of sneezing, coughing people go to the library.

3. I swear I don't think much about the Swine Flu. Nope, not at all. I'm not worried. Just making conversation.

4. I've been half watching Neverending Story with the kids. It still kind of works for me. I just watched the Rock Eater cry and danged if I wasn't a little touched. It's not a great movie but it's a pretty good one. I think I'm going to watch Teen Wolf maybe that holds up also.

5. The rumor is that the workers keep finding scorpions in the boxes of books being stored for the new Yuma library. I don't know if I believe it, but it keeps my mind off the swine flu.

6. It is May, so the countdown for Drag Me to Hell officially begins. May 29th. This is the movie I want to see most this year. Unfortunately I'll be in New York and I can't justify going to see a movie I could see in Yuma. I just hope Our Town is as good.

Swine Flu - Day 4 of the madness

My motto has always been, "Always err on the side of not worrying enough." It has served me well, which is why I'm not worried about the swine flu. 99.9 percent of everything is never as bad as we think it will be. Even the Spanish Flu only had a mortality rate of 2.5% percent. 2.5 is not that shabby. (Sure that's 50 million people but still . . .)