Coffee keeps me alive

2010-07-09T20:13:00.000-05:00

Summer starts with a 12 pack of Summer Ale...

That is when you know that summer is here, when Sam Adams Summer Ale is back on the shelf. At least it is one of the many beautiful signs. This summer has already been packed with several amazing trips and lots of great time spent with friends. My wife and I took an awesome trip to New Orleans where we saw the sights and had more great food than we should have had time for. We saw the Magazine St. stores and the WWII museum. We found a really cool cigar shop that rolls and presses all its own cigars. There really is nothing better than waiting on a table at Cafe du Monde while smoking a stogie. We also got to spend a fun weekend in Sevierville, Tennessee with my parents, my sisters and my awesome nieces. We stayed at a hotel with a huge water park where we were able to slide down huge water slides as well as play with my nieces in the kiddie pool. We have had Weird Beer Night III and IV and the results will come in a new post soon. All in all the first half of the summer has been awesome and I can't wait to see what the next two months before football season brings.

Fantasy baseball has been quite an exciting new addition to my summer time days. My buddy Barrett got me into a league last summer and i enjoyed it but was not able to draft my own team because of shift work. This year has been alot more fun, I was able to draft my team and on top of that I have been able to follow my team better with the droid. I am holding onto first place in our league at the halfway point of the season but alot can change after the all star break.

My wife is amazing and she encourages me to strengthen myself in many ways. One of those is the way of the handy man. With her amazing gift for design and the skill to put her ideas into action she continually pushes me to learn how to do things that years ago I didn't know what to do. Recently we have been tiling a first for me and it has been a slow but gratifying procedure, check my wife's blog for the updates.

One big part of every summer, especially my summers, is summer reading. This summer has been a good one too. I have found some really neat books so I will forgo some of the ones that have been on the shelf waiting to be blogged about and hit my summer reading this time.

Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy - Melissa Milgrom (5 out of 5) What an amazing find this book was. It was an amazon.com book of the month a few months ago and it really caught my attention with the awesome cover. What makes this book so unique is that is a book about taxidermy but it's not by a taxidermist. It is written by a woman who found taxidermy interesting and so researched the heck out of it. It covers the WTC, that's World Taxidermy Championships for you newbs, as well as everything from the Smithsonian professionals who make the dioramas to a Canadian who builds amazing extinct and protected animals out the pelts of other animals. After learning everything about the profession she actually stuffs her own New York squirrel and enters it in the WTC under the watchful eye of a master of the trade. Just good.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Stieg Larsson (4 out of 5) The final book in the millenium trilogy follows Lisbeth Salander as she recuperates from a gunshot wound and the journalist Blomkvist who is doing everything he can to keep himself alive while also keeping Lisbeth from ending up in a straight jacket for life. It brings the story that starts in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" to a great close. I wouldn't recommend it without reading the others, but for a thriller it is really a fun read that really shows that this author will be missed. The original plan of five novels, he only finished three before he died, would have been fantastic.

The Help - Kathryn Stockett (4 out of 5) Continuing the summer streak of great books. This was one recommended to me by several girls that I know and I will be honest I was slow to purchase this book but I can't think of a reason why now. Set in Mississippi in 1962, it follows a young southern college grad who is trying to explain to herself why the city she lives in is the way it is. She wants to help the world see the connection between black helpers in southern homes and the children that they raise. The way the author bounces between three narrators, two maids and the author skeeter, is seamless and really draws you into the book.

Beatrice and Virgil - Yann Martel (2 out of 5) Probably a bigger letdown for me because "Life of Pi", the authors previous book, was soo good. It has great characters and in a funny coincidence a heavy taxidermy story line. The narrator is an author who is trying to run from his fame and befriends a taxidermist who is very skilled and wants the authors help finishing a play he is writing about a donkey and a monkey (beatrice and virgil) that seems to be about the holocaust. It is strange and never really grabbed me.

There are several books I am working on now but those are the ones I have finished. Stay tuned for more summer blogs as well as weird beer updates.

2010-03-28T18:50:00.000-05:00

Chris Columbus & Some Other Guys: The Title Thief...

I have probably made it pretty clear in the history of this blog that I love books. I also love movies but books definitely are my number one media with movies a very close second. I am the guy who most of the time has already read the book when the trailer comes out but if I haven't there is a good chance I'll read it before I see it. I love the written word. Being able to see a story from the point of view of the author's choosing. With a movie it is only third person. The only way we get inside someone’s "mind" is with a voice over. I appreciate a good book to movie translation but I absolutely loathe a mediocre one and feel like a rewrite is akin to murder.

As an example of a small change take "The Runaway Jury" a John Grisham book turned into a movie back in 2003, the movie was very similar to the book only really changing the company being sued from a cigarette company to a gun manufacturer. Both are companies that produce a product who can harm but a person has to use the item to cause the damage. Not bad, same general story different bad guy in name and product only. An example of a cardinal sin of screen adaptation was "The Lost World" by Michael Crichton, Crichton by the way may be in the hall of fame of bad movie adaptations, "Sphere" and "Congo" were atrocious. In a little defense of "The Lost World" some of the issues were caused by changes in "Jurassic Park" but the beauty of Crichton was that most of his what-ifs were sooo close to reality they were an imaginable escape while reading. But seriously a T-Rex attack, Godzilla style, on San Diego. BOO Stephen Speilberg, shame on you. But I digress, back to the original point of this post.

My friend, Coach Mac, and I went to see "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" a couple weeks ago. I had recently read the book, which I will review below, on recommendation from said Coach. To say I was angry and frustrated during the movie would be an understatement, the characters names and movie title were the only things that were the same. The movie had a completely different story line containing a few choice events from the book that were so backwards it actually made the heroes look like idiots. Why would you travel the U.S. looking for three items to help you escape the underworld when three people were going down there to save a fourth. Simple addition says you need four, that is unless you are trying to contrive an event that happens accidentally in the book. I have never left a movie before it was over and I was literally contemplating it. The people behind me seemed to be enjoying the movie but I couldn't get over the changes. I don't even want to go into the injection of sex into a story that is supposed to be about 12 year olds because I need to review some books.

The Lost City of Z - David Grann (4.5 out of 5) An awesome "travel" book. The author follows in the footsteps of many who are trying to find mythical explorer, Colonel Fawcett, who along with his son disappeared in the Amazon in 1925. Grann goes through the history of Fawcett as well as the preparations for his own attempt to find "Z" a mysterious, large civilization that was rumored to have existed back in the days of the conquistadores, the mid 1700s. So well written and researched and about one of the most interesting and still unexplored areas of the world.

The Great Divorce - C.S. Lewis (4.5 out of 5) A great allegory written in 1946 by an amazing Christian writer who has a knack for putting everything in perspective. It's the story of a man who travels through heaven and hell meeting all kinds of people and supernatural beings that help him understand the consequences of his behavior on Earth. The fact that we must choose one or the other we cannot serve both is the central theme. "If we insist on keeping Hell we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell."

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (3 out of 5) Classic novel about Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with life at the turn of the 19th century. It is an interesting book dealing with social pressures of class and upbringing. I felt like the books focus on the female character is a big reason for its popularity among women, especially at the time of publication when most women had their lives chosen for them by their fathers. Elizabeth bucks tradition and goes after Mr. Darcy despite her father's wishes.

The Lightning Thief, The Sea of Monsters and The Titan's Curse - Rick Riordan (3.5 of 5) The first three books in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians pentalogy were good. I enjoyed the update of the old mythology stories that I haven't read since 8th grade. The idea behind the stories is that the gods are still cavorting with mortals and making demi-gods like Hercules. One of these demi-gods is Percy Jackson who shows up as a twelve year old that may decide the future of the gods. He is forced into action first when his father (Poseiden) is framed for stealing Zues' lightning bolt and he tries to retrieve it to protect him. The second book follows the same crew as they try to retrieve the Golden Fleece from a cyclops to save the camp they half-bloods call home. The third book follows Percy and his friends who are trained and now try to save new found demi-gods and find themselves trying to avert a war in which the ancient titans are trying to bring down the gods of Olympus. These books aren't as enthralling as Harry Potter but are a good, quick read.

2010-03-17T22:34:00.000-05:00

Weird Beer Night the Second...

got a little weirder and a lot more awesome! This time around we had several more attendees, increased from five tasters to nine, and our "competition" beers increased from eight to twelve. My lovely wife made taco soup and we commenced with a viewing of "The Hangover" while our participants started tasting. We had one repeat from the first week, our winner Fat Tire. It again rated very high which showed how good it really was, scroll down for the post to see what we had for our first weird beer night as well as the final rankings.

We had quite a range of beers including our worst rated one so far. We have a rating system a one being the worst and a five being the best. Our lowest beer this time got a 1.9 ouch. And the host brought it, I went out on a limb and the limb turned out to be very untasty. Here is the line-up and rankings from our latest weird beer night.

Delirium Noel from Huyghe Brewery in Melle, Belgium
Chimay Blue from Monks from the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Scourmont (my kind of monks)
Shock top from Michelob
Honey Cream Ale from the home brew of Nick M. one of our tasters, kudos sir!
Hibernation Ale from Great Divide Brewing
Oatmeal Porter from Highland's Brewing Company
2o Below Ale from New Belgium Brewing Company (seasonal from Fat Tire brewer)
Boddingtons Pub Ale from Strangeways Brewery (Manchester, England)
Pete's Wicked Ale from Pete's Wicked Brewery
Samuel Smith's Imperial Stout from Sam Smith's Brewery (North Yorkshire, England)
Old Brown Dog Ale from Smuttynose Brewing Company
Java Stout from Bell's Brewery

We had a great night and I think everyone tried a few beers they never would have otherwise. We will have another one soon so keep your tastebuds ready.

2010-02-19T21:04:00.000-06:00

The End Of An Era...

has come to the McFee home. As of five weeks ago I officially finished shift work. I have been working southern swing, 7 nights (9p-5a) with 2 off days, 7 afternoons (1p-9p) with one off day and 7 days (5a-1p) with 3 days off for the better part of two years. I can't explain the relief and happiness that I am feeling being able to come home daily when my wife does. It was quite a shock when I was asked to come back to days and I really still don't know if I really get it yet. I think as the weekends that I don't have to work continue to stack up it will become more and more apparent to my mind that I am really done.

The work I got to do on shift, working as a shift supervisor, I would not trade for anything. I learned so much and genuinely enjoyed the work. It is missing stuff, events and get togethers, that I won't miss. The guys that I got to work with will be something that I will always get to look back on. But thank goodness it's looking back and still looking on. Day shift here I come.

I did do an interesting thing this year that this blog helped make possible. I was able to keep up with the books I had completed and was able to add up the pages that I had read. This past year I read 11,500 pages! I don't know if that is alot compared to my past or even alot compared to other people but that is almost 32 pages a day. I also listened to my first audio book which I will also review. I don't know if I will keep those up it was interesting listening to a book. It was close to nine hours on the iPod but I guess that may be how long it takes to read 325 pages. Anyway I won't make this one long since I took two months off from blogging.

The Elegance of the Hedghog - Muriel Barbery (3.5 out of 5) This was a really interseting story and told from two different points of view. One of them a very smart young girl in a rich family. She is smart beyond her years and all the things that being rich "entitles" people to are things that she loathes. The other narrator is the concierge (French Super) who though she runs a building full of rich people is considered lower class. The story is about what they learn from each other and the back and forth views is really interesting.

Superfreakonomics - S. Levitt & S. Dubner (4.5 out of 5) Great followup to the 2005 book "Freakonomics". Another great book that looks at people through the eyes of an economist. Not how people spend money but how they interact with each other. Cause and effect and statistics reveal some surprising information like it's more dangerous to walk home from the bar drunk than to drive drunk.Of course all these things come with caveats like the fact that it is only more dangerous for the drunk person since most times accidents involving a car and a person don't tend to injure the driver. Also the interesting ways that people figured things out through statistics and the scientific method. How they used algorithms to help track down terrorists before they commit acts of terror. A long list that includes things like not buying health insurance (since it wouldn't pay out anyway). Great book and a quick read, didn't get a five because it was so short especially after the four year wait for the followup.

The Girl How Played With Fire - Stieg Larsson (4.5 out of 5) Second book in a trilogy. I absolutely loved the first one and this one was great but the first was soo good it is hard to follow it. Follows Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander as they try clear Salander of a murder that she didn't commit or at least Blomkvist hopes she didn't. She is such a loose cannon that anything can happen around her. I am pretty sure I said this last time but this not my usual style of book but I really liked it. The movie for the first book "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is coming out this summer as well as the final book in the trilogy.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane - Katherine Howe (4 out of 5) A really neat book that pulled me in because of the cover art which I have discussed before is something that can draw me to a book I know nothing about. The story is about a young college professor looking to find a topic her big presentation that might take her to the next level. She spends the summer in an very old house that was left to her when her grandmother passed away. As she works to clean up the house to sell it she learns something interesting about a former inhabitant of the house. She was a witch that was murdered during the Salem witch trials and she happens to be a relative of the narrator. The more she learns about Deliverance Dane the more she finds out about herself.

Son of a Witch - Gregory Maguire (2.5 out of 5) Good but nowhere close to as good as "Wicked" which this book is the followup too. It is the story of Liir, Elphaba's son, as he tries to find his childhood friend who was in captivity at the end of wicked. It was a disjointed story that I never really felt like I was part of. Still a great idea for a story and I am sure that I will still read the next book focusing on the cowardly lion.

2009-12-31T04:06:00.000-06:00

Weird Beer Night The First...

was a huge success. It was a tradition that was started back in college when a few buddies of mine and I got together and decided that we wanted to try new things. We all liked good beer and decided that we wanted to expand our horizons and try a few new kinds. But what do you do on a students salary or more importantly what do you do when you buy beer and you hate it. Just throw away the other five? No you gather up your friends and get them to try the crappy beer and see if they may like it. Everyone has different tastes some like the hops, some the maltier the better, others like it as light as water. The taste is the key, beer is to be enjoyed like a fine wine. So that is what we did. The rules are simple, actually THE rule is simple. Everyone brings a beer that they have never tried before. This can be hard normally especially since I have been "of age" for seven years now and have tried most domestics. I haven't had a weird beer night since I graduated college.

The signing of "Gourmet Beer Bill" in May 2009 thanks to the Free the Hops campaign opened up a whole new world of beers to Alabama. The increased alcohol content is not the exciting part, it is the doors that it opens. Many breweries will not ship any of their beers to Alabama if they can't send all of them. This means more microbrews, more foreign beers and just generally more of everything. There is still some ways to go as you can see by the site but this enhancement in our beer choices gave me an idea. Weird beer night in Montgomery!

A month or so ago I got together five of my buddies who were good beer lovers like myself and we inaugurated this new bill with a beer tasting of sorts. Eight different beers were brought to the house and I had two others that didn't enter the "competition".
-Gaelic Ale from Highland's brewing company
-Delirium Tremens from Huyghe Brewery in Melle, Belgium

The other eight were rated very partially by the judges and finished as follows, one being the highest rated by average and eight being the lowest but still good beer.

Fat Tire from New Belgium Brewing
Butt Head Bock from Tommyknocker Brewery
St. Bernardus Tripel from Belgian Family Brewing
Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale from Anheuser-Busch Company
Hoptober also from New Belgium Brewing
He'brew The Chosen Beer Messiah Bold from the Shmaltz Brewing Company
Rogue American Amber Ale from Rogue Ales
Jack Whacker Wheat Ale also from Tommyknocker Brewery

It was absolutely awesome. Hopefully soon we will be able to do it again and we can use my certified best gift of Christmas 2009, my new Sam Adams glasses.

Designed for the perfect pint of beer. Check it out here. My sister and brother-in-law got me a set of four and I am so excited. I will update with another list next time we get together to sample the mead.

2009-12-21T00:36:00.000-06:00

On A Cold Day in December...

my father and I made a drive to Nashville. But I need to start at the beginning. I rarely have a weekend off (about once a month) and so we took the opportunity to travel to my parents house and have Christmas a little early since I have to work on the actual holiday. I got a random text Friday night, "Dad got 2 free tickets to Titans/Dolphins game Sunday, Noon. Would you want to go?". I was like what, sure, maybe I'm dreaming, free tickets to one of the most exciting matchups of the weekend. I wasn't. After an awesome pre-Christmas Christmas day where we watched "Elf" and "Christmas Vacation" in an amazing holiday double feature, opened presents and had a big family dinner, we headed up the road to Nashville. The pops and and I swooped into the 37o stadium fully layered and ready for some football. With both teams facing elimination from the playoffs with a loss this game had a lot riding on it. We were treated to an awesome game worthy of it's importance...

The Titans were winning 24-6 with 5:40 left in the 3rd quarter and it was looking like they were going to pound the Dolphins when they did what they have done all season and slogged back into the game. Helped in big part to an absolutely improbable catch (it's about 3:06 in the highlight reel) where the ball is almost intercepted then knocked away then caught for a long first down. The temp dropped to a lovely 35 about mid game before the wind finally let up and the sun came out right before overtime started. That's right OT, it was my first NFL overtime and I have to say that I LOVE college footballs overtime setup and have been a frequent nay-sayer of the NFL overtime but man it's crazy watching it. The Titans intercepted a Chad Henne pass on the first drive and kicked a game winning 47 yard field goal... WOW!

Titans won and we headed home. We left the house at 9:15am, walked into the stadium 30 seconds before kickoff and were back in Hartselle right at 6pm. An awesome day with my kick A dad.

Also I joined the twittering phenomenon this weekend, I have yet to tweet but I am following several folks to get the feel. Look me up - JohnMcFeeIII. Follow me and I will follow you or whatever the kids call it these days. Actaully I am going to announce this blog post on Twitter by tweeting a tweet about this bweet or bleet or tweelog.

2009-12-13T20:05:00.001-06:00

Now winter is half over...

and this is my first blog in 3 months. Not going to happen again but then again it may. The winter is here and my wife and I both absolutely love this season. Maybe for not all the same reasons but we do share at least one major crossover. We love to spend time with family and friends as we celebrate the cornerstone of our beliefs. Without His birth he couldn't have died and given meaning to this crazy race we call life. We get distracted this time of year by presents and football and worrying about how we are going to get to everywhere we have to go. But we cannot forget the reason for the season. I will get off my deacon soapbox and continue on to other things.

It is a great time of year for reading. I know that I read year round but this time of year is when coffee takes on a new life. Christmas blends at my favorite coffee shops sipped slowly at home or at the shop itself. Starbucks at Eastchase or Cafe Louisa in Cloverdale are outstanding venues for a cup of coffee 'for there'. I forgot how much fun it was to just slow down and finish a mug of coffee, something I took for granted all those years at Taylor's Bakery in Auburn. I figured that in order to catch up on my 3 month drought of posts I could go through a few interesting books that I have read in the last few weeks. As most of you know who read my blog I am an avid movie fan as well and as mediums go only books are better. So it only stands to reason that I would rather read a book before seeing the movie and alot of times I have already read a great book before they even decide to make a movie out of it. So four of these are topically relevant all but one I have also seen the movie.

The Blind Side - Michael Lewis (5 out of 5) - An amazing story about a black boy born in the worst part of Memphis who through a series of events ends up at a private Christian school thanks to a grandmother who new there was potential in her grandson and left money for him to attend a private school. Michael Oher wasn't the grandson he was just a friend of the grandson who went along for the ride. A caring family who found out he didn't have a place to stay took him in and helped him qualify for high school football as well as adopt him giving him a family for the first time in his life. The book continues on through his college recruitment and an investigation by the NCAA when he chooses his adopted parents alma mater 'Ole Miss. The book a ton of info about left tackles and their development as one of the highest paid positions in the NFL second only to quarterbacks. The movie is also outstanding and does a great job of telling Michael's story.

Twilight & New Moon - Stephanie Meyer (3 out of 5) - Unless you are a dude or a girl living under a rock you have already heard about these books. I have called this many times 'girl porn' as it appeals to the most basic want for girls to be sought after feverishly by a godly being of a person who is willing to forsake his own needs to be with her. The first book is about Edward and Bella meeting and cementing their love for each other and felt more like a prequel than a full story. The 3 out of 5 is more of an average Twilight got closer to a 2 and New Moon closer to a 4. New Moon starts with Edward leaving Bella after a very tense event where Bella cuts her hand in a room full of vampires, and he realizes the danger he is putting her in. Jacob her friend and soon to be werewolf falls for her and again she is swooned over by a guy who never wheres a shirt. The movies were similair to the books Twilight was ok and New Moon was better. If it keeps improving the 4th book may just be great.

The Road - Cormac McCarthy (5 out of 5) - I don't understand why it took me 3 years to find this book. I can only blame Oprah's Book Club for picking it which is no excuse since everyone of the books on her list I have read has been great (Night by Wiesel and Million Little Pieces by Frey). It is about a father and son who don't ever even have names that are traveling through a post-apocalyptic world trying to find food in the ash covered world that is left after some nuclear event. People have resorted to eating each other and they are trying to find a place where they will be safe and maybe get out from under the clouds of ash. The father is trying desperately to show his son that life can continue on without resorting to cannibalism and loss of morality. The movie is in limited release now but I strongly suggest you go see it especially if you aren't planning to read the book. No spoilers but it is a heavy story so don't look down on a man who sheds a tear while watching.

Hopefully I will have several more posts before the end of the year to give some best of 2009 stuff and alot more book reviews. Merry Christmas!

2009-09-10T00:46:00.000-05:00

The Fall is HERE!!!

I know, i know September just started but when football starts so does the fall. In my opinion at least. I didn't get to watch much football this weekend because i had to work the afternoon shift so I have to reserve most my judgments for when I actually get to see more than just the end of a few games. I will say I was really happy with what I saw out of Chris Todd and just the excitement level of the whole Auburn team. I watched the replay on FSS at like 1am last night and I am really trying hard not to get too excited over LaTech although they were 8-5 bowl winners in 2008. I will be more comfortable with a win at MSU this weekend. But anyway WDE!

Fall means most of the great movies have already happened during the summer with a few exceptions, Sherlock Holmes for one. Fall does mean new TV though which has me ready for some couch time. I put together a little list for myself and thought I would share it with everyone else. Mad Men, Entourage, Glee and Greek have already started so you may already be behind but most of the others start next week.
Tuesday 9/15
30 Rock - 8:30
Thursday 9/17
Community - 7
Parks & Recreation - 7:30
The Office - 8
Fringe - 8
Always Sunny In Philadelphia - 9
Monday 9/21
How I Met Your Mother - 7
Big Bang Theory - 8:30
Wednesday 9/23
Gary Unmarried - 7:30
Thursday 9/24
Grey's Anatomy - 8
Sunday 9/27
The Simpsons - 7
Family Guy - 8
Thursday 10/1
Private Practice - 9

The only show that I know of skipping this fall is 24 which doesn't start season 8 until Jan 2010. If there are some I missed I will catch up in another post. I almost forgot the new show on the list is "Community" coming on NBC starring Joel McHale(Talk Soup) and Chevy Chase. I hope it's funny the stuff they have online is hilarious.

I decided to blog instead of book review today. I will catch up with a book this weekend.

2009-09-02T11:36:00.000-05:00

Coffee Book of the Week

This weeks book is a classic that I picked up because I had enjoyed his other books that I had read and this one may be my second favorite of his to this point. Again I had not heard much about the book I just got it because it was written by Ernest Hemingway.

The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

This book was first published in 1926 and was second novel but the first major success for him. The central idea of this book was really a narrative about the "Lost Generation". The young veterans of WWI that had trouble returning to the norm after the war was over traveling abroad to get away from the responsibilities back home.

The story follows Jake Barnes, an injured fighter pilot, who can't get over being shot down in the war so he travels around Europe with his buddies Mike, Bill and Robert. He is in love with a woman, Lady Brett Ashley, who is taking the independence given to women during the war to a whole new level. All of the men in the novel are after Brett in one way or another. At the beginning of the novel she is engaged to Mike, but at one point in the novel you find out Brett once had a short affair with Robert, who spends the entire novel trying to win her back. They travel from Paris to Pamplona to see the running of the bulls. They all drink too much and party too hard with no apparent consequences other than maybe the occasional fight or an indiscretion that later merits an apology. Hemingway's description of the running of the bulls and later the bull fights themselves is graphic and the prose he uses really makes you feel like you are sitting around the drinking table with this crew or sitting in the stands with them.

Rating: 8 out of 10

2009-08-25T14:09:00.000-05:00

Coffee Book of the Week

The book this week is not a long one (just over 200 pages) or one that I had heard much about before I read it. Don't get me wrong I had heard the title and seen it on bestseller lists but had not heard much about the premise. The inaugural book for my weekly book posts is one that really tugged at the heartstrings and showed something we have all heard, read and talked about many times before in a different light.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

Since I hadn't heard much about the book it was very exciting "figuring out" what was going on and understanding what the narrator, a young 9 year old German boy, was talking about. Because everything is told from his point of view and in his vocabulary there are several key words and phrases that he uses in the book long before you actually figure out what they mean. This is going to be spoiler free but I just wanted to give everyone an idea of how ingenious the author uses the boys imagination and young mind to bring full circle Nazi Germany and what it would look like too a child.

The book starts out with the child, Bruno, upset that he is having to leave his friends and move out of Berlin. His father is in the army and "the Fury" has come to his home and asked them to relocate to a place he calls "Out With" as a promotion and great opportunity for his father's career. At his new home, which by his standards is not as much fun as his old house, he is surrounded by soldiers and fences. The fences contain lots of people that are all wearing striped pajamas and he is confused by why he is separated from them and why he doesn't get a pair of striped pjs. In his explorations he meets a boy about his age that he becomes friends with. There is, in his mind, no reason why they should not be friends.

I was floored by how this book made me feel. Anger, sadness, and still after all the years studying the Holocaust still shocked. The ending is amazing and I was surprised after such a short novel how well I identified with Bruno and how sometimes I just sit back and wonder why things that are happening, are happening? By the way "The Fury" is the furor and "Out With" is Auschwitz which was the largest concentration camp but I am sure you already figured that out. There is also a movie made from the book but I haven't brought myself to watch it yet, I don't know how it could even compare to the book.
RATING - 9.5 out of 10

2009-06-19T14:54:00.005-05:00

Sometimes There Are Free Lunches....

I had a wise old baseball coach as a Calculus teacher, not a coach. If that's not a nerdy beginning to a story I don't know what is, anyway he had a big poster board by the door of his classroom that had in big hand written caps "NO FREE LUNCHES". For those of you not familiar with the term it means nothing in life is free there is always a catch, or you have to study to get the good grades, yada, yada, yada you don't get something for nothing. But I recently had one of the best customer service experiences in a long time maybe ever where this did not apply. Some of you know my iPod was acting up and not playing music from any of it's outlets, headphones or through a sound dock. I tried a couple things on the online troubleshooting guide but nothing seemed to work so I called the dreaded tech support line. I got to speak to a guy named Kenny Ferris (I knew I was in luck when he explained how to spell his name by saying "The same as Ferris Bueller's Day Off", sweet) who was absolutely beyond helpful. Once he figured out my problem by having me squeeze my iPod in a couple different places he said those dreadful words no technology owner wants to here, "Well your iPod is 2 years old and it only had a one year warranty..." BLAST right but the next statement threw me for a loop "BUT, we expect our products to last longer than than so we will send you a new one." Yeah you read that right and they paid for shipping, sent me a box with a return label on it to get mine and my new iPod here in less than a week. I might expect this kind of treatment from a smaller company interested in keeping business but this is Apple they sell like a gagillion iPods a year but they are still interested in the guy who bought his a couple years ago and something inside it broke, awesome.

Some friends of mine and I had a discussion about favorite vacation spots. Everyone in the group was supposed to rate vacations home spots from most to least favorite, these are just general but the categories were

Beach House/Condo
Mountain House
Ski Lodge/Condo
Lake House

Everyone's responses were interesting especially since mine and my wife's #1s were both completely different. Here's mine

Mountains
Skiing
Beach
Lake

I can't remember how my wife's went but I know beyond a doubt her #1 was the beach. This has always put us in quite a conundrum as far as vacations go knowing that neither of us is on our ideal vacation when we are together. But over the summer in the course of about 3 weeks we got hit both of our #1s. We got to spend an awesome weekend in Highlands, NC with some college friends and then two weeks later spend a weekend in Destin, FL with some of our amazing friends from right here in Montgomery. Drop me a comment and let me know your order of favorite vacations.

Also, I know this is a short blog for such a freaking long break but I figured out what keeps me from getting over the hump to blog and this is going to sound really nerdy BUT it's how many books I have to "review" I wait a little too long then I have to rush the blog so that I can get the books listed and not be too long. So I have decided to change up the blog a little bit. I am going to make the book review longer and once a week. I am a good 8 or so books behind so I shouldn't catch up with my reading for a while. I haven't decided what day for sure yet but I am thinking Tuesday. It's new book day at the book store so why wouldn't it be new book review day. So check back Tuesday for my first one "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas". I will be doing personal blogs along the way as well so don't fret very loyal audience, but they will be sporadic as events/ideas happen.

2009-05-22T17:00:00.006-05:00

May is the month for crazy and growing up...

It has been absolutely one of the nuttiest months for me especially since my last post. We are in a month long outage at work and when you are on the "front lines" like I am now as a supervisor outage takes on a whole new meaning. Before I was just coordinating two or three jobs and one contractor for a couple weeks. Now I am working with every contractor working in the department, my guys( aka the crew), maintenance needs on the equipment that is down and also the equipment that is running. It was crazy but also exciting at the same time. The fact that the outage is over this week will be a blessing on everyone because it was so long but it also means we completed it successfully. In past outages we had multiple supervisor coverage but this time I was the lone man in charge. I know that sounds crazy, me in charge, but we did it. OUTAGE COMPLETE... and in the immortal words of Johnny Drama as Torvald, VICTORY! And as of now I am down to 1.5 night shifts 2 afternoons and one day shift before the big switch.

My wife is joining my age club next week. As of Monday she will officially be in her "late-twenties". It's not easy moving into a new partition of life the good news is she has a long weekend off to prepare herself for the slide to 30. Not that there is anything wrong with 30 it's just the first big "0" age after college and though nothing happens at 30 specifically it is a turning point. A turning point that has become more evident as we found a house we weren't looking for. We kind of fell into a house in old Cloverdale, well we haven't fallen in yet just I guess found it and are pursuing it despite the fact that less than two weeks ago I had not yet even started to think about moving. It is 4 bedroom 3 bath and as soon as I mentioned it at work all the guys started ragging me about how you can't have 4 bedrooms in a house without starting a family. Wow, that is heavy but also so very true and while my wife and I aren't planning that right now the "turning point" I talked about earlier really makes me think.

This summer has just started and already the movies have been awesome. We to see T4:Salvation this weekend and loved it. It was also the 4th weekend in a row my group of friends and I had been to the movies which I know is a post-college record. Graded below

May 1 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Rating B)
May 8 - Star Trek (A+)
May 15 - Angels & Demons (A+)
May 22 - T4: Salvation (A)

And there are still so many great ones left too

May 29 - Up
June 5 - The Hangover
June 19 -Year One
June 26 - Transformers:Revenge of the Fallen
July 17 - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
July 31 - Funny People
August 7 - G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

Of course there are others coming out too but these are the ones that have the most promise of being good. If I missed any let me know. With Netflix I was surprised how many books I got through in this month but there were all very good.

The Last Dickens - Mathew Pearl (5 out of 5) The latest historical fiction mystery from Pearl based on the true fact that Charles Dickens died with only half his last book written. The story is about the search for the last half of the book. It covers Dickens' last American book tour and a alot of great background information and actually characters from that time. Another great weaving of history and fiction.

On the Road - Jack Kerouac (4 out of 5) A biographical look at the late 1940s "Beat" generation. Jack, who calls himself Sal Paradise, travels cross country listening to jazz, hitch-hiking, drugging and leaving women in his wake. But is more than that, it is a look at a forgotten age of trust, generosity and lasting friendships. He wrote the whole book on a 120 foot scroll of paper that is still around. It is regarded as the "Bible of the beat generation".

Blink - Malcolm Gladwell (6 out of 5) The second book by Gladwell was absolutely amazing. I would recommend this book for anyone in business or sales. It is a study in what our brain does subconsciously which he calls "thin-slicing". I could do a whole blog just about this book so I won't go to deep but it looks at preconceptions we have about people and things that are developed throughout our lives. What is called the "Warren G. Harding Error" about how a man that just looks presidential because of his height and demeanor can actually be elected president despite being completely inept at politics.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson (5 out of 5) A best seller worldwide from Sweden. It is a great mystery/thriller about a journalist who gets ousted from his magazine after getting charged with libel. He is enlisted by an ex-CEO of an international company to find a murderer. The twist is that the murder happened 30+ years ago and it was his niece who he was grooming to take over the company. Her body was never found so it has haunted him for all these years. It flowed amazingly and I liked the subtle differences in writing style such as using proper names for books and things like saying "he picked up his iBook" instead of "he picked up his computer" which is the norm.

2009-04-09T11:03:00.002-05:00

April Showers Bring May Weeds...

well if you haven't mowed yet this spring I guess they don't count as May weeds more like late fall weeds that died and since you didn't do anything to keep them dead they just came back. Anyway enough about uncut yards. It's been 2 months since my last post and I hate doing these first posts after a long wait because they always feel rushed but here goes.

Biggest thing that has gone on was our amazing trip out west. My wife and I and 2 other couples went to Breckenridge, CO for my first big skiing adventure. The area was beautiful and the mountains were awe-inspiring. Having spent most of my time in the woods in the Appalachians and the Sierra Nevadas I was absolutely floored by the Rocky Mountains. Thier size, snow coveredness and juttiness, if that's a word, were awesome. For space sake here is my wife's blog on the trip. I will just say a couple things
1) There is nothing like a trip with best friends. Spending a few days away with them is amazing with all crazyness of our lives it's hard for grownups to develop the same type friendships we had as children but a trip like this is perfect.
2) Take ski school. My wife went from falling down the mountain and having dispariging things to say about the sciences on day 1 to skiing down some of the hardest greens just the day after, DO IT.
3) Skiing rocks. It's fun, not dangerous if you take it seriously and in a place like Breckenridge you get the same outdoors feel of backpacking with out all the packing.

Next up although my next job is still up in the air I did finally get full recognition for what I am doing now. The crew I have is great and everyday is challenging trying to figure out how to fix problems we have when not everyone is there at the mill. Also I will be done with shift work on July 1st if everything goes as planned, WOOT!

A Netflix update: I appreciate all you guys/girls who watch your dvds slowly and some of you know who you are who keep the same one for weeks at a time. I appreciate you because you keep Netflix affordable for me since I have about the shortest turnaround time you can get as of now I have had the service for 2 months and have gotten 18 movies and 3 full seasons in the mail and using the instant watch feature watched another 25 movies and 4 seasons. So like I said thank you to everyone who slowly returns movies and keep up the good work!

I want to give a shout out to a great comic book series that I just finished reading in graphic novel form, Y: the last man. I don't know if I mentioned it before but it is outstanding. Story starts with an epidimic that kills everything with a Y chromosome except the main charachter Yorick Brown, the last man alive. It's collected in 10 graphic novels as he tries to cross the globe to find his girlfriend who was on vacation in Australia after the world starts to fall apart with one gender gone. Read it.

On that note I also have read some great books since my last post so here goes:

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (4 out of 5) Classic set in the 1920s the narrator, Nick, is new to New York and moves in next door to the mysterious, party throwing, Jay Gatsby. The story follows a year of his life hightlighting the changes of the time with women gaining more rights, the rise of jazz and the stock market. Great read and a difinitive look at the "roaring 20s"

In the Woods - Tana French (4 out of 5) Thriller would be a good description. A detective who had a harrowing experience as a child is brought back to the same neighborhood he left behind to solve the grisly murder of a young girl left on an archeaology site. He should recuse himself from the investigation but doesn't and as the try to figure out who killed the young girl he also learns more about himself. It's a real cliff hanger story and I don't usually read these but I liked it, just enough twists I never figured it out until the end.

Marley & Me - John Grogan (5 out of 5) Great story and written soo well. The movie skips alot of good stories and information from the book so having seen it doesn't mean the book isn't worth your time, it is. An good story about a bad dog who despite his quirks means more to the family than they really know. I think anyone who has a dog can relate to some or all of the story.

Bad Dogs Have More Fun - John Grogan (2 out of 5) Got it thinking it would be another good story from Grogan but should have read the cover. It was just his columns reprinted. Some good ones but too short and quick. (That's what she said)

Hot, Flat & Crowded - Thomas Friedman (5 out of 5) Really more of an extension of his last book "The World is Flat"that I reviewed back in June 07. The book centers on how the flat world affects the environment and our love as a world for getting everything that we can no matter the outcome. Lots of great facts and figures and discussion about what it will be like when the emerging countries of the world catch up with the U.S. in oil consumption/person.

The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell (6 out of 5) A why the world is the way it is book. Reminded me of "Freakanomics" in style. Discusses what it takes for things to tip from obscurity to epidimic from personality types to stickiness factors it is awesome. Comparing a suicide epidimic in Micronesia to teen smoking may just be the neatest part of the book. I would recommend anyone in the business world to read this book now.

2009-02-09T00:45:00.007-06:00

Netflix: The first 14 days....

I have done it. I have moved into the a new and strange world where the "new thing" the cool new way to get DVDs is through what is affectionately known as 'snail' mail. That's right, despite the fact that Netflix is facilitated through the Internet the circle is complete. Now new technology uses old technology, it is beautiful!!! And by the way so is Netflix. Two weeks in and I have gotten 4 DVDs through the mail and watched 13 other movies INSTANTLY on the computer. I know I might not have rented them all at Blockbuster but they would have cost me about $60 instead it is only $14/month. I feel occasionally like I am robbing someone but I am pretty sure it's legal. Also in a really neat additional option you can invite friends that can see your ratings and you can peruse their queues (Yeah I know it sounds dirty but it's not). If you have Netflix just press the link and you can be my friend :)

Peruse My Queue

Also there are some other quick links that I wanted to post. I have been enjoying a new website where you can find lots of neat interviews, previews and reviews on anything from movies to comic books. It's called The A.V. Club.

Also a week or so ago we had some of our best college friends in from out of town to stay with us for the weekend. We had a blast and our friends brought with them a game that is absolutely awesome. We played like 28 games of Marble Pursuit.

It may be the most fun team board game I have played. On the surface the game can be described as alot like "Sorry". Your pieces start at home and you have to work your way all the way left around the board to your base that is only a few spaces to the right of home. The difference here is that you don't have dice you use two decks of cards and from your hand of six cards you move your marble around the board the number of the card. The interesting and strategy inducing part is the cards that don't just move you forward. Joker's allow you to take the place of anyone on the board and 8s move you backwards 8. There are a few more rules but I won't go into all of them. My wife really loved it as well, enough to get beat like 27 out of 28 times and still wanting to play another one. Team John-Mike was absolutely dominating!!!

I have been reading several books this month some quick reads so here goes.

The Monster of Florence - Douglas Preston & Mario Spezi (4 out of 5) A true crime story about a mass murderer in Florence who killed couples consummating their relationships in vehicles on the outskirts of the city. He killed 14 people over 20 years and they still have yet to catch him. The book is a look at the investigation that is still ongoing to this day. The author is actually part of the story since he is indicted in Italy for conspiracy while researching for the book. Thomas Harris researched this story when writing Hannibal, and if I remember correctly based his detective after Spezi, the coauthor.

The Associate - John Grisham (4 out of 5) New law thriller from the man himself. Best he has written in a while but still not up to his amazing originals like "The Partner". An inside look at big wall street firms and the fact that they will go to any links to save face, protect major clients and bill them $300/hr for a guy who hasn't even passed the bar to sort files. It's hard to go into too much detail without giving away the plot but the story follows a new law school grad as he starts his career, a ghost from his past comes back to bite him and he is forced to start down a dangerous path to try to keep everyone from finding out.

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote (4 out 5) A true story about a family in Kansas that is horrifically murdered with no apparent motive or suspects. The murder has the whole small town pointing fingers and the K.B.I (Kansas Bureau of Investigation) for months. Interspersed within the story of the search is the escape of the murderers and the things they do while everyone in the state is in morning. So well written I can see why it is a modern classic.

The Enemy Within - Kris Luundgaard (5 out of 5) A quick read but so much information. It looks at sin as "the flesh" and it's power over us if we let it and don't turn to got for the strength to overpower it. I especially liked the chapters that dealt with identifying sin and how to die to self. Would be great for a Bible study.

The Zombie Survival Guide - Max Brooks (4 out of 5) Written as a all encompassing guide for zombie outbreaks. This guide includes how to choose your weapon and why. Guidelines for survival when under siege, on the run or on the attack. It also covers chronologically zombie outbreaks in history including some unexplained real events like Roanoke Colony. Very funny book that really feels like it's preparing for true life threatening events.

2009-01-07T00:30:00.002-06:00

2009 is underway...

and despite the warmth this January is already a great beginning. Over the past month and a half since my last post I have still been doing shift work at the mill as a supervisor. Everyday gives more challenges and so far I haven't been tripped up. At this point I have been doing shift work for about 7 months and it is tough but definitely doable. Thankfully my company has seen fit as well to keep me on in this tough financial time, CHEERS to the guys at the top for thinking me a contributor worth keeping.

The last month as well has seen a plethora of youth events which I love. The kids at our church are amazing and being a chaperone for them is a blessing. I know everything that we do I get something out of and I hope that they do to. We had a progressive Christmas Party and the main event was a video scavenger hunt at Eastchase. You had to go to certain stores and perform different movie scenes or Christmasy things and video them. Examples would include trying to get two people to put their tongues on a pole ala Christmas Story or go into Kinnucan's and "cut down the Christmas tree" like Christmas Vacation. It was fun in itself but the real excitement came when we were asked to leave the "Scavenger hunts were against the rules." I just told the security guards, that's right plural, we were shopping just like everyone else I don't know how much they believed us though when we immediately ran out to the big reindeer and played duck, duck, goose. Needless to say we had a blast. Also we recently returned from out annual ski trip in Beech Mountain, NC. This trip had a little more excitement at the beginning and end since Craig and I had to drive the church bus, we were in a charter bus with another church last time. There was no snow this time either but they made snow both days. It was still really fun and the slope that my wife and I walked down last time, I skied down without falling three straight times to finish the trip. I was proud of my improvement over last year, I now consider myself a skier!

College football is almost over, only one more bowl game and it's nothing but speculation until August 2009. It has been a fun year despite Auburn's problems. I am excited about the coaching staff that Chizik is putting together at Auburn. I can't help but think though how great would it be if everyone could make amends and Tubberville could just come back and lead these guys. I know, I know crazy but hey I can dream can't I.

Christmas with the family was outstanding as well. This is the first Christmas since my wife and I started dating that we have gotten to see everyone and be together with the least amount of driving we have ever done. I love you family and I hope to see more you all in the new year.

I read a few books in the time since my last post mostly because as some of my friends pointed out it's been a long freaking time but also the travel time helped, here goes:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon (6 out 5) This book is a fictional story about a pair of cousins who live in NYC in the 1940s and help a novelties maker and a racy magazine producer make what at the time was something relatively new, comic books. The story follows them from 10 years old to 50 as they produce their flagship comic, The Escapist. It is an outstanding look at life in this period of the growth of a still misunderstood medium.

A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway (2 out of 5) Great writing style and content but that is why he is famous. The irony that he uses in this novel is hard to explain without giving away the ending but I haven't read many war novels that were so engrossing. Hemingway is amazing just not my favorite type of story.

The Discipline of Grace - Jerry Bridges (4 out of 5) We did this book as a study in our Bible study and it was very good. The idea of this study was in the pursuit of holiness we must be rooted in the grace of God. This is the only way that we can even take a swing at success and the balance of discipline and grace in our lives.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard - J.K. Rowling (1.5 out of 5) Short! I know that there is no way to satiate the hunger of Harry Potter fans now that the story is told. Her use of Dumbledore's notes after each story was neat and kind of fleshed out the stories some but I think I read the whole thing in like 45 minutes.

Let's Play Doctor - Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg (2 out of 5) Another follow up to the amazing neat doctor questions books, "Why do Men have Nipples" and "Why do men fall asleep after sex". But this one left something to be desired. It was set up as a kind of how-to book of how to pretend to be a doctor. They gave lots of the facts and diagnoses like the other two but it was muddled in a lot of dumb crap. Hopefully if they make another it will be back to the old recipe.

2008-11-19T00:18:00.006-06:00

November Is Halfway Over...

and what a month it has been. I hit 1000 hits on the blog which is exciting and it meant i also shouldn't have waited a month before putting in another entry. As of today I have been training on my shift supervisor job for six months, SIX MONTHS! Now don't get me wrong I am absolutely loving the job that I am doing but it would be great to move from the "in training" symbolically following me around to "trained". I don't know when it will happen but they have given me a crew to lead for the interim which is encouraging but I would love to have the job especially in this economy. Well enough of that on to more important things.
I got to spend another weekend in beautiful Highlands, NC. with the same 3 other couples that we traveled with there last year. It was a beautiful weekend of sitting around the fire, eating great food and drinking a college party equivalent of alcohol with friends who all needed a weekend away and made the most of it. The temperature was perfect, the leaves were just beginning to fall off the trees it was gorgeous I always forget how much I love the outdoors when I haven't been there in a while. I need a backpacking trip soon or I may explode.

I want to take a moment before I move on I want to say something about advertising. With the over advertisement of alot of things these days it's tough for things to happen, especially interesting things, that not many people talk about. First one is that there is a director and I must say he may be the worst promoter in the history of movie directors, Guy Ritchie. Most of you will know of the movie Snatch, with Brad Pitt. It was a fantastic movie but wasn't big in theaters and really picked up with the dvd release this though was not his first, mobbish, action movie, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was his first and I don't know that anyone even knew it was in theaters. This past week I caught his 3rd movie in this genre in the last week it was in theaters only because I kept seeing the stupid title on imdb.com and researched it. RocknRolla... it was a great movie but like I said if a guy like me hasn't heard much about a movie they must have not even put out a trailer. The second thing and I will get off my saopbox is Pepsi. They took the time to compete with the coke rewards points that Coca-Cola had put out and in the process trounced coke by teaming up with amazon.com giving free mp3s with every five cap codes. I don't drink much Pepsi but the guys around the mill do and they have been saving them for me. In the course of about a month and a half I have put in about 250 codes which is fifty, that's right FIFTY free songs. For a music junkie like me this is pay dirt. Every artist isn't available but we have gotten everything from Coldplay and Jason Mraz to Eagles of Death Metal and Dashboard Confessional.

I have a few books this time mostly because I was reading two of these simultaneously while I when I blogged last.

In a Sunburned Country - Bill Bryson (3 out of 5) Good travel book about Australia and Bryson's travels there. The first part of the book about the cities wasn't as interesting as the second half which focuses on the outback and outlying areas of the only country that's a continent.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz (4 out of 5) A very neat story about a nerdy guy whose mother is from the Dominican Republic but he grew up in New Jersey and never really found his nitch as a person. The metaphors and story were right up my alley although it is a sad story as evidenced by the title the story is moved along by multiple narrators that all add depth to the story.(winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

Good to Great - Jim Collins (5 out of 5) Business book about taking a company from good to great. One of the most interesting takes on what makes a business step out of the comfort of being good and becoming great and staying there. Outstanding for anyone in business world or really is applicable in so many parts of life.

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (4 out of 5) My dive back into the classics was a short but good story about a man who catches the biggest fish of his life but at what cost. He lays everything he has on the line for a marlin the likes of which has never been seen. Great story but like most Hemingway it's not a fairy tale ending.

2008-10-26T23:07:00.003-05:00

It's Anniversary Time!!!

Three years and eleven days ago I became the luckiest man ever. I married Laura Marie Jeff. I was in some deep thought today and I was contemplating how different my life is now compared to before. All of it better I mean I tried to make a list of all the "differences" between now and then but it would have required some research and with the fall TV season in full swing and this shift work I didn't get around to it as you can tell by the fact that I planned on writing this entry on my actual anniversary. I was planning on making a two column list of "then"(ex. 19" RCA not flat screen) and "now"(ex. 50" Samsung 1080p DLP) but I think it sounds pretty cheesy now so I will just say I love my wife and congrats to her for putting up with my nerdy self for three long years.

Get excited about the new TV season! I forgot how much fun it is to not be pissed about strikes and wondering how many episodes you were actually going to get before the season was over. There are several shows that I want to give a shout out too that may not be new shows this season but they are new to me.

Always Sunny in Philadelphia - FX, Thursdays 10pm - In it's 4th season this show is a raunchy and hysterical show about a group of friends including the dad, Danny Devito, who run a bar in Philly that is a crap hole. With episodes titled "Who pooped the bed?", "The Gang Find's a Dead Guy", and "Sweet Dee is Dating a Retarded Person" you know it's quality TV.
How I Met Your Mother - CBS, Mondays 7:30pm - Great Friends-esque new show with a group of friends living close to each other and the show is a profile of their shenanigans. The premise is the main character telling his kids stories about how he met their mother.
30 Rock - NBC, Thursday 8:30pm(right after The Office) - New season hasn't actually started yet it starts this week but I caught up with it on Hulu, http://www.hulu.com/ it is an amazingly funny show and it is worth a watch for sure. Unless you have been living under a rock you know it is a behind the scenes of a SNL/MadTV sketch comedy show and Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin and Tracey Morgan are outstanding.

Three other new shows I am watching but don't know if I am sold on yet are Gary, Unmarried, Fringe and Life on Mars.

My frequent watches are The Office, CSI(all three), Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, SNL, Heroes, Big Bang Theory, Family Guy, Eli Stone, Greek, and Chuck. I know what you're thinking that's a lot of TV but DVR is a beautiful thing.

Other than new TV shows I must say that Rockband 2 has been an outstanding upgrade from the original with the weird schedule I have been on I haven't gotten to play as much as I would like but the new songs are outstanding and being able to create a band member that can play any instrument is my favorite improvement, they also added a thrift shop with cool t-shirts and old school duds. The Gloved Ones have already had their first show and I am working to schedule some more.

Also for you that will appreciate it - http://www.biggerbetterbeards.org/

Only one book finished this time but it was a neat one.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals - J. Maarten Troost (4 out of 5) A memoir about a guy who follows his wife to Tarawa, a remote South Pacific island atoll in the Republic of Kiribati. He spends two years on the island while his wife works for a relief agency. The island has no electricity, running water or toilets but it becomes home for them so much so that they have trouble deciding to leave. It is an extremely easy read and as far as travelly books go one of the best I have read.

2008-09-26T02:56:00.002-05:00

Prefixes vs. Suffixes...

It has been about a month since my last post and a lot has changed. Unlike most people I have spent my life with a suffix, John Kaywood McFee III, the third. It has served me well and I didn't have to go to medical school to get it. Just a born right that was passed on to me from my mother and father. Having said that I have never had a prefix that wasn't given solely out of manners, Mr. John McFee, or being an imaginary knight, Sir John McFee the gallant, see there I had a prefix and suffix only the coolest(or nerdiest) get to have both and since my last post I have achieved both through no act of my own other than being the best damn big brother ever. You can call me Uncle John Kaywood McFee III. That's right UNCLE of two beautiful twin baby girls that are perfect and wonderful and can be seen on the most recent post of my amazing wife. It could not have been a more perfect time for them to come. Their birthday is only two days before their uncle's who by the way turned 27 on September 16th. My wife and I, thanks to her new found off weekends, traveled up on Sunday to see them on their first day of life. I didn't get to hold them but I did get to touch and see them, they had to go to neonatal ICU but just for observation.

I also spent my first week with the crew all to myself on night shift this past week. It was a blast and a real eye-opener. I was able to give some support as well as notify my boss of a disaster thanks to the great crew I was working with. It really is neat how a group of guys all of them older than me, some of them older than my dad, can work with me and teach me and still allow me to be the manager. It is a delicate balance which isn't always easy especially when you may be doing the job that one of the guys wants or they just have an innate hatred/fear for the college degree you have and they don't. But thankfully even those guys seem to be warming up to me as well showing me where I can improve and learn new things. I know this may not make sense but it's an awesome opportunity that I have been able to "practice", I just hope they let me do it full time (that's what she said).

Quantum of Solace - Ian Fleming (4 out of 5) Collection of about 10 short stories that Fleming wrote and are collected here. Some are good some aren't but they all tell a little bit about the vodka martini drinker that we all know and love. Also the title from the new movie was taken from one of the short stories.

The Reason for God : Belief in an Age of Skepticism - Joseph Keller(Amazing) This book is a 20th centuries Mere Christianity. Keller tackles the biggest questions skeptics have about God and also the biggest reasons for faith for people that are already Christians. Outstanding.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt (5 out of 5) A great book written about Savannah, GA by a New York Magazine journalist who came south to getaway and got wrapped up in and old towns mysteries including a real murder by one of his new friends in town. The author winds up spending a decade traveling to and from Savannah and learning a lot about the rich, the poor, the dead, the cross dressing stripper named Chablis and even a hoodoo witch.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns(TPB) - Frank Miller (5 out of 5) I was told it was one of the greatest Batman story arcs of all time and it didn't disappoint. It had Frank Miller's trademark art and gritty realism. It is set 10 years after Batman's retirement when a crime wave causes him to have to put back on the cape and cowl.

Also War Damn Eagle!

2008-08-23T15:05:00.009-05:00

A Month of the Great Outdoors...

I have spent the last few years since graduating high school trying my hardest, it would seem, to stay away from one of my greatest loves - the woods. Sure I have gone on the occasional camping trip maybe like once a year but that's not a love that's a passing fancy, certainly a long passing fancy but one none the less. This all changed in the past month and if I have anything to do with it this will be a change that will last into the future. It all started a month ago with a Manmaker 2008 Ocoee rafting trip with the mans in the youth group.We spent the weekend being men and learning/teaching about the ways of a Christian man. There were challenges of manhood layed down by the boys to the leaders and an amazing shirt was on the line. I drank a bottle of Frank's RedHot Cayenne Pepper sauce in 9.2 seconds to keep mine.

The next week my wife and I took a day trip to Mt. Cheaha with my dog Barley to scout the drive and some trails for my trip the next with with the youth and had a blast walking through the woods and just spending time together and enjoying nature. Barley I think had a better time than we did, I honestly felt like he felt "at home" out there he walked the trail ahead of us making sure we knew where to go and was so funny to watch in the streams and woods.

The following weekend I took 3 youths, one dad, and the youth director and his wife out onto the Chinabee Silent Trail for a 7 mile overnighter with beautiful waterfalls and great views of God's nature at its finest.

This was all followed up by another rafting trip down the Ocoee with my friend Nick and my parents, sister and their Sunday school class. It was a blast once more and a great chance for one of my best post college friends to finally get to meet my family. It is an interesting situation we have as grown ups that our new friends rarely get to know our parents unlike all our friends from high school who more than likely had to be approved by the parental units. It was a great night with grilled out meat, beer and family does life get any better, I submit that it cannot.

Also, everyone needs to try this little quiz I got from the POP Candy Blog.

http://www.empireonline.com/features/posterletters/

I pulled down like a 29 or 30 first try do it and leave your score in the comments.

On the side note I took a reading hiatus from Leo Tolstoy's, War and Peace, I am halfway through but I needed a little break from the Russian he was causing my stack of "to be read" books to grow to insurmountable heights. I think if I could knock out the last 4 I will go back to him but when you hit the 600 page mark and you aren't halfway through it's a sign to take a little break. On that note I read alot of books this month so bear with me they were all good.

Bright Shiny Morning - James Frey (4 out of 5) Great fiction book from the Oprah-shunned author of "Million Little Pieces". He mixes the history of L.A. into a neat little 5 story merry-go-round each one about a different person or couple or family and the strife of living in the city of angels.

Goldfinger - Ian Fleming (5 out of 5) Book seven of the original James Bond novels is probably the best one I have read so far. Very close to the the movie but much better, probably the closest movie/book translation in the series so far.

When You are Engulfed in Flames - Dave Sedaris (3 out of 5) I like Sedaris' wit and the way hew can make even the most normal story funny. Like Burroughs though I do wonder how many more memoirs he can write about his crazy family. The best part of the book is the last chapter called "The Smoking Section" and is a collection of stories about him quitting smoking that are amazing.

Watchmen - Alan Moore[writer]/Dave Gibbons[artist] (10 out of 5) Freakin' amazing! Probably the best piece of comic book literature I have ever read and if my 3 long boxes of comics gives me the street cred to say this, and I believe it does, it is outstanding from start to finish. It is a look at what the world would be like, really, if there were super heroes or just cape wearing crazies running around, how it would affect world relations, police, etc. READ IT!

The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon (4.5 out of 5) Great detective novel set in a fictional city Sitka, Alaska where the Jewish people were placed after WWII until everyone settled down. It is a well written and his writing is so descriptive that I am amazed how well placed his insanely descriptive metaphors just flow. I wish I had highlighted some of the best but I did not and you need to read it for yourself.

2008-07-21T01:05:00.005-05:00

The Best Movie of the Year...

This past weekend my $10 ticket to the Thursday night show of "The Dark Knight" was a portion of the $20 million that was earned just in opening night screenings of this killer movie. As of this afternoon it was the highest first weekend ever for a movie beating out Spiderman 3 and Pirates 3. I was astounded an amazed at the way the move exceeded my expectations. My wife who has never and I repeat never stayed up past like 10 o'clock when a movie was on theatre or at home was wide eyed and engrossed at 2:45am when the movie was over. I won't drop any spoilers since I know several people who still have not been able to go yet to the movie. But I will say I was very impressed with the lack of gore especially with how freaking crazy Heath Ledger (The Joker) is and how many people he kills or in a court of law would be blamed for. I felt like I was watching and old school Alfred Hitchcock flick or something where you didn't need to see something happen to know it did and that can totally freak your mind up.

I also wanted to give a shout out to the newest facebook application "Pieces of Flair". I am totally stoked at the idea and the process of showing of your flair. Office Space is seriously top 20 favorite movies of all time and easily top 10 in comedies. I love that all these kids on facebook (the ones younger than me) are using this application and I can't help but wonder how many of them have actually seen the movie that spawned this app. I have no real insight into this phenomena just making a statement.

From Russia With Love, Dr. No - Ian Fleming (10 out of 10) The Bond books continue to impress I can't stop reading them. I have been alternating these out with other books though so that I can spread them out a little. Dr. No was the first book that closely resembled the movie that was made from it. The only real difference is that in the book Dr. No puts Bond through a gauntlet of deadly items ending with a fight a giant squid and including a crawl over hot metal and deadly spiders in the dark. After escaping he buries Dr. No in a pile of dirt not that crazy nuclear meltdown he somehow escapes from in the movie.

Walking With God - John Eldredge (4 out of 5) Another great book by the author of "Wild at Heart". This books goes through a year of his life and reads like you are reading his journal while he explains a few additional items. It was great and once again it was perfect for what my wife and I have been going through in our work and marriage. Whenever she reads it I will get her to giver her insight on her blog linked to the right.

2008-07-07T23:35:00.005-05:00

Overflow of information...

Since I have not Blogged in awhile I really don't know how this one will go. As I told one fellow blogger this week I couldn't figure out what was keeping me from sitting down at the computer and putting my thoughts into words. First off I would like to say that my grandmother passed away since I last blogged and she was a longtime reader of the blog so that she could keep up with her oldest grand kids life and marriage. She was a wonderful woman and was loved by many here is her picture taken back when my boys, my wife and I spent the week with her a few years ago.

She was loved and is already missed very much!

In a related note number two of the Baltimore five got married this weekend. Jeff Jones took the great dive this weekend in Birmingham where he married the lovely Kimberly Burns. We had an absolute blast this weekend having the whole gang together again for a weekend. There were eight of my long time bros together for a weekend of debauchery that was well worth the drive and the tough mornings that f0llowed late nights of catching up and 18oz canned PBR. They were married off without any issues despite the amount of worry that went into the rehearsal dinner and the wedding trying to keep all the groomsman's pants on.I also made a great purchase a week or so ago on eBay. I don't know if everyone has one of those items that you just search for every month or so and never find, one of those items on my list was an old coffee cup that my grandfather used to use when they owned the marina in Tennessee. It is a beautiful specimen of glass and humor

I hit "Buy it now" really without even checking the shipping and handling. I don't know if I am going to drink out of it yet or just keep it on the shelf but at least now I have it.

I have two blogs that I would love for everyone to see

http://www.happywatching.blogspot.com/ - Sara Beth Eady's Entertainment Blog

http://blogs.usatoday.com/popcandy/ - Professional Blog about cool stuff that I always find interesting.

I got a serious list of books this time since it had been almost 2 months since the last post:

Bringing Down the House - Ben Mezrich (3 out of 5) The book that inspired the movie 21. A good bit different than the movie but still follows the same general story line. A crazy story of a kid who makes alot of money counting cards in Vegas with a group of MIT students.

Snuff - Chuck Palahniuk (2 out of 5) Interesting new book by the author of Fight Club. It's about a Porn queen who is trying to kill herself by having a 600 person gang bang. Yeah I know it sounds really crazy but it's more the events surrounding the said sexual event.

The Grapes of Wraith - John Steinbeck (4.5 out of 5) Great book about how the industrial revolution affected tenant farmers and what they had to go through when they were forced off their land since it was cheaper to use a tractor to cover 20 different families land than have the families all farm their smaller tracts separately. They left the Midwest headed for California looking to find a place and found way too many people doing the same thing.

Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever - Ian Fleming (20 out of 20) The original James Bond novels are outstanding! I love the movies and wanted to check out the books and I was floored. The stories are much more believable and are more like the Bond I always wanted. In the books he is not the womanizer that they make him out to be in the movies, there aren't any crazy watches or "gadgets" just yet and the bad guys are outstanding. Also on another note I picture Daniel Craig when I read the novels and I can't decide if that makes him my favorite Bond, discuss.

2008-05-14T17:26:00.011-05:00

My Wife The Hero Recently my wife did something that many people think about all the time. I don't know if for you it was positive or negative but at some point everyone has thought/worried/wondered about what it would be like to do something different, to not accept the job you have as the job you always will have. My wife took the gigantic leap of faith this past week and I am the proudest of her I have ever been. There is nothing gained in life from sitting on your laurels and accepting a situation that makes you unhappy. Much prayer was involved in making this choice and thankfully,but not to proudly, I can say there were times when we could see God leading us and our decisions. I love my wife and am so proud of her!

In another job related note I am going to be doing a short tour of duty, about two months at this point, out in the mill. I will be doing shift work and shadowing two different shift supervisors a month a piece to get some management experience. I will eventually be applying for the job for a one to two year stint and I wanted to do the training now. I don't know how happy my wife is about the shift work but it is important for furthering my career as an engineer. It is really the only way that a process engineer(me) can get any experience managing people if I ever want to go into operations. I start next Tuesday night shifts are 9:30pm - 5:30am, 5:30am - 1:30pm, and 1:30pm - 9:30pm. Seven nights with two days off then seven afternoons with two days off, finally seven days then a long 3 day weekend that actually falls on a weekend. ANYWAY wish me luck on my new adventure, it should be quite interesting for the wife and I to both be trying out new jobs at the same time but hey God doesn't give us anything we can't handle.

On another note Mario Kart Wii is freaking amazing! This is the first game out for Wii I think that has really made use of everything that the new system has to offer. The online play is outstanding, anytime you want you can get on and play with as many as 12 other players anywhere in the world. I have played a good 300 online races so far and probably averaged 9 opponents and with the rating system you can earn some street cred by winning. Also one of the unlockable riders is your Mii. It even takes into account the "weight" you set for your Mii originally when picking your kart size. AMAZING!

Finally I want to preface my two books this post with a little back story on the first. Usually I am proud of the books I read so much so that I push them on everyone I meet, jumping at the chance to tell them about it. In a round about way I hope that some day they will be walking through Books-a-Million and slow down by an end cap and say "Hey, that crazy guy sitting outside Starbucks told me how good this book was, I think I will buy it." I know it's nerdy but honestly it's how I pick alot of the books I read so be careful what you recommend to me because they go right on my list to read and then right to my blog when I finish them. I know that was a random sidetrack but I told that to tell this. The first book on my list wasn't one of these, I was nervous reading it and much like now I had to give everyone a preface before I would tell them what the book was about.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach (4.5 out of 5) - I read her first book Stiff which I put on the blog back in April of 2007 which was about the history and uses of human cadavers. This is about the history and study of sex as a science. In the book she continually defends sex researchers as being pre-judged as perverts for their choice of the sexual sciences and no matter how interesting and scientific the book was I honestly felt a little perverty, not when I was reading, but when I was telling people about it (which was not very often). It is full of so much information and her writing style keeps science fun and interesting. If you get a chance read it and maybe the knowledge gained will be enough to out weigh the small loss of respect you may get from that Joe at Starbucks who looks at you funny when you tell him what you are reading.

1776 - David McCullough (5 out of 5) - For my first historical non-fiction I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. The author has a great way of making the facts flow together like an amazing fictional story but it's all true. I picked this up at the urging of Jason G. and was spurred on by the great John Adams miniseries on HBO. Also, I never realized how close we were to not being Americans as we now know it and if not for the gumption of Washington and a few green colonialists we might still be a British Colony.

The Appeal - John Grisham (4 out of 5) - Another good and exciting law story with a twist, this time the story starts after the judge has already ruled against a giant law firm that has polluted a town and caused hundreds of cancer deaths. The big company does everything it can to affect the appeal process including and not limited to funding the campaign of a unknown lawyer to oust a supreme court judge. Good book, not his best but most of the time his good books are much better than anything any other author wishes they could write.

2008-04-08T18:40:00.009-05:00

Freedom...

I am finally out of the 3 weeks of spring outage that had me working long hours and days in a row. It is coming to an end this week and I know I have blogged about it before but I wanted to make some sort of excuse for blogging so infrequently.

Biscuits baseball started back up this past week and we had an amazing opening night complete with fireworks and sadly a season beginning loss. It was good to be back eating chicken biscuits and beer and finishing it off with a nice souvenir helmet full of cookies n' cream dippin' dots. There seems to be even more fans this year than last, I know it was opening night but I really feel like Montgomery is loving their baseball team. I know on the scale of college footballs 100,000 fan stadiums 7,251 fans doesn't sound like much but we are talking AA baseball people that is pretty huge.

Something else I have been talking about all week is the amazing new jump that the rockband game has taken with the connection to the Internet. Back in the days of Guitar Hero II there was an attempt at an expansion with another game release Guitar Hero: Rock the 80's. This was a good try to answer the problem that has continued to surface in this series:

"This game is great but I wish it had more songs."

Well with the Internet and Rockband that has now become an option. I believe Rockband shipped with about 53 or 54 songs and though we still haven't played them all in band mode I kept hearing the phrase above in the quotations... until I signed on to the PlayStation network and found 80+ downloadable songs with new ones added each week. From my perspective it doesn't get much better than being able to pick and choose your "expansion" songs instead of having to buy a new game and start the process over of unlocking everything you just add songs to your already kick a$$ song list and keep on rocking.

By the way if you haven't played this game yet make friends with someone who has it or just freaking come to my house and play it with me, shoot we don't even have to be friends. I don't discriminate against anyone for their video game prowess. I don't care if your first video game system was an Xbox or you don't know that Zelda is the girl and Link is the hero or even you never played video games before. I look down on no man. But I will kick your tail in Super Smash Bros while I explain to you why given the choice of the current video systems on the market I chose the Wii and the PS3 knowing that I wouldn't be missing out on much.

On to the books!!!

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini (4 out of 5) Great follow up to his debut novel "The Kite Runner" that I reviewed back in October of 07. This is another great look at the middle east and in this book the story is more from the perspective of woman in Afghanistan and gives a dramatic look at society from their point of view.

Dixieland Delight - Clay Travis (5 out of 5) This rating is only good if you are a fan of SEC football. If you cheer for the Big-10 or Pac-10 it may not be your cup of beer. A UT grad that writes a column for CBS goes on a tour of all the SEC school in one season taking graduates from each school with him on his weekend trips to help with the experience at each school. He pokes fun at a few southern football traditions such as shakers, bama bangs, and bi curious shirts are things that I will be using as little jokes so read up fools so that you think I am funny.

2008-03-11T20:23:00.003-05:00

Round 2...

of 2008 posts and also the first Wii instalment of the greatest Gamecube game of all time. I know it's not technically the second since the original was on N64 but I didn't play that one therefore it did not exist.

Super Smash Brothers: Brawl is a great followup despite the long wait and before you ask I will list some important points:

I did reserve the copy two months ago
I did not go to the midnight early release
I did not play in the tournament

despite being the two time Auburn Champion of Super Smash Bros. Melee ('04 and '05) and as much as I would like to pretend I chose to be less nerdy it was in the interest of marital bliss. My wife and I had a big list of projects to do Sunday and I knew that if I picked the game up Saturday night at midnight I would more than likely get into trouble when it was late Sunday night and I had not finished anything I was supposed to do. Long story short, pictures went up before the game came home and I played the hell out of it when it did. So far it's great the game plays just like Melee with better graphics, more charachters and levels. The online thing seems great but I haven't gotten to do a fight online just yet. I need to get some "Friend codes" so I can play with anyone that's got the game. In other news I got "Superbad" at Blockbuster for $3 and I felt like I was stealing it. I have bought alot of DVDs used and of eBay but I have never gotten a movie for that cheap.

I am reading a few books right now but I only finished one since my last blog and this great one was thanks to Jason G.

The World Without Us - Alan Weisman (5 out of 5) It is a very interesting look at nature and its way of taking back over what man has left behind and expanding that to what would happen if all people were gone. He takes things from the past and small events that are currently happening and translates them into the big picture. It was interesting from beginning to end and it reminds me alot of Bill Bryson.

2008-02-27T18:34:00.010-06:00

First post of 2008...

and at least it's not March yet. I have taken a small break from blogging and because of it probably lost what little readership I had. But after some badgering from others and an amazingly insightful weekend in the woods I figured I would dive back into the great world of the blog. Several big events have happened to me in the last couple months that were definitely blog worthy but this weekend in Sipsey really got me thinking about a lot of things. The woods tend to do that to anyone that will stop and listen to the wind and rain. There really is nothing compared to laying in a mummy bag while the rain lightly patters the tent above your head. It's 30 degrees outside but out in the wild temperature is relative. At least it's not 15 since that is below my bag's temperature rating :).

One really neat thing we saw out in the woods were these tree etchings and if anyone else besides me has never seen these before its an old Arborglyph in a beech tree. The Indians used to carve them into trees to mark specific places of interest. They are really cool you can place your hand in the sun beams and see that that is how they carved designed it. If you look really close you can see the face inside the sunbeams.

Sitting around the campfire talking with my father and his friends I really realized how great it is to be twenty-something. In this stage of life you can converse and connect with the widest range of age groups. My wife and I have been enjoying helping with the youth at our church the last couple of months and we really feel like we have connected with them. I can talk to my 2 years from retirement co-worker about NPR and our favorite shows on there. Work with people from college co-ops to people my grandmothers age and have conversations about the intricacies of pulp digesters or relationships. It was such a great feeling to be able to relax around a roaring fire crackling in a clearing surrounded at a comfortable distance by tents that were setup while we still had sunlight. We talked about politics, marriages, work and past hiking trips for hours. I was 20 years younger than anyone else there and couldn't have been more a part of the conversation. Now it could have been the wine talking but we had to run out of wood that started out in a pile about 3 feet high before the fire was started but it was a great night. This will hopefully be the beginning of another long run of entries I really love reading others and I hope people enjoy reading mine. I have read a few good books since my last blog so bear with my concise reviews all four of these books were good reads:

The Poe Shadow - Mathew Pearl (5 out of 5) I really enjoyed Pearl's first book the Dante Club but this one was soo much better. I would recommend this to anyone who likes historical fiction. It's set in Baltimore with a young socialite trying to solve the mysteries surrounding Edgar Allen Poe's death.

Into Thin Air - John Krakauer (4 out of 5) Personal account of a magazine writer who gets his shot at Everest. He is on a crew that looses several hikers in the deadliest Everest season to date. Very well told story he is the author of "Into the Wild".

I Am Legend - Richard Matheson (3 out of 5) Much better than the movie. I don't want to ruin anything if you haven't seen it but about the only things the same are the name of the main character and the title. A good post-apocalyptic world where a disease caused people to turn into vampires.

Sailing Alone Around the World - Joshua Slocumb (4 out of 5) A biographical narrative written in the 1800s about a guy who was a longtime ship captain who builds his own boat then sails it by himself around the world. It is more interesting than it sounds he is a great writer and he spends alot of time stopping in neat places all over the world.

2007-12-02T17:52:00.000-06:00

On droughts...

Well coming back from an extended break in posting I have no excuses for the amount of time I have taken off from updating. So I'm just going to pretend it didn't happen and move on.

The year is entering its final month as is the college football season and man has it been a crazy one. Auburn finished strong with it's six straight win over Alabama, War Damn Eagle. Hopefully they will find a good bowl and maybe it will be close to home so I can attend. This year has allowed us to get a lot closer to a new group of friends through our Bible study and what started out as a study group has turned into a great experience that I haven't encountered- making new couple "best" friends. Granted I have since college made a new best friend who is in a couple with a woman that my wife and I both are best friends with, Nick and Laura, but never have my wife and I with no previous knowledge of either part of a couple grown so close to new friends.

We traveled to Highlands, NC with three other couples and man did we have a blast.

We spent a lot of time hanging out by the fire, talking, and trying to figure out how our drink glasses were empty already. "Is my wine glass leaking?" was a favorite quote. We learned so much about it other in those two days, repeatable and non-repeatable, and it was amazing. We were overlooking a golf course and staying in this nice little community up in the mountains that had one of those views that when you wake up and see the sun rising over the hills you know there is a God and that guy can paint a backdrop. This by the way was that view:Hopefully that will only be the beginning of several trips but even if the venue isn't as exciting as long as the company is the same it won't be too soon.

Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer (5 out of 5) Well written biography of a guy who dropped everything to be part of nature. He traveled around the country with no money and some serious gumption which allowed him to work odd jobs and hitch-hike from place to place until he decided that he wanted to spend some time in Alaska, Jack London style, and it turned out to be to much for him. The author does an amazing job of walking through his travels and forming a chronicle of his days. (Thanks Nick M. for the suggestion)

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson (5 out 5) Well this book is amazing for the person who loves history, chemistry, physics and biology. The idea behind this book is that Bryson decided one day that there was some things he wished he new, the age of the earth, when and how the elements were found, everything about dinosaurs, DNA and plate tectonics. Once he had answered all his own questions by research and study he figured he should put it all in a book. He was a journalist for Outside Magazine so its an easy read especially if you are a little technical and the topic interests you. I think I had a "Did you know..." fact to give tell people every time I sat down and read at least a page.

2007-10-30T16:20:00.000-05:00

Loving the new computer so much I forgot to blog...

Work is going well and so is life. Auburn football this season so far has been exciting to say the least 6 out of 9 games decided in the final two minutes of the football game, but with the win this weekend over Ole Miss, Auburn is bowl eligible for the 8th straight year one shy of the record set in the 80s and 90s of 9 consecutive. The wife and I are traveling to her Alma Mater this weekend to watch the Alabama vs. LSU "Saban Bowl" which should be a great game and sadly will make it even on Alabama and Auburn games attended this season. The outage and duty weekends really killed my chances of seeing many Auburn games this year.

I wanted to pass on a couple of books this time that I finished and immensely enjoyed especially the second one which has been on my list for a long time but I never purchased until recently.

Playing for Pizza - John Grisham (2 out of 5) This was a good book but nothing compared to his law thrillers. If this wasn't written by Grisham I probably wouldn't have even picked it up. It is about a NFL backup QB who causes a playoff loss so terrible he is dubbed the worst in history. He doesn't want to give up the game so he goes to Italy to play in the American football league there. Good story but short much like his other non-law books.

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (5 out of 5) Wow I loved this book. I read it in a week and it' no slouch at 370 pages. It's a fictional story about a wealthy young boy who grew up in Afghanistan before the Russian takeover and his life up to present day. He is forced to deal with racism in a best friend that is from a lower class of Afghans, life in America after he and his father escape the country and courtship in a flea market that still resembles the traditions of his father. It has wonderful insight into the culture, country and beliefs of a people that are continually looked at suspiciously since 9-11 and how little the world(and I) really knows about them.

2007-10-11T18:09:00.000-05:00

Still Naked but My clothes have been ordered...

I am still without my home computer but thanks the folks at Dell I only have 3 - 5 business days to wait until it arrives. I'm pretty pumped through a deal at work I was able to get a reasonable price on it and it kicks my other computers butt well it wouldn't beat up a dead computer but while it was running it would have kicked it's butt I'm sure of it. For you disk heads out there here are the stats

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+ (2.6 GHz) Processor
INVIDIA GeForce 8300GS Video Card (w/ 128 MB of additional RAM)
2 GB of RAM
250 GB Hard Drive

Quite and upgrade from my 6 year old model that wasn't even two gigs of processor speed, how did I even get around the Internet :)

My previously described work "week" is finally coming to a close tomorrow. With a grand total of 33 consecutive days worked. Just to put that in perspective I was last off all day on September 9th when I was still 25 years old. That has got to be an NCAA as well as the volume of my manly and not at all high pitched scream as my Auburn Tigers downed UF with a last second field goal. I know we have already had a game since then but give me a break I was working. Hopefully now I will be able to get back to a more normal routine. Sadly my beautiful wife will be working this weekend for my first days off in a month. At least I will have football to comfort me. Alabama and Auburn will both be on TV this weekend so that should be fun.

WAR DAMN EAGLE!!!!

The Ragamuffin Gospel - Brennan Manning (3.5 out of 5) A good book about joys that can be found in being the least, last and lost. A little depressing at times but all in all a very insightful view of Christianity and it's roots in Jesus and his love of the "least of these". This book has been around for awhile and I urge you to push through the beginning it gets better once he gears up.

2007-09-29T08:01:00.000-05:00

I feel so naked...

and alone. My home computer bit the big one late this week and I really don't know what to do. I am torn between purchasing a new laptop which I have been wanting but by no means need to be doing at this time for budgetary reasons and spending money to get my computer fixed. It is completely non-responsive so it's definitely a hardware issue. I didn't realize how much I use it until this morning when I realized I couldn't check scores online when Baseball was on ESPN, my #1 video game World of Warcraft is also out of the question as well as my college football pick'em. Well I don't believe I have ever blogged two days in a row so this is a first but I just want to say GO BULLS! I told everyone in bama country how good I thought USF was even before they beat Auburn and as of last night they beat the #5 team in the nation West Virginia. A little consolation on a day that could be very bad for an Auburn fan. Auburn is headed into "The Swamp" today to play #3/#4 Florida but hopefully the boys in white will step up and play a game like they did last week and not flounder about for 60 min like the MSU debacle.

2007-09-28T14:30:00.000-05:00

What makes a week a week...

is it the fact that they are broken up by days of rest and reflection because if so I have had one of the longest weeks of my life and it looks like it might only be half over. I am on day 19 of work in a row. It has been great, I have learned so much and been able to take part in some great and information filled jobs and events but I am tired and ready for a break. Maybe this weekend I will be able to take a day off but I wouldn't put any money on it. Also if the day is Saturday I'm pretty sure the Auburn - Florida game will remove any chance of quiet contemplation.

Most of the new shows started this week and man was I impressed with the season premieres. "My Name is Earl" and "Grey's Anatomy" (two of my favorites) both had great starts but the best show on television "The Office" had an AWESOME first episode. I don't want to ruin it for anyone who hasn't gotten to it on their DVR( or TiVo) so skip to the bottom of this paragraph if you haven't watched it yet. The fact that they left you hanging the whole episode about Jim and Pam was great and the scene where Dwight is telling Angela about what he found when he went to feed Sprinkles was priceless. This season should be better than last and it's already proving to be.

Also I wanted to drop a quote that I read in my current book which I should be ready to review next week so I won't spoil it but if anyone has ever told me that something was childish, asked why a grown-up would do whatever it was that they were doing I always defend youth or the action of being young or living young. Who decides what is grown-up which things make you "mature" (that was me doing big quotations with my hands for effect). This quote is phenomenal:

"Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles the soul. Preoccupations, fears, doubts, and despair are the enemies which slowly bow us toward earth and turn us into dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature, and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man's soul.
-Gen. Douglas MacArthur

Wow. He says it all.

2007-09-18T21:10:00.000-05:00

The Big Two Six...

started Sunday. Officially I have traversed into the second quarter century of my life. And honestly it couldn't make me happier. Sure, the first 25 were great don't get me wrong but, man, the possibilities in the next 25 are literally limitless.

I celebrated my birthday a day early this year since I had to work on the actual day. Now the football sucked (Auburn lost, UT lost, and UAT won - can it get worse? I submit that it cannot) but the company was amazing. Two couples we haven't gotten to see in far too long came in to town and we had a great day together eating junk food and amazing homemade camp stew care of chef J.

It just goes to show that good company can save a bad day. Hopefully AU can pull out a good season but as long as I got this group it really doesn't matter. Especially if this little lady comes back...Hopefully the next quarter century will see more amazing changes in my life and more growth in God and family than I can imagine at this point. Cheers to 85 more years.

The Rick and Bubba Code - (0.5 out of 5) I bought the book to get it signed and I really should have stopped there. I enjoy the morning show but the book.. ehh.

The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl (4 out of 5) Very Da Vinci Codesque. Set in 1865 around the first translation of Dante's Inferno by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Italian into English. Someone is killing people like the judgements in Dante's Hell and the poets that make up the Dante Club are the only ones who can help.

2007-09-10T22:30:00.000-05:00

War Damn Eagle...

for better or worse, in winning and in losing, in overtime and in regulation I will always love my team. Hopefully USF will turn out to be as good as Auburn made them look this weekend so we can save some face from that heartbreaking loss. It didn't help that the A/C in our house went out this weekend and my wife had to work most of the day Sunday either. For my last weekend before the big mill outage lets just say it could have been better. Luckily I got to spend Saturday with a good friend of mine watching football while our wives shopped. I haven't blogged in a while so this shouldn't be short but it is late (and hot since they weren't able to fix the A/C today) I will do better updating more frequently especially since so many people have commented on my lack of posting. Thanks for your loyal readership you will not be disappointed, I am going to attempt a once of week post and since I have said it has now become e-law.

A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson (5 out of 5) Definitely a book for outdoorsy folks to enjoy but everyone that has ever tried to do something they were entirely unprepared for can enjoy this well written book. Two guys that are in moderately good shape decide they are gonna thru hike the whole Appalachian Trial. That's 2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine for anyone not familiar with hiking that's about 3 months straight of walking if you are in good shape. Lots of good flora and fauna facts as well about our Eastern US forests as well as the origin of the trial.

2007-08-13T22:35:00.000-05:00

Sounds like somebody has a case of the Mondays...

is one of the best lines from "Office Space" and it is a phrase that negatively describes one of the best days of the week for me. As the weekend comes to an end it's hard to be excited about going back to work, unless you have a bible study like ours afterwards. Laura and I have been in an amazing group of couples for, wow, about eight months now and it has been awesome. This summer has been one big fun group date after another and in a week we will be back to the Bible studies. Which will be great but this summer has been filled with Biscuits baseball, bowling and lots of game playing and dinners. I have felt so at home in Montgomery with the combination of the bible study group and the Milkys, that we have something to do or somewhere to go most nights is such a blessing. No offense to Prattville but this is where we were supposed to be. Several books have been finished since the last post. Harry threw them all off and I kinda finished all three around the same time.

Catch - 22 (3.5 out of 5) Good read and a wonderfully satirical look at the armed forces and war in general. The book is actually the origin of the phrase.

Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs (3.5 out of 5) Another followup to Running With Scissors. More stories of his life this is post-first book and he is pretty interesting especially his life after getting off drugs/alcohol.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - (6 out 5) Solid ending to a great story. The ending was better than expected and even if I tried I couldn't spoil anything since I am probably the last Potterite to finish it.

2007-07-24T15:01:00.000-05:00

No Trail... No Problem

That would be our motto looking back on this awesome camping trip. My dad and some of his buddies had seen a rock shelter and a campsite while kayaking down the Sypsey. Using a map and his trusty GPS he sought to return to the spot with me and my friends this weekend. Well as you can see by the picture above we made it even though the "old logging road" on the map was definitely old but definitely no longer a road or anything that could even be construed as a trail. We had a blast though and despite bushwacking for a mile or so in and out we still had the energy to fish, skip rocks and stay up til after midnight talking and drinking Scotch from a Nalgene bottle. Jeff T., Landon and Jeff J. did awesome especially considering it was the first backpacking any of them had done. Some high points were dad stepped on a copperhead that he didn't see but Jeff did, we were sung to sleep by some seriously talkative coyotes, Jeff J. cooked Vienna Sausages over the fire on a stick for breakfast and once again my dad stole the show with some insanely good steaks cooked over coals from a killer fire that burned for a good 6 hours that actually started back up the next morning just by stirring it up and adding some kindling. We had an amazing time and the itch for the woods(or maybe it's the mosquitoes) is worse than ever. Hopefully I will be back out in the woods again sooner rather than later.

The last Harry Potter came out this weekend which you know even if you live in a rock shelter out in the woods. I am only about 40 pages into it now which is why I don't have any finished books to review since they all hit the shelf until Harry's story is complete.

2007-07-06T14:00:00.000-05:00

TRANSFORMERS... Robots in Disguise

I have seen the movie of the summer. Out of the way Pirates and dare I say Spiderman, you have been dethroned by the one and only Optimus Prime.I has extremely high expectations for this movie and I would say they were overwhelmed. There is no substitute for pretty girls, fast cars and fast cars that turn into robots. I grew up watching the cartoon and eventually the movie which came out in the mid-80s('86 I think but not sure) and they were good. This is phenomenal all those times I changed that 18-wheeler from a robot to a truck and back this is what I pictured. The special effects were awesome as well as the acting ok enough all ready I know it's just a movie but go see it as soon as you can. I myself am going for Round 2 tonight hopefully it will be as good the second time around. Oh yeah and here is the old Optimus from the cartoon just to compare and contrast.

TRANSFORMERS!!! More than meets the eye....

2007-06-27T15:20:00.000-05:00

2 years and counting...

Well I have officially been employed with International Paper for 2 years 27 days 8 hours and 22 minutes at the moment this BLOG was started and it feels good. I love my job and alot of the people that work here. It gets tougher every day more things to do, look for and know but all in all I feel like I am growing. A greater respect for my parents and really everyone who has worked day in and day out for 20 or 30+ years. At least you keep getting more vacation to offset the crazies.

Well, wedding season is upon us and for those of you that don't know my wife is a wedding coordinator which means I don't really get to see her any from her birthday until the end of July for more than a couple hours daily. We are right in the middle of a travel wedding stretch where she will spend Thursday to Sunday in another town, ouch. But she enjoys her job as well so as long as IP and Jill keep sending us paychecks we don't have much to complain about. Also this season brings a sadness to every other Monday night. We are no longer having our Bible study weekly and doing more of an alternating weekly Monday social night. We had a blast last Monday where yours truly ran the table defeating many men. I took down Pit with an Iron fist and a bell and Alex, Craig and I downed the other half of the men in a rousing game of scene it. And the people rejoiced... yeah.

This summer is taking off in force and hopefully I will be able to catch back up on my blogging soon and keep more of a once a week thing. Until next time here are the book reviews from the ones I have finished since my last entry:

Children of Hurin - 5 out of 5 - Newest and supposedly last post-humus Tolkien book is an expanded story from the Silmarillion and it follows that style. Less Hobbit more historical but still very good.

Rant - 3.5 out 5 - Palahniuk's newest novel was a quick read set as an oral biography the story reads like an E true Hollywood story where the author lays down the story using quotes. Interesting but like alot of Chuck's work you leave the book wondering what the real point of the story was and where this or that story line in the book really turned out.

The World is Flat - 6 out of 7 - I affected the rating system on this book since I have been reading it for months as I finished others at just under 700 pages its a serious undertaking but by far one of the better "state of the world" books I have ever read. Friedman is obsessed with technology and how it is shaping the world and making it more "flat". This book is a useless trivia nerds dream. If I talked to anyone while I was reading this book they got at least one story or fact from it even if they didn't know it was from this book.

2007-05-24T10:54:00.000-05:00

Beaches and Birthdays...

Well technically it's just one beach and one birthday but "Beach and Birthday" just doesn't have the same ring to it. Recently my wife and I and two other couples Shea, Mark, Sara Beth and Michael spent four B-E-A-Utiful days in Seagrove, FL at a nice little house not too far off the beach. I love that are more and more each time I go there is a little town area just West of Seagrove called Seaside. In this little town center area there is a book store, coffee shop and market that I would kill to have right here in Montgomery but instead they are at the beach how is that for convenient especially since I can't stay in the sun more than um 8.4 minutes without getting sunburned. We had a great time smoked some cigars, drank a few Jager bombs and Margaritas, and ate some really good seafood. Seafood tastes even better when you forget your directions and drive an hour the wrong way, get fed up and stop at a restaurant called the whale's tail(aka the Whale's blowhole) leave because the place sucks, drive back past the place you are staying to the restaurant that you were looking for and was only 3 minute drive from the house, that is when you have earned it :)

Now to birthdays. I wish a happy 25th to my wife who I love with all my heart. This birthday got me thinking though why is 25 such an important birthday, and not just to my wife. After a little contemplation and conversation I came up with the fact that it is the last time a birthday means you can or cannot do something. Unless you are gunning for a US political office in which case in which case at 25 you could be a Representative but not a Senator(30) or the VP or Prez(35). Think about it once you turn 25 you can now rent a car and no one can ever tell you you can't do something else because you are to young. It makes sense then that at that point everyone starts making fun of you because you old. 30, 40, 50 etc. are all birthdays where everyone has a laugh at the "old guy" the one that's "over the hill" or "that ninety year old". I don't feel much different already being 25 but I am sure I would have been alot more excited if I had realized this point last September. On to the reviews:

Barrel Fever (Dave Sedaris) - 2 out of 5 - first half of the book gets a 1 second half a 3 thus the 2 overall. This was a mistake on my part enjoying an authors latest book and jumping back to his first. I love his autobiographical stories and the first part was just fictional short stories. It was all worth it though in the end for the chapter titled "Santaland Diaries" where he tells stories about working as an elf for a Santa in a mall.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (Dave Sedaris) - 4 out of 5 - More family stories, hilarious.

Facing Your Giants (Max Lucado) - 5.5 out of 5 - Amazing. David's life laid out wonderfully with parallels to our life, just great.

2007-05-11T13:54:00.000-05:00

May the 4th be with you...

(be aware of mushy content, you have been warned)
Ok so maybe it's not May 4th but who cares. This weekend is Mother's Day, and I just wanted to take the opportunity to say I have a mom. I know that may seem trivial but I feel like everyone has a mother, someone who birthed you, but not everyone has a MOM. There is a big difference there too although many people might not see it. I know being a parent in general is a tough thing and I am by no means knocking the job. I am just saying that it takes a special person to be a mom and this BLOG is devoted to the mothers out there who are moms as well. I have been so blessed in my life that I had the care and cookies of the one we call Mom around the McFee house. No matter how many times we disagreed or agreed she was always looking out for me and thinking about my future. There is no way I would have gotten all those applications finished, forms turned in, homework assignments done right and assigned chapters read without her. Without her I wouldn't have learned the hard way that basketball goals and vans don't mix, no matter how much concrete is loaded in the pole. I wouldn't have ever worn anything that didn't have wrinkles or probably even had clean clothes at all. The amount of times my mom took me to things, basketball games, football practice, comic book shops and movies that she had no interest in, but you never would have known it, is uncountable.

Thank you Mom.

As an additional note not only am I lucky enough that my mother has done all things things but I also have grandmoms and a mom-in-law that go out of their way to make sure that I have everything I need. And I know my wife is not a mom yet but I don't know what I would do without her either, I know that someday there will be somebody writing about her this way as well.

2007-04-30T17:47:00.000-05:00

I have created where there was nothing.

What you see here is your normal run of the mill wall. What you don't see is the work going on above that will convert this "wall" into something far greater.
I am breaking down this hunk of clay you call a "wall" and changing it into something that not only supports a roof but also transfers information from the outside world into my living room. After a few hours and a few trips to home depot the conversion is complete. The cable that was not there only a half a day before now brings "The Office" and "Lost"directly into the living room has been placed perfectly onto the wall opposite the fire place. I am man, I have tools and I dare you to tell me I can't put my TV anywhere I want.

2007-04-23T09:53:00.000-05:00

Through the River and through the woods...

turned out to be how to spend an amazing weekend in the Sypsey wilderness not just how to get to grandmother's house. My dad and I went on a backpacking excursion this weekend and man did we have a good time. There are so many beautiful waterfalls in the area but we managed to spend the night below one of the most secluded. On a previous trip dad had found this little canyon and I can't say I wasn't skeptical when, after 6 0r 7 miles on day one, we headed "just a little ways" off the main trail to see this natural wonder. I was overwhelmed once we got there, about a mile later, at how few people probably have ever trekked down to this gorge.

It is where two tribuataries meet making two waterfalls right next to each other. Of course the waterfalls have names so we weren't the first people down there but it sure felt like it. We set up our tent on the only flatish spot around we couldn't find a trace of other people. We ended up hiking about 16 miles total and though I am definately feeling it this morning it was worth every step. I enjoy the outdoors so much I don't know how I waited this long to dive back into it. There is no better place to just feel God radiating than the outdoors seeing wildflowers, birds, snakes and insects in their natural habitat is a blessing. The last two miles of the walk back to the car we about as tough on me as anything I have ever done. We took a trial that was supposed to be about a mile long(45 min walk) and it ended up taking 2.5 hours on a ridge with no shade and it sapped me, slapped me around like I said something about it's momma. I was exausted but we persevered and Dad had to walk a little slower that he was used to but we made it home. And having finished one of my current books on the trip I figured I could end with a couple reviews.

Books

Me Talk Pretty One Day(Dave Sedaris) - 5 out of 5 - Hilarious collection of autobiographical essays. This guys just keeps me laughing. The above picture is me reading a couple sections to Dad at camp saturday night. Who would have thought God would make me a recliner all the way out there especially one that was really comfortable.

To Kill a Mockingbird - 4 out of 5 - Great classic. I had never read the whole thing and I really enjoyed it. Couldn't put it down.

2007-04-12T15:12:00.000-05:00

The Calm After the Storm...

is so so sweet. I have spent the last twenty days in a state of perpetual work. Starting on February 28th I worked straight to Easter without a day off and without a day shorter than 12 hours. But enough about that I learned a whole hell of a lot during the outage and I'm glad I had as much responsibility as I did.

Having people that you have fun with and care about to spend time with is always something that I love. Having an awesome group of friends in Auburn, the Lost watching crowd (which is not to say we don't do other things, you know who you are), work friends, Bible study couples and my other nerdy friends that don't fall into those categories but I spend countless hours playing in the online world with are a blessing to me. You all rock my face off.

Is it just me or have the good shows just gotten better this second half of the television season. The Office and Lost seem to get better and better every week and the Black Donnellys has done nothing but surprise me with how good it is and no offense to my wife since she enjoys reality TV, I really think scripted television is taking back over. I feel like American Idol, Bachelor, etc. are on the way down and I struggle to keep from smiling when I say this but thank goodness. Ever since Friends went off the air I have worried about the state of television but I know that I laugh just as hard if not much harder at the office than I did at Friends and this is my all time favorite.

I thought maybe I would end each BLOG from now on with a recommendation list of books and movies I have read/watched since my last entry. Take it how you want I just calls 'em like I sees 'em.

Movies
Don't Watch - Eragon - Annoyingly childish and dumbed down from the high quality book it came from.
Watch - Pursuit of Happyness - Will Smith fan or not this story is outstanding and he plays the role perfectly.
Watch(dudes)/Don't Watch(ladies) - Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj - no explanation needed except one big private parts/fart joke.
Even - Children of Men - heavy movie about post apacolyptic earth with no kids, neat movie, lots of death.

Books
Count of Monte Cristo - 5 out of 5 - much better than the movie so if you liked it you will love the book.
Next(Micheal Chricton) - 2.5 out of 5 - trying to hard, somewhat hard to follow, definately not his best book as he tries to tackle genetic engineering.
Stiff: The curious life of human cadavers - 5.5 out of 5 - Full of cool stories and a history of willed body to science stuff. Cool as hell.

2007-03-07T14:33:00.000-06:00

Now that everyone has had a bathroom break...

We can continue with PART 2 of the State of the McFee's Address. ALOT has happened since the first half was posted some weeks ago. Namely this guy \/

Barley is his name and we don't know really what he is yet but he's some kind of shepherd mix for sure. At four months old and weighing in at a mighty 15 lbs. he has the potential to be pretty big but as long as he stays as cool as he is now I don't think a topout at 60 lbs. Would really be that big of a deal.

Next, the McFee's are gym members, that's right, and actually going this time. Nick and I have been running, let's just call it once a week, for now. We plan on kicking it up a notch after basketball season since we both need to be 100% this week, it's tournament time!

Work is great I love my job and the amount of work I have been doing has kept me from being able to blog as much. I am going to keep this short today and promise to do some late night blogging like I did back in the old days of this blog.

Keep us and our patients in your prayers because Barley is great but so help me, if he keeps doodoo'n in his cage I'm going to go crazy.

2007-01-24T09:59:00.000-06:00

My fellow Americans... (Part 1)

last night our President gave his State of the Union address. I felt like it was a good time to give the State of the McFees address in my blog.

This by the way is my family's tartan. Anyway, this address concerns only the McFees of Montgomery and though the rest of the family is doing well they will have to write their own blog about it.

Concerning work my wife and I both are enjoying our jobs and couldn't be happier to get up and go every morning. Well I would be happier if it was later but at least it's before the traffic. We are steadily bringing our home together day by day. We now have furniture and a few wall hangings as well as a lot of painting done. There is always another project to be worked on but we are trying not to let the house eat all of our extra spending money. There is of course our Bible study that really starts off my week right every Monday night. We did a study on Corinthians before Christmas and now we have jumped to James. There is definitely something wonderful about 5 or 6 young married couples studying the Bible together and getting to know each other at the same time, we have thoroughly enjoyed it.

We are enjoying several shows and I am just going to list them all and let you decide which one of us is the instigator:

American Idol
The Office
Grey's Anatomy
Lost
My Name is Earl
Studio 60
Deal or No Deal

I think that covers the primetime shows that we watch regularly. Anyway I will continue on the next post, until then keep the McElhenys in your prayers they will be bringing a new baby into this world in the coming weeks and no matter what everyone thinks I just have a feeling its a boy :)

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.

-Chinese Proverb

2007-01-09T14:12:00.000-06:00

I do love a challenge,

No matter how trivial. I have endeavored to enjoy this bowl season to the utmost. I finished the bowl season a happy man for several reasons:

Watched 30 of 30 watchable bowls (see previous posts for rules).
SEC went 6-3 this bowl season including a national championship. GO SEC!!
Auburn beat Nebraska. WAR EAGLE!!
I managed to keep a happy wife while gorging myself on football.

At least I hope I did the last one :). Well now it's back to the real world where you don't get "official reviews" and there aren't 80,000 people cheering or booing your every move. Where more important decisions have to be made than which game to put on the main TV and which one to put on the secondary TV being fed by the splitter.

My wife and I are church hunting.

We have come to enjoy the company of a group of young marrieds that we Bible study with and through them we have found a Presbyterian church that we really like. I being the engineer that I am wanted to do some research into the differences between Presbyterian and Baptist as well as Methodist having grown up Methodist but attended a Baptist church in college. What I have found so far is not cut and dry. Seeing the differences in the different branches of Presbyterianism also got me looking into Methodism and Baptism(the denomination) and I see tangle of people who are still searching for a good way to worship and serve God to this day. I personally love a preacher that challenges me every Sunday morning and that is what I have followed since a wonderful man, WG Henry, forever "ruined" me.

Whether it's a good or bad thing, I refuse to accept boring sermons. Our Sunday at the Presbyterian church was enlightening and I liked the pastors sermon, I am also starting to read the Westminster Confession of Faith. It was given to me by our Bible study leader to help me understand the differences in Presbyterianism. I love to learn and especially I love to learn about God so this should be quite an interesting experience for my wife and I. Keep us in your prays.

"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much."

- Mother Teresa

2007-01-05T10:48:00.000-06:00

I wouldn't say I'm missing it...

but this break, at least for a couple days, of college football has been restful. I posted earlier that I was going to try to watch at least three quarters of every bowl game during this post-season. Well with 29 out of the 32 games in the books it looks like I might be victorious. Out of the 29 so far I have seen 27 games. I know what your thinking, "that's not all of them?" The problem came from the NFL Network which was not offered in my viewing area so... I have watched 27 out of the 27 games that have come on television so far :). Quite an accomplishment if I may toot my own horn for a second or so. There that was good enough. Anyway Auburn won so WAR DAMN EAGLE!!!! and one last thing about college football before I begin to reminisce, I have been enthralled with the Georgia Tech fight song for years especially after hearing the opening line, I'm a ramblin' wreck from Georgia Tech and a helluva engineer. Well today I found the fight song in it's entirety and I thought I would share it with anyone else who shared my curiosity.

Official fight song:
Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech

I'm a ramblin' wreck from Georgia Tech
And a hell of an engineer--A helluva, helluva, helluva, helluva, hell of an engineer,
Like all the jolly good fellows,
I drink my whiskey clear.
I'm a ramblin' wreck from Georgia Tech
And a hell of an engineer.

Oh! If I had a daughter,
sir,I'd dress her in White and Gold.
And put her on the campus
To cheer the Brave and Bold.*
But if I had a son, sir,
I'll tell you what he'd do
He would yell, "To Hell with Georgia,"
like his daddy used to do.

Oh! I wish I had a barrel of rum
And sugar three thousand pounds,
A college bell to put it in
And a clapper to stir it round,
I'd drink to all good fellows
Who come from far and near.
I'm a ramblin', gamblin',
Hell of an engineer! Hey!
(*Some students will substitute the line"To raise the ratio!" referring to the low female-male ratio in the student body.)

Great huh, I wish my song talked about drinking and gambling instead of eagles flying, but hey I would rather be at Auburn than Georgia Tech any day (No offense yellow jackets I just love the plains).

Finally, I wanna say happy new year to everyone and I hope that this year treats you all well. We have loved our new house especially now that it is finally coming together, this year we should have all the painting done and our furniture is trickling in as well. It looks a little sad now without it's Christmas decorations and I don't know why but I always feel guilty putting the nativity scene away. Good luck to you all in the new year and GO GATORS!

"I never think of the future, it comes soon enough. "
- Albert Einstein

2006-12-28T09:26:00.000-06:00

9 out of 9...

but starting to get a little worried. The game last night was a great one. The Pac-10 is 0 - 3 which is something that only happens in those really good dreams. The problem lies in the choice of a couple of the bowls to be played on the NFL Network? I don't even know what that is but I don't think I have it. If by some chance I miss the NFL Network games I think I should get some kind of asterisk or something which states the games were "unwatchable" and mean actually unable to watch it not, "the game is so terrible its unwatchable". This morning I got to thinking about this past Christmas weekend and it made me smile. There are a lot of people out there who have no family or, maybe just as bad, they have family and they don't see them. I am surrounded by more family than I know what to do with and they all love me, how great is that. I received much more than I gave this holiday season in quality time, love and presents. It was a great, happy holiday.

Finally I want to say congratulations to Laura's grandparents. Yesterday was their 65th wedding anniversary. WOW! With only one year under our belts that seems like an eternity of time, and I mean that in a good way. Laura and I have had so much fun this past year enjoying each others company and friendship I can't imagine what it would be like to be able to look back on 65 great years just like this one.
Laura, I love you. Here's to at least 64 more years.

"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
- Mark Twain

2006-12-27T08:25:00.000-06:00

The Bowl Watching Challenge...

was set before me by our recent Co-op here at the mill. Well he didn't really start it was my defense of the current bowl setup that got me into this exciting and interesting mess. The discussion was one that has been carried out around many a watercooler or cups of coffee this football season, "Playoffs vs. Bowls". The arguments 32 team, 16 team, 8 team, and plus 1 seem to always come up in the conversation especially when these first bowl games pit two storied programs against each other like for instance Eastern Michigan vs. Middle Tennessee State or Tulsa vs. Utah. To make a long argument short the co-op, Matt Mullins, stated that the only bowl game worth watching was the national championship because none of the others "mattered". I strongly disagreed with him and my side of the argument was helped when he said that he would also watch the Auburn game. There are 32 bowls - 64 teams that will play in this month long stretch of gift giving, worshiping and celebrating. That's over half of the division 1 football teams and everyone of those schools have students and fans that love their school, even Rice the smallest Div. 1 school that only has 40,000 alumni has something to get excited about this bowl season because their team "made it". So I told him I will watch all the bowl games because I LOVE college football. No Chance he said but so far I have proved him wrong. Now it does depend on what you consider watching a game: 1 quarter, a half, 3 quarters, the whole thing, or just scrolling through and pausing every time you get back to channel 28. I myself consider 3 quarters to be considered a full game watching since there is a chance you might, I don't know, watch a recorded episode of "The Office" during the halftime show and not come back until the game is underway. With that set I am now at 8 of 8 on the bowls so far and those were the hard ones. Two close calls have been games watched while at restaurants but with strategic seat choice I was able to fulfill my obligatory time requirement. I will keep everyone posted on how I am doing and hopefully I will get all 32 of 32. By the way Christmas was fantastic, God watched over us as we traveled along with the rest of our families. "No Tears '06" went off without a hitch. We were able to spend enough time with our respective families to walk away with everyone smiling. Lets hope every Christmas is as happy as this one. I will leave you with a quote I saw over the holidays.

"A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences." - Dave Meurer

2006-12-11T23:33:00.000-06:00

After a long day at work...

I like to wind down with a few pages in a good book along with a couple hours on a good video game. Normally I stay ahead of the game in both of these categories but lately I am definitely slacking. I have three books waiting to be started here at the house while I am reading two others - Lost and The Jungle. Which, by the way, might be one of the better books I have read in a while. It's a classic about the meat packing industry in Chicago especially when you think that just about everyone was an immigrant at some point in their lineage. A big surprise for me too is that I haven't jumped into the new "next generation" gaming hodge podge that is Christmas '06. I read today that so far the new Nintendo Wii has sold more than DOUBLE the PS3, and everyone was worried about the name. Nintendo will always be here and if it's not I don't know that I will want to be gaming anymore. There is a silver and non-nerd lining to this post as well. I made the wonderful mistake of sending out my last post in an email so now I have to BLOG more often :) Thanks for the comments family, you know that I love. I am going to attempt to kick it up a notch in the next post with some pictures but until then... PEACE!

"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything." :)
-Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

2006-12-06T11:07:00.000-06:00

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

how funny it is that you make me feel like Christmas is around the corner. I have stockings already hung by the chimney with care ( and monograms). But until that freshly cut down wonder graced the interior of my home it might as well have been June for how close Christmas seemed to me. Now that we have a fire place we are attempting to take full advantage. Last night after getting the tree in the stand we sat back drank our respective coffees and mochas (hot chocolate on steroids) and enjoyed the tree by firelight. There isn't much better. With Christmas fast approaching I have to say God has shown himself to me lately in so many forms. My wife and I have had some trouble picking a church to go to and a direct result of this is the lack of Christ-centered activities. Now don't get me wrong I pray and thank God all of the time for the blessings he has given us but we have recently joined a Bible study and it has literally lit a fire in my soul. I forgot what it was like to weekly brood over the Bible searching through verses and looking for the message. My last run in with this was back in Auburn where the guys and I had a little book club/bible study that really got me into learning more about the Bible and the "background" story that helps so much in understanding it. I challenge everyone this holiday season to read something in the Bible that isn't the Christmas Story (of course read that also) but something else that shows the love of Christ other than his birth.

Secondly I would like to say that I love this season for two reasons.
1. Christmas
2. Bowls, mainly of the college football variety but I will not turn one down that contains food.

I love football and this time of year we get TONS of it. Starting Dec. 19 and lasting until Jan. 8, that's 16 days, there will be 32 bowl games. That's an average of 2 football games a day, BEAUTIFUL! I also found an interesting little site that had the votes for the final Coaches AP Top 25 poll. Each of the 63, well 62 (Jim Tressel is a panty waist), coaches ballots listed and how they compared to the other coaches as well as how each of the final 26 teams were ranked throughout the season.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/graphics/coaches_fb_poll_2006/flash.htm

It's pretty nifty. Well have a great holiday and if I don't BLOG before then Merry Christmas!

"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. "
-George Burns(1896-1996)

2006-11-22T09:04:00.000-06:00

Chuck Norris puts the laughter in Manslaughter.

This post has nothing to do with Chuck Norris other than to tell you that there is a website out there on the internet that when you go to it produces one random Chuck Norris "Fact" that can be rated. http://4q.cc/index.php?pid=fact&person=chuck Reloading the page gives you a new one. What's behind Chuck Norris' beard? Another fist.

Anyway moving on. I don't need to tell you how excited I get about seeing family. I love my Mom, Dad, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, step-uncles and cousins, no mater how many times they are removed. The great part is now my family has literally doubled in size. Which is pretty good considering I have 22 first cousins. Thanksgiving and Christmas are serious family togetherness times and I love it. The only problem is that families expect new married couples to continue attending family events like they did when they were dating. The only way everyone would be "happy", and by happy I mean some sort of bizarro happy where everyone just isn't crying, is if I dropped Laura off at her house in Birmingham and trucked it on up to Hartselle and we spent the holidays separated. I can't image what people do when their In-laws live more than an hour apart. The best part about the whole thing though is that since we are married it's a one for all, all for one kinda deal with the McFee's of Montgomery. I will be with my wife every minute of every holiday this year no matter where that takes us.

Two things also that I wanted to comment on quickly and without too much gloating.

War Damn Eagle!! Thanks in part to Tommy "Tom Thumb" Tuberville. Second 10 win season in 3 years, 5 straight over the school up the road, and still undefeated in TTown.
I have a new house and I love it!
A new car is in my future - hopefully that future is today!

Finally happy Thanksgiving to everyone and I hope you all travel safely. My quote for today comes from a process control engineers office door.

"Never argue with and idiot.

They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience."

2006-11-13T16:03:00.000-06:00

Now that's a house of a different color.

Well I am a two week old home owner and life seems to be surprising me at every turn. I didn't realize how just painting something can make it feel more like yours. My wife tried to explain it to me pre-painting but I just took at as a really good excuse to buy paint. Everyday I feel more and more at home in this new world of debt and I have got to say the goods outway the bads. The bads being the mortgage, so really I guess its just the bad. I am excited to move forward in this life we have started with great friends and so far great neighbors. My work is going well I feel like I am getting more responsibility every day. If only my football team would quit sending out some terrible excuse for an alter-ego I would have the whole package. Seriously I feel like Auburn this year is Bruce Wayne. You know how he doesn't have the suit on he gets his butt kicked but when he gets in that suit he is damn near invincible. Well I will be honest. I have been putting quotes on the end of my posts since the beginning and this post really started because I heard a little "saying" today and I really wanted to post it, which I might just do in the future, so I wrote an entry. I almost fell out of my chair laughing but I don't know what kind of mood you will be in when you read it I had just heard a grey headed fifty year old man telling a story about a store in Florida that sold 3-D elephant thong if you catch my drift...

"Old age and treachery always defeat youth and skill."

2006-10-23T16:48:00.000-05:00

The End

Well technically that is not normally the way to begin anything but I title this Blog "The End" at the beginning since I usually quote at the end not say "The End" at the end. I know that was a little confusing but I just wanted to pass on a little insight from a phenomenal little book I just read. "The End" is the end of The Series of Unfortunate Events Triskaidecology (13 books bet you didn't know that's what it was called just a side note a 13 sided polygon is a triskaidecagon).
In this book he talks about how we as people react to good and bad situations, and it really got me thinking. He points out that when we eat say a strawberry milkshake for the first time we are over come with this combination of milk and strawberry ice cream and just can't get enough. But does that feeling get better with every milkshake or does it slowly degrade over time? On the flipside what about a bad situation, say having something stolen. It doesn't become a run of the mill everyday event. In fact we tend to get more excited, angry and frustrated with every occurrence. This to me is one reason we stray so far from God. He gives us good things and good things and we just accept them and move on like it's what's supposed to happen but everytime something bad happens its a monumental let down from the Big Guy. I felt this especially this weekend while trudging down I-85 after my car broke down. I felt myself led to prayer over my predicament and realized I had rarely stopped and thanked God the 173 other times I had driven to and from Auburn without incident. I am not trying to read to much into Mr. Snicket's story but the idea he puts forward is a good one. We need to celebrate the times when things go right, ALWAYS.

"Eet mor chiken"

2006-10-09T09:40:00.000-05:00

Day 16

of work in a row. And I believe it's the first time since I started blogging that I didn't wait a month between posts. We are finishing up our fall outage here at the paper mill. I am worn out and tired but unbelievably happy that during this month I will become a home owner. A married couple, friends of mine and Laura's, that live in Baltimore found out they were unexpectedly expecting. And we had the most interesting argument about what makes you more grown up? Having a baby or buying a house? We had a sound argument that involved post event. It takes a lot more time and responsibility to take care of and raise a child than it does to live in a house. Their argument was more on the front end, there are not many true pre-requisites to having a baby other than puberty :) But a house takes planning and saving. That got me thinking, I don't feel much more mature than I did when I hit puberty so what makes me so certain that I can move on in this house thing and become an "adult". I will tell you what I think it is...

FAITH

I have faith that my wife will be there, God will support me and so will the rest of my family. I am not trying to preach to anyone but my wife and I were discussing it last night and she said, "How can you just say it will all work out? Don't you worry about this or that?" and I reply "No, I don't." and I mean it. I don't just run through life willy nilly not thinking out my decisions or the future but there is one thing about life that is certain and that's uncertainty. I will leave you with a statement that will leave you pondering. A 64 year old control room operator said this too me yesterday.

"You never know what life brings, that's why I never buy unripe bananas ."

2006-10-06T07:58:00.000-05:00

Love is a very special thing...

I have just experienced marriage in a light that I thought impossible. Some of you that know me were at my wedding almost one year ago. Which means my one year wedding anniversary is right around the corner, October 15th to be exact. This caused quite a conundrum for me because the 15th falls on a Sunday. Any date would generally come on Saturday afternoon/evening the 14th. If you're not an Auburn fan that date really means nothing to you and you're saying, "Yeah, that's what I would do to." I was willing to do this and had planned on it despite the fact that two top 5 teams would be playing at Jordan-Hare that very afternoon. Thats right as of right now No.2 Auburn will be playing No.5 Florida at home next Saturday. I had not really persued tickets for that game or anything other than a celebratory date with my lovely wife. The surprise came to me this morning around 7:30 AM when my wife called me at work because she couldn't stand it anymore. My anniversary present (BTW first anniversary is paper according to the list of anniversary themes) my wife got us two FIFTY yard line SIXTH row tickets to what could be the biggest home game for the rest of the season.

Here we come to a point where good is rewarded with good. I planned a romantic dinner so I get football tickets.

"Can life get any better than this, I submit that it cannot!"

2006-09-08T08:42:00.000-05:00

What's it like when your to busy to BLOG?

I have had about the most eventful couple of weeks as I have had since moving to Prattville. My wife and I are moving away from Prattville :) Yep you heard it here folks to the wide blue yonder know as East Montgomery. I will have to get up extra early (5:30 or so) but I couldn't be happier. We found the perfect 3 bedroom/2 bath/ big back yard house in Halcyon right behind Eastchase.

The process has been exciting and stressful but to tell you the truth a lot easier than I thought it would be. We will be closing on Halloween and will probably have 18 million trick or treaters while we are still moving stuff in.

Work is crazy too. I have been in my new department now for 2 and a half months and I am learning so much but I'm not getting my 4 pm leave time anymore, most days 5 is about when I'm driving out the gate. But it's worth it and I feel like I am accomplishing a lot more now than on the paper machines.

It's crazy how much life changes all around us without asking us what our ideal situation would be. Our friends Leslie and John McElheny found out they are "expecting" with a due date exactly on their two year wedding anniversery. We just spent the weekend with them and they are not in the best place financially with John in law school to have a baby but they are happier than I have ever seen them. So I will leave you with a related remark

"When life gives you lemons make lemonade, then find the person life gave vodka to and have a party"

2006-08-12T09:33:00.000-05:00

Homework Assignment

Alright, I'm gonna have to pull an AP test switchero on you Nick. Since my music vocabulary is very limited and I don't really "do" classic rock ,which will probably be like 75% of the responses, I am going to put this forward.
If the question read "You could have only 10 movies for the rest of your life what would they be?"
(in no specific order)
- Star Wars IV (A New Hope)
- Old School
- Garden State
- Spiderman 2
- Star Wars V (Empire Strikes Back)
- Star Wars VI (Return of the Jedi)
- Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
- The Princess Bride
- Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
- The Usual Suspects

Alright I know that was a copout but music just doesn't mean the same thing to me as it does to most. BTW I have all three of those movies from my last post (the good ones) so if you would like to see them let me know.

2006-08-09T10:30:00.000-05:00

Day 2

Scrabble is the greatest board game ever invented. My wife and I have taken to 1 on 1 matches to prepare for couples events in the future. It's actually a really fun way to do it especially becaue we are both VERY competitive. Words/definitions have always been a really geeky love of mine and I cannot stand to read a word and not know what it means. This can present a problem if you read as many books as I do. Since I make linerboard and don't do anything philosphical at work I am probably gonna stick with writing about my books and movies, especially since nobody probably wants to hear about my crack addiction (World of Warcraft, aka World of War"crack"). I have seen four movies in the past three days and I would recommend three of them.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
The Island
The Benchwarmers
V for Vendetta

Hopefully you can guess which one comes in at #4(a slightly funny #4)think

Billy Madison + Duece Bigelow + Napoleon Dynamite = Benchwarmers

Good for a laugh just don't think to hard :). The other three though I don't know if we can be friends if you don't watch them. And last thing before I get back to work. I don't care if James Frey is a freaking liar, that bastard can freaking write a book. "A Million Little Pieces" is phenomenal so far and I'm only at page ~130 out of 430, you don't come across to many non chick books that can make you happy/sad/feel his pain like Frey.

I think maybe since this is a blog I should leave you with some words of wisdom each time just to keep you on your toes, today its going to be Brodie from "Mallrats"

"Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn for Sega"

2006-08-08T14:41:00.000-05:00

So this is what it's all about. You type something in here and people just respond to it? Well I can't wait to see what people say about this one.