Okay; my lungs are better but now I have a nice sinus headache.

Hey, I'm famous! Uh, scroll down a bit. I posted yesterday's link to his site before I knew about this. I have a small handful of sites that I support financially; his is one of them.

Did I mention our new house has a pool? I have been bitching about it - I didn't want one - but I guess that sounds conceited. "Oh, I hate the new pool!"

Well, I do. They are vast money-sucking pits. I knew owning one would be a maintenence headache.

It rained hard yesterday; at about 9 in the evening my husband got worried about the pool overflowing. He bitched, whined, and went to Wal-Mart and bought a Shop-Vac - only to discover he couldn't use it to suck up water without buying another piece for it.

So he was set to head back to Wal-Mart and I pointed out to him that the Shop-Vac was pretty useless for his intended purpose; you might as well grab a couple of buckets and start bailing. I won't go into detail but the argument got a little heated.

So I stomped outside and stood there in the dark and the cold, wet rain; I contemplated the pool and I asked myself the magic question: "What would MacGyver do?"

I know what he would do: he would gather up some household chemicals and blow the damn thing out of existence. Me, I grabbed a serrated knife, pulled the garden hose off its rack, and measured a length of it from the pool to a nearby drainage ditch. I cut a length of hose off, applied suction, and voila, instant siphon.

Jon stared at me for a second, and did 2 things right. 1: he apologized for getting angry, and 2: refrained on making an oral sex joke. Had he done the latter I would have killed him - or maybe just pushed him into the wet, dirty pool.

I realize I haven't talked about diet, exercise, or skydiving for a while. That's because I haven't done any of those things for a week. I did get 2 skydives last weekend - both AFF dives; a level 1 and a level 2. I haven't done any instruction for the last 2 months and it felt good to knock some rust off. She was a good student, too. Thank goodness when they have a brain and take it with them on the dive.

So more movie stuff:

We finally got the living room organized; with some careful pre-planning we managed to get the digital cable box, TiVo, VCR, DVD, and the Laserdisc player all working in conjunction with each other. The living room is almost devoid of boxes. I settled down to watch The Battle of Britain but haven't finished it because I got interrupted by an overflowing pool.

So here's a top 10 list:

Top 10 favorite male characters from movies and why I like them:

10) Peter Parker (Tobey McGuire, Spider-Man)

Loser nerd-boy develops superpowers. What elevated McGuire's nerd-boy to something special in my eyes was his growing understanding of the law of unintended consequences. I don't find McGuire attractive, but I do find Parker so. Like his uncle Ben pontificated on - the spider bite not only gave him super powers, but it also began his transformation into a man. And despite my anti-chick movie stance the angst between him and MJ is delightfully painful.

9) Spartacus (Kirk Douglas, Spartacus)

What most people don't realize is that Spartacus, as Kirk Douglas portrayed him, is nothing like Russell Crowe's Maximus. Spartacus is not the baddest badass (he loses the one gladiatoral fight he participates in) - he is a clever, intelligent, compassionate leader of men.

8) Peter Washington (Ken Foree, Dawn of the Dead)

Okay, if you woke up tomorrow and the world was overrun by flesh-eating zombies, wouldn't you want a calm, collected, intelligent, badass ex-SWAT team man taking care of you and your unborn child? Enough said.

7) Han Solo (Harrison Ford, Star Wars)

Duh. What preteen girl in the late 70's didn't have an estrogen spike when he showed up in the cantina? Solo is the apotheosis of the scoundrel with a heart of gold. While his character is nothing new to movies, like someone said: "It's not who does it first, it's who does it best".

6) Severen (Bill Paxton, Near Dark)

I'm not particularly fond of bad guys, and I'm not particularly fond of vampires. But Severen is evil incarnate in this movie, and his animal ferocity, his sheer joy at being aliv-er, undead, is infectious. Evil Bad Guy Goodness.

5) Hoot Gibson (Eric Bana, Black Hawk Down)

Gibson is a Delta Force soldier - he comes across in the movie as a bit of a lone wolf, a professional warrior. Badass, super-competent. Intelligent. And hot. He's not completely aloof - he offers advice to Josh Hartnett's young Ranger sargeant several times, trying to make him understand there's only so much responsibility you can shoulder in war.

4) Quincy (Jason Isaacs,Armageddon)

The smartest man on the planet. And, as Fox Mulder once pointed out, Smart *is* sexy. He's the guy who came up with the plan to save the world (remember the ketchup bottle speech?). He got so dissed; no one gave him a parade!

3) Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin, The Lord of the Rings)

The epitome of loyalty. We all know he's the real hero of the trilogy. Pudgy, thick, ordinary Sam saves the world because his friends needed him to.

2) John Preston (Christian Bale, Equilibrium).

Ruthless, cold-blooded, unquestioning (hot), until he manages to break the hold of the drug that makes him so. Betrays everything he thought was right in the name of emotion. Speaking of estrogen spikes: "I pay it gladly". Yow!

1) Richard Winters (Damian Lewis, Band of Brothers)

Yeah, you knew this was coming. Thoughtful, quiet, intelligent, lion-hearted leader of men. Kills without question when his country needed it, put it all away for a life of peace when it was all over. Based on a real man - do they make them like that any more?

I'll post my top 10 women characters later on.