Monkey-boy says HI!

HI!, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

I was thrilled to see my old friends Nancy and Mark, and their almost 4 son Anthony this weekend. Poor Anthony started running a fever, so he slept a lot. I am quite amazed at Anthony's language skills! I've met some 5 and 6 year olds (and some 30+ year olds) who can't put together sentences that complex. Brenden meowed for Nancy - I'm so proud of him! He also demonstrated quite aptly why we call him 'Monkey-boy'; some of his climbing feats were giving even Anthony grey hairs.

I made Jonathan some General Tso's Chicken for Father's day and let Brenden scribble all over a card I picked out. And like a jackass I forgot to call my dad. He's supposed to come visit this coming weekend.

What I'm Watching (in hi-def!)

My favorite High Definition channel is hands-down the Discovery HD channel, especially Sunrise Earth. This show is on at 6 am and it's simply mornings on earth somewhere. This morning they had hot air balloon morning in Vermont. It's gorgeous to watch.

I also like the Universal HD channel, because they keep showing nifty movies. I recently watched The Andromeda Strain, which is showing its age (1971), but is still a totally watchable thriller about scientists racing the clock trying to find the nature of an organism that came to earth aboard a satellite and wiped out an entire town.

Then there is Jaws, and I think I have documented sufficiently why this is still one of my all-time favorite movies. And the high definition really brought out details I haven't seen since I originally saw it in the theaters, like during the night attack on Quint's boat: The floats attached to the shark are agitating phosphorescent plankton as they are being dragged through the water, and during long shots you can see shooting stars in the sky.

I saw bits and pieces of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith on the HBO HD channel. I'm still amazed that George Lucas got such uniformly stiff and wooden performances from such decent actors, but those space battles sure are pretty!

Brenden made me watch some Nascar race sunday afternoon, because he was attracted to the cars on the ESPN HD channel. Fortunately he lost interest after about 5 minutes or so so I went back to watch the Braves get beaten by the Indians on a non-HD channel.