Good morning all. *hears echo from the multitudes (okay, four. maybe): “Good morning, Matt!”* The weekend was a lot of fun. Friday evening I attended a get-together for the college group from my church, a cookout by the pool of the leaders’ apartment complex. Donald’s really starting to become a good friend. He’s into bikes, whereas I’m into cars, but we share enough common mechanical knowledge to have great conversations. We went to a movie night at Luis’ apartment last night and commented on Tombstone the whole time. I think you know that your sense of humor lines up with someone else’s when you can rip on a movie in progress (not too often, mind you) and they actually laugh. In any case, the party on Friday night was great; even the mosquitoes enjoyed themselves.
Afterwards I drove two guys from my Saturday morning car group to a monthy meeting of the Mazda Sports Car Club of NC, whose name sounds more lofty and official than the actual turnout at the meeting would indicate. Nevertheless, Nick and Mike, after being slightly confused and thoroughly debunked in all their Fast and the Furious-related aspirations concerning cars, achieved a state of automotive nirvana when given rides in a member’s immaculate 3rd-generation RX-7. It was actually quite amusing to witness their transformation from smug Vin Diesels-in-training to knock-kneed, slack-jawed puddles of automotive ecstasy, overcome with the smooth brutality of the most desirable Mazda’s accelerative prowess. I had fun talking to the guys, too.
Saturday night was a hoot, but not on account of Elyse’s wonderful pasta dinner. A group of us watched a Chinese vampire movie, which, if you haven’t seen one, is enlightening in terms of the peculiar idiosycrasies the Chinese assign vampires, such as, they may only hop, feet together, in order to move, and placing a small piece of paper containing Chinese characters on their forhead will “deactivate” them (but of course some of them will still twitch). If this sounds messed up to you, you’re on track. In its favor, though, the movie did contain a good deal more than its more elemental American counterparts, namely some decent suspense, the obligatory martial arts, humor, a smattering of romance, and even some touching scenes playing up the virtues of family values, even among bloodthirsty vampires. ‘Twas fun. Thank you Elyse.
Yesterday Jake (6) and I had a Lego war, something I’ve not done in eons. After showing Jake our stash of boxes upon boxes of Legos, I became more engrossed than I had intended in the process of creating a worthy spacecraft. It had to be perfect, you see, bristling with weaponry while still maintaining the fragile aesthetic balance warships often have. Jake just slapped some Legos together, and I think got a little impatient with my singlemindedness. In any event, he won the war due to a brilliant sortie by his largest spacecraft, armed to the teeth with (what else?) 19 lightsaber-wielding Jedi knights perched on the wings, which (obviously) deflected any incoming laser bolts I fired, trying to stave off the imminent destruction of my base. It was a bit of a pyrrhic victory for him, though, as I had already destroyed his main base and was on my merry way to vanquish his “secret” one when the unfortunate encounter with his ship occurred. Next time, next time…