Okay, as I sit here listening to the Hudson Hawk soundtrack (Hey, I liked the movie), I'm trying to go over the events of the weekend so I can remember all of the wonderful things to tell you nice people. On Friday I had hoped that the Lightning could pull a miracle out of the hat, but they were eliminated. The only bright spot is that there was an NBA playoff game scheduled right after the hockey game. The game went into a triple overtime (I love multiple overtime games.) and the NBA fans had to miss a quarter and a half of the basketball game. That was a good feeling. Tonight there are three possible elimination games. If Ottawa, Vancouver, and the Ducks can win one more, round two is over and it's on to the conference finals.
Also on Friday I said I was off to help build a swingset. And, while that is true I thought we'd be done Friday night. Well, Friday night ended and the set wasn't finished. So, I got up early on Saturday to go back and help. Saturday afternoon rolled around and I had previous engagements so I had to leave with the set still unfinished. Sunday afternoon, Mark and I worked with a determination to finish the set no matter how long it took. Thankfully, we were able to accomplish the goal. Jacob loved it, but man, if there's an extra price for assembly...PAY IT!!!! Or, at least spend four or five hours familiarizing yourself with the directions so that you don't have to take apart all of the things you already put together. One of the crew wasn't big on instructions Friday night. On Saturday, we found that several boards were in the wrong places. So, most of Saturday was spent undoing Friday's work. A good portion of Sunday was spent undoing or re-doing Saturday's work as well. In the end, there was a happy (almost) three year old so that's all that matters.

Also on Saturday, we headed over to Mitch's house to watch the first X-Men movie. Then we headed to the theater to see...you guessed it X2. On the whole it wasn't bad. Not having read any of the comic books or seen the cartoon I'm left to my own imagination on most things. I love the mutant effects, especially the gratuitous use of the Zippo lighter. My Aunt Margaret works for the Zippo factory so anything that keeps them in business is good with me. After the movie we headed back to Mitch's for dinner and ended up watching a movie called American Outlaws. The film, I was told, is loosely based on the life of Jesse James. About the only three things the actual life of Jesse James and this movie have in common are 1.) Jesse and Frank James were actual people and also characters in the movie. 2.) They both, at some point, rode horses. 3.) They both hold up banks. That's where the similarities end. However, it was an entertaining movie at least. And, I did learn one thing from it. Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton surrendered at the Battle of Vicksburg. That wasn't actually in the movie, but the conversation going on around the movie brought up the question and I looked it up for future reference. Anyway, I think those are all the major weekend occurences and work has been extremely quiet today so I'll just sign off here and stop boring everyone to death.