BenSpark Family Adventures

It is an M. Night Shyamalan movie and I like them, The Sixth Sense was great and I liked Unbreakable. I haven’t seen Signs or The Village yet. However, I have just seen this trailer and I can tell you why I probably won’t see this one, Lady in the Water. It is the wolf thing that is in the movie. There is a part of the trailer where it busts through a wall. You see, there was a movie based on a Steven King book (Cycle of the Werewolf) called Silver Bullet. In one part of the movie a werewolf busts through the wall of a house. You see werewolves are not like vampires, they are ferocious and won’t be stopped by mere doors and the lack of an invitation. Only a silver bullet can stop them. That is it. Werewolves can come crashing right through walls without you least suspecting it. That scares the crap out of me. I happened to see this scene in Silver Bullet when I was younger and that was it for me. No werewolf movies for me. And I bet I would really like Underworld and Underworld – Evolu...

Photo-A-Day #398 05/11/06 I doubt I have ever taken a picture of the camera that I use to take the daily photos. Well this is it, it is a Sanyo Xacti C4 straight from Japan. And it is dying. I have a replacement camera on the way. It is in Chelmsford now according to the UPS tracking number. It is a cheap interim camera until I get a digital SLR camera. I haven’t decided to get a Nikon or Canon or some other kind. I have used my sister’s camera often and it is a Nikon D70. If I get a Nikon as well then we can share lenses.

Photo-A-Day #397 05/10/06 It has been a very long time since I was last on the west coast. This week’s trip was a quick one. I spent an inordinate amount of time on airplanes this trip. Most of the flights were very benign and I had one delayed flight, Cincinnati to Boston. I don’t know if I get more annoyed when I am going to my destination or when I am returning home when this sort of thing occurs. I probably wouldn’t be as annoyed if I was heading to Providence but I am going to Boston and once I get picked up I need to drive home from Canton. I’m annoyed that prices are too high to go out of Providence. I am annoyed that I couldn’t even fly on an airline I am actively accumulating points with. From a purely status attaining standpoint this trip was a waste for flights. I am slowly getting closer to actual status at Marriott but still have over halfway to attain Gold. I have missed that by very little each year. Oh well, just keep on doing what I am doing and I will get there. I hav...

Photo-A-Day #396 05/09/06 From my hotel room I can see Mt. Hood, the highest MT in Oregon. One of the folks from our team took a ride up there today. I should have done that tomorrow when I had the chance but I didn’t even see it yesterday because of the fog in the air.

Photo-A-Day #395 05/08/06 This is the Great Salt Lake. Is it weird or should it not be red? Also today I went to find the rich stuff in Astoria Oregon and all I got was a lot of driving done. Around 3:30 PST I decided that Astoria was not far from Portland so I took the trek out there in search of The Goondocks. If you were a child of the 80’s you missed out if you never saw The Goonies. Well, that movie was filmed in Astoria Oregon. I wanted to drive out there and see the place for myself. It really is an interesting place. It lies at the mouth of the Columbia River it is where Lewis and Clark stopped their journey because they had found the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to find that beach that the kids ended up on at the end, but I was pressed for time and didn’t find it. (I just found that is was not in Astoria, so I could have looked all dang day. Pretty much the only place I was even near was the Bowling Alley that Chunk was at. Of course I figured that I would find it easily, you know ...

Photo-A-Day #394 05/07/06 What a beautiful spring day today. Allison and I walked to my Aunt Corrine and Uncle Jeff’s house for my cousin Haley’s First Communion Party. We had a very nice time spending the day with our extended family. The photo today is of one of Jeff and Corrine’s friend’s kids. It was his first time on a motorbike. And he loved it. He was scooting around the backyard at 2 1/2 miles and hour and loving it.

Photo-A-Day #393 05/06/06 Today Allison and I did a little shopping and we even went to the comic book store because it was Free Comic Book Day. There was a free G.I. Joe and a Transformers and an X-Men one and I found a CSI one for Allison. Randy moved things around at the shop and much more room for back issues. Because I only took one book with me last week I ended up picking one up at the airport. It was Iris Johansen’s Countdown. I like her books but it is hard to know which one is the next in a series. The last book I read the main character was about 10 years old and in Countdown she is 21. These are flowers that are blooming on a tree in our front yard. Dad put it in about 6 or more years ago and each spring it becomes more beautiful. We also went to a spaghetti dinner at church that was sponsored to raise money for the Relay for Life teams at our church. We met some very nice people who knew some of my teachers and their kids from when I was in High School. We had a very nice ...