Denise and I took Dad out to eat Sunday night.

As I told you yesterday, Dad called my house Sunday afternoon, lookin' to see if I was plannin' to come over and take him out to eat. Mom wasn't plannin' to cook, so she was gonna have to take him somewhere. he asked her about whether I was comin' to get him and she dialed the number for him. I think also he was confused and thought it was already Friday again. That's the way things are goin' these days.

Anyway, I asked Denise if she wanted to go. She said "Of course", and so a plan came together quickly. I headed south from Gatesville, where I'd been pickin' up my new toy, stopping in Killeen long enough to change shirts and wash up, and then we headed over to get the old dude.

At one point, as we drove to the Chinese food place, I handed Denise the camera and asked her to see if she could get some shots from the back seat. I've turned into SUCH a camera whore.



I tell ya, I LOVE my little car. It isn't that blue GT500 that I lust for but it's sporty enough and get's 28 to 30 MPGs. In a day when gas is getting to $3.20 a gallon and will probably get to $4 by the end of the summer, I think I'm better off goin' to work every day in this one. One of these days I'll be in a position to get an extra four-wheeled toy for the weekends, and the Ford folks may be happy to see me.



Anyway, I like to drive the Solara like it's a GT500 much of the time. Too many tickets will attest to that. That's when dad grabs for the hand hold and starts to tell me to slow down. He cracked Denise up at one point sayin' "You'd a made a great pilot son.", as I made a NASCAR move, darting by one truck and then out in front of another minivan that was piddlin' along. I tell ya, I can't STAND drivers who piddle along! A lot of time Denise wishes there were a break peddle on the passenger side too. I just take a drag on my cigar, blow the smoke up through the sun roof and tell her "Hold it together baby. Hold it together."

Of course, this is the same man who regaled me with stories in my youth of him drivin' his Dad along these very same roads back in the late 1950s in his little Austin Healey, with his dad holdin' on for dear life and tellin' him to slow down. The worm turns.



At some point I got this shot of Dad's eye's getting wide. Cracked me up when I got home and saw it on the computer. Not sure what he was lookin' at, or if it was my drivin', or what.

Anyway, we took him to Dynasty for another big buffet meal but he'd already forgotten about the last one. He kept askin' me how my week had been, like it was Friday, until I told him it was Sunday.

The food was great, again, and then the after-dinner tipple at the house was fun and tasty, with little glasses of Chateaus Monet goin' around. We got Mom a new bottle and a few for ourselves, so we could share with visitors. Of course, no one visits, so we'll probably have to drink it all ourselves. SUCH a pity.

After that, Denise and I went to the local Mall and saw 10,000 B.C. at the late showing. It turned out to be pretty cool, though it drives me up the wall to have movies mess up history like this. I mean, history is so friggin' cool all by itself. Why do they always get shit wrong?

First of all, by then hunters had much better technology than the stuff they show in the movie. They make the main characters look like friggin' Neanderthals, wrapped in skins and crap, and tossin' bone tipped spears. Most folks agree that by then the hunters were using something called an Atlatl, or a bow and arrow.

Most of the critters you see in the flick were extinct by 10,000 B.C. (or B.C.E., as they say now - Before the Common Era). Of course, I love anything with with Mammoths in it. I have a special affinity with other large hairy things that are mostly gentle, but occasionally roused to violence.

The coolest critters they show will blow you away, and you'll be thinkin' "Naaaa, those couldn't have existed.", but they did. And they may have preyed on people, just like in the movie. Think of a Velociraptor with many more feathers and stubby wings.

They make fleeting references to Atlantis and the idea that the Pyramids and the Sphinx were originally built by some very early mystery culture. They play up the old, now defunct idea that these wonderful monuments were built by slaves. They weren't. There's a very brief view of the Sphinx with a lions head. The theory is that the Egyptians took that much older statue and a Pharaoh replaced the lions head with his own. Who knows? I don't think any serious folks take that, well, seriously.

I know, I hear you sayin' "FHB, you've got to suspend disbelief. It's just a movie!" Yea, I know, but I had to do it SO OFTEN. I still liked it though. It's cool, and worth seein'.

Well, you guys have a great Tuesday, and a great hump day tomorrow. Cheers.