Agent Coulson

Watching the second half of Iron Man on one of the movie channels, and noticed a couple of entertaining things. Firstly, one of the locations used in the movie was the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA (which we visited a few months ago) and secondly one of the characters was called Agent Coulson! A quick check on IMDB confirms this, and also that we can look forward to seeing this character in a number of forthcoming releases (Thor, Nick Fury and the Avengers) as well as this year's Iron Man 2. Might be reason enough for watching the films - mind you Iron Man wasn't bad for a superhero action movie.

I would have added some WD Concert Hall pictures to this post, but I am still trying to get back up to date with Flickr uploading, and I still have well over 1,000 of the California pictures to upload, so have got nowhere near LA just yet. Don't rate my chances of being up to date before we go on Independence and take a few hundred more.

Finished Superfreakonomics this week (excellent book - borrowed the first one from the on board library and read it when we were on the Legend cruise in 2006!) and also read Frankie Boyle's autobiography. Outrageous, disgusting, offensive, but also very very funny.

Cross about Cross?

Finished the most recent Alex Cross outing from James Patterson the other day. I actually found it not too bad, but having said that I suppose that my expectations were set pretty low by some of his recent novels. Once upon a time, many years ago, I picked up a second hand copy of Along Came A Spider in a second hand bookstore, and from then on I was hooked on the thrillers about Alex, the detective / psychologist battling against the bad people of Washington DC and often the rest of the US as well. I thoroughly enjoyed the series for quite some time, and would grab the hardback as soon as it came out, but in recent years the quality has gone rapidly downhill. Now I pick up the paperback when it is on special offer (which they always will be now that Patterson is well and truly in the quantity over quality game). I then read with trepidation, hoping that Patterson hasn't hammered too many more nails into his reputation. Then again, it's not clear how much he cares as no doubt he can rely on there being a huge number of mugs like me out there, willing to buy and buy and buy, hoping for a return to form one day.

The current book ends by giving us a sneak preview of the first few pages of the next one due out soon. Alarmingly, Kyle Craig seems to be back again - wheel out the old adversaries when ideas are thin on the ground ...

One other thing - renting out his name to other authors to help them up the publishing ladder is just not on! He can't have that much involvement in the books that show his name plus another on the cover - there just isn't time.

Animation

We have a budding film-maker in the family. This is Jake's Olympic Opening Ceremony animation video made at school. Pretty cool, isn't it !!!

This is the life

OK, it's Sunday, the sun is shining and I'm laid in the hammock in the
garden tapping away on the iPad. This is officially "the Life". The
only downside being the sense of nervous anticipation about a certain
football game this afternoon. Why couldn't we manage to come top in
our group? Then we would have had Ghana in the second round followed
by Uruguay in the quarters, but now thanks to a late goal by the USA
resulting in them winning the group ( and, truth be told, more as a
result of us drawing our first two games) we now have to face Germany
in the second round, and if we get through it, then most likely
Argentina in the quarter finals - not that these two are bogey teams
for us or anything. Please no penalties, please no sendings off!

Last night we had Steve and Abbey over for a BBQ, which was lovely.
Jake was his in-company-grown-up self, and enjoyed challenging Steve
to a game of Fifa 10, which Steve was a good sport about. The funniest
was when I played against Steve - no goals but I think we both
finished the match with about seven players left. Amazingly, despite
being with my current employer for over 15 years I think that this was
the first time we'd had colleagues over for a meal - poor form indeed.

Jake and Nicky are just back from swimming (I was at church this
morning playing for Mark's baptism) and I think that there might be a
plan to go carpet shopping in a while. May be a bit of a challenge to
drag me out of the hammock. Still, so long as we are home in time for
kick off ...

T minus 50

We're at the end of another week, and a sunny one at that. Amazingly, it looks like carrying on with the nice weather over the weekend (no mud baths at Glastonbury this year). Fingers crossed it stays that way well into next week - I'm at the Oval for the England v Australia ODI on Wednesday and then Nicky and I are off to Wimbledon on Thursday.

Today is a milestone day - and I'm not referring to the anniversary of Michael Jackson's death - it is 50 days until we go on our cruise around the Med. Marking 50 days could well turn into a bit of a blog tradition, although having said that I seemed to miss it for California, but did at least get it for our last Florida trip, as in this post.

Our ports of call are a little different from when we went on a similar cruise on Legend in 2006, but to be honest, I wouldn't mind if we went to all the same places again. I'm definitely looking forward to going back to Rome.

Today was a slow journey to work - apparently due to cattle on the M25 (!), so as I was sat going nowhere on the M26 I had a quick look at twitter and noticed a tweet from AllEars about a new residential development at WDW called Golden Oak. It brings to mind the excitement around the initial development of Celebration, but it looks like Disney have decided to tweak the model somewhat compared to what they did then.

Back when Celebration was first announced it was all about building a community, and I think that even for the folks at Disney they've found that to be a rather challenging enterprise. So, with Golden Oak it looks like they've decided to go with a more "resort living" approach rather than a community development project. So, a small number of houses plus a hotel and clubhouse facilities, tucked away in a gated community, and no mention of schools, hospitals, community centres and so on.

Oh yes - one other thing - the price: ranging from $1.5million to $8million.

Might need to have a whip round!

The Long(est) Day Closes

No star is o'er the lake
Its pale watch keeping
The moon is half awake
Through grey mist creeping
The last red leaves fall
Round the porch of roses
The clock has ceas'd to sound
The long day closes.

Go to thy dreamless bed
Where grief reposes
Thy book of toil is read
The long day closes.

Night night all.

A Jake Decade

Somehow, amazingly, Jake is reaching the grand old age of 10 tomorrow. Doesn't time fly when you're having fun! To mark the occasion, I've dug out some photos from Jake's first ten years to post here (in chronological order)!