Memory and emotion…it is odd how these things are linked together. Jeff pulled the most awesome April Fool’s joke on me Saturday. The biggest of the two comic conventions that Kansas City annually holds was cancelled earlier this year due to a space issue. This is my favorite one because it brings in more “celebrities”, more artists, and offers a variety of merchants, not just comic related. Jeff told me that not only was Planet Comicon back on but that Neil Gaiman and John Romita, Jr. were going to be there to promote their new comic, The Eternals. As exciting as the news was I have recently seen Neil Gaiman and I was honestly much more excited about Planet Comicon being back on. Yes, it was stupid of me to fall for that but it was late and I was obviously very gullible. It was a great April Fool’s Day prank! However the unreasonable melancholy that I feel over the show not being on this year has stuck with me all week and I was wondering why so I looked back through my blog and realized that it was this week last year (April 4th) that I attended Planet Comicon for the first time. It was a wonderful experience and I have such great memories of it. Ah, cruel fate! At least they have dates reserved for next year already.

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Continuing the odd coincidences of my feelings this week and memories, this past Sunday I watched ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover for the first time in a loooooong time. It brought up such a flood of emotion and remembrance, more so then many of the other shows I watched. Turns out it was the year anniversary of when I had the privilege of working on the Kansas City home for the show! I can only speak for myself personally but it was such a fun, exhausting, surreal experience and I am so thankful that I had the opportunity. This time last year is also the anniversary of me taking my wife down to the comic shop to meet Jeff. Jeff and I had been hanging out for a little while by that point but this was the introduction of bringing our families into it, which eventually resulted in the Smith family being brought into our circle of friends (sorry Smiths! 😉 ). Its hard to believe that this was only a year ago. From last April to this April…what a fantastic year!

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And speaking of anniversaries, this weekend marks the one year anniversary of our nephew Motley entering into the family. He was such a little stinker then. Now he is a slightly bigger stinker but still as cute and fun as ever. Happy kind-of-birthday/anniversary/adoption day Motley!

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Do you dream in color ? It is an odd question that I personally had never known the answer to. I think unless one specifically thinks about that immediately after waking up from a dream then one doesn’t really know because any future remembrances of dreams will most likely be filled in with color unconsciously in the remembrance. I found out the answer for this myself this week. I had went to bed particularly late and as often happens after nights of doing this I woke up not long after going to bed from an odd dream. I was outside looking at the trash that had been set out for the garbage collector. Going through it I was finding boxes of stuff that was very important to us as a family…our Christmas decorations, etc…in the midst of actual trash. I panicked because I knew the garbage truck would be there any second. As I was anxiously trying to decide what to do I looked up. Now I don’t know why this is but often when I dream of being at home, as an adult with my wife and child, I am in my parent’s house…the house I grew up in. So I looked up at the neighbor’s house across the street (my parent’s neighbor) and saw a group of 5 people I had a sense were in their early 20’s all dressed in very strange, warped circus/masquerade costumes. The costumes themselves weren’t horrific nor were the people particularly scary but I got such a sense of menace from them and as I caught their eye they immediately began to move toward me in one sychronistic movement. With their first step I woke up with a startling feeling of dread! My first thought was “cool, that dream was in color!”. I remember it so vividly because everything I was seeing in the dream had this really cool grainy, special effect type of tweaking to it. I’ve seen it in movies before where they do this and punch up certain colors…reds and blues were enhanced in my dream. Anyway it was a very interesting experience. I love waking up with that slight terror. Your senses are heightened and you lay in bed wondering if something woke you up…the blood is pulsating in your ears and you hear every little creak in the house. Its such a rush.

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The title of the post comes from a Stephen Merritt song featured in the movie Pieces of April. For some reason I have that song in my head today, a very melancholy song. Stephen Merritt is a very interesting musician that I expect not everyone would take to. He is a favorite of many authors I enjoy from Neil Gaiman to Lemony Snicket’s own Daniel Handler. His music, the stuff I like anyway, has a very folk-ish quality to it. Stop by his site and check it out.

I hope you have a wonderful, April Day. Tomorrow, a Friday Favorite that I am very excited about!

More photographic evidence that spring is springing up all over my yard:

Another reason I know its spring is that Mary is getting the urge to cook some of the delicious Italian dishes that she found in a cookbook we bought last year. After watching Under the Tuscan Sun for the umpteenth time it occurred to us that for all our love of pasta we had a very limited repertoire of dishes that we prepared. This is a very delicious one with a very light sauce that tasted so incredible last night!

Recipe for Spaghetti with Tomatoes, Black Olives, Garlic and Feta Cheese from Food and Wine Magazine’s Quick From Scratch Pasta Cookbook:

Incredients:

(Serves 4)

1.5 pounds tomatoes, seeded and cut into 1/2 inch squares

1/2 cup Kalamata or other black olives, pitted

1/4 pound feta cheese, crumbled

3 tablespoons drained capers

3 tablespoons chopped flate-leaf parsely

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper

3/4 pound spaghetti

6 tablespoons olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced.

In a large glass or stainless-steel bowl combine tomatoes, olives, feta, capers, parsley, salt, and pepper.

In a large pot of boiling, salted water cook the spaghetti until just done, about 12 minutes, drain.

Meanwhile in a medium frying pan, heat the olive oil over moderately low heat. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the cooked pasta and the garlic oil to the tomato mixture and toss.

That’s it! Simple! The hardest thing is cutting up the tomatoes and getting the seeds out. (Which I did last night..I’m such a martyr!) 😉

It is a warm, light, delicious dish filled with so many interesting flavors. Thank you sweetie, it was yummy!

Hope your spring is going well so far. Its Tuesday folks, only 4 more days until the weekend!

Saturday was my daughter’s first flag football game of the season. Yes, you heard right, flag football. The greater Kansas City YMCA’s have a coed flag football program and this is the last year Tori could participate. Her age group is the 6th-8th grade one. After getting over the initial qualms about the boys playing touch rather than flag football…wink, wink…I have to admit that its pretty cool and I’m proud of her for getting out there and doing this. She doesn’t have a great deal of football knowledge except for that gleaned from watching the KC Chiefs and playing in our annual Thanksgiving family football game but she makes up for it in enthusiasm and the courage to get out there and do her best. The weather was gorgeous out all day Saturday and they play their 5 on 5 flag football games at Derrick Thomas Academy on a small, 50 yard astro-turf field painted with Chiefs colors. It is a really cool little field. In her minimal playing time her strength appeared to be what would essentially be middle line-backer. She recorded a sack and harrassed the quarterback a few times. I look forward to the rest of the games this season. In the “its a small world” category I was shocked to discover that her assistant coach is one of the guys I know from the local comic shop. He’s a great guy, very encouraging. Should be a fun couple of months.

After grabbing something to eat we headed to the Loose Park to spend a few hours people watching and playing with Moses and Motley. It is there that the beautiful afternoon turned gray as one of our own, our beloved nephew Motley, turned to a life of crime and was busted:

There is a leash law within the city limits and Motley was running free, claiming the park territory as his own. For a usually vocal dog Motley had been unusually quiet all day. Perhaps he was deep in thought planning his introduction into the criminal underworld. This all changed when the animal control officer showed up and Motley vehemently voiced his opinion of the men in blue, rebuking the officer for stepping onto his turf. Cooler heads may yet have prevailed had Motley not decided to also jump on the officers leg. For his crime Motley saddled his owners with a citation…damage to be determined by a ticket in the mail. The officer shared that they had written 45 tickets in the last hour. Evidently this was some sort of dog mafia spawning ground. Hopefully Motley will travel the straight and narrow from now on!

There is evidence all around that spring has indeed sprung, for which I am extremely thankful. It is so nice to be outside. We of course were all recipients of natures April Fool’s joke as none of us thought to wear sunscreen on that glorious Saturday and 6 hours out in the sun makes for some lobster-like complexions! And speaking of April Fool’s Jeff pulled a nice email joke on me when he told me that my favorite author…do I need to name him?…would be at Planet Comicon this year. This is of course the annual Planet Comicon that had earlier been cancelled due to space issues. It was almost midnight on the 1st, I hadn’t been pranked all day, and I was also very vunerable after my nephew’s earlier criminal behavior because I bought it all hook, line, and sinker. Of course I haven’t stopped crying since I found out the truth. Betrayed by my own friend and fellow Gaiman fan. The youth of today are so cruel!

Happy Monday everyone, I wish you a week filled with spring breezes, the sights and scents of new spring growth, and no animal control officers!

It is indeed time for another Friday Favorites, and although the wheels have been turning in that oh-so-goofy brain of mine I regret to inform you that you will have to wait until next week. Alas! I hear you cry. What foul deed has befallen you, prohibiting you from opening the coffers of your Favorites file to share with us its rich treasures?!? The perils of my indentured servitude…er…work…is mostly to blame for my lack of energy and artistic enthusiasm. But I would be less than honest if I did not also blame several late nights countering international espionage as Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. And then of course there was the distraction of the late show of V for Vendetta on Wednesday night followed by a vigorous discussion of the virtues of the Coen brothers and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. Mostly I am just beat. My muse is singing loudly in my ear but my body and mind crave sleep above art. As you journey forth on your weekend I wish you well. Keep the April Fool’s Day jokes to a minimum, watch some March Madness, turn those clocks back forward (thanks Anne), and rest….

Updated with new pictures! Happy Birthday Dad!!!

The post I did last year for my dad’s birthday continues to express my sentiments towards him though they are even deeper one year later. My parents were recently here for a visit as much for social reasons as to help us out with many and varied repairs that needed to happen around our home. Thanks to his intervention a long plague of rolling, mysterious electrical outages throughout the house is now at an end, my dishwasher is fixed, and my chainsaw is once again with blade. He probably did numerous other things that I am forgetting now. Through it all I was able to visit with my dad, appreciate who he is and the love he has always shown me, and admire his willingness to get in and try to fix anything. If I had half the courage and motivation of my father I would be a much better man.

My dad is a shining example of what it means to be a father to one’s children. I am often reminded of how truly blessed I am to have this man, my dad, in my life. I am so thankful for your continued influence in my life. I hope you have a wonderful birthday and I want you to know that I really enjoyed talking, laughing, playing darts, and celebrating with you last weekend. I love you dad.

He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
~Clarence Budington Kelland

(Mom, Dad and their grandchildren: Elijah, Tori, and Haley)

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And I also encourage you to say a very special “Happy Birthday” to Angela, Sci Fi Chick, who turns 29 for the very first time this year! I have enjoyed another year of talking all things geek with you over the past year Angela and am sorry that for some reason my site chooses to not work for you more often than it works. I hope your day and coming weekend are filled with lots of celebration and appreciation by those you love. Have a wonderful day and remember, this is as old as a woman ever has to get! 😉