Me and my diet!

Damn it!  I was doing so well before the holidays.  This is exactly how I feel these days.

7 lbs

7 lbs

 

I watched this movie last night.  I wanted this movie to be the best movie I’ve seen all year.  I wanted to finish this movie and say “Wow!” with those emotions that leave you speechless while you try to piece together the movie as well as your emotions.

I did not get those feelings, and I really wanted to.  I saw Oprah talking about this movie and how great it was and how it was going to change my life.  I should have known better.  Oprah will sell anything as long as she can get the famous guest on her show.  

If you have not seen the movie, do not worry, I will not ruin the plot for you here.  It’s a very good movie, one that is original (somewhat) and it’s the kind of movie I have been craving to see.   I am tired of Disney and special affects movies.  I cannot stand to watch another comic character come to life movie.  So, the wife and I sat down with great hopes to watch something great.

In the first 5 minutes of the movie, I turned to my wife and said “I’ve figured it out”.  I actually wrote down on a piece of paper on my night stand the plot of the movie and turned to my wife “read this after the movie”. (The wife by the way fell asleep)

So, this morning I went to imdb.com and read some of the reviews.  I must be one heartless and emotionless bastard.  Everyone talks about how they did not see the ending of the movie coming and how it touched them in every emotional level.  I love a good heartwarming story!  I cried like a girl watching “Terabithia”.  “Rudy” makes me cry every frigging time.  I can’t watch “Old Yeller” and not weep .   7 lbs did not have it.  To me this movie was the equivalent of “Titanic”.  In the “Titanic” I kept telling myself, “I know the frigging boat is going to sink, I know the ending”.  This movie was the same.

 

Quack Quack

We celebrated our post-Christmas celebrations on Sunday by inviting all my outlaws for a Turkish dinner and also to watch the horrific and sad downward spiral of the great Cowboys.  The ladies started the day at a spa getting their toes and hands done.  Personally the idea of someone picking at my toes disturbs me; I don’t even like touching my own toes but I digress yet again…

Something about Turkish dinners and my American outlaws.  About an hour after we left the dinner table, 4 of my guests had succumbed to the meal.  My brother in law passed out on a reclining chair while GG Mom and GG pop fell asleep sitting up.  My mother-in-law fell asleep with the littlest member on her chest on the couch.

Around the third quarter when Barber handed the ball to the Philly Eagles (by then they were more like Philly Vultures feeding on the dead Cowboys), we decided to play a game of cards.  We were all waiting for 6:30

This is when we left the house to go to Grapevine to have a DUCK tour.  I had arranged a few days earlier to ride the DUCK in the city of Grapevine to see the Christmas lights and take a little ride in the lake.   My good friend Jim has been operating the DUCKRiders.com for the last 3 years giving local tourists a ride in the Grapevine Lake and around the city of Grapevine.  My outlaws did not really have an idea on what I was talking about when I told them we were going to ride the DUCK.

We got to Grapevine around 7:00 PM and Jim was ready for us.  It was a chilly 50 degrees but each seat had blankets for us along with a serving of hot chocolate.  We were told that city of Grapevine spent $250,000 decorating the downtown area with wonderful display of lights, sounds, and scenes of Christmas festivities, with Santa sitting and watching it all on the roof of a building.  Jim was pretty knowledgeable on the history of Grapevine and gave us a short history of the city as we drove around and looked at the lights.  

After the light show, we drove down to the lake for a short dip.  I had personally never been in a DUCK either.  Running down a short ramp and driving into a body of water is something that is unnatural to a city slicker like me.  Doing this at night makes it doubly unnerving.  There was not another soul in the lake when we started our ride in the water.  If something happened to us, no one would know.

After the lake we drove to the Gaylord Hotel (topping a speed of 21 mph) for more Christmas lights.  If you have not seen the lights inside Gaylord, you should check it out next year, it’s pretty elaborate.  There are lots of places for Kodak moments inside the hotel.

Check out the tours @ http://DuckRiders.com  Give them a try when you have company over or simply bored on a weekend.

Cute but I am done!

I got to hold my little niece Mikayla on Christmas day and played with her a little.  For about 5 seconds I reminisced how great it was to have a little baby.  And then I remembered how glad I am to be done with all that baby stuff.  It’s great to have little nieces to borrow and spoil.  She is possibly the best baby I’ve ever held.

Happy Holidays!

I love celebrating things.  It does not matter what we are celebrating, you tell me it’s a custom somewhere and it’s for a good cause, I’ll join you.   Tell me there is drinking and laughing involved, I’ll be there.   I don’t get offended if someone wishes me a “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Hanukkah”.  Same to ya buddy.  I can use all the well wishes in the world.  I’d rather you wished me a Happy made up holiday like Kwanza over a one finger solute from your car while you are shopping for your loved ones for Christmas.  I don’t get offended by anyone assuming that I celebrate or don’t celebrate anything.  If it puts a smile on your face while you tell me something nice, I am OK with it.  I will return back a cheerful response of the same kind.  It does not break a cardinal rule in my book, my God is not going to strike me with a bold of lightning because I joined your happy thoughts.  (I would have been charred by now for other offenses believe me).  It is Ok if you tell me “Happy Holidays” too.  I understand you are trying to be sensitive and use a more generic well wish, I appreciate that too.  I actually like “Happy Holidays”.  I am not going to boycott Walmart or Kohls because they are using the phrase “Happy Holidays”.   I don’t get bent out of shape for that.  Keep Christ in Christmas? Please do, if that’s what you believe.   Please don’t over analyze my well wishes.  I don’t mean any harm, disrespect, or insult.   There is absolutely no hidden agenda or message.

It is simply easier to say “Happy Holidays” then:

Chanukkah or Hanukkah, Kwanzaa (did I mention made up?), St. Lucia, St. Nicholas Day, Ramadan, Juletide, Weihnachtszeit, Dagur nemenda, Winter Solstice, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, and Christmas.

I  wish you happiness and good health for all of them.

 

p.s. I hope Santa brings me that GPS I’ve been asking for.

PhotoMosaic

I used over 10,000 pictures to put together this image.  It took all my pictures from 2007 and 2008 to compile it together.  The original image is over 12 Mb and @ 100% scale, you can actually see each frame very clearly.

Target practice

                A while ago my son was annoying his little sister out of boredom.   Finally, he got her with one of his nerf guns and made her cry.  Knowing how much I hate those frigging nerf guns, he knew immediately that he was in trouble.

I gave him an option: no electronics for a week or his sister gets to throw something at him.  Being the electronic addict he is the choice was clear.

Unfortunately, she missed all 3 throws.

Is Santa real?

 

When I was a young boy, my family and I took a summer vacation to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.  We visited a city called “Antalya”.  On the way to Antalya we made many stops in small towns and spent a night or 2 in each town.  After our last stop, we headed to Antalya.  It was getting late and as usual my younger brother was getting pretty green in the back seat.  We came to a fork in the road:  they both had a sign to Antalya.  One was much shorter than the other, the shorter one being a more direct route and a less paved one.  My dad took the shorter one. 

 

After a few miles the road became a dirt road but still pretty smooth.  We were driving by pretty scary looking cliffs and enjoying the scene.  I don’t remember what happened next but, we blew a tire and my dad lost control of the car.  We spun out of control and went off the side off a cliff.  I remember being airborne, and remember hitting something. 

When we all got out of the car, what we saw was pretty amazing.  We had fallen off of a cliff and hit a boulder.  THE ONLY big piece of rock anywhere on that side of the huge drop.  If one had aimed for that big piece of rock, I don’t know if he would have targeted it so dead on like we did.  My mom’s face was hurt badly as she had hit the window head on and my dead’s ribs were bruised.  The 3 brothers in the back were not hurt at all.

This is not the only amazing part of the story.  We were in a very remote part of the country.  It was getting late and we were worried about spending the night in the middle of nowhere.  From (what it seemed) out of nowhere some people showed up.  These were the nomads of the region that traveled in tents with their livestock.  Modern day gypsies I suppose.  All my life I had heard stories of gypsies, and none had happy endings.  Whenever I pissed off my mom, she’d threaten me with “I am going to hand you to the gypsies so you can start begging with them”.

These people came over and asked us if we were OK.  They took us to their tents and gave us water.  I remember how cool their tent was and how cool it must be to live in it.  They were simple people they wanted to make sure we were OK.  Soon after, another car came by and saw us.  It was a young couple who were engineers in a nearby town.  They took us to their house for a day while my dad stayed behind to get our car towed.  Long story short, our vacation was over, but we were all un harmed.

What does all of this have to do with Santa?

All of this took place in a little town called Myra the home of Saint Nicholas of Myra.  St. Nicholas of Myra is the inspiration of Christian figure of modern day Santa Claus.

Someone was watching over us on that day. 

The picture above is from the city of Myra.  The Church of St Nicholas still stands today.  It is said that he dropped money down the chimneys of girls who did not enough money for their dowries.

Here is a link to pictures of that little town:

http://www.pbase.com/andrys/kaskale

 

 

My new niece Mikayla!

She already makes Uncle Ertan proud!

She was born on Dec 8th. 

Mikayla Nicole Ball

English, do you speak it?

I’ve been Christmas shopping for the wife this past week (hush hush).  I went into this mom-and-pop store in Irving during lunch.  It looked like they would have the kind of thing I was looking for (can’t say what it is since the wife reads this blog sometimes).

It is owned by an old married couple (I assume here).  I walked in and started looking around, picking things up to see how much they cost.  The old lady came over and asked me a question.  She had a very very thick Asian accent.

Old lady – !#@$*) !#@(!@# !@#

Me – I am sorry?

Old lady – (I deciphered it this time) Can I help you?

Me – Yes, I am looking for X (the gift)

Old lady – What?

Me – You know, it looks like X

Old lady – What?

Me – It’s made out of blank and it looks like blank

Old lady – OK

Me – Do you have one?

The old lady turns around and yells at the old man in I think Chinese and he comes over.  I do the same song and dance with him as well.  I realize I am not going anywhere with this so I gracefully thank both of them and leave.

As I drive back to work, I can’t help but remember a scene from one of my favorite movies “Pulp Fiction”:

 

 

If you happen to watch the video, you must realize that I thought of this because I think it’s funny, not because I’d actually do something like that.  I’ve been there, there was a time I could not speak a word of English at all.  When I first got off the boat (well, an airplane), I knew how to say a few phrases most of which were not good in civil conversations.  I was 17 and scared shitless.  It took me 8 months of going to a place called “Intensive English Language Institute” @ U.N.T. 

IELI was an all day school, 8-4.  No dictionaries were allowed.  It was the equivalent of diving at the deep end of the pool without a floating device.  But most people learned enough of the language to pass TOEFL and move on (test of English as a foreign language).  TOEFL is a pretty standard benchmark for most college and government applications.

I love this country, do not think that I am going down a Republican path here J.  I love it that when I go to take my citizenship exam and I sit in front of an instructor in the immigration office and the lady who is administering my verbal exam cannot speak English very well.  I truly think this could only happen here in America.  I take pride in that.  I think giving another fellow immigrant the opportunity to work in an office that oversees another immigrant’s exam is kind of a poetic justice.

But there are days I wish some people made more effort to speak the most commonly used language we have.

By the way, the sentence I had to write down on a piece of paper during my “written exam” at the citizenship interview?

“This car is brown”

I passed the test.

 

 

 

 

 

A predicament

My daughter has been asking for an “American Girl Doll” for a while now.  It’s at the top of her Christmas wish list.  She picked a girl that looked like her from the American Girl catalog and showed it to us.  “This is the one I want” she said.  For those of you not familiar with the trend, American Girl Company makes baby dolls that look like your kid.  Personally, I find this to be creepy to have a little plastic doll that resembles your kid around the house but that’s a topic for another day… My daughter loves it and that’s that.

 
We ordered the doll according to her specs in the catalog.  It arrived in the mail the other day.  We took the box in the guest room, shut the door, and opened it in secret.  I was curious to see if it looked like my baby.   My wife took it out of the box and we both stared at each other.  We both knew what we were thinking but did not say it for a second or 2.  I broke the silence.

 
Me – Shitballs! That baby is very dark!
The wife – I know!
Me – Is she black?
The Wife – I am not sure, but it’s darker than Bey.
Me – Huh.  What are we gonna do?
The Wife – Well, I can take it to the store @ Galleria and get a lighter one.
Me – Yeah, what are you going to tell them?  This one is too dark, we want a lighter one?
The Wife – Of course NOT!  I am just going to tell them this is darker than my daughter.
Me – It still sounds bad honey.
The Wife – Shit! I know it does.

So we decided to keep the doll as it is.  I am not sure why we had this reaction immediately.  For all we know Bey will not even notice it, hell, she may have circled the doll in the catalog because she simply liked her looks.    I guess we were expecting a doll that had the same complexion as our daughter (and me): olive skin.  I am pretty sure Beylem will open the box on Christmas morning and love her new doll without any prejudice. I hope!

Merry Christmas Y’all

Only in Texas

Hell Raiser

 

It’s starting to smell like Christmas as well.  Homemade potpourri  that looks like a prop from the movie Hell Raiser.

First come first serve

Its bacon!

The dog is the easiest to manage.

Ornament Nazi

Our tree usually looks like a garage sale of Christmas trees from past years.  Everything the kids ever cut-out, painted, molded, chewed went on the tree.  Although this is great for memories and warm sentiments, the tree was looking pretty… ummm well, it looks like one of those yards you see driving on the side of the road somewhere in Arkansas.

 

Christmas 2008

This year instead of hanging every single ornament we’ve ever owned on the tree, I thought we should go with a color coordinated theme.  I was trying to get in touch with my Martha Steward side over the weekend.  I’ve always let the kids and the wife take care of the tree but this year I wanted to help.

So, as I sat by the tree looking over the kids going through our treasure of ornaments, I judged each one before it got on the tree.  Beylem and Aydin were not happy with most of my choices especially for some of the hand-made ornaments that did not make the list.  I discriminated against most ornaments that were not 2008 worthy.  It had to have red or green coloring to match the rest of the decorations in the house.  I even helped the wife decorate around the house.  Usually, any counter space, coffee table, desk, nook, orifice in the house gets some sort of Christmas festivity put on it.  We’ve toned it down this year!  We don’t have Santa staring at me while I take a poop anymore, although I have to pour my coffee creamer out of a camels mouth (kind of disturbing if you think about it). 

This week, I get to try something new outside the house.  It was too windy for outdoor work this past weekend.