The Smith Zone: January 2006

Sunday 01-29-06

recent shots

curls, curls, curls

the wild boy

I've been adding old travel pics to my photo site as often as I can lately, so keep checking it for updates.

gotta get in shape again

I'm finally disgusted enough with myself that I'm back to exercising for the first time in years. I've been steadily getting fatter since I returned from Iraq. I've been worried about running because I have a bad knee which has been really hurting lately, but I figured that if it's going to hurt for no reason at all then I might as well start running again. After all, maybe it's getting worse because I never exercise it.

We've been going to a nearby school park with a track for a week straight. I jog, Kimberly walks (and jogs a bit), and the kids both walk and run and then they play on the playground. I'm feeling better about myself already. I know that we'll stick with it because I'm determined, and we've been sucessful in the past when we've been determined about it.

1/6th returns!

It's been a long time since I've messed with any 1/6th scale figures. I have several in the garage that I ordered while I was in Iraq and have never found the time to put them together since I've been home. Recently, I finally brought one in the house - my WWI U.S. infantry soldier from Sideshow Toys. Then, I broke down and ordered one for the first time recently. I saw that Sideshow's General George Washington had been released, and I couldn't resist. They released an Abe Lincoln figure last year as part of their Civil War line, but I never bought it (maybe someday). Sideshow also recently aquired the license for 1/6th scale Star Wars figures, so I'm sure that I'll end up getting a few of those. My favorite company is still Dragon Models, which puts out a ton of WWII product, but Sideshow has been putting out some diverse lines that the other guys don't make.

General George Washington. If you don't appreciate what this guy contributed to our nation, then you should pack up and go live elsewhere.

Ready bayonets, it's out of the trench and past the barbed wire into "no man's land" for an attack on the Krauts.
Here's the typical "doughboy" (WWI U.S. soldier).

Four new photo sets.

I've stayed up very late and added four more sets to my photo site. They are Kemah, Downtown Houston, the Garden Tomb, and Capernaum. Go check them out.

daily drive

views of downtown after I leave work

criss-cross: on 288 going past 610

01-19-06

I always have plans to post lots of pictures – both here and to my photo site, but the kids just don’t like to let me sit down at the computer for any significant length of time. Anytime I do get something posted, it’s usually when I stay up very late after they finally fall asleep. In fact, I’m taking the time to write this during my lunch brake at work just because I need to get something new on the site.

We didn’t do anything significant last weekend, so there’s not much to talk about on that front. Some TV shows have started up their new seasons recently, so we’ve actually been watching TV the last several nights. In the Fall, I pretty much only watched Survivor and The Amazing Race. Survivor will be starting again in February. American Idol has started a new season so we’ve been watching that (it wasn’t on in the Fall). We’ve also added another show to our lineup that we didn’t watch before. I had kept hearing how good 24 was from several radio hosts, so I decided to start watching it when it started a new season this week. They say it’s the fastest show on television, and I think they’re right. It actually premiered with four episodes in two nights. It was indeed quite good.

I think I mentioned before that Kimberly and I are going to try to start taking a trip once a year (usually for our anniversary). We’re going to start saving up for such trips, but of course we don’t have much saved yet since we just started this plan. Therefore, for this year’s trip we’re simply going to go to San Antonio since it’s just a short drive. We’ll probably go at the end of March, which will actually be almost two months after our anniversary, but it fits our schedule better at that time. We’re not going to go to Fiesta Texas or SeaWorld (which are places that we’ll probably take the kids to years from now), so our only big expense should be a hotel room for two nights. We’ve already started looking up things to do - mostly the photo-opportunity sites downtown, but also other things as well. It’s funny that I lived just outside of San Antonio for over three years, but I never did most of the things that we’ll be doing over the course of two or three days. Having a digital camera now frees me up to take pictures of anything and everything without limit, so I’m always looking for nice scenery or famous or historic sites. Back in the days of film, I was always stingy with what I would waste a shot on. I know many of you have been to San Antonio numerous times, so feel free to give your advice on what hotel we should use and what places we should go to.

I think I’ve decided that the first trip we’ll take when we can afford to fly somewhere will be to Washington DC. There’s tons of places I want to see in America, but DC ranks high due to the sheer number of things to see there. You can probably tell that I’m more interested in historic sightseeing vacations rather than relaxing vacations. I’m certainly not opposed to relaxing vacations, so we’ll probably do a few of those during our lives as well.

I had zero interest in travel for most of my life. I always thought that I’d be happy to never leave Texas, and I certainly never wanted to leave America. The Air Force forced me to leave America when I went to Saudi Arabia. I went to Iraq for financial reasons and finally got the travel bug while I was there. I guess hearing everyone else around me talk about all the places they had gone on their R&Rs piqued my interest. I now have tons of places all over the world that I’d like to see (but I’m sure most of our trips will be in America). Traveling to some of the most dangerous places in the world has helped me to lose any fears I had about traveling to less dangerous places.

train show

On Saturday we took the kids to the model train show at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. There were some neat things to see and lots of great modeling work on display. After we left, we did a bit of walking around Downtown just to look around. We thought about taking the kids to Museum of Natural Science, but they were getting tired and fussy, so we'll have to do that another time.

home of the Texans

Reliant Stadium

da bulls

the practice bubble

Should the Texans draft Reggie Bush, or Vince Young? Post your comment if you care.

Main St. fountain

This is the big water fountain that shoots over the light-rail train tracks on Main St. in downtown Houston.

downtown H-town

As always, click to see larger pics (I'm making them smaller than usual on this page). Whenever I get the chance, I'll put lots more pics of our Saturday trip up on my photo site.

underwater hair

"you don't know the power of the dark side"

- the Darth Vader voice changer

Wow, what a game.

I stayed up late last night and watched the Texas Longhorns beat USC to win the national championship. That was one of the most exciting football games I’ve ever watched, and considering it was the championship game it has to rank pretty high on a list of best games ever. Overall, it was the Vince Young show. He put on an awesome performance and deserves most of the credit for the win. Way to go Horns.

Istanbul pics up at my photo site

Sultanhamet (the Blue Mosque). Named after the conqueror who captured the city for the Turks.

Hagia Sophia. Originally a church back when the city was known as Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. When the Turks conquered the city, they converted it into a mosque (and added the minarets). It's now a museum. The reason why almost all mosques today have that similar "domed" look is because they were all influenced by this building (which ironically was built as a church).

Another famous mosque (I'm not sure of the name).

Some guy.

Now that I have a photo site again, I'm going to try to post all of my large photo sets over there (this may take awhile). I'll be posting locations visited, one by one. First up is Istanbul, Turkey. Over time I may add more descriptions.

Check it out

Happy New Year, and Happy Birthday Kimberly

We're not much for parties, but we did get to celebrate Kimberly's birthday on New Year's Eve. It's always nice to go out on a date withouth the kids since we very rarely have done that since they were born. Kimberly's finally getting old like me, ha ha. We're hoping that one of these days, we'll actually be able to afford to go somewhere special for a birthday or anniversary. We decided that we need to start setting aside a few dollars a week or so just for that reason, and then we can start doing more. We always talk about doing things in the future, but if we don't start planning for them, they'll never get done.

New Year's has come and gone again, but it really doesn't mean much to me. I just see it as the end of the Christmas season. Having the last digit on the year change doesn't inspire me to celebrate. I guess it's an excuse for lots of people to get drunk, but do those of you who like to do that wait for an excuse anyway? I know, you probably think I'm the strange one, but I'm cool with that. Have a grand ol' 2006 everybody.

Christmas day

We had a big Christmas this year. After missing Christmas last year, I felt like going all out for the kids this time. Needless to say, both Santa and Mommy & Daddy were good to them. Other than the kids, we toned it down with everyone else this time. Kimberly and I didn't get much for each other - and other than that, we pretty much just bought for our parents.