It was during the afternoon of Saturday of the 1st when I became involved with helping my sister and her husband move out of their temporay home, just a few blocks away.  Their lease was up, and the landlord was creating a new rule of no pets, so finding a new home had been an objective.

  They found a decent double-wide out in the country with 11 acres to call their own, located in a neighboring town.  I helped to finish cleaning out the house, and it was left in better condition than when they first moved in.  Or at the very least, it smelled a heck of a lot better.

  All that stuff loaded into a large U-Haul truck, it was carried out to their new place.  It had been a long day, and it was dark, so we quit, leaving the unloading for the next day.  They had previously discovered that one of the pipes under the kitchen sink had been broken, and after some inspection cutting, tearing, growling, and cursing, I decided I might give a try something I came up with while bearing witness to all the cutting, tearing, growling, and cursing.

  I essentially capped the pipe so we could turn the water on without anymore leaking.  The only thing the pipe in question did was supply hot water to the kitchen sink and dishwasher.  Doing without that for a few days was no big deal.  Well, there was an indirect big deal.  It turned out that the plumbing under the house was broken as well.  I went out the next morning (I had spent the night there) to begin the unloading process to find the part of the front yard was water-logged.  So, we were back to no water at all.

  We unloaded the truck and then went back into load up things from a storage shed that they had been renting, plus some laundry needed to be done, and the dod pen behind the old need to be removed.  Not to mention the dogs needed to be brought out to the new place.  My sister did the laundry at the laundry mat, my brother-in-law transfered the dogs and began breaking down the pen, and I loaded up everything from the shed.  It all sounds smooth, the way I wrote it, but there were some altered plans in there.

  I managed to convince my b-i-l to let me continue, and then again to finish emptying the shed.  He wanted to leave some to get in later days, little by little, with just the car, but I saw no point in that.  Just get it done, you know?  There wasn't that much left, relatively speaking, on both occasions.

  The first time he returned, he commented on how quickly I had gotten the majority of it completed.  I didn't think it was so fast, because I wasn't rushing, but I suppose I could see how he might perceive it that way, since he tends to do a lot of standing around and shall we say, recovering from minor bouts of clumsiness.  I, on the other hand, prefer to keep a steady pace and keep going... and pay careful attention to what I'm doing.

  So, with everything remaining packed into the U-Haul, we head out to the house and unload it.  We still have no water, so a neighbor that my b-i-l knows says we can use his shower.  I shower while they return the U-Haul and do some grocery shopping.  It was a very nice shower given that I'd gone two sweaty days without one.

  The neighbor was kind enough to give me a ride back to the house.  I was very sore.  My calves were especially sore from walking up and down the U-Haul truck's ramp.  I ate and watched a movie to wind down.  I watched Memoirs Of A Geisha, or at least most of it.  I was very sleepy, so I saved the rest for the next day.  I spent that night there as well.  I could have gotten a ride back home the next morning, but I didn't feel like getting up before 5am.  I needed sleep.

  The next day, I slept in 'til almost 9am, had breakfast and watched the rest of Geisha, which was good, and then I watched A Sound Of Thunder, which kind of disappointed me.  If you don't know, it's a time travel movie starring Ben Kingsly.  Having the latter got my hopes up, apparently.  I'm a little surprised he agreed to be in it.

  Here's a summary of the movie: In the future, a man get rich off selling "Time Safari" trips to a pre-historic time to let people basically kill a dinosaur.  Cleverly, they kill the exact same dinosaur, at presumably the exact same time, every time, though I'm not sure how they manage that without encountering themselves.

  So anyway, something minor goes wrong on the last trip, and when they get back, time waves, which are many hours apart, start making changes to the present.  So, the objective is to go back and fix the problem and to make sure it does happen again.

  Does sound all that bad.  Well, Ben's role was nearly secondary, there were parts in the movie that felt like they were just trying to fill out screen time, I'm not so sure I by their time wave theory.

  The theory is that time will alter though a series of ripples, changing first those things which evolved first.  Trees and vines appearing in streets from out of nowhere.  A building suddenly being infested with beetles.  Later, more highly evolved "new" species appearing.

  Speaking of which, give me a break.  Baboonasaurs (my name for them) that sleep hanging upside down from the ceiling.  Good freakin' grief.

  But anyway, what exactly is behind this pond-ripple theory?  It seems more likely that there would be only one ripple, if you ask me.  Throw a stone into a pond and it creates a series of ripples.  So what?  What about a single explosion in space?  No ripples there.  How about atomic bomb explosions?  What exactly makes time so comparable to water?  Isn't perceived time linear?  There's no ripple, just a wave, and why would the effects not be seen immediately upon return?  Isn't only our perception of time that's linear?

  Now, include space into this idea, and I'll come closer to buying a theory mildly similar to a ripple effect.  Say, from the exact location of the change, an expanding sphere of change alters events, and the sphere continues outward into the farthest reaches of the universe, though things past a certain point may not actually be changed.  At the very least, it's something I've never seen before.

  Anyway, the movie had a decent idea, but I just don't think it was very well developed and thought out.  And good grief, the baboonasaurs.  Sheesh.

  One last thing.  I've noticed that a lot of people have The Shawshank Redemption as one of their favorite movies.  Why?  I've seen it.  I wasn't impressed.  Seriously.  Someone please explain it to me.  And it's always females who like it.