I was up by a quarter after five this morning after having gone to bed so early last night. It is rough when you aren’t even able to sleep in on Saturdays anymore. Oh, for the good old days of sleeping until nine and spending the morning eating cereal and watching cartoons like the Gummi Bears, Smurfs and tons of others that were all so much the same thing over and over again that I have forgotten them. It is amazing how many cartoon series I watched as a child and how few I actually remember. The only show that I really loved was the Gummi Bears. Perhaps because it was a good setting, a better than average story line, targetted at being a really happy show and, as Wikipedia put it, the forerunner of the bevy of new, high quality cartoons that happened in the late 1980’s. The Gummi Bears was Disney’s first Saturday morning cartoon and really did a lot for the company even though it has languished forgotten ever since it went off the air in 1990. It is really quite sad. I feel that the Gummi Bears would have had a really big following and that Disney really missed a big and obvious opportunity with them. Why is there no Gummi Bear movie? Why does Disney World have no Gummi Bear attractions (at the very least a snack bar if not an all out ride) or merchandise? While researching Gummi Bears for SGL I happily discovered that in just under one month Disney is finally releasing the Gummi Bears on DVD! I am very excited. It is the only Disney cartoon series that I really liked (Ducktales, Rescue Rangers and Talespin were okay but nothing special.) I have long held that the Gummi Bears were my favourite cartoon series ever and I have been very sad that I have not been able to watch them again since they originally aired. Very sad indeed.
I also learned a bit about the Smurfs that I had never known before. For one thing, the Smurfs 3D movie is set to release in 2008. That will be creepy. I had long known of the suspected communist undertones of the Smurfs when I was a kid (what wasn’t communist undertoned in 1980?) but I was unaware of the fact that religious groups were claiming that it was the work of Satan and that it was a demonic production. Apparently, according to Wikipedia, this went so far that there was a widespread belief in Latin America originating from Puerto Rico that when people watched the show or listened to Smurf records that real life Smurfs would come to life and run around causing mischief for you much like gremlins. It was common to get reports from people who believed that they were actually seeing Smurfs in their gardens or around their houses. The Smurfs are planned to released on DVD next year. And no, I will not be buying them. That was a really boring and stupid cartoon.
I spent the morning working on the total overhaul of my personal, professional site ScottAlanMiller.com which has not been updated in three or four years and was horribly out of date. That took a few hours of work but I am pretty happy with the look of the new site and how much I was able to get done this morning.
Dominica slept in until half past nine. That was about twelve hours of sleep for her. We went to breakfast at Food for Life and took Oreo for his Saturday morning walk in the park. He is really excited whenever we get to go to the park now because he only gets to go a few times a week and there have always been many dogs there that he hasn’t had a chance to smell yet. Overall Oreo is not nearly as sleepy today as we would have expected. You can hardly tell that he spent most of the week at daycare. He must be getting stronger. We are pretty sure that he is getting leaner.
There was a picture from Oreo’s daycare that was messed up when I posted it to Flickr but that is fixed now. He is so cute that you can even see the cuteness when it comes from the Axis security camera at his daycare. Speaking of pictures, I did finally manage to remember to take my Kodak digital camera with me while walking Oreo in Military Park today and managed to squeeze off a couple of pictures of 1180 Raymond from the north end of the park. I think that Military Park has the best view of the three big downtown buildings with 1180 right in the middle. The shots are taken well within Military Park standing almost directly in front of but slight to the west of NJPAC (the New Jersey Performing Arts Center) and due west of the entrance to the Robert Treat Hotel. The lighting isn’t great as this is totally an almost noon shot but at least I remembered. I will work on getting some great shots some other time when I have my Nikon with me. I also posted a picture of Dominica’s BMW’s bumper so that everyone can see the damage. It is very sad.
I did some work on my Nintendo DS Lite to see if I could get the touch screen working today. It turns out, as far as I can tell, that the problem was simply that the protective screen had stuck to the pressure sensitive screen in such a way that it was causing it to think that it was being touched all of the time. I was able to use some Scotch tape and to get the protective screen moved away from the real screen and everything started working like it should. I will be keeping an eye on it but it would appear that everything has been fixed. What a relief that would be.
Dominica went out shopping downtown for some clothes today. She also overnighted a Oreo’s halloween costume to Frankfort to have it altered. The shipping to Frankfort cost more than the costume did. This is becoming a very expensive halloween outfit.
For dinner we ordered in pizza from the place that Dominica has been getting pizza from recently and we settled down in the living room and watched Beyond the Sea the biography of Bobby Darin written and performed by Kevin Spacey. It was a really good movie and Kevin Spacey remains possibly the best actor ever. His range is just so incredible and he actually did all of the singing for this movie which is amazing as Bobby Darin was one of the greatest singers ever even if he was a horrific actor (never, ever watch his performance in the remake of State Fair!)
After that it was time for bed. Dominica played her new Urbz: Sims in the City game and I worked for a little while on Lunar Legend.