The Art Of Life 2

Before I begin, Happy 30th birthday to my step-son.

I should catch up on my life here a bit over the past week or so. Part 1 is here and this is part 2.

This past Friday I took my friend Dave to lunch in honor of his birthday. Thankfully, he picked one of my favorite places, Gator's Dockside, (I love their Gator Chips!) in West Orlando to eat at AND as an added bonus asked if his brother Dan could join us. Like my own brother Mark, Dan seems to always be able to make me laugh so I welcomed his company. That's Dan on the left and Dave on the right, or as he said to me after he saw the photo, "We look like those prawns in the District 9 movie!" Sorry buddy, I can't do anything about your genes.

Dave is a big fan of the comic book character Hawkeye. For the past few years I have actively searched for an affordable statue of Hawkeye that Dave could place on his shelf. This year I finally found one at Coliseum of Comics in Fashion Square Mall. Much like my lunch on Monday with Denise, we spent our time catching up with each other's lives, though since Dave doesn't do much e-mail, doesn't read my blog and doesn't use Facebook or Twitter we had a lot more ground to cover. Dave's kind of a slow adopter. He didn't really start using e-mail until a couple of years ago and still only uses it sparingly. He'll probably get around to Facebook and Twitter in a few years, after they've been replaced by the next big thing.

Friday evening after she got off work, Cindy and I went to a quick dinner at The Earl of Sandwich in Downtown Disney, then to see "The Time Traveler's Wife" at the AMC theater in Pleasure Island. I read the book about 4 years ago and enjoyed it. In what is a very rare occurrence with me, I actually enjoyed the movie version more than the book version. The film handled the sometimes confusing time shifts in a very understandable manner and stars Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams truly made this movie and story have the emotional impact that touched the hearts of the audience. Cindy was crying, but as we were leaving one poor woman was sobbing.

While we're on the subject of leaving the theater, here's a mildly amusing story at my expense. It was raining Friday evening, so when we sat down in our seats I leaned our umbrella against the back of the seat in front of me. During the previews it fell and made a loud "thud" when it hit the floor. Cindy was watching the screen and didn't see that happen. She leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Was that your iPhone falling out of its holster?" and I told her, "No, it was the umbrella." When the movie ended I picked up the umbrella and when we reached the exit doors I, as is my habit whenever leaving someplace, reached to my hip to be sure my phone was there and found my holster empty. I turned to rush back into the theater as Cindy called out, "I TOLD you I heard your phone fall!"

Pushing against the flow of people still filing out of the theater, I made my way to our seats in the still-darkened room and first felt the seat itself, hoping the phone had not fallen through to what I knew would be a dirty, nasty floor. But no such luck; the phone was not in the seat or in the area between the seat and the armrest. That meant I had no choice but to get down on my hands and knees to feel around the area under the seats, which was not just dark but pitch black...the same color as my iPhone and its rubberized case. After blindly feeling every square inch of yucky floor under each of our seats and coming up, well not exactly empty-handed but with no phone, I expanded my hand-feeling to the floor on each side and behind our seats. Still no luck with the phone but I did find a wad of gum, a puddle of sticky coke (the drink, not the drug) and a quarter with some kind of crusty material on it as well as several other items of indistinguishable origin. It's just about this time, as I'm thinking, "I wish Cindy would call my phone so it would light up and I could see it" that my phone does indeed start ringing with her distinctive ringtone. I hear it and it's nearby, so very close judging by the volume, but still I cannot see the face lighting up in the darkness. I'm just about in the middle of asking myself, "Did it fall face down...?" when I suddenly realize why the ringing is so close. It's because the damn phone is in my shirt pocket where I ALWAYS put my phone during a movie so I can retrieve it quickly if a call or text message comes through. It's been in my shirt pocket the entire movie and, of course, during my entire frantic search through a darkened floor area that is almost too nasty to even walk across with shoes on.

This getting old and forgetting things stuff really sucks.

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