So my DVD & Book were delivered on Monday.

The DVD was great. Watched it Monday night. Amazing how a guy who is generally known for having his shit together can fall into a bad situation and get caught up in it. The saddest part of the whole thing was when he had to sell his sweet ass DW drum kit (valued at $8000) to his drug dealer for $3000 so he could pay rent. It just made me miss that fact that music was such a big part of my life for so long. I’m a rock star at heart.

The book on the other hand did little for me. I read a bunch of it yesterday afternoon and finished it up last night. The basic concept is valid to some degree – and that’s the idea that intuition and initial impressions are more valid than we often give them credit for and that too much info and thought process can acually adversely affect our decision process. The problem is that that idea is laid out in the first 8 pages. The other 278 pages just repeat examples (and add details) ad naseum. If I had read just the introduction that would have been enough and I’d have agreed with the idea in theory. Unfortunately, I read the whole book and while there’s some good ideas and things I do agree with to various degrees, I think this excerpt from Steve Sailer’s take on the book sums it up best:

But as far as I can tell, his book reduces to two messages:
-Go with your gut reactions, but only when they are right.
-And even when your gut reactions are factually correct, ignore them when they are politically incorrect.

So, it’s a promising idea and I believe in a certain degree of validity to it, but the book presents the concept in a way that sucks.

Today I’m getting all the directions and reservations and info and stuff together for next week’s trip. Well, we’re gone for next week, but we leave on Friday. It’s mostly a trip to visit the in-laws. We haven’t been to their house since we lived in Florida ourselves (6 years!) and they moved between the last time we visited and now – so essentially this will be our first time at their place. So of course I’m piggybacking a few park stops onto things. We’ll hit Atlanta briefly to check out Goliath at SFOG, we’ll hit Waterville USA while we’re down that way. The kids will dig the waterpark and I can get a new credit (and the pics for coasterimage). On the way back up we’ll stop by Alabama Adventure and Lake Winnie (finally! third try’s a charm).

Then I have about 48 hours to bust out something new on coasterimage before we go, otherwise I’ll have one of those month-long lags with nothing new. It’s not hard, just tedious. It’s hard to find the motivation to get started, but once I do, I usually bust it out. I have Celebration City pics processed, so that’s probably what will go up.

As for right now. It’s the 4th. No days off around here. The plan today was just to go see the local fireworks this evening, but it’s seriously looking like it’s going to be rained out. Based on what’s happening outside the window (err…sliding glass door) and what the weathermen are saying…I’m guessing no fireworks tonight.

Oh yeah…I got new shoes last night too.