I made it in to work today. In Southern Maryland we "only" got 15 inches of snow unlike, DC, Baltimore and Western Maryland which got smacked down. On Monday the plows came through the neighborhood and cleared the driveways but in the process the piled the snow on our cars so we all spent hours digging ourselves out. On Tuesday the Federal Government was shut down. I don't work for the Federal Government but the organization I work for uses the Fed weather schedule so we were closed also. And today, the Fed Govt. policy is unscheduled leave which means you can take a sick day or vacation or personal time without permission from a supervisor.

The past few days were like a mini-vacation and it was great spending snowed in time with wife and kid. Ms. Queen hates it when I go to work and so it was great that I was able to be home for a couple of days.

I finally got to do some updates on St. Martin Catholic Books & Gifts website. I didn't do as much as I need to do but at least I was able to do something especially with a toddler running around demanding attention.

We saw the movie Signs over the weekend. The next paragraph or two will talk about the movie so skip over them if you do not wish to hear about the movie. I thought it was an excellent movie, certainly worth the hype. I had no idea that it was an alien movie. It was also a very, very funny movie, I certainly think that M. Knight has a special talent (and acting is not it). Mel Gibson and JoAquin Phoenix were excellent. My wife was creeped out by Phoenix in Gladiator and did not like him, but he won her over in this movie. He was very convincing expecially the scene in which he is watching TV and there is the report of the a visual on the alien and then they show the dark figure at the birthday party. That was a freaky scene. I like the alien, it was simple and evil looking.

The only weakness in the movie was that they did not explain why aliens with uber technologie could not get out of locked pantry. Also, via the TV report they said that the battle with the aliens turned in the middle east when people there used a primitiv remedy. That was poorly done. They could have researched and named an actual remedy and come up with some explanation why winning the battle in one spot had repercussion on the alien battle the world over. Anyway, it was a great movie, highly recommended, good God content, etc. Another point is that it was alien movie from the perspetive of a small family, no president, no national security, no air force, etc. It was simply, how one particular family dealt with the issue.

I just bought a bunch of photography equipment. I pray it works out, I got table top photography kit with flood lights, screen and all so that I can take pictures of small items like Jewelry. To sell things on St. Martin's website, we have to scan pictures off the catalogs, which is difficult and time consuming. I have a pretty good digital camera but the lighting is a problem. So this should solve the problem. Now we should be able to get on the website a better representation of rosaries and jewelry that we have in the store.

I watched the Michael Jackson documentary on Monday on ABC. The man does freak me out. One part that I found very amusing was the shopping spree in Las Vegas. I felt that the manager of the store did not give Michael Jackson the attention he should have gotten. Michael had to call for assistance on more than one occassion. Now, if that was my store, I'd be tripping over myself to make sure that this dude who is going to spend $6 million does not have to wait for answers. Of course, everyone who comes to our store gets star treatment, especially being a Catholic store, I just thought that for a store like that they needed to give Mr Mega Patron more attention.

And what is with the blonde haired kids? This guy really does not want to be black anymore. My wife noted that the blonde kid did have dark roots which makes it worse, i.e., Michael is making him blonde. And was anyone else freaked out by the fact that Michael grabbed his daughter right after she was born, even before the doctors looked her over and cleaned and he took her home and washed her!!? This guy is cause for concern. Oh well.

So there that was my weekend.