Blast From My Past

You're an innocent soul who often has trouble understanding the world around you. You appreciate the value of heritage and are driven by a desire to find your place in the world. Just lose the ugly sleeveless dresses, okay?

Take the Dark Shadows Character Quiz, hosted by the Dark Shadows Journal Online.

I was very, very young (no, really) when I would race home after school to watch Dark Shadows. Then, Patty Nilsson and I would discuss what happened the next day on the playground at Rosenburg Elementary School.

I had the biggest crushes on David and Quentin.

I watched House of Dark Shadows on the Chiller channel the other day. It came on about 3:00am, but I recorded it. Unlike Barnabas, I work better when the sun is up. The next night (or morning) Night of Dark Shadows played and I recorded that one, too. Watching these movies brought back many memories, but I was surprised at how campy the show was.

Me - Victoria Winters? Hmmm....

MK out.

Tales of the G - Part 3

It appears that debris from the back of the house (the bayside) was pushed to the front and is coming out through the garage.

















Blue tarps cover some roofs with beautiful blue sky in the background.



















What is left of Murdoch's Pier stands defiantly alone .






















I was so startled by the boats on the side of the causeway coming into town, that I did not snap any pics...

















...But I was ready on the way out of town.





















The little time I spent there was enough to put me into a depressed state. The words "my Galveston is gone," kept going through my mind. Not that I ever expected it to stay forever the Galveston in which I grew up and always remember. And likely, the post-Ike Galveston will emerge better than the one before.



By rights, no one should ever have been allowed to live on Galveston, as it is a barrier island - but too late now...People have built on it and have lived full, colorful lives. The ghosts of many adventures roam the island, and now, more spectors will settle there.



One ironic thing I noticed while surveying the damage - the water looked beautiful. It was as if it was trying to deny its culpability in the devastation.



Another ironic thing I saw were the "help wanted" and "now hiring" signs in front of the restaurants on the Seawall that are open. The island is crowded with workers and the only places to eat are feeling the effects of a town missing two-thirds of its population.



It remains to be seen how the island will bounce back, but bounce back it will. The people of Galveston are a hardy stock. There are families that have been there for generations. My only concern is the fate of the medical school. There are rumors that the State will use the damage from the hurricane as the excuse it needed to close the school. I seriously doubt that, but I am worried about how much will be eliminated from the facility. Something interesting to see was the legions of workers that were being bussed in to clean out the buildings at UTMB. There were big lines and groups of people wearing white jumpsuits and masks traipsing into the hospitals. It looked rather sci-fi.



I don't know when I will be able to go down there again, but hopefully next time, I will see more signs of life.



MK out.

Tales of the G - Part 2

The Flagship hotel sustained a little damage.













The driveway onto the pier to get to the Flagship is gone.












Best sign I saw.












Belongings put in the yard to dry.













Debris mountain at one of the transfer stations.

MK out.

Happy Birthday to My Baby

Today is my child's 18th birthday, and I forgot to wake him up with the Birthday Song. I also forgot to let the Birthday Fairy in last night to decorate the breakfast table and leave her gift. She has been leaving a gift for him to find every morning on his birthday since he was about 3.

I'm a bad mom.

I need to sulk, but I must be off to work.

While I am away, Blogger is loading a boatload of pictures for a story I must tell. It may take more than one post.

MK out.

Tales from the G

It has taken a while for me to process what is depicted in these images. Overall, the island looks sad and dirty - but amongst the anguish and devastation, there are glimmers of hope. There is debris everywhere one looks, but some streets and neighborhoods have more than others.

Harbor View and parts of Fish Village look like a bomb went off. It's earily quiet, with few people around. There are several boats in slips at the Yacht Basin, but the once full-on-weekends parking lot is empty. The boat storage warehouse that burned during the height of the storm is a mangled and charred mess.


The grass is dead in this yard, littered with debris.
























This street looks very sad.























This pile, in front of a stately home in one of the finer neighborhoods contains ruined furniture, mattresses, soggy sheetrock and the like.


















This stump is left from a tree that was almost blown over during the storm. The root system is exposed.
















Ruined merchandise and shop furniture from a business out by the curb.











MK out.

Sundays are for Movies

I've watched a few in the last month and a half:

Eragon was adapted from a book that was written by a 15-year old boy. It a fantasy about a young boy who finds a dragon’s egg and soon finds out that he has been destined to become a dragon rider who must defend his world from an evil king. It was good, but I have not read the book and I was told that it is very different from the book.

Curse of the Golden Flower has deceit, revenge, romance – It’s a real entertaining film, set in the time of the Tang dynasty. The emperor has ordered the royal physician to drug the empress and make her go insane, the empress has a lover, who also happens to be the lover of the royal physician’s daughter…It can be a little hard to keep up. Set the language to English. It was good.

The Bank Job is based on a true 1971 bank robbery. Some small time bad boys were enlisted to rob the safe deposit boxes of the bank, where the true treasure was evidence implicating high officials and members of the Royal family. It was a good renter.

The Band’s Visit is about the Ceremonial Police Band of Alexandria, Egypt, who travel to Isreal for a performance. No one meets them at the airport; so, they set out to find their destination on their own and wind up in the wrong town. They have to spend the night with some of the locals, and each faction learns a little about the other’s culture. It was good.

Autumn Hearts: A New Beginning is set in the 1980s. It is about three concentration camp survivors who reunite and put a few past demons to rest. Susan Sarandon, Gabriel Byrne, Max von Sidow and Christopher Plummer star in it. It was pretty good.

Thumbsucker is basically about growing up. A 17-year old, not very popular – socially or academically - high school student still sucks his thumb as a coping mechanism. He gets diagnosed with ADD, is prescribed medication and becomes an overachiever. It was a bit on the quirky side.

Set in England in the early 1980s, Son of Rambow is a film about two boys from different backgrounds who join forces to make a movie. It is really, really good.

Baby Mama is pure, entertaining fluff, but it did have a message underneath it all. Tina Fey plays a high-powered career woman who is unable to conceive. Amy Poehler plays her baby mama – the surrogate she hires to carry her baby. It was pretty funny.

Persepolis is the big screen adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s bestselling autobiographical graphic novel that gives us a glimpse of what it was like growing up as an outspoken Iranian girl during the Islamic revolution. It was pretty good. In the set up menu, you can choose to watch it in English or in French.

The Astronaut Farmer was a cute, feel-good, family film about a man who has always wanted to build a rocket and launch it. Billy Bob Thornton and Virginia Madsen star in this good renter.

Young@ Heart is a cute documentary about a choir made up of 70 and 80-year and they sing works by modern groups such as the Ramones, the Clash – They are not happy to sit on their rockers and listen to elevator music. I liked it.

I saw a couple of films in theaters:

Towelhead is hard to watch. It is a film about a young teenager, now living with her strict Lebanese father, who becomes rather obsessed with sexuality. The film is set in Houston during the first Gulf War. There is pedophilia involved. The recognized names starring in this film are Toni Collette, Aaron Eckhart and Maria Bello. It's not for everyone.

I was able to catch The Dark Knight finally. While I thought Heath Ledger did a marvelous job as the Joker - and truly, what a tragic end for him - the movie was nothing special. Christian Bale did a good job as Batman - but the material - not so good. I think I lost interest with the Batman movies after the seeing the second one.

MK out.