"Fill your hands, you son-of-a-bitch!"

John Wayne is quite possibly the coolest. Person. Ever.

I would post a picture, but I can't find one that is legal for me to put on here.

Just finished watching "True Grit". Damn, he's cool. And yes, I know I'm awfully late in coming to this realization.

I ordered a Hawaiian pizza from Pizza Hut (Woo-hoo! Something that resembles real pizza!), sat down in front of the TV, and popped the "True Grit" DVD in the player. Excellent movie. Plus, there's the added fun of seeing Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, and Dennis Hopper in it! That shootout at the end, 4 to 1, John Wayne says that line at the top, puts his horse's reins in his mouth and rides toward the four, shooting, spinning his rifle around to cock it, coming out unscathed...John Wayne is the man.

I had a pizza tonight to try and keep with the Kidd Family tradition of Friday night pizza. Mom and Dad's first date was at a pizza parlor. When we lived in Pocatello, we had friends who ran a pizza parlor, so we went there all the time. Even after we moved to Washington, it was pizza on Friday. In fact, I think I've eaten so much pizza over the years that pizza sauce flows through these veins. This is not a complaint. My favorite pizza has always been Hawaiian pizza (see also: Canadian bacon and pineapple). Funny thing about Hawaiian pizza over here, though. Now introducing our special guest topping: CORN!

Yep. Corn.

I don't know about you, but nothing says "Hawaii" to me like a bunch of corn on my pizza. This must be the Hawaiian pizza they serve in...hmmm...Honolulu, Nebraska? Yeesh. So with an added request of "No corn, please," I ordered my pizza. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, tasty.

Sunday is Open School day at Starfish High. Today, in preparation for Open School, we had some pumpkins delivered to school from the nearby town of Date. That's pronounced Dah-tay, not date. Why pumpkins? Well, apparently for Open School last year, one of the English teachers carved some pumpkins for decoration, what with October being the month of Halloween and all. Our vice-principal asked me to do the same this year. With five years' worth of experience in carving pumpkins for schools, I told him, "I'm your man."

So today, I held a special "Jack O'lantern carving" lecture after school. I showed the students how to skin and gut a pumpk...I mean, carve a pumpkin. Tomorrow afternoon, a bunch of students and I are going to carve about 15 pumpkins to decorate the school. Better yet, we'll still have a big batch left over for the following week's Open School. Here's a photo of today's result.

I always try and find the humor in things, and I found it again today. I moved into my current apartment in August and could not believe the sheer amount of crap that was here. I would open a cupboard or drawer and find mountains of unnecessary crap. A bag of used batteries, used suits and shirts, "decorations" (or shallow representations thereof) that I didn't want, half-used bottles of shampoo, bottles of rotted wine. No joke. There was something growing in the bottom of those bottles, and it didn't look friendly. Anyway, my point is (and yes, I have a point) that the superstar pumpkin carver/drama dude/English teacher from last year had been the previous resident of this apartment, and all of that crap was his. [I met the guy once, and it was all I could do to keep from punching him in the face.] All over my apartment is all this junk that I can't use and don't want. Yet I find something useful that he left behind at school. He had his parents send him a pumpkin carving kit that has all of these little, precise tools. I used them today, and they were quite nice. I was actually impressed. Not that I will ever forgive that jerk for the state he left this apartment in, but I was a little impressed.

The humor of it all? The fact that I am talking about the sorry state that anybody leaves a place in. Mom, Dad, I figured you'd get a kick out of that.