Yes, we went to the races, yesterday. Second time in my whole life that I have done that. First time was over 14 years ago. We had a really good time; in fact, we may go back Thursday or Friday for the fireworks and stuff. Thursday night, .38 Special is playing a concert at the park, so that might be fun, although Rachel has no idea who they are! We didn't do half bad, either. We only lost a total of about 20 dollars. Of course, if you went by each person's luck, I came out last, darn it! I was 15 dollars down at the end of the day. Christi was about 15 dollars up (she accounted for 44 dollars and some change of the "winnings"), Rachel was a little less than 10 dollars down, and Stephanie came pretty close to breaking even. Of course, the children can't place wagers, so I place all bets and simply let them choose a horse and hold the tickets during the races. I would have won a little more, but I got greedy and bet a "trifecta" on the last race. I picked the winner, but missed the second and third places. My second place horse came in third, and my third place horse, well, I'm not sure it even crossed the finish line... In one race, I picked horse number 1 to show and there was a "1" and a "1a," which effectively gave me two chances to win. Oddly, horse 1 came in second and horse 1a came in third! I'm not sure if I got money for both or not. I bet five dollars and came away with eight. If we go back Thursday evening, we will probably go with two dollar bets. Who knows? Anyway, we had a good time, and will likely do it again.

I don't think I ever mentioned the movie, "Hypercube." I watched that, actually, a couple of weeks ago. Now, I had watched "Cube" a day or two prior, and enjoyed the story, but the acting was pretty stiff. The premise here is that 6 or 8 people wake up in this room with 6 doors in it, one on each wall. They can move about from room to room (all cube-shaped, hence the name), but the catch is that some of the rooms are deadly traps. In fact the movie opens with a man moving to a room and this criss-cross wire thingy comes rushing by from one side to the other and cuts him into little bitty squares. Ick. Anyway, eventually the people all find each other, and one overly strong personality takes over and becomes "leader." In "Cube," only one person gets out. "Hypercube," the sequel (actually called "Cube2-Hypercube" with the 2 being as in squared) has slightly better acting, and the cube has been modified to shift in time as well as space. In other words, sometimes the people meet themselves in another room. Totally freaky. If you've ever read Dean Koontz's book, From the Corner of His Eye, there was some element of quantum leaps in there, as the main character had the ability to jump to various parallel universes. Well, that's kind of what happens in "Hypercube." It was very entertaining. The ending was a little lame, but it had an alternate ending in the special features. I highly recommend it.

Missed anything?
The Beatles--Abbey Road/Alice Cooper--Killer - July 04, 2012
The Beatles Eponymous Album - June 26, 2012
Autism's False Prophets - February 12, 2011
Santana--Guitar God? - November 11, 2010
Tribute To the Red Sox - September 29, 2010