reflections from the road: saturday, december 27th

since today was our last in amarillo i decided to take syd, my five year old niece, to see bolt the most recent film by disney's increasingly irrelevant* pixar unit. although bolt was vaguely entertaining the primary lessons i learned by the end of the film were:

a) acquaint yourself with the voice actors before going to see a glorified cartoon lest you spend an hour and a half guessing whose annoyingly scratchy voice is behind the wonder dog
b) thou shalt feed pre-schoolers before the film lest you spend most of the film refusing to buy additional concessions, and
c) if one tears up during the "climactic" finale when the child actor voiced by miley cyrus is unexpectedly reunited and subsequently saved by the sans super power, but still darling and devoted wonder dog voiced by john travolta one probably misses his dog more than he would like to admit.

all in all, i enjoyed hanging with syd. maybe next year she'll be old enough to catch an anniversary edition of raging bull with me or something.

one of the things i love best about celebrating with two families is expanding my christmas palate. at the morris house Christmas is not the time for turkey or god-forsaken spiral ham sandwiches, but the time to enjoy authentic hand-rolled tamales, tasty green chili and texas brisket with a nice, cold miller high life. we ate well in amarillo.

kellie's dad, commonly referred to as "grumpy" also surprised preston and i with an uncle henry pocket knife for christmas. i'm crap with knives but little p has been having a blast with it!

on our long trip back to tulsa kellie and i listened to john le carre's absolute friends, which is a lengthy examination of back story in search of a plot, stopped at bucks in okc for much needed pit stop and made it within three miles of my parent's house before the left rear tire on our rental car shredded to bits. fortunately, thanks to my masterful mechanical skills, the donut was affixed in short order and we dragged our tired arses home.


* from what i've heard wall-e was fantastic and i enjoyed the incredibles as well. but "pixar does doc hollywood" and "pixar does milo and otis" is somewhat less than original.