Brian Hale-Yeah!'s blog

Surprise!

Well, this marks the first day of June. I will turn 30 this month. dun dun dun!

Jacinda and I are working on our "Total Money Makeover" so I already told her I don't expect much in the way of gifts. I said a CD and some cards from the kids would be cool. Usually, we're all about the gifts. Hence, the Total Money Makeover. 

Anyway, she emailed me today at work and announced that I will be getting a birthday month where she plans something fun to do each day in honor of my birthday. Tonight is our normal date night, so we are dropping the kids off with G&G and going to see "I love you man" and eat some chipotle. That is pretty much the perfect date for me by the way!

I can't wait to see the movie. I love both those actors, I'm just hoping it's not over-the-top crass like some of their movies are. 

Time to go. C-ya!

i know...don ' t judge me

If you notice, I've had a couple blog posts in a row here. I'm trying to catch up with things and I have all these things that I'm looking back at that we did. 

Jacinda have started up our date nights again, taking the girls to my parent's house, and bringing the baby out with us. We went to our first movie in awhile a couple weeks ago. We went to the ever-so-famous $3 theater in Clovis and saw Bride Wars. 

Before you judge me, I have mentioned several times on this blog and in public that I'm an emotional sap and I love chick/teenie bopper films. They always start nice, create some kind of problem, have climactic music building up to an end that is perfect. It's kind of like watching an episode of Full House. What's wrong with that?

Bride Wars didn't disappoint. classic story line that ended all happy. Nothing special, just entertaining.

Attention Men!

I know the Super Bowl was just last week, but this week is Valentine's Day. Let me just say, from years of experience...when she says:

"I don't want anything"

she does.

That's not a knock on the girls, but as a general rule, girls love to be pampered, focused on, splurged on, and to feel loved. You just have to figure out what makes her feel most special.

Jacinda and I have our weekly date nights, and so instead of fighting the crowds, reservations, and inflated prices on flowers, we will celebrate tomorrow night. We did it like that last year and it was great. We hit up Fleming's and took our time, didn't wait in line, or have to worry about making reservations a month earlier. I'm still trying to decide between 2 places to take her for dinner this year and then we're going to go see a movie (a rare occasion lately). I'm also going to take each of my daughters out for lunch this week for Valentine's day. I can't wait. Even though they are young, I believe that as their Dad I should be the one to show them how a man should treat them on a date.

ironic

Jacinda and I went out tonight because I was missin' the whole family too much last night, I had to postpone date night.
We went out for some mexican food and the burrito I ordered was the size of one of those bass fish's that grandpa has hanging in the living room. I just cut it in half and asked for a box. We had a great time catching up, syncing all of our holiday activities and planning for Christmas.
We went across the street to Target and started looking for some Christmas presents for the girls. This year our church is doing this really cool focus on spending less, loving more, giving more...you know the drill. Well this year it's not just talk. We are raising money to dig wells in Africa for people without clean drinking water. We are doing something!
Jacinda and I are really trying to grab onto this whole way of thinking and trying to focus on family instead of festivities and playing games together instead of buying new toys that will sit in the closet. As we are looking for some cool things for the girls, Jacinda picks up this Disney Princess Cash Register. She's like, "this is actually really cute" and I just start laughing. "That is so ironic" is all I could say. I thought our daughter would love it too, but here we are trying to spend less and discourage the whole "shopping is my life" mentality and we're going to buy her a cash register complete with debit cards and shopping lists for fantastical princess picnics. Hilarious. Makes you think.

Pasta, a Funny, and iMac

Last night Jacinda and I went out to a nice restaurant here in Fresno called FIVE. I've been helping a friend out with all of his investments, but not really getting paid for it because of what we're doing, so he gave me a gift certificate to FIVE. Very cool.

I had Gnocci. It's a potato based pasta that is kind of like a dough. Jacinda had Salmon and Halibut with a Goat Cheese stuffed Serrano Chile Pepper. They were both really good. Plus, we still have enough to go out another night! Then we went home really quick because it actually ended up being a really nice night and Jacinda got cold. Then, off to the movies.

We saw, "I now pronounce you Chuck & Larry" with Adam Sandler and Kevin James. i love both of these guys so I knew it would be funny. There were a couple of points where they could've gone over the edge, but they treaded the line pretty close. The story is pretty obvious, but it was still fun to watch. They actually made a good statement about human rights while not totally supporting (they actually made fun of) gay rights. They showed how the Crazy Christians treated the homo's and how their co-workers treated them. I'm not going to open a full discussion here about homosexuality, but they helped open the emotional side of the argument up. Jacinda and I talked almost the whole way home about the origin of sin, being born into sin, people who have gay tendencies, how they must feel to the world and how so many of the young gays that we see we think is more of a fad, like how goth was the "non-conforming" crowd in high school.

Keep your eye on www.apple.com today. I think we will be seeing a new version of the iMac coming out. Everytime Steve Jobs makes one of his talks, the stock seems to go up too. So, check out AAPL on http://finance.google.com today! It is probably too late now, but a tip that might help in the future! Maybe.

Just a movie...

Last night we headed out the door with cold pizza in our hand because we didn't have enough time before the movie started to grab dinner. My mom is working 4 10-hour days this week as school is coming to a close, so everything got pushed back a little. We headed over to the theater and rushed right into the movie. It was showing in one of the enormous theaters there, and since it was Monday night, there were maybe 30 people sitting. Plenty of seats and this lady sits almost right in front of me. Where am I gonna put my feet now?! Oh well.

I heard a quote somewhere that George Clooney had said the title of this movie should've been, "Ocean's: the one we should have made last time" I really liked it. Entertainment at it's best. It won't win any awards, I won't buy it and it won't be remembered as a movie great, but for an afternoon at the movies, it was perfect for me. I laughed pretty stinkin' hard a couple of times and I might of even cheared once. They are all just such a random bunch of characters, it's just funny. So, my final answer: 3.5 out of 5 as far as all movies go, but a great summer flick.

good dinner, better movie

Jacinda was feeling cruddy yesterday, went to the Dr. and it turns out she has pink eye and an ear infection. Don't you have to be a little kid to get either of those? Funny, but not for her. She still wanted to get away from the house for awhile so we headed on over to Dai Bai Dang for dinner. The afternoon weather was perfect so we sat outside and ate. It was so nice to just sit together and talk and we even started trying to plan our vacation for later this year.

After dreaming of white sand beaches and days of relaxation, we walked on over to the theater. We saw Fracture (4 out of 5). It was a really good movie. Just enough wit to keep you guessing, but not lost, and they were very good at not letting you figure it all out until the end. They gave little clues along the way, so you can kind of figure it out, but all in all it was very entertaining. Jacinda and I were both pleasantly surprised.

Bloody Dinner

we started our night out early because my mom and dad (the babysitters) took the day off of work. We headed over to the promised land also known as Champlain & Perrin. Pretty much everything you need are on these 4 corners. So, we grabbed a nice dinner at Campagnia. We had both a gift certificate and a $10off coupon. Good thing because the meal was over $80! Just the two of us. But, with the gift card and coupon, why not splurge a little. I got a ribeye with this horseradish butter cream sauce. oh yeah! We looked around at a couple of the shops before dinner, so afterwards we had to race to the theater. Stopped by 7 eleven for my Junior Mints and we made it just in time to catch the previews.

We saw Shooter starring Mark Wahlberg. It amazes me that this guy used to be a rapper (kind of). I think he's a pretty good actor. Believable to me anyway. The movie definitely earns it R rating with some of the gun shots, but I'd give it a 3.5 out of 5. The whole movie was pretty intense and even though it dealt with conspiracy theory and the FBI, it didn't get to the point where it didn't seem like this could ever happen. Not like an episode of 24, although I love it, seems pretty far fetched now. I needed this night out too. I've been tensing up for about 2 weeks now, and it fealt great to just go out with my girl, talk, and watch a movie. My ideal kind of night!

Date Night!

Last night Jacinda and I went to P.F. Chang's for dinner. Before I get into that, I gotta tell you I was in rare form. I think it was my "supplement" plan that I'm on to lose weight. I had two shots of 64g of Protein and 2 sets of these pills that have the caffeine equivalent of like 100 cups of coffee (I don't know really). But, I don't drink coffee, so you can imagine what caffeine does to me. Plus, I went to the gym after work, so needless to say, my metabolism was up...way up. Everything was funny.

So, PF Changs was good. 2nd time I'd been there. For some reason to me it's weird to eat "fancy" chinese food. Like Mexican food, I prefer it to come from some mom and pop hole in the wall. It's not a price thing, it's an authenticity thing. D Hou on Palm and Bullard is good chinese from a really nice family and I'm still working on one solid mexican joint. I go to several different ones, but not one has hit me out of the park that I must go everytime. Let me know if you have any suggestions on either. Another great chinese place is Lum's downtown. After that we walked over to Gottschalk's (a department store that was started in Fresno) because Jacinda has been waiting for them to get this certain pair of shoes in. There was absolutely no one in there. There were maybe 10 people working the whole store and 6 of those girls were maybe 13 years old! That place just reminds me of being a kid and going shopping with my mom. You know when you are so bored that you will sit down on any fixture you can find because the flourescent lights are just draining all super powers away!?

Then we walked over to the theater and saw Music & Lyrics with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. I don't know if you read Carlos' post on what star you had a crush on when you were 16, but mine was Drew. I had pictures of her in my wallet. My feelings have faded, but the movie was really good. Anne was totally right in her movie review at Mungles that it is a total chick flick, but the guys won't be bored. I thought that it was hilarious and just had a really nice, "feel good" kind of storyline. Movies like that are totally predictable, but sometimes you just need that. Someone meets someone, they like each other, he screws it up, yadayadayada. You know how it plays, but just like extreme makeover home edition, it's therapeutic. We both laughed hard many times.

When we got home (at 10:15) both of my parents were asleep on the couch! They didn't even hear us when we came in. I think I almost gave my mom a heart attack! When she finally did hear us she jumped, and I mean jumped out of the couch. So PF Changs 3.5 stars, Music and Lyrics 4 Stars.