Post No. 531"

Read a couple of issues of DC's Takion (#'s 5 & 6) from the late 1990's last night. An interesting enough primise attempting to create something new in the Kirby 4th. World when that seems like "holy ground not to be touched" by many writers and I'm sure took some guts to attempt.

#5 gave a review of the origins of "Mr. Miracle" and "Orion" and told how "The High Father" and "Darkseid" traded their sons at birth to keep peace between their two nations. Plus how after Orion killed Darkseid, he resurrected and that was the cause for The High father to create Takion to help pursue their conflict.

But even though it was interesting, still it was rather bland even for a book that was published as late as it was in the last century by DC, and I can certainly see why I never found much interest in it. :^\

The Winter Men (#'s 1-3 & 5) was very good. One of the best of the Wildstorm titles I'd read, all dealing with how the U.S.S.R. had created their own race of super-humans during the "cold war era", and how those people interact with society today in the face of the new Russia. The storyline revolved mostly around the rescue of a young girl, which leads the central character to go to the U.S. and join the Russian mafia undercover tracing leads to her whereabouts, and exactly why certain villians wanted her in the first place. Although there was supposed to be eight issues in this series, only five were produced and the story had been planned to be tied up in a special of sorts that has yet to materialize. But the first five issues read pretty complete and the dialogue is realistic. X^D
Getting right along into some personal thoughts here...

My mother is improving every day even though she's still stuck in the local nursing hom. Still, I know that there she's at least getting the best of care and eating three meals a day and has medical service. Her arm, which she couldn't use at all a couple of weeks ago, is tremendously better. Today she remarked that she could finally touch her face, which just the act of lifting it a short time back was impossible for her to achieve, and she's able to use her fingers a bit on that hand as well. The physical therapy seems to be helping quite a bit and they've even got her up and trying to get some strength back into her legs again, and she's eating most of her meals at the dinning room rather than in bed. She's not "too" bored from lack of company as she's had many friends and family come for visits, and everyone there that's on the staff seems very nice and capable of their various jobs.

After working several days straight I have the next three days off from work, and thus far I've done one job around here my wife asked of me, which was to either move or just eliminate the two scrubs that were next to our large window in the front of the house. I started on this around 11:A.M., and was amazed that I finished up just a little after noon considering what that involved in the process.

First, I tried to trim off the bushes some to round them, and then tried to dig them out with a grubbing hoe. This proved unsuccessful, so the next plan was to just cut them down as far to the ground as possible and see if they could be completely taken up. Using a pick I was able to pry them out by the roots in sections finally, and then I dug a couple of holes on the right side of the house and replanted/watered the larger of the root systems I saved. I raked up all the mess that was left, threw it on a tarp and hauled that to the back of the yard (where I have a brushpile) and swept the area, and voila!, I was done save for putting back up the garden implements. (The replanted roots may or may not take, but if they don't survive I'll just dig those back up again and toss them.)

And yesterday, the Amish guttering guys came to put up two sections of gutter and a drain spout on the right side of the house. I really wish these people wouldn't come when I'm not there because, honestly, my wife doesn't know anything about the best way for such things to be done, and they asked her if it made any difference which way the downspout was positioned, to which she said, naturally, "No", and they put it angeled right back towards the very area I was wanting to put new soil in where it had previously washed out. The angle the workers had it would have sent water right back into that said area, so I had to dig out some elbow pieces of downspout and redo the base to redirect that water away from that, and now I think it will be alright. I plan on filling back in that low ground with new soil and planting grass seed in that barren spot of the yard. (The cost by using the Amish workers was only half or less than a regular contracted worker, BTW.)

And today is Aug. 8th., 2008, which translates to 08-08-08, and as usual, those who play the KY. "Pick 3" lottery bought out those numbers out of superstition. Of course it won't come in, but the lottery has a field day of sales from such things and even has to cut off the seeling of such numbers for liability purposes for the payoffs. I'd have to laugh at those fools wasting their money especially if that 8-8-8 came in tomorrow!

And finally...

My old friend, Mala Shaw, came by for a visit from Louisville today to see if I wanted to buy any stock. He sold me a short box of modern stuff for $20., which actually had some decent reading material in it (as if I didn't already have enuff of dat stuff lying around), but...

Some of the highlights included a copy of the V for Vendetta limited series #1, several early issues of The Ultimate Fantastic Four, several issues of The JLA & The JSA, a Uncanny Tales from the Grave (Marvel) #6 (w/a Ditko reprint) and myriad other titles. There was around 150 books, about 35-40 of which were dups, but still I paid less than .20 for what I wanted.

And for $2. each I bought complete/nearly complete sets of the Batman Returns Movie Cards as well as The Valiant Comics Cards. I'm not a big time card collector, but I thought those pretty neat.

(Thus went a Friday.)