Potpourri No. 19

200th Post
That's right, you're now reading the official 200th post by yours truly. I know, it's not a huge milestone considering I've been writing this blog for over three years now. (Wow!) A lot of bloggers would have passed their 200th post mark long before their first year was up, but if I tried to blog on a daily basis, I would probably flunk out of school and spend even less quality time with my family than I already do. So, perhaps I should be celebrating how little I've written rather than how much. Whatever. I'll let you decide how to interpret the specialness of this occasion.

Cutting Footloose
I'm now officially off of my crutches and out of my walking boot. In order to accommodate the swelling that still remains in my left foot (and will likely remain for as long as a year, saith the doctor), I had to buy some cheap shoes that are one size bigger than I normally wear. It feels weird to be in a regular shoe, simply because I'm not used to it, but it's also nice to see normalcy on the horizon. In related news, I've started physical therapy. Sometimes I'm unsure of how much good it's doing, especially considering it's costing me (after insurance!) roughly $100 per week! But I assume they know what they're doing. As long as they can get me to the point where I can kick 'em in the rear if it ends up being a waste of my time, I guess that's something.

Rockin' Robin
Melanie and I recently splurged and went out to eat at a bona fide sit-down-and-get-served restaurant. We went to Red Robin, the gourmet burger establishment. And I must say, it was certainly a gourmet burger that I enjoyed. It's the new "Burger Parmigiana," which comes with marinara sauce, sautéed peppers and onions (I got mine without the onions, of course), Parmesan cheese, garlic mayo, and the coup de grâce, a "crisply fried Mozzarella wheel." If you're sick of relying on triple bacon cheeseburgers to get all that fat into your system, the revolutionary idea of adding fried dairy products to your burger should prove very appealing.

Watch for Falling Stars
I don't suppose very many of you pay attention to the ever-changing contents of my sidebar, where I feature the most recent books, movies, and music that I have read, seen, and/or heard. Even fewer of you (we're threatening to get into negative numbers now) are likely to pay attention to the star rating I bestow upon the movies I see, based on a traditional four-star rating scale (going from "zero" meaning crap to "* * * *" meaning excellent, ascending in half-star increments). Well, I think I'm going to change things up a bit. Back in the day, I used to do an excessive amount of movie watching and I viewed myself as an amateur critic. I wrote movie reviews for my high school newspaper, and I continued the trend after graduating high school by participating in an online forum for modest critics such as myself. (You can still find the 80 or so reviews I wrote if you know where to look.) But nowadays I find myself more distracted in life, and I find that I am not so particular about the movies I see. That is, I don't scrutinize like I once did, although I pride myself on being more perceptive than the average movie goer. The belabored point being, I think I'll make my movie ratings more vague. Basically, I'll have four categories. I may come up with some clever way of labeling them, but in a nutshell it will be as follows (from best to worst): highly recommended, recommended, not recommended, strongly not recommended. That should be precise enough to express my opinion without reducing things to a potentially meaningless numerical breakdown. Yup.

This is the Song that Doesn't End
A while back, a good friend of mine introduced me to a video that his son had come to be a rather large fan of. Not that long ago, I showed it to my own son, and now Eddie is constantly requesting to sit at the computer and watch it. (The only thing he requests more frequently is, at least currently, Finding Nemo. See Melanie's post about that.) I tracked down the video on YouTube (not the video's official home) so I can now share it with you. It cuts off a second earlier than it should, but I don't think that will prevent it from getting stuck in your head almost indefinitely. Enjoy!