Spider-man No Way - 95%

 

Watched with my dad and sister!

It was pretty good.. Didn't really like Dr. Strange in it. 

Good to see ole Tobey Maguire again! The whole, I have been stabbed before was pretty funny. 

Movie had a slow start but was worth the build up. 

Lots of good references to all the Spider-Man movies 

Demon Slayer S2 - 100%

 

Whew! This show got better!

Amazing ending, great action! Great fights!

Inosuke and Kyōjurō were great!!

This is quickly becoming one of the best anime ever!

UGEARS Hexapod - 100%

 

Clear instructions, high quality, precision wood! 

Cool gears, works well, sturdy!

This is a fantastic set!! I will definitely be getting more UGEARS sets!

Highly recommend!

Took me about 8 hours to put it together while sitting on the couch visiting with family on Christmas Eve!

Satisfactory U5 - 100%

That's it! This is officially my favorite game! Update 5 brings it all together!!

The floor holes! The doors! The colors! NO CLIPPING ON BELTS!!!!!!

Pattern - thin layers that hide all the belts and all the factories on top making sub factories. 

Got to do the Christmas Event too! Lots of fun!

Put about 70 hours into this build!

First time to make a simple train setup. 

First time to make turbo fuel!

Didn't bother with nuclear..

 

Aggretsuko S4 - 85%

 

It was alright 

Watched with my wife

Didn't really dig the conflict between Retsuko and Haida

Got a little weird at the end

More intense then previous seasons

Demon Slayer S1 - 100%

 

Wow!

Great story arcs, action packed, amazing animation!

Inoskue is my favorite! 

Great team building. 

Origin story and progression of Tanjiro building a team is amazing!

Nothing could have made this better!

Lego Titanic - 100%

 

Such an amazing set! 

9090 pieces for only 630 is a pretty good deal! Only 7 cents a piece!

Great scale, color, amazing detail!

One of the best Lego sets period!

Parks & Rec S1-S7

 

Whew, I finally finally got the wife hooked!! We watched every single one of the 126 episodes!

We watched about 3 episodes a night on about 4 nights a week. 

My wife's favorite character was Donna!

It was great to go through it all again, truly one of the best shows!

Netflix Cowboy Bebop S1 - 95%

 

Fantastic! 

John Cho was a fantastic Spike!

Daniella Pineda was a fantastic Faye!

Mustafa Shakir was a fantastic Jet!

Hated the whole mechanic sex scene they had to push in for Faye. 

Jet had too much needless profanity.

Too much random nudity.

But all in all it was probably the best live action adaptation of any anime I have ever seen! 

Watched it all with my wife. Both of us were disappointed to learn that they will not have a second season.

Walking Dead S10 - 60%

 

Didn't really care what they did with Negan.. This season was mostly a bust.. 

The whisperers were not much of a villain. The leader was not scary and the end was anticlimactic. 

The girl with the goggles .. "machine gun-totting princess" started off cool but then got boring.

Lots and lots of filler. I can't believe I managed to get through it all. 

POE Spectral Helix - 90%

 

Solid starter build. Nice and fast. 

Didn't care for the league again. Didn't feel very rewarding. 

Felt like I was playing a hammerdin, funny because I just got done with that on D2 Res. 

First time I completed 12 challenges without even trying for one specifically. 

So with enough challenges for the first cosmetic and not liking the league.. I am gonna quit till next because I can't wait to play Satisfactory Update 5!!!

Drops were terrible too... 

D2 Resurrected - 95%

 

Faithful to the original D2!

Unbalanced, OP hammerdin. 

I started with the Sorc ice build but got beat by the immunes... but almost nothing is immune to hammers..

It was indeed nostalgic!

Played it for a couple of weeks and now I am done... at least until D2 resurrResurrected  comes out!

POE Spectral Shield - 90%

Very late post.. Wrote this on 1/1/2022. This was about mid August during the Expedition league.

The build started out pretty well but then I decided to try to focus on Impale and it broke it. I gave up on the build shortly after getting enough challenge points for the first league cosmetic reward. 

Didn't really care for the league.. it didn't feel rewarding much at all.

Kenshin Final - 30%

 Didn't like it at all, didn't even make it all the way through the movie.

Batman Hush - 90%

 

Lots of Batman Catwoman sex

Pretty intense show

Lots of bad guys

Didn't like how Catwoman looked with her hood on. Made her face odd. 

Lots of good fights scenes and animation.

Didn't really care for the mystery villain

Lego Aston Martin - 97%

 

Fantastic! 

A little disappointed that there is no steering but they made up for it!

Lots of nice chrome!

I am not a fan of the 007 series but the N64 game was amazing and so is this Lego set!

Kenshin Beginning - 85%

 

Got a bit confused as to what was happening on some of the scene transitions.

Pretty gory 

Pretty great as far as the low bar of live action translations of anime films 

The actor who played Kenshin fit pretty well. 

Manifest S3 - 100%

 

Fantastic!

Didn't care for how Olive just forgot about TJ after he moved to Egypt. 

Lots more great layers of plot!

Dr. Gupta is a bit off

Eagan is interesting

Angelina makes me a bit sad

Great show! THEY HAVE TO MAKE A SEASON 4!!!!

Lego Ford Mustang - 100%

 

Fantastic Lego representation of the car!

Great colors!

Great functionality!

Love the engine

Great with the mods

Top of the line Lego set!

Manifest S2 - 98%

 

Even better than the first season!

Like Zeke and Mick better than Mick and Jared

Saanvi is so smart. 

The image of the season spoiled the surprise of Grace being pregnant.

Recommend watching this show even more!

Black Widow - 90%

 

Scarlett Johansson is amazing!

Not a big fan of the new widow Yelena. 

Really don't care for Red Guardian. David Harbour is the same character in every show / movie

Good action over all. 

Plot was OK. Interested to see How It Should Have Ended. 

If I learned one thing from this movie.. apparently... explosions can't kill people.

Manifest S1 - 95%

 

Great cast. Michaela is my least favorite and she is not bad. 

Great music

Great advancement of the main plot! Doesn't feel like any filler.

Zeke is cool.

Not a fan of the Michaela Jared Lourdes love triangle.. so many love triangles

Highly recommend this show!

Castlevania S4 - 87%

 

Pretty good, better than season 3. 

Carmilla's fight was well done. 

All the bad guys died so I guess the show is over? 

The ending was not so great. 

Ragnarok S2 - 90%

 

Not as good as S1. 

Felt like more of a bridge to Season 3. 

Lots more character development, especially for Luki.

Fair amount of pandering... awkwardly shoved in. 

Classic lose power and quest to get it back.. 

Short season, only 6 episodes. 

Watched with my wife on Netflix. 

The Little Things - 40%

 

I like most everything Denzel Washington but this was an exception. 

Slow, predictable, not compelling. 

Don't like Jared Leto in anything.. 

Not really worth watching. 

50 First Dates - 25%

 

Blah. Almost didn't make it through the first 30 minutes. 

They threw a bunch of dumb characters to attempt to make Adam Sandler look better but didn't help.

Drew Barrymore couldn't even save this one.. 

Not worth watching.

Grand Canyon + Zion

Whew! I don't know how to have a relaxing vacation and this certainly wasn't one. 

Details of the family + grandparents vacation to the Grand Canyon!

Day 1: Saturday May 15th

We woke up at 0400, drove an hour to the hotel parking lot and took a shuttle to the airport. 
We had a two hour delay in Denver getting out to Flagstaff.   
My parents flew into Phenix and had to wait three hours in line for the rental car. 

Met my parents at the South Rim pictures below:

Then we drove 3.5 hours to a hotel in Kanab and left the kids with my parents.

Day 2: Sunday May 16th

We got about four hours of sleep and had nothing for breakfast but power cookies and made the stupid choice of attempting the rim to rim hike at 0600 when the sun was already up... 

When we got to the trail head the parking was so packed that I had to drop my wife off and park the car at the lodge and walk two miles back to the trail head.

We made it all the way to the streams past Cottonwood going to Ribbon Falls when heat exhaustion hit me like a ton of bricks. I had vomiting and diarrhea. 

I though I might die on the spot. Wife ran back to Cottonwood to get a ranger and some hikers stopped and give me lots of encouragement. The ranger doused me with freezing water and made me sit in the streams and I shivered for hours. The ranger checked my glucose levels and said it was so low that I shouldn't even be conscience so I ate a bunch of sugar and the ranger checked it again and there was no change... I felt perfectly conscience so we concluded that the test strips were expired and that the reading was bad. The ranger cooked ramen noodles for me but I couldn't eat. I didn't eat anything for the rest of the day. Then the ranger setup a tent for my wife and I at manzanita and thankfully the pains in my abdomen dissipated around 0100. 

Day 3: Monday May 16th

The ranger said he would cook us oatmeal if we waited till 0600 but I felt better and didn't want to get caught out in the sun so we started out at 0400 and made it out pretty well by 1030. I was really tired when we got out the North Rim but thankfully a kind soul had mercy on us and gave us a ride back to the car at the lodge. 

We ate a huge lunch at Jacob Inn and met my parents there with the kids. After that we went to our house in Kanab and rested. 

Day 4: Tuesday May 17th

We went back to Jacob Inn for breakfast and then to the North Rim and took a scenic drive to Point Imerial and Cape Royal, fantastic views and paved trails. 

Then we went to the lodge and got to eat lunch looking out the window in the air conditioning. Best view from inside lunch ever!

Then on the way out of the lodge I discovered that they had mule rides available going down the North Rim so I bought two tickets for my mom and wife to go the next day. 

Then we took highway 89A back to checkout the Vermilion Cliffs and ate dinner at Lake Powell.

Day 5: Wednesday May 18th

Dad and I drove through Zion and checked out Pipe Springs with the kids while my wife and mom went Mule riding.

Then we went back to the hotel in Kanab and got mom and went to Kanarra Falls. 

The falls were amazing! But I was still super beat and had to carry my 3.9 year old through most of it and the amazing part was all at the end. 

Day 6: Thursday May 19th

We drove over to the visitor center at Zion and dad and I hopped on the shuttle to go to the Narrows while mom, wife, and kids went shopping. The Narrows was amazing, dad and I managed to hike 3.5 miles in to a ways past the main fork. The main down side was that it was crazy crowded. The shuttle driver told us that they sell 5500 tickets every day and it seemed like there were 5000 people all in the Narrows! The shuttle driver told us that before COVID, they would pack the busses with standing room only and people were happy to do it but now only 19 people per bus. After that, dad and I hiked to the lower Emerald Pools. At that point we were both pretty tired so we called the girls and arranged to be picked up and headed back to the hotel in Kanab. 

Day 7: Friday May 20th

Travel day back to Flagstaff. 

First stop was lone rock in Lake Powell. We drove out there and I got stupid and got the car stuck in sand! Thankfully dad and I were able to push it out. 

Then we went to horseshoe bend and that was one of the top most amazing sights ever!

Then we went back along Highway 64 and pulled off at all the vistas that we missed in the dark on the way to the North Rim the first night. The Watchtower was amazing. Lots of great stuff to see. 

Look closely at the Horseshoe Bend picture and you will see a boat and a campsite on the beach! 

Day 8: Saturday May 21th 

We got to the Flagstaff airport at 0430 and the plane got delayed... Some minor issue that cause it to not be able to take off until 1000, four hours late. This caused us to miss our connection in Denver so the rebook gave us an additional layover of fours hours! We finally got home at 0100 Sunday!! Traveling back with kids about did us in!