Late June:
Someone broke into my car and stole my camera. Bastage. I gave serial numbers to the police, but nothing has turned up yet and I doubt anything ever will. I'm oddly at peace about it. I want a new camera, obviously, and I'm a little bummed that my Flickr account won't be getting any new photos uploaded, but I'm not saving like mad for a new camera.

Saw Batman Begins. My thoughts, stolen from an LJ entry about it:

The first thing I noticed is that it's even darker than the first. For example, there is a rather poignant scene near the beginning explaining the cause of Batman's seething rage and guilt. Burton's version leaves the viewer emotionally detached, understanding but not empathizing with Bruce. Nolan's version pulls the viewer in, heightens tension, and underscores the horrible, unjust nature of the scene.

There are times that Christian Bales seems to be positively channeling Michael Keaton, as the first time you see/hear him as Batman, you'd almost swear that it's a young Keaton hanging there. Michael Caine is a very believable Alfred, Morgan Freeman is great as Lucius Fox, and Gary Oldman is all but lost in the role of nebbish Jim Gordon.

I would have like to have seen Ra's Al Ghul explored a little more; it felt like he was supposed to be regarded as a mythical man, like Kaiser Soze in The Usual Suspects, but after a brief introduction, he's left out of the plot for so long you almost forget about him, and when he shows up again, he's mostly your average two-dimensional villain. Doubly so for Dr. Crane; if ever there was a hand-wringing smarmy villain, he's it. I suppose it does no good for the viewer to root for the villain, but he seems almost engineered to make the audience hate him.

I hate to admit it, but I was wrong about the new Batmobile as well. I figured that anything other than the '89 Batmobile was destined to suck, and it most certainly doesn't. In fact, all of his little toys are great, and a decent amount of backstory/explanation is provided into where exactly he gets all those wonderful toys, and fairly plausible (for a movie about a comic book) explanations for how things work.

If you're a Batman fanboy/fangirl, you'll love it. Even if you're not so sure about the whole Batman thing, you should give it a try. Ashley doesn't go in for Batman much, but I brought her and she really got into it.

4th of July was spent in the Sioux city area at Ashley's family reunion, and we regularly cycled back and forth between Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota. We hung out with her extended family, smoked cigars lit with my knockoff Zippo, and light off way more fireworks than I've ever had access to in my life. On the 3rd, we found ourselves without lodging, so we celebrated my raise by buying a tent, a lantern, some fans and pitching camp in a KOA.

I bought (and mostly beat) Lego Star Wars, watched the first season of The Adventures of Pete and Pete, as played a heck of a lot of Battlefield 2 with Brian and Andy.

Finally, I bought Ashley a promise ring because I'm not ready yet to get engaged, but I get the strong feeling we're headed in that direction. Now time to plan and save...

In order to facilitate I Eat Paint being updated a little more often, I'm allowing others to submit entries. To keep things from devolving into absolute chaos, the system is set up that all entries submitted go into a queue where I can edit/deny them. I also do this because it lets me clean up HTML and, frankly, I love to wield supreme executive power. It makes me feel like a big man.