Technically Speaking

Sometimes I just need to laugh out loud. When life gets stressful, and I need to break the tension, nothing helps like a good belly-aching hearty laugh. The trouble is finding something funny enough to get me to laugh that loud and hard.

Problem solved. When you need fodder for a laugh-till-it-hurts type laugh, I recommend a blog I found recently called Close Second. The blog is written by a witty down-to-earth guy who lives in Seattle and works at a Spanish imports store. Steve’s vignettes are entertaining, well thought out, and very well written.

Next time you need a good laugh, head over to Close Second. Who knows. I may bump in to you over there.

FYI: I don’t necessarily recommend reading this at work, or any other place where loud laughing/snorting isn’t appropriate. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I’d forgotten that I hadn’t done this yet, but before my dad died, Christina and I went to see Cars. I wanted to write a review of the movie, and then in all the business of the last week or so, I totally forgot. Katrina blogged about the movie today, so I decided to post my review.

The hard part for me with this review will be to separate the movie experience from the actual movie. See, we went to see Cars in a new theater in Salt Lake has 10 all-digital auditoriums. Basically, it was like watching Cars in HDTV, with a 50 foot screen. The digital cinema was breathtaking. The clarity and brightness was phenomenal. It was like nothing I have ever seen. If you are going to go see this movie again, you should check to see if you have a digital cinema near you. It was worth it. There is only one theater chain in Utah that has the digital cinema projectors: the Megaplex Theaters. (Here are a list of digital cinemas world-wide.) Digital show times at the Megaplex theaters are noted by the icon. (Not all showings of Cars are digital (about half are, depending on the location), and not all movies have been produced digitally, so only selected titles are available in digital.) Currently Megaplex Theaters had ten digital cinema auditoriums at The District, five at Jordan Commons and four at the Gateway.

In addition to the great theater experience, I loved this movie! I read a review that said that Pixar could make a movie about socks and dust and could make you like it, and I wouldn’t doubt it.

When I saw the first preview for Cars last year, I started to wonder if this would be the movie that ruined Pixar’s great reputation. I mean, cars as characters? And they hoped to please a wide-age range audience? My faith was weak. It needn’t have been.

Cars works because Pixar knows how to tell a story. They create characters that you can care about, and they twist them into a meaningful plot with just enough sentimentalism to make it feel-good without making it sappy. Cars is, first, a great story, and second, a movie with great animation (and third, even better in digital cinema…). Not to mention being very, very funny. I don’t want to ruin any of the jokes for you, so I won’t repeat any of them here. But do stay for the entire credits. There is some really cute post-movie additions that you’ll miss if you leave as the credits begin to roll.

It’s family friendly, yet still great date material. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, go watch it. And if it is available in digital cinema anywhere near you, it’s worth the drive to the theater. You won’t be disappointed.

And if you are, then you just don’t know a good movie when you see it.

I got a report a couple of weeks ago that somebody had tried to contact me via the contact form on my blog. Since I was sorta busy the last few weeks, I just had a chance to look in to it; I had coded part of it wrong, so the message wasn’t being forwarded on to me.

If you tried to reach me in the last couple of months via my contact form on the blog, I’m sorry to inform you that I didn’t get your message. If you used the contact form on my main website, paulpehrson.com, I did get your message.

As of this morning, both contact forms are working properly again. If you remember what you tried to tell me, then do me a favor, and resend the message.

Sorry for the technical difficulty.

My dad passed away this afternoon. His obituary will be published in the Deseret Morning News and Salt Lake Tribune tomorrow morning.

Funeral services will be held on Saturday morning at 11:00 AM.

I’m including the obituary notice below.

Nels Frank Pehrson

Through the atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ, Rheumatoid Arthritis has been defeated in Nels Pehrson’s life. After a 38-year battle, victory has finally been declared.Nels passed from time to eternity on June 14, 2006. He was born September 8, 1952 in Salt Lake City to Ruth E. and Paul L. Pehrson. He married the love of his life, Lindy Smith, on April 18, 1975.

He was an active member of the LDS Church. He served a mission in the Texas South Mission and as a transient bishop at Welfare Square, as well as a bishop of the Whitewood Ward in Bennion in addition to various other positions on the ward and stake level.

He was self-employed all his life working at Pehrson Hardware, Eldredge’s Sales and Service and Country Roads Realty.

He is survived by his wife, Lindy, and children: Wendy, Paul (Christina), and Rick; as well as sisters, Ruth Hill (Bert), Janet Brown (Wayne), Karen Allred (Robert), Pat Ricks (Dave); and brothers, Paul (Karen), David (Gloria); and special brothers Kim Olsen (Bobette), and Paul Wiseman (Toni). He was preceded in death by his brother Richard.

Funeral services will be held Saturday June 17 at 11:00 AM in the Sandy Canyon View Stake Center, 9119 S 1300 East. Friends may call at the Jenkins-Soffe Mortuary, 1007 W 10600 South from 6 to 8 PM on Friday, or at the church from 9:30 to 10:30 AM on Saturday. Burial will follow in the Wasatch Lawn Cemetery.

On of my favorite scenes in Disney’s Emperor’s New Groove is after the palace guards have been transformed into animals. Yzma, the ex-palace administrator (a bad guy), yells for the now-animal guards to follow Kuzco and Pacha (the good guys). One of the guards raises his front leg and says, “Hey, I’ve been turned into a cow. Can I go home?” Yzma excuses him.

Do you ever have days when you feel like that? Yeah, today is one of those days for me. Here’s how it went down:

I got up on time and got ready for work. My mom called and told me that my dad is doing worse today than yesterday. Then Christina came and told me that she wanted to call her doctor. We waited for the doctor’s office to open, and the nurse said we should go in this morning.

On the way to the doctor’s office, we were stopped by a police officer again. I knew it was coming. We lost the registration sticker for our car. The registration is up-to-date, but we lost the sticker. I called the DMV on Tuesday, and they told me that I could get a replacement sticker for $5, but I hadn’t had a chance to do that yet. The stoplight turned red as we approached the light at the corner of the Quarry Bend development (the same place we got pulled over for the same reason last month) and a motorcycle policeman pulled in behind me. That was the minute I knew I was toast. Next thing I knew, his lights flipped on. We didn’t get a ticket or anything, we just got a firm (second) reminder that we needed to get that taken care of.

Up at the doctor’s office, Christina had her appointment. Everything is okay. That was a major relief. So we decided to run over to the DMV to get the registration sticker taken care of. After that, I took Christina home so she could take a nap, and I could head off for work. It was only 11:00, but I was starving, so I decided to make myself a peanut butter and honey sandwich. We were out of honey, and it was my first choice, so I decided to wait until I got to work where I had honey. (You can see it coming, can’t you?)

I drove to work because it was so late. When I got to work I was emptying my pockets on my desk and what did I find? Yep. Both sets of keys. That means that Christina can’t drive herself to work today because I have her car keys. (For that, I might as well have taken her car instead of the truck. Her car has a radio and air conditioning.)

I made arrangements for my brother to take Christina to work later this afternoon and then went to make my sandwich. Turns out, we are out of honey at work. So I ended up with just a plain peanut butter sandwich, which is about 10 steps below either a PB and honey or a PB and jelly sandwich.

So, in the spirit of Disney, I ask you,

“Hey, I’ve been turned into a cow. Can I go home?”