Adventure a'plenty over Memorial Day weekend.

Sorry for the delay, folks. Work has been... brisk. So, had a great weekend. I took a gamble and left the preggo with her parents in favor of going for a bit of an adventure themed weekend. We started off by meeting for a hike the Art Loeb Trail in Pisgah National Forest. It rained most of the time, unfortunately, but it at least made for some good sleeping. The rain broke a bit for the hike back out, which made for a few good vistas. My dad caught this pic of me during a quick break on Tennant Mountain:

To be certain, even a crappy day of hiking beats a good day at the office, and it was nice to get out to places where there is no cell signal- where if someone wants to reach you, they've got to strap on a pair of boots and do a couple of miles of hard uphill. Of course... when your girl is 'in the window' to have your firstborn, that very fact can also be a tad bit unnerving.

After we got off the trail and grabbed showers, we met my brother back at my parents' house, where my mom served up an awesome meal of barbecue sandwiches, homemade coleslaw, and watermelon. After a short nap, we were off to see the new Indiana Jones movie. My old man and I have seen all of the Indy films in the theater, together. So this was a must.

Personally, I wasn't disappointed. It was what any Indiana Jones movie should be: ridiculously over-the-top. I keep hearing people complaining about how unrealistic this movie is- but as for me, I'd have been mad if it hadn't been. Let's review some key points of the prior movies:

- In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the biblical Ark of the Covenant spewed forth spirits and laser beams that melted and/or exploded a bunch of Nazis.

- In The Temple of Doom an Indian guy managed to punch through a guy's breastbone using just his fingernails, drag out his heart, which then continued to beat and then burst into flame during the next few minutes while the guy was being lowered into some lava.

- In The Last Crusade, they found a several-hundred-year-old knight guarding the Holy Grail.

Yeah, I'd say over the top is what the Indiana Jones series is about. And this one, in my opinion, does it right. You've got Kate Blanchett playing a rapier-toting, communist version of Betty Page. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that Indy wasn't tapping that. I don't know about you guys, but I always get a little creeped out when a 60-something year old leading man ends up hooking up with some grossly younger chick. I know that at one point I saw that as being cool. I guess that's one more thing that changes when you have a little girl, eh?

Anyway, bottom line is that if you can unhook your disbelief and try to take in this Indy the same way you took in Raiders back when you were 8 or so, I'm thinking you'll find it a good ride, and certainly worthy of seeing on the big screen.

Last but not least, we watched UFC 84, which was an all around good fight card. Tito Ortiz's shots- as well as his little comeback- were handily stuffed by Lyoto Machida. Even though Tito has cleaned up his act a lot in the past years, I'm always game for seeing him get owned; in my book he's still got a lot of arsehole karma to pay off still. Machida came out second in the Sherdog rankings, and word is that he'll be up for a title shot at the winner of July 5th's Rampage Jackson - Forrest Griffin fight.

Wanderlei "The Axe Murderer" Silva rather handily illustrated that Keith Jardine has, indeed, wandered out into deeper waters than he's quite ready for. It only took the big Brazilian 36 seconds to tuck The Dean of Mean in for a nice nap. I don't dislike Jardine, but I think this answers questions about whether Liddell was just having a bad day at UFC 76.

And then the main event, BJ Penn vs Sean Sherk, for the lightweight title. I'm still mixed about this one. Penn punished Sherk on their feet for three solid rounds- but everyone was expecting Sherk's solid conditioning to keep him rolling into the fourth and fifth rounds while Penn began to run out of juice. At the close of the third round, Penn dropped Sherk with a flying knee and pounced in with strikes. Ref Mario Yamasake made as if to stop it as a TKO, but seeing Sherk fight back, he stopped short. Just then, the bell rang. Penn goes over to Yamasake, arguing that he had stopped the fight before the bell- which replays showed he hadn't, in my opinion. Yamasake seemed to reluctantly agree and ruled that Sherk was 'unable to continue'. This seemed pretty sketchy to me. I'm not terribly sure the fight would have gone any other way had it been allowed to continue, but I'll take a good clean stoppage over a ref taking direction from a fighter any day.

With all that goodness done, I returned home Sunday to find that the baby was still inside the wife, thank goodness. I'm not sure what, exactly, would have happened to me if little Tori had decided that she was going to make an appearance while I was gone, but something tells me that it wouldn't have ended favorably. After another good meal with the in-laws and yet another good meal with friends on Monday, I returned to work fat, but happy.

So that's all I've got for now! Hopefully I'll be able to catch up on posting by getting out my "Living with a Preggo" series finale by the end of the weekend. Stay tuned!!