Re-living My Childhood

So there I am in Target browsing and thumbing through the DVD section looking for anything that caught my eye. I'm such a movie buff that I love to add to my growing collection of DVDs. I've gotten more and more picky however as time has gone. When I first started, I'd buy just about anything...but I'm a little more, well, deliberate so that I get what I truly want versus just filling up the DVD cabinet.

Any-hoo, back to Target. So there I am...looking, searching, trying to make up my mind about a possible next purchase...and then it jumped off the shelf at me! He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. At first I thought I was imagining what I was seeing, but no, it was real enough all right. He-Man was the best cartoon memory from my childhood that I had -- and still do. I was religious in watching the show. After school. Everyday. Without fail for 130 episodes. Now, I don't pretend to actually have seen them all, but I must have come close. Me and most of the friends I had at the time. Not only that, but the toys too. Oh, the toys! In fact, I still have most of the ones we (my brother and I) had and now my boys are playing with them. Castle Grayskull. The Wind Raider. Skeletor. Battle Cat! I grabbed the DVD set and read furiously to see what the details of my soon future purchase were. I was a little disappointed as it was only 10 episodes from the 130 -- but it was supposed to be the 10 best, and it is a very good cross-section of all the shows that aired. But surely they would be releasing all the episodes on DVD soon enough, right? You betcha. In fact, in just a few short weeks, the first volume will grace store shelves and once again, He-Man and the MOTU will grace TVs all over the country and 30 year old "boys" will relive that amazing time in their childhood that made us all feel like "the most powerful man in the universe!"

There have also been a few other TV series sets that have been released on DVD and I'm working hard to collect. The other two of my top 3 are Superfriends and Thundercats. Superfriends went through many variations and changes in the years it was on TV so it may be hard for those responsible for putting it on DVD to accurately do so in some sort of exhaustive manner, but I'm sure they will try. Thundercats only ran for 2 to 3 seasons and so that should be pretty easy to get completely on DVD within a short amount of time even.

I'm such a nostalgia junkie that I hope they keep releasing this kind of stuff on DVD not just for me to watch and re-live, but so that I can share it with my kids and pass it onto them as a source of enjoyment. Better than what they might be exposed to today.

Does Life Get Any Better?

My 3rd year anniversary at work rolled around and that means my vacation time renewed. I get 2 weeks every year -- which will roll over if I don't use it. To date, I've always used my vacation for some reason or another...mostly a day here, a day there. The only longer stretches I've used in my time with the company has been in 2003 when I took several days for a family vacation and earlier this year when I used nearly all my two weeks for Hannah's birth. Now that I have more time, I decided to kick out of the office for a couple of days and relax. We decided a few weeks back to take some time and go to Val's folks over in East Tennessee for a weekend. It's her dad's birthday this weekend so we decided it would be a good time to go. It's been Easter since we were there and I hate the fact that we don't get to go more often so it was time -- past time really. So, I took two days off (Friday and Monday) and even though we will only be at her folks' place until tomorrow (Sunday), life doesn't really get any better. We get to relax, have some great food (her mom is a phenomenal cook!), the kids get to spend time with Grandpa and Grandma, the scenery is awesome and, well, no work. God's blessings are overflowing!