This was in the Ft. Bragg Commissairy parking lot, in an SGM parking space.
It's an Aston Martin V8 Vantage (correct me if I'm wrong), and probably a couple of years old. If so, it could be worth around $75,000, a reasonably obtainable price for someone in the military, provided they were deployed for a while. However, if it was new, it would be more in the $120,000 price range.
Regardless of price, and provided it's the pre-'09 model, regardless of power, this is still a nice car.
I just love the sound of a nice engine with 8 cylinders or more. This one sounded great, and I could have heard it better as it drove away, but unfortunately, my door was closed and the window was rolled up due to the rain.
[update: today on Ft. Bragg I saw a Porsche Carrera S, a car that sells for around $100k, so it could answer the question posed by the title of this post. However, I see Porsche 911s every so often, but this is the first time I've seen an Aston Martin in person.]
We got back from Charlotte earlier this afternoon.
First of all, here are a few photos taken with my cellphone of two pricey cars in a parking lot in Charlotte. The first is a Bentley (A Continental, Continental GT, Continental GT Speed or something like that) and the second is a Mercedes S65 AMG.
Ok, about our time in Charlotte.
We stayed in the Renaissance Suites for two nights, and got back home Thursday afternoon.
The Renaissance Suites is supposed to be a four-star hotel, I believe, but I'd subtract at least one star because a bottle of water provided "for the guests' service" is $4, and wireless internet access in the room costs $13! To its credit, the hotel did look pretty impressive from the inside, when you were on a floor above the first (ours was the 5th; there were 9 in all) looking down on the first floor. To give an idea of what it looked like, imagine a 4-sided building with rooms and balconies facing inwards, so you can walk around the side of the hotel next to the wall. [Sigh] I'm not too good at explaining things like this; I should have taken some pictures.
Mainly, we just hopped around from restaurant to restaurant, utitizing coupons and saving a lot of money.
The hotel was 3.8 miles from a place called Underground Racing, I think. Underground Racing is a tuning company that equips cars that are already fast with things like twin-turbo kits and makes them even faster.
I wanted to see if I could see anything like Lamborghini Gallardos around the place, but I didn't get to go.
During our time there, we didn't actually do a whole lot, except for eat. ;-)
Actually, we did go to a went to a park for a little while and do some other stuff as well.
We stopped at a Blockbuster once. It was closing, so most of the DVDs were 8 dollars or less. Although there were some things I would have liked to have gotten, I didn't get anything. Although I will likely be able to watch all or many of the movies and TV shows on my Mac (everything from the Lord of the Rings trilogy to Heroes to the Bourne series and much, much more), I guess I'd like to have the actual DVDs.
When my parents went to get dinner one night while we were there, my younger brothers and sisters watched MacGyver on my dad's laptop using Netflix Instant Viewing, but Lucas and I played a Call of Duty Nintendo DS game with each other. We only have two DSs, so Josiah and I took turns (which was fine with me).
[to be continued, maybe...]
-Max out
OK, quite simply, here is a link to another BarlowGirl sweepstakes (and please refrain from any eye-rolling here).
This one's grand prize gives the winner and guest (winner's parent or legal guardian, if under 18) a paid round-trip flight to the city a BarlowGirl & Superchick concert (both will be at the same event) will be at, hotel accomodations for one night, and two concert tickets.
The first prizes are simply the two concert tickets. So look at it this way: the first prizes are the same thing as the grand prize, only with everything but the tickets taken out. ;)
BarlowGirl & Superchick concert sweepstakes
Finally, something to write about.
This evening, I watched Race to Witch Mountain with the rest of my family.
It was one of the movies I suggested my mom get from Netflix, since there are many movies I'd like to watch that aren't for children, but I also try to look for movies our whole family can watch (and preferably ones that I will like also). Many of the reviews I'd read (at Christian movie reviews) said it was a good family movie, so I thought it might be a good idea. As it turns out, I am happy with my choice.
For those who haven't watched the movie, here's my take on it, provided you don't care about having some of the surprises spoiled. If you have yet to watch the movie and don't want to see the plot spoilers, skip to the "end of spoilers" part.
[WARNING: Some plot spoilers ahead]
The movie begins with a taxi driver, Jack Bruno (played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), taking people where they want to go. It may be my odd & twisted sense of humor or something, but the Stormtrooper scene in the beginning had me laughing. His next passenger, Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino), spends much of her time studying and giving lectures on UFO phenomena, but Jack doesn't believe in the existence of UFOs, which rather disappoints Alex. Later, as Jack is driving along without any passengers, he looks in the rearview mirror and sees two kids in the back seat! He comes to find out that their names are Sara and Seth, and they are aliens on a mission to save Earth from destruction by the more war-inclined denizens of their planet some 3,000 light-years away. Unfortunately, they are being pursued by government agents and a Siphon, an alien assassin sent to kill the kids. To help matters just a little bit, the kids both have special abilities (i.e. superpowers): Seth can withstand tremendous impact without being hurt and can pass through solid objects, and Sara can read minds and can manipulate objects with her mind (telepathy and telekinesis).
The trio later team up with Dr. Friedman and try to stay one step ahead of the government and the rather unfriendly interstellar intruder, all the while trying to find and get to the siblings' spaceship. I won't say what happens next, so watch the movie to see the rest.
[End of plot spoilers]
The movie has no objectionable language that I caught, and no sexual content at all.
Overall, even though it does require a good amount of suspension of belief, I found it to be enjoyable on the whole and satisfying (I can't say the same for Inkheart, which I watched recently; I found it to be too illogical and lacking...something...), funny in parts, and pretty good with some of the special effects.
In case you didn't know, I think superpowers, especially telekinesis and other mind powers like telepathy, are really cool.
Something in the movie that some people might have a problem with is the fact that the government agents, presumably from the CIA, FBI, or another large and well-known intelligence agency, are the "bad guys" trying to use Sara and Seth for their own ends. Naturally, this doesn't bother me in the least, as I am, well, a conspiracy theorist, and I have no illusions or delusions regarding the government. In fact, I believe some think me somewhat of a pessimistic/fatalistic prophet of doom for saying things like "the government is becoming totalitarian and might be like the former U.S.S.R. and other countried relatively soon, and we can already see how many of our freedoms have been and still are being eroded and how the government's power is steadily increasing..."
Well, enough about that.
Here are some themes I see in the movie that I believe can be seen biblically (although the biblical themes may be only loosely connected):
1) When seeing how Jack and Alex develop a close affection for the kids, even though they were previously total strangers, we can be reminded how God loves us and adopted us into his family, even though we hadn't known him before.
[to be continued...]
Some of these are pretty funny. These are from a few weeks ago; I especially liked the Kanye West & Obama one (if you haven't heard about the Taylor Swift incident the cartoon is a parody of, you can find it in the news).
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/15887
OK, so you all know Ted Dekker is my favorite author, or at least one of my favorites.
His books are very good, but he also has insightful things to say on his blog from time to time.
For instance, the "The Baby, the whole Baby, nothing but the Baby, so help us God." and "The Challenge of being Gay" one. The second is not about what you're probably thinking, just to reassure you.
Here's the link to his blog: Ted Dekker's Blog
Also, read The Gunslinger and see if you have the same expression when you finish it as I did ("What?!?!?")
The Boar, on the other hand, has a message that is easy to see.
Well, got to go.
-Max out.
Well, not really, but I'll get to that in a second.
Today we went to church as usual, and I managed to wake up at 8:00 am, even though I was tired and had gone to bed at past midnight the "night" before.
Not much else happened that wasn't the usual stuff, but yesterday we did get three boxes of pies from Ft. Bragg (3 boxes with 10 pies each), thanks to a program called "Pies for Patriots." Apparently, anyone who is active duty can get free apple pies from this annual event. And so now we've been eating apple pies...
When we first got them, they were still nearly completely frozen, but we ate one like that anyway.
You might like hot pies and think that frozen pie would taste like a lot of other foods do when frozen or cold (i.e. not good), but it was pretty good, and of course, it stayed together pretty well; that is, it didn't crumble as much. We don't have that many pies left now, because we took a case to church this morning and two were eaten during the fellowship meal and we gave all but one from that box away to other families.
But, we still have some, so if you come over to our house very soon, you can have some apple pie, although I must admit that we are out of ice cream.
To tell the truth, I was actually wondering what I should write about (besides cars), because nothing's really happened to me that I'd call interesting, but since I can't think of anything, here are some photos taken with my mom's cellphone camera and my brother's camera (he took the pictures of the F430; I was driving).
I saw this Ferrari F430 Spyder parked next to the Harris Teeter parking lot some months ago, but since this photo was taken right before I turned onto Raeford Rd. where Harris Teeter was, I think it's safe to assume the owner lives nearby.
Does this car
look somewhat like this one?
That's all for now.
- Max out.
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