Earlier this week, Justin told me he wanted to take me out for dinner this week for my birthday. After telling me that he asked, “by the way, did you bring your camera?” That, of course, has had me curious as to where he was taking me.

Last night after class, the two of us met and he took me to a Vietnamese restaurant. The food was good, and unique. That wasn’t the big surprise though. After dinner, Justin took me to the Fort Worth Museum of Science & History, who is currently hosting the travelling show, Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination.

The exhibit was split 50/50 between Star Wars artifacts and real-life scientific advances. For example, in the first room we got to see a couple of landspeeders actually used in the filming of Star Wars — the full-size one, and a smaller model used for faraway shots. After that we found a station where we were encouraged to build our own anti-gravity machine using Lego blocks and magnets. To be honest, most of the science experiments were geared toward kids (it is a kids museum, after all) and I wasn’t terribly interested in most of them, but the Star Wars costumes and models were super awesome. Thanks again, Justin!

If you would like to see a couple dozen pictures from the museum, click here.

Mason, Morgan and I have made it to day three of bachelor-hood (and bachelorette-hood). Susan is “roughing it” on a four day conference in Vegas. Mommy comes home Thursday afternoon, and she’s got a ton of dirty dishes and dirty clothes to contend with. When it’s just me and the kids, the house’s cleanliness takes a backseat to getting through the day. Actually, things have gone really smooth this time. Monday night the kids went to go visit Susan’s sister for a bit and Tuesday they went to visit my mom for a while. They’ve been having a good time seeing everyone, and that’s kept them from being stuck in the house which usually leads to one of the little angels trying to kill the other one.

Mason and I are stuck on the Hoth level of Lego Star Wars II. I even checked Gamefaqs, which says the way through the level is to pick up the bombs and drag them into the end gate. I assume this means the gate with the TIE Fighter door access panel on the right hand side? Can anyone help? I hate getting stuck in games where I just don’t know what to do. If I can’t get past a part because it’s hard that’s one thing, but we’ve spent the past week trying to get past this one level and it’s getting a little frustrating. I must be missing something obvious.

I’ve decided to build a PVR/Home Theater PC for our living room. Today I picked up a WinTV-PVR 150 card. The reviews look decent and it comes with a remote unlike the other one I was looking at (the ATI). Now all I need is a PC to put in there.

Yesterday, George Lucas announced that in September of this year he will be releasing the original Star Wars Trilogy on DVD. For those who don’t know the story, in the mid 1990’s Lucas re-released the Star Wars Trilogy in theaters, but as “the Special Edition”. In these versions old special effects had been retouched, new scenes had been added and others had been deleted! These new versions were the testing ground for Lucas’ integration of CGI and real actors, which would appear heavily in the next three Star Wars films, Episodes I – III. Then Lucas released Episodes I – III in theaters and on DVD. The original trilogy was not released until September of 2004, and when it appeared, boy were fans pissed. Not only were the DVD’s the new “Special Editions”, but they had been edited even further. One of the biggest shocks was seeing Sebastian Shaw (who originally played Anakin Skywalker’s ghost) completely removed and replaced by Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin in the newer movies.

Fans have been begging for the original films to be released on DVD for years. It looks like the force was finally with us.