Goin' to the drive-in

... So it was 10 years ago today that Kates and I decided, hey, we make a good team, let's make a go of it together ... And now we have Phoebe. It hardly seems possible. Like we should still be two college kids running around, pulling shenanigans at camp ...

To celebrate, we made plans to go to the drive-in. "Wall-E" was playing, along with "Get Smart" as the second showing -- if we could make it that long ...

But we almost didn't think we were going to make it at all ... As Kates and I were eating dinner and watching the news tonight, we suddenly heard what sounded like a car racing by our house -- which was odd because we live on an extremely quiet residential street, and there's a stop sign at the intersection in front of our house ...

Kates and I didn't see the suspect car whiz by because our living room window, and our couch, backs up to the road ... Then, at almost the same instant it hit me as to what could be happening, Kates and I heard police sirens, turned around to look out the window and saw a squad car screaming down the road. Then another one. And then a police motorcycle.

There was a high-speed chase going through our neighborhood. Kind of freaky, when we started thinking about the danger of it all ...

To top it off, a few minutes later, my friend Matt called with the stunning climax: The suspect car had crashed into the drive-in theater a few blocks from our house -- the same drive-in we had planned to go to tonight ... It all ended with the cops pulling the driver out of the car at gunpoint.

Fun.

But the movies went on ...

We packed up Phoebe and loaded the car. And sure enough, there at the entrance, still surrounded by a couple police cars and a rescue squad was the car pressed up against the back side of the movie screen, with concrete and rubble littered around it ... And for good reason, the drive-in wasn't allowing any cars to park in the first two rows ...

We did see "Wall-E" and we enjoyed it. Although, after falling so deep in love with the trailer and hearing such rave reviews about it, I think perhaps my expectations were a little too high going in ...

Still, it is pretty amazing what a few good storytellers and computer animators can do with such a simple story about a couple of robots who only speak a few words in their journey to save the Earth ...

We also gave Phoebe her first driving lesson ...