Yesterday morning I fixed up some more stuff for ANGRY BEEF and Fools Play Island. I also took a 45-minute walk. So about a mile out and a mile back? Yeah, probably. I like walking in that direction because there's a big hill that's basically like a mound in the middle of a neighborhood. You walk up it and then down it. Then when you're coming back home you walk up it and down it. Reminds me of when I was in college and would routinely walk 30-45 minutes to class.
I spent much of the rest of the day working on Nicole's fashion show handout ("Creativity by Candlelight"). It kicked my bum but it's a really spectacular handout. Just look at this one image alone (click dat thumbnail to the right there).
In the evening, as soon as Carrie went back to the BF to teach class, I put on Nausicaa and watched the new English dub. By gob, Patrick Stewart is absolutely phenomenal in that film. His vocal performance seriously kicks some ass. As does his character, so it fits. There were also a couple of voices that sounded a lot like the great Chris Latta, which is of course impossible (he dead). So it was either Peter Renaday (Grapple) or Frank Welker (Blades, , Buzzsaw, Chromedome, Frenzy, Galvatron, Groove, Laserbeak, Megatron, Mirage, Mixmaster, Ratbat, Ravage, Rumble, Skywarp, Sludge, Soundwave, Steeljaw, Superion, Trailbreaker, Wheelie, Teletraan 2, Spoilsport), as those are the only two voice actors who were in Nausicaa and Transformers. It was probably Frank Welker.
Yesterday I spent the morning fixing up the Fools Play Rasslin' League website and some other paltry little things that the Fools Play website needs. Instead of doing work that I get paid to do. I picked up Carrie for lunch because it had been raining, and she had to bring home her skirt for the wedding (Mary's) this weekend and didn't want it to get rained on just in case. Unnerstannable. She made rice and I made cream of potato soup.
In the afternoon I got two more Fashion Show handouts done, which I do get paid for. There was a game of Mario Kart immediately after Carrie got home. After a scrounging dinner (I can't even remember what I had) I did some dishes and cleaned some kitty litter using the new flip-top garbage can system, and fixed up some more stuff for the Fools Play website.
Not very interesting, is it?
What is interesting, though, is the fact that I created my first ANGRY BEEF Sighting since the end of March. Five months is not that long of a time for a website that's supposed to be updated three times a week (or more), right? I'm building it up so that by the weekend I'll have 199 Sightings completed, so when Fools Play Island launches the 200th ANGRY BEEF Sighting Contest will have launched. Hopefully that'll get people interested in making Sightings again, 'cause I really don't have time to make so many nowadays. That's unnerstannable, right? Maybe I can recruit Leah or somebody to help me make them. Hmm...
Yesterday (Friday) Carrie only worked four hours in the morning because Linnea hasn't been feeling well, and so didn't want to hafta go into work today (Saturday). So Carrie is right now at the store working on the floor for four hours, which she hasn't done for years. She doesn't know where anything is nor how much anything costs. Should be fun.
Anyhoo, I went and picked her up from the store at 12:30 yesterday and she brought home some more samples for the BF fashion show. I spent goodly portions of the day working on Heather's instructions for her beaded purse strap. Deceptively f--king complicated!
For lunch I made a steak sammitch with onion cheese that Viki brought back from Sonoma for me. Freakin' A that was good.
For dinner we drove up to Federal Way and joined my family at The Village Inn to celebrate my mom's birthday! Even though her birthday is a week before mine, since so much crap is always going on at that time of the year (especially this year what with surgery et all) she just postpones her whole gift giving/cake eating birthday until later in the year, usually August. Hence celebrating her birthday in August.
I had ham & cheese crepes, although I'm not sure that the cheese sauce was real. It might have been fake or velveeta cheese, in which case gross. But it tasted pretty good. Mum got some books and a pressure cooker and some fabric that she's gonna turn into a "Watermellon Quilt." The cake was an orange cake with sugar cheese frosting and was freakin' amazing. I eated too much of teh sugar.
Yesterday was a very, um, disciplined(?) day. In other words, I didn't just sit around on my lazy bum all day.
I got up before 8:00 in the morning, had breakfast, finished all my morning intarnet stuff, and got started working at 9:00. I worked until 1:30 with a half-hour break in which I took a walk around the neighborhood.
Yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon, after I had hung out with Brandy and had had some macaroni with Carrie, I went for a walk. As I was walking down one street in particular I passed a house surrounded by chain-link fence. A tiny dog rushed the fence with an angry look on its face, obviously driven to protect its territory from the big mean man (me) on the other side of the chain-link. I, of course, expected it to start yipping its head off. Instead it let out a mighty, loud, shockingly deep "ROWRF!"
I stared at it a moment as it vibrated the way only tiny dogs do. "Well!" was all I could find to say about that.
Later in the walk I was passing through a fascinating neighborhood when I noticed something, well, fascinating about it. The houses on the north-south streets were all for s--t. They were all ugly with bad lawns and awful architecture. But if you turned either direction and headed down an east-west street, the houses were all gorgeous and homey and nice. Very strange.
I had to stop off at the BF to go to the bathroom on my way home.
After work Carrie hung out with Cat for a bit. She called me on her way home to tell me to get dinner started. For dinner I grilled up a couple of marinated tuna steaks (very tasty fish). After that there was some Mario Kart, and then I watched Mythbusters (helicopter-diver suckage and "Car Capers") while Carrie took a walk. After that we cleaned out our closets because sometime today (Thursday) a truck from UCP is supposed to come and pick up stuff that you don't want anymore. So we put about eight bags and boxes out by the curb this morning. It took a long time to clean out our closets that much!
As many of you probably know, my good friend Brandy is flying out this Thursday to New York City to attend NYU. Yesterday (Tuesday) the two of us had our last outing together.
I met her at Primo Grill for lunch (she had mussels; I had smoked salmon linguine). Then afterwards we dropped my car off back here at my house. I ran inside to put my leftovers in the fridge, and I called Carrie's phone to tell her that she could eat them if she wanted, but then I heard her phone ringing from the living room. She'd left it there while she and Mary went to the Supermall to pick up Mary's wedding dress.
Brandy then drove us to Cold Stone for ice cream (I had lemon sorbet with brownies & fudge—it reminded me of my birthday cakes; Brandy had a variation on the Candyland type of thing). Then we went to her bank, which is just a little on the south end of Lakewood, so it took quite a while to get there.
Then today (Wednesday) I made her a going-away present. I was going to make her a mix CD and a cute little cartoony card, but I panicked. I made her more than THREE HOURS worth of mix CDs and a 12-PAGE mini comic book. I took it over to her apartment and we watched the episode of Buffy where Spike & Buffy get engaged and Xander becomes a literal demon magnet.
GILES: Stop that this instant! I can hear the smacking.
I'm not going to get to see her again until after Christmas. On the one hand it's very exciting because she gets to go to NYU for Christmas's sake! But on the other hand it's a little sad because I won't be able to just see her any time I want.
Yesterday Carrie had the day off, seeing as how she'd had to work the entire weekend down in Sonoma. So I took the day off, too, and we went and saw The 40-Year-Old Virgin. God-damn that was a funny movie. I expected it to be funny, but it was FUNNY. Then for din-dins we walked down to Engine House #9. I had a big ol' headache all evening that I just couldn't shake. It was pretty bad.
For FP practice yesterday (Sunday) Mike & I had everyone else play with the new Fools Play Island website (coming soon—you'll know when). For the entire four-hours of practice they explored it and found all the fun thangs you can do there.
And after practice Mike & I worked out many of the bugs associated with it. Yikes! But it's gonna be awexome!
I went for a couple of walks yesterday (Saturday). One of them was rather impressive! I walked up the street a couple of blocks past the Starbucks, then turned left and walked a couple of blocks. Then I made a B-line to the Bead Factory and used the restroom in the Warehouse. Then I walked home, but saw a sign for a Yard Sale, so turned off to go find it, but it ended up that it was many, many blocks away from the sign, so I turned around and ended up going instead to a garage sale that I could see from my front yard. They had a Unicron, but no other really good toys.
In the evening I was feeling well enough to drive down to Fools Play and be in the audience. It was the last show that Brandy could go to before leaving forever, so it was a good way to squeeze in some final hang-out time with her, too.
The show was very funny. I got to sit on the couch between Lisa and Brandy (hot babe sammitch alert), and next to Brandy was one of her cousins. What's funny about that family is that their two last names are Elder and Newby. The format was Fools Play Game Show, and one of the scenes was "Guess how long it takes The Purple Fool to storm off in disgust." It took five minutes!
After the show we all went to Red Robin, where Taisha told cool/scary stories about her trip to Arkansas to meet her relatives. After that me, Mike, Mathias, & Sandy all hung out in the parking lot until after 2:00 AM. It was really, really nice to be able to hang out with people like that, especially since Carrie is out of town.
Yesterday (Friday) was a surprisingly busy day! First off, Carrie left at around 7:00 in the morning to go to the airport to fly to Sonoma for a Bead Show this weekend, leaving me alone in the hizzouse. Boo!
Anyhoo, In the morning I did much bug testing of Fools Play Island. Then I made a handout for Melissa and delivered it to her at the store. I continued on to Target where I bought a new flip-top garbage can for kitty litter garbage, to make it easier to stay ahead of the game (don't hate the playa, hate the game after all).
After that I came home and did a little more work and ate lunch (chicken patty sammitch). I then headed back to the BF to give Brandy back her No Doubt CD (it was Brandy's last day EVER at the BF! To which I said, "I know; it's exciting!" Steph then replied, "No, it's not exciting, it's sad!"). Then I continued on to Fred Meyer to deposit my paycheck and buy the following:
An Onion
A Carrot
A Potato
Garbage bags for the new can
That's right! When I came home, I made some STEW! I also worked on some Precious Maille stuff.
In the evening I mostly watched Sci-Fi Channel stuff, including the always-excellent Firefly. I didn't get to bed until after midnight, tho.
Even the Best Writers Squeeze Out the Occasional Cleveland Steamer
Yesterday I wrote an article and then totally forgot that I wrote it. Can you believe that!? Anyway, it's a book review of one of the worst books I've ever read in my life, written by my favorite author! Go to Articles and read it!
Last night my brother came over with the almost- completely-finished version of Fools Play Island. Soon it will be a mighty sight to behold by the beholden!
Seriously, it kicks ass. It should be completely done-up by the end of the month. I'll of course let you know when that happens.
I forgot to mention this, but when we got home from the ballgame Fantastico was there to blert at us and roll around on the floor as is her usual greeting when someone walks in the door.
However, later in the day we simply could not find her anywhere in the house, until Carrie found her in the backyard. Well, it turns out that the very back screen door had somehow gotten propped open a few inches, and apparently all day long Fantastico had had full reign of the outdoors and indoors of the house. Whoops! It's nice to know that she'll come back of her own accord if she ever gets out.
It's also nice to know that she didn't get hit by a car or get into a nasty catfight or anything! Jeez!
Yesterday (Wednesday) Carrie & I took our respective dads out to a baseball game. It turned out to be a pretty good game to go to, seeing as how there were two grand slams (one in the first inning, one in the last) and the Mariners actually won by 11-5.
Towards the end of the game Carrie got some garlic fries and ate them all.
On the way home we stopped at Jack in the Box for a milkshake (and I got a burger).
We played a bunch of Mario Kart in the evening ("a bunch" meaning two complete games), and Carrie beat me once! Sure, she was playing her best characters with her best car, and I was playing my worst car with a very un-helpful character (Baby Luigi). But somewhere in between the two games all the garlic in her garlic fries started giving her gas.
She slept on the couch.
It's now about 8:50 AM the next day and the whole house still smells like garlic, though not in a very good way.
Oh, and in the evening I updated my links page a little bit to more accurately reflect my current Intarnet habits.
Last night I had at least three separate dreams that starred both me and Godzilla. I was in some non-existant Godzilla movies. The dreams consisted for the most part of me figuring out ways to avoid being killed by the giant lizard while he killed scores of other people.
In the first dream, for example, I figured out I had to hide behind this big, craggy brown mountain to avoid his death breath. The second dream was a bit unusual in that it was more like Jurassic Park in space than a Godzilla movie. There were a whole bunch of dinosaurs loose on a space station, and for some reason this angered Gozilla a whole bunch (even though he was on Earth—in fact I don't think I actually ever interacted with him during this dream, just the dinosaurs. But the dream did get cut short, so I don't know how it would have ended).
The third dream was my favorite. Godzilla was loose in an amusement park. He especially liked terrorizing this one lookout that was in the side of the mountain to the west of the park. I of course was in this lookout at that time. Eventually I got out. At one point I was running with a big crowd away from Godzilla when I realized that the crowd was dead mead. So while they turned left to get shelter under a covered marina type of place, I went straight ahead and ducked under the fence to my right. Sure enough, Godzilla's HEAD CAME OFF OF HIS BODY and trampled the people hiding under the covered area, TURNING THEM INTO DOLLS AND STUFFED ANIMALS AS IT TOUCHED THEM. Freakin' A. That was awesome. After G-man's head rejoined his body and he went off (I think to torment the ferris wheel), I went over and examined the dolls with some other survivors.
I then wandered back to the fence behind which I had hid, and realized that I had taken a foolish chance by doing so, because it was the fence to the dinosaur pen. Yikes! Fortunately there were only two types of dinosaurs in the enclosure: some small compy-like things and miniature anklyosauruses. When the anklyosauruses spun their tails around really quickly it made two "giant" monsters rise out of the ground. They were really only about ten feet tall or so. One was a giant flower, complete with incredibly thin stem. The other looked like a giant sandshrew.
Fortunately after they burst from the ground I ducked back to the outside of the fence and there was a tree that grew invincible stars from Super Mario Bros. The dinosaur zookeeper (played in the dream by Melissa Lovejoy) told me how to shake the tree to shake them loose (which as a bonus also shook loose several 100-coin coins). They didn't make you invincible the instant you touched them. You had to smash them against your chest to activate them. So I went back inside the pen, activated a star and scrambled up the stem of the evil giant flower, destroying it. It shrank back into the ground. I was confused as to how to kill the sandshrew-looking monster, but the zookeeper demonstrated that you had to smear something appetizing on yourself (blackberries in this case) and then let it sit on you while you held its mouth closed... it all seemed a little too dangerous to me.
Unfortunatley I woke up at this point, so I'm not sure whether the zookeeper succeeded or was an absolute idiot.
I saw this on Fark. If I ever wanted to get a tattoo, it would be along similar nerdish lines probably. Of course, with my strangely specific paranoia I would have trouble getting a tattoo (I have a strange urge in the back of my mind to be as free from "distinguishing marks" as possible in case I ever have to create a new identity for myself). Now that I have a giant permanent scar (and two smaller ones) on my belly, though, it seems a bit silly to be feared of distinguishing marks.
Yesterday (Sunday) Carrie & I went out to eat a lot. And by "a lot" I mean "twice." We woke up rather late, and so decided to go out for breakfast even though it was lunch time. We went to Knapp's down on Proctor. I had sausage bennies, which are like biscuits & gravy but with more sausage, scrambled eggs on top, and cheese. Man-o-man that's tasty fish. Carrie had a veggie scramble and hotcakes.
In the too-freakin-hot afternoon Carrie walked over to the Mandolin Cafe to get some work done on handouts for the upcoming BF Fashion Show. I stayed at home and worked on getting some new books online (status: in progress). The office was so hot that I could only stand to be in it for 45-minute segments.
Then in the evening we went to Ricardo's for the Bead Factory's Farewell Dinner for Brandy, Kate Molly, and Gretchen, who are all variously leaving around the same time (in a couple weeks, give or take). Here are some photo highlights of the evening:
I and my hole-filled belly got kinda tired so we left a little earlier than I'd have liked (but not before some other people had already left). As we were leaving the 4 kids (Mark & Viki's plus Lena) were bending over the railing of Ricardo's upper deck and yelling goodbye to us as we got in our car. And they just wouldn't stop. We could hear them still yelling when we had driven a block away even.
Yesterday (Saturday) was Carrie's maternal grandmother's 80-something-th birthday. We celebrated by betting on the horsies!
We went to Emerald Downs and stayed for eight of ten races. Carrie & I left with ten dollars less than when we started, but considering that we bet a total of (at least) $12 on each race, and bought two drinks each and some french fries (and paid for parking), ten bucks is cheap. Our periodic winnings almost paid for the day. At one point the loudspeakers announced birthdays, and announced Grandma K as being 39 nears old.
After the races we went to Red Robin, then wound our way back home, where Carrie had me watch the episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation with special guest star Kevin Smith. You can totally tell he used to be a fanboy of the original Degrassi. He was very funny.
Then there was some Mario Kart, and a little later some bed.
Last evening (Thursday) there was a nice li'l barbeque for Kate Molly, who is one of about a half-dozen denizens of the BF who are leaving in the coming month. The festivities were at Point Defiance, in one of their turn-offs from the Five-Mile Drive (the "Vashon" turnoff, although neither Carrie nor I ever saw it labeled as such).
It was quite niceness to be get out of the house and around the peoples. Other than by going to Fred Meyer, which we did before the barbeque.
Yesterday (Tuesday) evening Carrie had to teach class, which left me all alones here. Rachel Ray's "30-Minute Meals" wasn't holding my attention, so I came in here, went on Wikipedia, and read synopses of all the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming to see just how much the movies differed (sometimes they were surprisingly accurate).
Wouldn't you know it? Later that evening From Russia with Love came on the TV. That's the Bond movie that's remarkable for the fact that Bond kills the established villain (the guy in Jaws who gets eaten on the boat at the end), and then there are no less than two tacked-on action sequences (one involving a helicopter, the other a handful of boats) involving nameless thugs after the main villain is already dead, before they finally have another climax to wrap things up. Very, very strange choices, and the boat action scene especially seems tagged on. You could cut that whole sequence and lose NOTHING.
I just got back from the hospital about 2.5 hours ago. Hooray for me! I'll write more about it if'n I feel like it, but I probably won't. Needless to say my intestines are now all inside of my body—a very strange proposition for the likes of me. Arrr.
I'd like to give a shout-out ("yo") to everyone who came and visited me, but especially to Brandy, the only person I'm not actually legally related to.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) I go back to l'hopital to have my follow-up surgery. They'll push my intestines back inside my body and then sew up the hole. I'll be in hospital four or five days they say, until the bottom half of my small intestines gets used to having things pass through it again.
An expected side effect is the fact that I'll probably have to go poo about every half hour for the first several days. Not looking forward to that. The good part is that the poo will actually come out of my bottom instead of my belly.
For posterity's gross sake, I took a photo of my belly this morning, with poo bag attached and everything. If you for some reason want to look at it, click here.
I will understandably be away from my computer for the duration of my stay in hospital, so no more updates until I get back and I feel like updating (I'll be bringing home some pain medicine, so it might be a while before I feel like sitting down here again).
You can reach me by cell phone if you want. If you don't have my number, ask someone who does.
Saturday (the 30th) was the Fools Play Rasslin' League format at Fools Play. Not only was it a very special show because of my return to the stage after a lengthy absence, but it was a special show because none other than MIKE TANNER THE GREEN FOOL returned in a surprise (to some) run-in as the Great Inverter during the opening match! Yowzah-yow-dow!
Here's what I can remember as to how the show went down:
Sombitch def The Crazy Bean via pinfall
Best Friends Forever def Sweet & Low via pinfall
Lightning Joe Lightning & Halloran wrestle The Siamese Boyz with Man in the Audience to a no-contest when Halloran malfunctions
He is a Monster loses The Sweetest Sensation via pinfall in a Loser Match
The Ref def Weird, Dirty Heel, and The Great Inverter via disqualification; The Ref def The Rabbid Dogg via pinfall to retain the FPRL Championship.
Also, a gambling type thug hired Weird to intimidate Charlie into giving him a cut of any gambling action at the FPRL. Weird sub-contracted to Goo, who intimidated Charlie by putting cellophane over his toilet seat and later TP-ing his house and car. Anyhoo, it was a grand old time, and as usual the audience was pizzacked!
After the show we went to Red Robin—me, Geoff, Ed, Mike, Mike Tanner, Brandy, Sandy, & Mathias. It was heaps of fun to have the whole gang in one place like that.
I spent much of the rest of the day working on Nicole's fashion show handout ("Creativity by Candlelight"). It kicked my bum but it's a really spectacular handout. Just look at this one image alone (click dat thumbnail to the right there). 
