Yesterday (Sunday) there was no Fools Play practice due to the fact that Taisha & I were the only two who could have made it, and we were like, "Screw it."
In the early morning Carrie & I went to Trader Joe's for to buy provisions. Then we went to Cash & Carry to buy two types of cheese. Swiss and goat. We came home and ate all the leftovers in the fridge for blunch, then played much Mario Kart. Taisha stopped by to pick up the Samurai Jack DVDs that she has been forgetting to actually take for the past two weeks or so.
Then it was cleaning time during the commercials of I Love the 80s 3-D. Soon The Goonies came on TV, so we took a break to watch that. I took a break; Carrie fell to the sleep.
After Goonies there was some final cleaning and then a little more Mario Kart, which was interrupted when Carrie realized that we should probably get to Fred Meyer's before the deli closed so that we could buy the corned beef that we needed. In addition to corned beef and apples and dill weed, I also picked up the first season of Home Movies, because both of us were kinda getting sick of watching the second season over and over at night.
Carrie went to Cost Plus to buy wine glasses (most of ours had broken over the years) and then went to the BF to help Viki for a couple of hours. I, meanwhile, watched most of Dreamcatcher on TV and carved a pumpkin. I was planning on carving two or three, but the damned thing took so long that I only got the one done:
Saturday night was Fools Play Trick or Treat, one of my favorite formats. I didn't think it went quite as well this year as in previous years, but it was still a tonne of fonne. All the Fools came in costume:
The audience also mostly dressed up. In fact, at the end of the night when the costumed audience members were called on stage for the costume contest, there were only a tiny handful of people left in the audience.
The winner of the contest was the guy on the far left, dressed either as Alan Moore's Swamp Thing or... foliage.
Scary Movies don't hold a candle to Spring-Heel'd Jack
Yesterday (Friday) I took Carrie to work and then spent the rest of the morning doing trickly programming about discounting bulk prices. It was fun, but my bwain huwt aftewewds.
Carrie didn't get off for lunch until 2:00-ish. After I took her back I went straight to the store and bought those fancy curly lightbulbs and butter and dishwashing soap. Yum-yum, dinner's gonna be good tonight! I changed the lightbulb outside on the front porch. Carrie called me very shortly after I got home saying she was off early. It was only like 3:15-ish! I believe we played some Mario Kart as soon as she got home.
Anyhoo, she had a fun evening planned with Christine & Steph. In fact, she was gone from like 5:30 until 12:30 AM.
I made a steak wrapped around blue cheese for din-dins. I slow-cooked it in the oven so all the fat melted all over it and it was juicy and good and holy-crap I'm gonna have a heart attack.
I did a bunches of dishes while Carrie was gone and watched many "scary" movies on the Sci-Fi channel, including such hits as (the last half of) Day of the Dead and Resident Evil. Oh, my God, the computer effects in that movie are for s--t! They seriously look as good as (not better than) the effects from the first Mortal Kombat movie. Y'know, the one that was made ten years ago. Every time that big mutant thing was on screen in Resident Evil I just kept thinking to myself, "I can't believe this is what actually appeared on screen! Didn't anybody watch this before it was released?" That and the movie isn't really very good. Although I did like that the first third of it was like a "killer AI" movie, and then the second third was a typical "zombie" movie, and the last third was a "killer monster on the loose" movie.
Before Resident Evil they played Route 666, which I had read about at Unknown Movies long ago. It had the problem of using that fake, choppy slo-mo effect that always looks horrible. I really liked the zombie makeup, though. And the performances were actually all really good.
After Resident Evil they played some crappy low-budget recent thing about Day of the Dead. Jeffrey Combs was in the opening, but then it jumped ahead in time fifty years for the rest of the movie, so I quickly lost interest.
I was still awake when Carrie came home. I was looking up stuff about Spring-Heeled Jack on Wikipedia. Funny stuff, that was.
Yesterday (Thursday) around 10:30 or so I started to feel really cold. I wondered why. Then I looked at the thermometer, which read 62. Oh, I thought to myself. I feel really cold because it's really cold in here. Needless to say, I had to use my little space heater to heat the office that morning.
Um, let's see. I did a bunches of BF work in the morning, then took a shower right when Carrie got home. I used the space heater to heat up the bathroom so that when I stepped out of the toasty-warm shower water it was into a toasty-warm bathroom.
I then made a really quick jaunt up to Fred Meyer's and bought some gardening tools: gloves, a little diggy thing, and some plant food. Then I planted the tulips that Carrie's dad had brought back with him from Belgium for us. That last sentence I just typed was extremely awkward. So I planted 25 tulips out by the side of the house, and another five in a secret location. The thing that sucks about planting bulbs is that you have to wait five or six months to know if you did it right or not. Hmm, I wonder. Oh well.
Carrie made a huge bucket of spaghetti for dinner. Oh, okay, not really a bucket, but a bucket-sized amount. It was ve'y tasty. Then she went and taught class. I, in the meantime, watched I Love the 80s 3D (not sure what made it 3D exactly). It was kinda like Wil Wheaton's evening on the TV yesterday, because he was all over the I Love 80s shows, and then at 6:30 I switched over to Cartoon Network, where he was playing Aqualad in an episode of Teen Titans (the one where Titans East takes care of Titans West while they're away).
Then after watching an episode of Mythbusters I did a bunch more website work from like 9:00 to 11:00 or something. Carrie eventually came home and ate a huge portion of the leftover spaghetti. Then we watched an episode of Home Movies on Demand, and then we watched Home Movies on DVD for to fall asleep.
Some sad news, though, is that William Hootkins, who played Eckhardt in 1989's Batman just died. We all remember that role, as the crooked cop who gets shot by Jack Napier. But we all remember Hootkins for an even more memorable role that he played long ago...
Yesterday (Wednesday) Carrie worked by going with Viki over to the peninsula to buy pretty things. She was gone all day pretty much, and didn't get back until almost 6:00 in the PM.
I went to the bank at Fred Meyer and deposited our paychecks and whatnot in our respective bank accounts. Then I went to the electronic section to see if they had any other seasons of Home Movies. They didn't. They did, however, have the unrated director's cut of Land of the Dead, so I picked that up. I also picked up some salami for mine own self.
I watched the film with the commentary track on. It was pretty good, although sometimes they would all (three of them) get so wrapped up in the film that they would stop talking for a while.
In the early afternoon I got a nice call from Brandy, and we chit-chatted about various things like classes that base their grade entirely upon the mid-term and the final, celebrities visiting your workplace, going to film school but not having time to actually watch films because of having to read so much, etc.
After Carrie came home we went to The Parkway for din-dins. It was tasty, although my hard ciders hit me harder than I expected.
I didn't get very much work done in the PM, except that I did learn that They Might Be Giants are writing at least one song for an upcoming Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas, James & the Giant Peach) stop-motion film based on a book by Neal Gaiman. Oh, and it stars the voice of Dakota Fanning. Of course. Because she contractually has to be in every film ever made.
Yesterday (Tuesday—jeez, I just forgot what day it was) Carrie got off of work at 1:00, and because she'd been working so many extra hours (the Anniversary Party, going in for sick people, etc.) she didn't have to go back at all. It was like having a split shift, but getting the second half of your shift off.
So instead we made lunch of cheesy bread, then I took a shower and printed off some earring kit inserts for the store. We dropped those off and then went up to Sterino's and bought punkins! They were 4 for $10 no matter how much they weighed, and they were all huge. Carrie also bought some other stuff, like bananas and corn.
We took the corn and a small punkin up to Grandma K's in Federal Way and hung out with her there for a little bit.
When we came home I was a-tired, so I took a nap until 6:15-ish. Carrie made fish and kickass squash for din-dins, then I worked until 8:00 when It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown came on the television. So I watched that, then I worked some more until bedtime.
I was doing a new version of the label logo for Ever After, and I was dealing with some huge file sizes. So while I was waiting for things to save and/or load I was doodling, as is my habid. I do doodle; you do doodle too. But I think something is wrong with me, because here's what I ended up doodling:
I did discover that Kim Possible is shockingly easy to draw, though!
Yesterday (Monday) Carrie & I actually got up and did some stretching in the morning. Not exactly exercise, but still nice to know that it's actually possible to get up in the morning and do something. Especially since neither one of us got anything remotely resembling good sleep the night before. We were both really exhausted all day.
She drove to work and I did put a whole bunch of new books on the Bead Factory website. Carrie's dad came over and dropped off some stuff, including some things that they'd gotten for us in Belgium, such as a chocolate witch.
Then at 2:00 I went down to Starbucks and had a "meeting" with Barry, the owner of The Rosewood. Mostly we talked about strangeness involving MacDonald's and stuff like that, and about how on peer review websites people only bother to write if they either absolutely loved or absolutely hated something. Who's gonna take the time to write a review of something they about which they don't have strong feelings?
Then I walked over to the store and picked up the car, drove home, picked up those books and brought them back to the store. Then I made a quick stop at Target to see if they had any other season of Home Movies, 'cause we've watched the Second Season pretty much to death right now. They didn't.
I picked up Carrie at 4:00-ish, and then Linnea came over and they went back to Target. I put on Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and fell asleep to it. Carrie had to actually go back to work at 7:00, but neither of us were feeling particularly hungry before then.
Cat came over to watch Laguna Beach. She actually got to the house before Carrie got home from work. I made some fish in the oven and then went in the bedroom and watched some rasslin' while they watched Laguna Beach. I can't be in the same room as that show or else I want to punch something/someone. I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate tahe that show.
Yesterday (Sunday) Carrie & I again slept in until after 11:00 in the morning, completely by accident. Oh, well. We didn't go out for lunch this time, but instead worked a little at cleaning the house up. Carrie left to go hang out with Cat and Fools Play came over for practice.
Carrie came home with goodies: Meunster cheese, bonky stick, and three boxes of king-sized candy bars (that last one is for Halloween; the first two are for eating right away). After practice a tonne of dishes were washed, and Carrie made perogies for din-dins. Then Mary called and picked up Carrie to go to the Mandolin Cafe and play backgammon.
I worked on this week's ANGRY BEEF sightings, but could only come up with two. So I'll have to come up with another one sometime before Friday.
Carrie called and had me meet them down at the Hob Nob's lounge place area for a beer. Mary is prolly gonna fly away on Wednesday and be gone for most of a month. So it was good getting in a little more hangout time with her before then.
When we got home I washed a final load of dishes before going to bed, but both Carrie & I had a lot of trouble sleeping. It was probably after 2:00 before we finally went to schleepy land.
Whoops! Yesterday (Saturday) Carrie & I slept in until about 11:30! It was actually kinda nice. We went out for lunch at Over the Moon Cafe and had their best cheese sammitches in the world. When we got back Carrie actually fell back asleep. I know, can you believe it?
At 3:00 I took her to the dentist. They actually worked on her but it took half as long as last time because she didn't try to book the next appointment while she was there. She just had the procedure done and then we left. She said this girl was actually really nice; it's only the receptionists that suck a--.
I shaved after we got home, which is always a greuling ordeal. Carrie says it makes me look like I'm 19. I went to Fools Play, where Taisha locked her keys in her car. We spent a good deal of before (and after) the show trying to break into her car without actually breaking it.
The show was goot fun. It was "Haunted House" and I hosted it again, getting the audience to get on the boats that took them from room to room within the haunted house. There were some actual good roomes, like The Dungeon, The Chemistry Lab, and The "Den" mixed in with The Folk Singers Room, The Microphone Room, and the final room, The (you know how haunted houses have bowls of grapes that you put your hand in and they're supposed to be eyes) Melons That Are Supposed to Be Boobs Room.
When I came home I found Missa and Christine in my house hanging out with Carrie. That was very nice to come home to!
Carrie kind of had a split shift yesterday (Friday). She got home around 4:00 and had to go back for the Anniversary Party at 6:00. So she worked from 8:00 to Midnight with only a two-hour break.
While she was at the anniversary party I got a call from Mary & Jimbo/Caplan. Mary got another Peace Corps gig that she's leaving for sometime this upcoming week, so she wanted to hang out. So I went with them to the Parkway, which was cool, although Carrie worked so late that she wasn't able to join us, which wasn't quite so cool.
Yesterday (Thursday) Carrie & I went out to lunch with my mom and her old friend Robbie from Oklahoma, whom I haven't seen in some twenty years or so. She doesn't look at all like how I remember.
We ended up going to the Rosewood at the last minute. Both my mom and Robbie said they didn't care where they went. Carrie had expressed interest in Rock Pasta. So we got in the van and as soon as we pulled out my mom said how she wanted the brie at the Rosewood. We all chided her for not speaking her mind when we asked, and then headed to Rosewood, where the kids got macaroni & cheese and the adults got the brie.
After The Rosewood we went to that Made in the Northwest store, where Robbie bought a Mt. Saint Helens as glass bauble as a souvenir. Then Carrie & I were dropped off back at home, where we almost fell asleep. We had to play Mario Kart to wake up.
I made like three or four handouts for the Bead Factory over the course of the day. I also stumbled upon the online portfolio of the guy who did all of the character designs for Kim Possible, a show that has a design style that I really like. His name is [Something] Silver. Check out his stuff... if you darest!
When Carrie went and taught class I watched some of Hudson Hawk. I still think a lot of stuff in the screenplay is really good. Upon watching it, I believe the direction was flawed—too much like the director was trying to make a kid's movie rather than a grown-up comedy. Hmm... I wonder. Oh well.
Dontcha just hate it when you work, but you don't really get anything done? Yah, me as well.
I took Carrie to work in the AM, then came home and worked a bit on Precious Maille stuff. When Carrie came home for lunch I made her breakfast instead: hash browns and scrambled eggs with cheese. In the afternoon I worked on some BF stuff.
Grr... you know what? Every once in a while I get this strange compulsion to draw a webcomic. Then I remind myself that not only can I not draw very well (I'm okay with people, but don't let me draw objects or backgrounds—painful to look at), but I don't have the time or energy to do a webcomic! I can barely manage three ANGRY BEEF Sightings a week. Oh, well, soon enough this compulsion will pass, like the other four (or so) times it has hit me. Pretty soon I'll forget all about drawing anything.
After work Carrie went straight to Trader Joe's and brought back actual, real-life foodstuffs. After she came home Heather and Mirriam came over and all three went out shopping. For dinner she bought me steak wrapped around blue cheese, which I cooked and ate. It was really tasty, but it had a weird fat content. The fat was like in sheets across it. Next time I'll cook it lower and longer to try to melt away more of that fat.
Carrie was so tired she went to bed before 10:00. I stayed up and watched Ghost Hunters and Mythbusters, then finished up an Article. So you should read that. It stars our favorite special guest, the Ocean Shores Pirate! Click below:
Yesterday (Tuesday) a guy from Puget Sound Energy came pretty early in the morning to look at the furnace. He fiddled with some wires and said that the gas valve had probably gotten stuck. But at any rate the heat works now. Not that we're going to use it much; just to heat the house in the morning so that we'll actually be able to get outta bed.
I wrote a review of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, which you can read if you want.
The Bead Factory was short-staffed so Carrie had to work on the floor in the morning. When she came home from her split-shift and promptly fell asleep on the couch. A while later there was a knockin' on the door, rather loud, and Carrie didn't even wake up. I opened the door to find Linnea & Lena. Carrie groggily woke up.
"Were you asleep?" Linnea asked.
Carrie nodded. "I slept all day."
"Except," I said, "when you went to work this morning."
Carrie looked confused. "What?"
"When you went to work this morning," I repeated.
"I did?" she asked.
"You remember! You worked out on the floor. Then you came home, I was watching Unleashed, and you ate your potatoes and fell asleep."
"I don't remember that."
It took several minutes for her memory to return. Man, I've never seen her that groggy before. It was very funny. The four of us ended up going to the Mandolin Cafe and having (going clockwise but not naming names) coffee, hot chocolate, mocha, and mint tea.
The evening went rather quickly. I went to Fred Meyer and bought some beef, onion, and beef stock, which I cooked all together to make a piece of beef with a side of onion soup. I started working on an Article, so look for that soon. Carrie called when she was about to leave the store and had me make some macaroni & cheese. I made a big huge batch. It was pretty good, though it coulda used more cheese. Everything could use more cheese.
Yesterday (Monday) I had to take Carrie to the dentist at 7:45 in the morning. I brought along The Mote in God's Eye to keep me occupied while she was in there for two freakin' hours. Two hours, but she only got worked on for 15 minutes. The rest of the time she was just sitting there waiting for soemone to do something. She was very frustrated. That place sucks.
After I took her to work I bought fruit smoothies at Fred Meyer for her (and eggs for me) and took them down to the store. Then I came home and watched the extended unrated Unleashed. Jet Li is so cute!
I made some cheesy rice for Carrie's lunch, which I also took down to the store. When I came home I showered and then went to Targeet and bought a little space heater for the office so that when it gets really cold we don't have to heat the whole house when all we need is one room heated. Of course, the furnace still doesn't work anyway.
After I picked up Carrie from work I made myself a chicken thigh with very subtle teriyaki flavoring. It was pretty good! Then I ate a whole bunch of Chicken in a biscuit and drove out to the Supermall to see the director's cut of Land of the Dead with Mike, Taisha, and three of Taisha's friends.
Land of the Dead is one of many movies (like Unleashed) that I had wanted to see this summer, but I was too laid up with my cut-up belly to get out and see them. I'm really glad I have, because both of them are way better than I thought they would be. Taisha said this director's cut was better than the original version because "90% of the gore in this version wasn't in the original."
I now have four movies to write reviews about. I wonder how many I'll actually do? Hmm... I've got a few minutes. I think I'll get cracking.
Yesterday (Sunday) morning I drove out to the airport to pick up Carrie, coming home from Chicago. She was, of course, exhausted.
When we got home we put on an episode of Home Movies, and then Greg came over to look at the furnace. See, when I had earlier tried to turn on the heat in the house on account of it getting cold in this part of the world, nothing happened. No heat came out of the heat vents. So I called our landlord and she sent Greg out.
We thought it was probably just the pilot light on the furnace, but it's one of those self-starting jobs, so the pilot light would automatically light when the thermostat tells it that it needs to be lit. Except it wasn't lighting. Greg didn't think that it was getting any power.
So long story short, we still don't have heat in the house. And it's getting colder...
Um, let's see. Fools Play practice happened. We came up with an FPRL character for Taisha. And I showed everyone the Fools Play Video stuff that we're planning on putting on Fools Play Island.
During practice Carrie slept a whole bunch. As soon as it ended she drove up to her folks' house to give them something, then bought some sparkling wine at the Metropolitan Market up there before picking me up. We then both headed to Katie & Stephanie's apartment.
Katie's dad, John, was in town. He's a friggin' fantastic cook. So he cooked brie with basalmic cranberries in a pastry shell. And vegetarian white-sauce lasagna. It was all really, really good.
Carrie & I came home around 8:30, and Carrie was so tired that she practically went straight to bed. She got in bed and went through all the magazines and catalogs that had built up while she was away so much. I created this week's ANGRY BEEF Sightings before I joined her. We decided to watch some Home Movies on DVD, but I couldn't for the life of me find the DVD box set. She eventually found it underneath some of the stuff she brought home from Chicago.
Hey, I actually got up when I wanted to today! That's probably because I set five different alarms, and finally got up at the third one.
So what happened yesterday (Saturday) other than Fools Play? Not much so far as I can remember. I've been experimenting with braising chicken thighs. Yesterday for din-dins I seared a chicken thigh, then braised it in a combination of beer and tomato sauce. It was okay; I thought it would come out sweeter than it ended up being. I watched Lost Skeleton of Cadavra while I ate it, though, so that was sweet.
Fools Play was "Cursed." Geoff was the first one out, then Taisha, then Mike, then Me. Ed lasted the whole show and bested the witch. My favorite scene of the night was "The Biscuitator." I'm now going to re-create it for you!
Ed is on stage, miming baking biscuits. He repeatedly checks on them but they just don't ever seem to be done. Finally he grabs a phone book, flips through it, and dials.
CHRIS ON PHONE: (click) Hello?
ED: Uh, hi. I've got a problem, but I've never used this service before, so I don't know what I'm...
CHRIS: Please state the nature of your problem.
ED: Oh. Uh, well, see, I'm trying to bake biscuits, but--
CHRIS: (menacing) THE BISCUITATOR!!! (hangs up)
Ed looks confused for a bit, but hangs up the phone and wonders what he should do now, when suddenly a section of the back wall of his kitchen gets knocked in, and in comes a furious, roaring Chris!
CHRIS: (roaring) The Biscuitator!
Chris roars, and clomps into the kitchen. While Ed feebly protests, the roaring Chris flings open the oven, grabs out the baking sheet (ED: That's like 300 degrees—oh, okay...), eats two of the muffins, bashes himself in the face with the sheet. He then carefully puts it back in the oven and, still roaring, backs out of the kitchen, putting the knocked-down section of wall back in place.
Ed stands dumbfounded for a moment. He babbles for a little while about how he wasn't charged for Chris's "service," and the least he could have done was tipped the man. So he grabs the phone and hits redail.
CHRIS ON PHONE: (click) Hello?
ED: Oh, hi. Listen, um...
CHRIS: Please state the nature of the problem.
ED: Well, the guy you sent was here, but I forgot to tip him, so I was wondering--
CHRIS: (menacing) THE TIPINATOR!!! (hangs up)
Ed looks confused for a bit, but hangs up the phone and wonders what he should do now, when suddenly a section of the back wall of his kitchen gets knocked in, and in comes a furious Chris!
CHRIS: (roaring) The Tipinator!
Chris roars, and clomps into the kitchen. While Ed feebly protests, the roaring Chris flings open the oven, grabs out the baking sheet (ED: That's like 300 degrees—oh, okay...), eats two of the muffins, bashes himself in the face with the sheet. He then carefully puts it back in the oven and, still roaring, backs out of the kitchen, putting the knocked-down section of wall back in place.
Ed looks extraordinarily confused, with his mouth open and a finger raised in the air. He just can't seem to form words. The end.
It was funnier live.
After the show Me, Mike, Taisha, and four of Taisha's peoples went to Red Robin, where Mike & I split an A-1 Peppercorn Burger. I hadn't had one before; they're really good.
I can't type long, as I have a metric tonne of work to do today.
Well, today I only slept in two hours longer than I wanted to. Sigh. I had really intense but inspecific dreams last night. Can't remember them at all.
Anyhoo, yesterday late-afternoon I went and saw Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit with Geoff and Gary down at the Supermall. Geoff came straight from work and made fantastic time, so he was there way early. He wandered around the mall until I called and said I was almost there. He said the Supermall creeped him out; it was just kind of wrong.
After the movie we had din-dins at the Red Robin just up the road. It started to get really windy outside. Then on my way home, when I was about three minutes from my house it started pouring buckets. Enormous drops of rain coming down in solid sheets. Thunder and lightning. It was a real goddam storm! Awesome!
It's like clockwork. No sooner does Carrie leave town than I oversleep by three hours. Yes, Carrie is out of town... again. Yesterday (Thursday) she got up at about 4:30 AM to get ready. I got up at 6:00 AM to drive her. Oh, not to the airport. To Lisa's house so the two of them could go and do their bead show at Regence downtown.
Later on, at 1:30, I went and picked Carrie up from Regence and drove her to the airport, where she flew to Chicago to go visit Devon.
In the meantime I created Leilani's first batch of Beaded Gifts handouts and took them to the store. I also burned the Locust Street Taxi songs that I had onto CD so I could listen to them in the car. Carrie had left her cell phone at home, so I couldn't call her to ask if she'd had lunch. So just in case I made a grilled cheese sammitch and brougth that to Regence when I picked her up. She had had lunch (a customer bought her a taco salad or something), so I ended up eating that sammitch for din-dins. So it all worked out.
In the evening I got bit by a typing bug, so I quickly wrote a little Article. You should read it. It's called
Yesterday (Wednesday) I took Carrie to work before 8:00. I then proceeded not to take a shower, even though I really should have. I created a handout for Lindsay and worked on some BF web stuff. Carrie & I made pasta for lunch. Around 5:00 I took to the store the CD with Lindsay's handout, and printed it out on Missa's computer.
At least I tried to. The second piece of paper got jammed and it took me quite a while to figure out that the only way to get at the paper was to remove the print cartridge. Weird printer design.
Anyhoo, Carrie wasn't around much because she was setting up for a Thursday (today) show at Regence. So I made a chicken/rice/mushroom soup thing for dinner that was pretty good. I cooked it for three hours. When Carrie got home she had a ton of jewelry stuff to do for the show, so while she did that I went in the bedroom and watched Mythbusters and Good Eats while doing laundry and dishes.
I got a drawing bug today, so I decided to draw a cute girl. So here's a cute girl who is kind of like a cross between my natural drawing style and anime drawing style. I kinda mucked up on her left hand, but the rest is pretty good. Click the pic for a larger version.
I also put this drawing in my Gallery. So check that out as well.
Yesterday (Tuesday) morning after Carrie had gone to work Linnea came over to use the computer to pay a bill. Hey, wait a minute. A married woman went alone to the house of a married man while his wife was away at work... scandalous!
Carrie had a split shift, though she slept almost the entire time she was home. While she was teaching class I watched some of Surface, which was airing on the Sci-Fi channel. I think I might like it, because unlike most shows of a similar genre (read: Lost), Surface doesn't spend all of its time delaying revelations. There's a ton of very specific information in the first four episodes. Unlike Lost, in which there's a monster that still isn't explained after 24 issues. Hell, you get to see closeup both a corpse of a monster and a live baby monster in the second episode of Surface. The show isn't about suspending information for no reason other than suspense, and I liked that.
I also went to Fred Meyer's twice; once to go to the bank and once to actually buy groceries for this weekend.
Yesterday (Monday) I was able to get up at a more reasonable time, and shave/shower and everything, although by the time I got to work I was an hour late. Well, 45 minutes. I created a prototype website for Chris Fantz, which is really cool.
I did some dishes and then ate a banana, and then Carrie came home! Having just finished the banana when she came in I said, "I have a present for you!" and presented her with the banana peel.
In the afternoon she and Linnea (& Lena) went to Joanne Fabrics 'cause Linnea wanted fabric, of all things. They came back and hung out for a while while I made some Halloween decorations. Yes, that's right; I finally did some decorations for halloween, including some insanely cute ghosts that are in the doorway to the kitchen right now. As always in October I'm planning on writing an Article about my decorations and/or costume.
I did a good deal of work on the Bead Factory site in the afternoon as well. I'm changing over the top navigation bar from images to text, and seriously working on making the site a template-based site rather than a javascript- called-navbar-based site. Whoo!
For din-dins I made fetuccini alfredo from scratch, but it had a funny aftertaste. Probably because I used Trader Joe's milk. I don't know why we bother to buy that sometimes.
To make up for it, I went to Gretchen's Dad's store and bought Chotlate House Cream later that evening. We ate some. It was teh yummy.
Carrie & I played some Mario Kart before bed. It'd been like 13 years since we'd last played.
Yesterday (Sunday) I didn't get outta bed until 11:00 AM (see all the posts where I complain about not being able to get up when Carrie isn't home due to being exhausted by getting up twice in the middle of the night to do bathroom duties). I cleaned for a couple of hours before Fools Play (mostly laundry and straightening up the living room).
Fools Play practice happened. Geoff forgot his uniform, but fortunately he lives only about seven minuts away so he was able to jet home and get it. Taisha was about an hour late. We took a ton of pictures, which ate up a lot of time.
Taisha also practiced hosting, and her natural host character turned out to be hilarous—and not at all what any of us suspected. She's like this super gung-ho, drill seargent or gym coach type of person. Loud and enthusiastic and strangely demanding. Very funny.
I had made waffles for breakfast but was stymied about what to eat for din-dins, so I ended up going to Jack in the Box and spending $3 on food there. I came home and made this week's ANGRY BEEF Sightings, so be sure to check those out on MWF.
After that I was hungry and that upset me because there isn't really any food in the house (although last night I did dream that sitting in my fridge was a huge lasagna with a ton of black olives). I found a package of corn muffin mix, and I had some milk, but no eggs! "Screw this," I said aloud to myself. "I'm buying eggs."
So I walked down to Gretchen's Dad's store and bought a carton of eggs for $1.69.
Then I came home and used the corn muffin mix to make four large muffins and four small muffins. I ate two small and one large. I think I'll save some for when Carrie gets back (today).
On TV at night I actually found that channel 11 was playing an episode of Farscape, a show I rather like that I hadn't seen in quite some time. After that they were going to play an episode of South Park, so I switched over to 13, where they were playing an episode of Stargate SG1, to which I was easily able to fall asleep. On account of that's a boring show.
Yesterday (Saturday), um... I did a bunch of laundry and generally cleaned up the bedroom some... um, wasn't a very busy day. The house is practically out of food, so for lunch I went to MSM II and got a 6-inch deli sammitch that was very tasty. Then for din-dins I thawed a piece of fish and cooked that up. It was seasoned with salt, pepper, paprika, coriander, mustard seed, celery seed, garlic, and onion. It was very tasty, although a little too salty. Fools Play was "Hideous Robot," and it was a frikkin' great show. Everything went really well. It turned out Geoff was the hideous robot after 2½ hours— one of our longest shows evah. But all good stuff, as I said. Afterwards Mike bought me half a burger at Red Robin seeing as how I'm not only practically out of food, but I'm basically completely out of money as well.
On Monday and Tuesday of our Anniversary trip to Disneyland, Carrie & I split the day between the two parks. In the morning we went to Disneyland early to take advantage of our early-access bonus for staying at a Disneyland Resort hotel. Then after lunch we'd take our leftovers back to the hotel and then utilize the hotel's own entrance to California adventure. We'd stay there until that park closed down at 6:00 and then on Monday we weren't hungry so we just went straight back to Disneyland until it closed at 8:00. On Tuesday we ate dinner before going back to Disneyland.
We saw the "It's Tough to Be a Bug" 3-D show (which we'd missed last year), which is kind of like a more advanced (but seemingly shorter) version of "Muppet*vision 3-D." Except this one stars Dave Foley instead of Jim Henson. It also has better live effects, and has an advanced animatronic of Hopper in it. Your seat also jabs you in the back at one point with a sharp protuberance.
The most amazing thing about the show to my mind, thought, was the fact that at one point they fill up the whole room with steam, and then POOF it's gone. The ventilation system for that theater is phenomenal—we saw the show twice and I didn't hear any fans or anything.
Yesterday (Friday), except for a brief sojourn to the mall to return two pairs of Carrie's pants, I didn't see or speak to anybody. I maybe said ten words aloud the whole day. Tell you the truth, it was kinda nice. But I definitely don't want to make a habit out of it.
Anyhoo, for some reason I was obsessed yesterday with figuring out what's been going on with the X-Men comics. I have no idea why. As far as I can tell, I've been obsessed for no good reason, but anyway yesterday I read online synopses of probably the last 100 issues of the various X-Titles. I now know that Wolverine and Storm are something of a romantic item, and Psyloche is unexplainedly back from the dead. Though I'm not sure how shy died.
Ugh! Why do I have a thing for collective fictional universes in which tons of stories are told, no matter how crappy or internally inconsistent they are? I drool when authors reference other stories they've written, and drool even more when they reference stories other people have written. I loved the X-Files universe, for instance, which eventually included shows such as Chicago Hope and Homicide: Life on the Street, and all of the Law & Order series.
That's probably one reason I like Heinlein so much, who in the last ten years of his life retconned all of his stories to be related to each other (even though he already had the "Future History" universe that contained most of his earlier work).
I dunno. But, boy, could that Wolverine be in more places at once? He's a member of all three X-Men teams, does his own solo stuff, and is a member of the new Avengers. You would think he would be a little worn out.
Yesterday (Thursday) I got up kinda late on account of I have trouble waking up when Carrie isn't home. But anyway, I got ready for the day, ate some melted cheese on bread, and drove over to the Supermall, where I met Neighbor Gary. The two of us went and saw The Corpse Bride at the theater there. I thought it was a better movie than The Nightmare Before Christmas, but then I've never been the biggest fan of that movie, so maybe it's not saying much.
After the movie the two of us went to the Red Robin that's within sight of the theater and chatted for a while about this-and-that. How Bob Dylan and Frank Herbert seem like they'd be assholes if you ever met them. Things and supplies.
Then when I went to drive home, I got stuck in this:
It made me say, ROAR! Or, alternately, ROWR, depending on how you like to spell that particular onomatopoeia. It took me two hours to get from Auburn to Tacoma, a distance of about 15 miles. Of course, when I got off the freeway in Fife I did end up stopping at the Olde Shipwreck Restaurant on the "way" back due to the fact that my I was about to explode because my bladder was too full of pee. That added many minutes to the trip.
Anyway, when I got home I relaxed for a while and then I wrote a movie review. Not of The Corpse Bride, thought (of course). I wrote my review of Serenity, which I saw last week. You should read it.
Yesterday (Wednesday) I took Carrie & Steph to Mark & Viki's around 9:30 in the AM, so they could all fly out to Philly for a bead show of some variety.
Then at 10:30 I met Jeremiah at Starbucks where he gave me my copy of
Under the Mailbox Theater: The Complete Series
Yes, it's true. Both seasons, all 27 episodes of the early 90s public-access sketch-comedy show on DVD.
I spent most of the rest of the day watching the episodes and reliving John Griffin, the Gatekeeper, John McDowell, John Hippogriff, Tod, Professor Horace & Cecil, and all the others. It's not nearly as cringe-worthy as I thought it would be; there were only a few sketches that I fast-forwarded through. And when you watch a whole bunch in a row like that you really start to get into the show's rhythm.
Anyhoo, in the afternoon I met with Chris Fantz and we discussed me creating a website for his photography stuff. Looking forward to it!
Yesterday (Monday) Carrie drove to work, but I ended up walking down to the store because she got her bonus and wanted it deposited right away. It was frikkin' cold!
After work we went to Torrid at the Tacoma Mall. Well, Carrie went to Torrid and I walked around and went into the bookstore there. She got three pairs of pants, two of which are going to be returned.
When we got home our neighbor's car was parked halfway in front of our driveway. We had to go up over the curb to park. Carrie & I went and knocked on their door. Both of us hate confrontations, but come on! As Carrie said, "I'm frustrated because this isn't the first time this has happened." Indeed, I distinctly remember coming home one day and finding an SUV completely blocking the drivway. I sat there and honked until someone moved it. And whenever they have friends over they seem to find themselves in front of our driveway. Next time I'm just going to call and have it towed; we've warned them enough.
In the PM we made fish for dinner and ate it inbetween tracks of Mario Kart. I also ate some cooked vegetables! Somewhat healthy!
Gary came over to watch rasslin', 'cause it was the big three-hour return of Raw to the USA Network. It wasn't anything all that special except for Mick Foley and Stone Cold and all the classics in the front row—Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Superfly Jimmy Snuka, Nikolai Volkoff, Kevin von Erich, Jimmy Hart, Dusty Rhodes, and a whole bunch of others. Superfly did his splash from the top rope! Doesn't really want to make me start watching again, though, seeing as how none of those people will be on again, and unfortunately HHH made his return as well.
Getting up and going to the bathroom twice every night is starting to wear on me. I'm having real troubles waking up in the mornings. Carrie has to force me outta bed. Plus it's getting cold, which never helps.
Yesterday (Sunday) in the morning I went back to Bartell's to get Carrie's prescriptions. Then we had practice at the Gibbs's ancestral Puyallup house, during which we worked on Brother & Sister and a song in which you don't actually sing the chorus, just the verses, so the song is rather open to interpretation.
All the while that I was at practice Carrie had been doing dishes, so by the time I returned they were almost 100% clean. Awexome. We went to Fred Meyer for cheese and a few other things, including some objects to burn in the fireplace. When we came home it was clean-clean-clean, and Linnea dropped off Lena while she went to a store meeting.
After the meeting almost everyone came over to our house to celebrate Leilani's birthday. I likes having peoples over, especially when you're done painting the kitchen and have put the kitchen stuff back where it belongs, instead of all over the living/dining room (which was why we had practice at not my house).
Everyone went home except for Gena, with whom I'd never actually talked before, so that was cool. She's only 16! I'm a old man! Her dad eventually showed to pick her up—he'd gone north when he should have gone south.
Then Carrie & I enjoyed our incredibly cleaned house by playing Mario Kart before bed.
After I got over my flu-like thing, I continued to paint the kitchen. It took most of the week on account of I hate painting. Well, I hate painting solid surfaces a solid color. I like painting pretty things on canvas.
On Tuesday I had a meeting at the BF where they gave me a whole bunch of stuff to do to the website. It should keep me very busy for quite a while, which equals $$, which is good considering I didn't work very much for the last six months (except in August because of the Fashion Show handouts).
On Friday night Geoff & I went and saw Serenity. I am going to write a review of it. I know I say that a lot, but this is the best film I've seen so far this year, so I really mean it this time. I'd be an ass/idiot if I didn't write a review. Boy, that's so setting me up for failure.
Yesterday (Saturday) I took Carrie to the dentist where they determined that they'll have to pull out three of her teeth. Yikes! But she'll be gone next weekend, so the next trip to the dentist won't be until the middle of October.
