thisischris.com -- This is Chris dot Com -- the website of Christopher Grant Harris

Yesterday (Friday) the weather was back to what has become the standard for 2007: gray, rainy, and a wee bit on the chilly side. Ah, well.

I actually left for work before Carrie did, but I didn't have to pick her up for lunch because she was already on her way up to Bellingham for the Bellingham Bead Festival. I made gnocci for myself, watched 60s British spy television, and got awfully drowsy.

After working some in the afternoon I went out to Office Depot to buy some binder clips and then Michael's to buy some felt glue. I bought the binder clips because the last time I was at Sandy & Mathias's place they'd put up a tonne of the stuff they'd collected in Japan. And they had a most ingenious way of putting stuff up on their walls, which involved attaching binder clips to the piece, and then securing the binder clips to the wall with thumbtacks. It makes it so it's incredibly easy to switch out your wall hangings; just unclip it and put something else up there. It also has the added advantage of not putting holes in your posters. Very nice!

So when I got home I hung up my Lost in Translation poster (after a couple of years of just having it propped up on my top toy shelf), and then I hung up my nerd-cred stuff:

Up top there is my issue #2 of the Serenity ("Those Left Behind") miniseries, signed by Jewel Staite herself (many, many thanks to Brandy for picking it up for me at NY Comic Con). Down below is issue #1 of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 ("The Long Way Home") comic. Note how the binder clips are only attached to the packaging of the comics, so as not to damage the comics themselves in any way. Suh-weet.

And, yes, you'll notice that both of those comics were penned by Joss Whedon. Well, that's because the only comic books I actually collect were written by Joss Whedon. I'd put up an issue of Astonishing X-Men, too, but I only collect the Trade Paperbacks of that series. The only thing that would make this wall of my office any more nerdy was if I had a framed poster of Serenity instead of Lost in Translation (unfortunately the Serenity poster, like most artwork generated for that film, is pretty crappy, so I probably won't get it).

Anyway, in the evening I had my own little Sam Raimi movie fest. I watched The Quick & The Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness all in a row whilst I worked on a felt project. Then I went to bed all by my lonesome lonely self while Carrie was way up in Bellingham.

Labels: Life, Pictures

I Taste Like Bread

I taste like Bread.

I am a staple in almost everyone's diet. Friends like me are a complement to any other friends I get on with almost everyone, remaining mostly in the background, but providing substance when it would otherwise be lacking. What Flavour Are You?

Labels: Links

Friday, March 30, 2007

Nice Day

Yesterday (Thursday) Carrie actually got off of work before I did. She had Christine's car so she drove herself home and was there when I got back. We both took short naps in the early afternoon, and then she went and hung out at Linnea's for a while.

Less than an hour later there was a knock on the door. It was Carrie and the Tarbet ladies, wanting to know if I wanted to walk to Starbucks with them. Yesterday was really the first truly nice day of the year. It was just above 60 degrees and no wind chill to speak of. It was basically room temperature outside—my most favorite all-time type of weather. So the five of us walked down to Starbucks and hung out and then walked back to my house. Carrie continued on back to the Tarbet house and went from there to Chéz Targét to buy some supplies for her trip this weekend.

When she got back we went to the Parkway for dinner. The ceiling of the Parkway is suddenly gone. There used to be a flat ceiling about 11 feet from the floor, but they removed it and now there's this gorgeous peaked ceiling much higher up, with rich, dark woodwork. It looks super fabulous. I shoulda snapped some pics with my camera phone, but I dinna think of it.

In the evening I taught Carrie all about how to add and remove songs from her iPod. I did some cleaning and some plushing.

Labels: Life

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Lethargy

For some reason I was completely exhausted yesterday (Wednesday). I don't know why; I didn't sleep exactly poorly the night before.

Jessica had stopped by Jack in the Box on the way to work, but they gave her the wrong food! So she let me have it, which was very nice. She also trained me on the cash register, so I worked my first official day on the floor for about half an hour.

Because I'd eaten a gigantic ciabatta breakfast sammitch, I wasn't hungry for lunch when I picked up Carrie. She made Mandarin chicken, which she then ate in the car on the way to to our taxes. We owe a hefty hunk this year, but we expected that we would and so we'd been saving up all year long just for this occasion.

After taxes I took Carrie back to work, came home, and basically just collapsed. I managed to straighten up the living room a little bit, but then I turned completely into a vegetable. An exhausted vegetable. I just couldn't do anything for some reason. I had no motivation or energy. It was so bad that I actually watched Men in Black II on the TeleVision! Gawd that's an abysmal movie! It makes no sense at all!

Carrie stayed at work until well after 8:00. Quite a long day! When she came home I was finally feeling hungry so I made some pizza bites and she let me eat some of her leftover Red Robin steak fries. Then I did some of my side work for the rest of the evening, trying to get CSS stuff to behave and look nice. I'm trying to do stuff with it that it really isn't designed to do, so it's quite the adventure. Also, I made brownies during this time, and ate some in bed with Carrie.

Labels: Life

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Tax Time

Yesterday (Tuesday) after work I picked up Carrie for her split-shift. I watched the last half of an episode of The Prisoner and the first half of an episode of The Avengers on BBC America. Oh, how I heart 1960s British spy TeleVision shows. Quite possibly my favorite genre of TeleVision shows EVAR. ♥

I got a nice call from Brandy in the afternoon. Apparently the horrible weather in NYC had gotten better to the point where she could actually hold her phone to her ear without freezing to death. Good! Unfortunately she spilled a glass of water on her laptop, so she is currently without. And coincidentally she also spilled a glass of water on her lap the very next day during a job interview. Or was it coincidence at all?

Carrie and I then went to Trader Joe's for to buy los grocieros on account of we were out of most foodstuffs.

After I took Carrie back to teach her class I made a pizza and then brought out my felt and started on a project. Turns out I bought the wrong glue, though, so I'll have to go get some that'll actually werk on felt.

Then I dragged out my Chinese bug-spray lunchbox and went through all of my receipts for 2006 to see what I could deduct for my taxes, because we're doing taxes this afternoon at 2:00. Not terribly looking forward to it.

Carrie called and had me put her foodstuffs in the oven so it'd be ready when she got home. She then went through her tax stuff while I finished up mine. I didn't actually finish until midnight.

Labels: Life

Sunday, March 25, 2007

God of the Spatula Eats at Restaurants Quite a Lot

Yesterday (Saturday) was a day of much eating-out for me. First off, Carrie went to work for a few hours in the morning. I hadn't yet had breakfast by the time she got back, and she also hadn't eaten yet that morning. So we decided to go out for brunch. We went to the Homestead, where I had the Cattleman and she had the CBH.

For some reason the weather hates Saturdays. For the past several weeks, no matter how nice the weather has been up until then, on Saturdays the weather turns completely to sh*t. It rained, rained, rained yesterday. I could barely see 50 feet in front of me on the way down to Olympia.

Anyway, after having the Fools Play workshop in the afternoon, Mike & I had to swing by Tiare's place to give her back her guitar, which she'd left in Mike's trunk. I met her cat, Grenade (which is a spectacularly good name for a cat), and we got on just fabulously. Tiare is crazy.

Then Mike & I swung by Meconi's where I got a sammitch and some potato salad. It was a tonne of food on the cheap, and way better than Subway stuff. Eat-out number 2!

Fools Play was the brand-new and very-exciting format "Deity High School." Before the show Mike & I wrote some wonderfully horrible, horrible theme songs to the show. They're just awesomely horrible. I love them.

Anyway, my student was trying to become the god of the spatula (and was made entirely of spatulas), Mike's was going for the god of exercise (and was a rather Schwarzanegger type of person), and Geoff's was going for the god of bigotry (he was made up entirely of Confederate flags). There was a fantastic bit towards the end where my character was chasing a taxicab through New York City. Since my character's hands were made of spatulas I had to hold my hands very stiffly flat, so when I ran I looked an awful lot like Robert Patrick in Terminator 2. And mike just happened to be playing a Schwarzanegger-type, and he showed up with a shotgun, and we basically spontaneously re-created a scene from T2. It was cool to hear the audience gradually realizing what we were doing.

After the show we went to Rib Eye as per usual, though I wasn't hungry enough for my usual patty melt so I just got some tots. Eat-out number 3! So the whole day, all of my meals were eaten out at a restaurant.

Thankfully the rain had calmed down to basically nothing by the time I left, so the drive home was nice and uneventful.

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Happy Birthday, Jen... Again

So yesterday (Friday) after Carrie was done with work and everything, we went to Party City and picked up some party hats. Then we went down to The Rosewood Café where we planned on meeting some people to celebrate Jen's birthday. Unfortunately it was going to be a prohibitively long wait, so we decided to have everybody meet at Katie Down's instead. There we dined on much tasty pizza. We were joined by Pete & Jen (of course Jen), Melissa, and Christine. We all wore party hats and blew into those party roll-out blow things. You know what I mean. I can't think of what they're called right now.

After that we went to Chalet Bowl in the Proctor District. It's an absolutely adorable little bowling alley. Only 12 lanes, and only 2 video games. Christine went and got Lawrence, and then we split up into men vs women teams. I had somehow injured my right forearm on Wednesday, and so I didn't have the strength to control a 12lb ball. I had to use an 8lb ball, but none of them had holes big enough for my fingers (especially my thumb). Consequently I bowled worse than I have in decades.

But it still turned out to be a lot of fun, and eventually Steph & Jamie joined us so that we were four to a team.

The best part about the night, though, was that Carrie & I could tell just how much fun Jen was having.

Oh, and here's the invitation that I made for the whole bowling party:

[Jen's Birthday Invitation Picture]

Labels: Life

Friday, March 23, 2007

Tiny, Cute

Yesterday (Thursday) in the evening after I took Carrie back to the store to teach her class, I hopped on the freeway to go up to Seattle. I wasn't paying attention, however, and habitually hopped onto the freeway going in the wrong direction. Well, a quick turnaround later and I was on track.

I went up and hung out with Sandy & Mathias and finished my robot that I had started several weeks ago. It now has tiny, cute legs! While I was there I also made another cute, tiny little thing. It's so freakin' cute.

I stayed until about 11:00, then I came on home.

Labels: Life

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Accidentally Cake

Yesterday (Wednesday) Neighbor Gary came over around dinnertime and hung out all evening. Carrie made a quite-quite fabulous dinner of pasta with a ricotta-tomato-bacon(!!) sauce topped with mozzarella cheese and baked. And to top it off she made mozzarella-stuffed meatballs and garlic bread!

After dinner there was much playing of Bomberman Jetters and Mario Kart Double Dash. I was put in charge of making brownies for dessert, so I grabbed a box off the shelf and mixed it all together and put it in a pan in the oven.

When I got it out it looked kinda funny; it had risen. Brownies don't rise, I thought. Carrie discovered what had happened: I had accidentally grabbed the box of devil's food cake instead of the box of brownie mix. Whups! Tha's okay, though, 'cause Carrie dug out a can of cream cheese frosting and we all ate some cake instead of some brownies. Just as good!

After much video games we watched some Ghost Hunters (they were having a marathon). Then Gary crashed on the couch for the night whilst Carrie & I went and crashed in our bed for the night.

Labels: Cooking, Life

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Jetting the Days Away

Monday and Tuesday were incredibly uneventful days. On Sunday I borrowed the video game Bomberman Jetters from my brother, and Carrie & I have been playing a lot of the multi-player battle mode. It's much different than the Bomberman 64 that we're used to; it's more like traditional Bomberman mechanics.

Yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon, after every game we played we'd spend several minutes cleaning up the house. We almost completely cleaned the kitchen that way.

Labels: Life, Video Games

Monday, March 19, 2007

Over the Weekend and Through the Woods!

On Saturday Carrie & I celebrated the weekend by staying in bed until almost noon. We ate some of them Krispy Kremes for breakfast, which prolly wasn't that good of an idea, but oh well.

My brother came and got me around 2:30 to go down to Oly and do a Fools Play werkshop. He had to pick me up because Carrie needed the car. In fact, she left the house probably only minutes after I did. She picked up her grandma and brought her to her folks' house for some St. Patrick's Day funtimes. Then in the evening she went with Jen to see a high school version of Beauty & the Beast. She said the guy playing Lumiere was really good.

Meanwhile, after the workshop, Mike & I picked up Princess Amber and went to the bakery where she works so she could get us a discount on our dinner. The bakery it totally cute on the outside, despite being across the street from an abandoned gas station (on which is graffiti of one of the TMNTs wearing Abe Lincoln's hat). It's a little bit dive-y on the inside, though. But the bagel I got was just fine, and Mike said the cake he got was ve'y goot.

Fools Play was the St. Patrick's Day Special, wherein a wacky leprachaun (Geoff) tries to keep us from getting his gold by distracting us and the audience with lucky charms that affect what happens during the course of the night. It was a good show, and the audience was larger than last week and much more into it.

Afterwards Tia and Tim showed up at Rib Eye, which was cool because I hadn't seen her in many weeks. I'm going to try to get that whole household together at some point.

Neither Purtlebaughs nor the Brunees came to see the show on Saturday. That's because they were all out camping together down in the Oregon. Mathias even thinks he saw some sorta predator animal while he was peeing in the woods!

----
Sunday Carrie & I got up earlier than Saturday and had breakfast at The Parkway, which is always very tasty. Then we went to Trader Joe's for provisions. I went to practice, she actually went and worked at the store for a good chunk of the afternoon/evening. I can't remember what was on TV that evening other than a new episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Two Redheads In an Irish Pub the Day Before St. Patrick's Day

Yesterday after work I was gonna go to the bank, but I came home and made some ramen with an egg in it, took my pills, and they absolutely and completely knocked me the heck out. I was just completely zonked. By the time I woke up I had work that I had to be working on. So no trip to el bonko for me.

Carrie came home after work for a while, and I made pigs-in-a-blankets (li'l smokies wrapped in crescent rolls) for us to gnosh all up ons. Carrie then went to Steph's swing class with some of the other Bead folks whilst I stayed home.

Around 7:30 she called me and had me meet them all down at Paddy Coyne's Irish Pub, just two doors down from where I work. There were:

Christine
Lawrence
Jen
Pete
Steph
Carrie
Me

And eventually Jamie joined us. Of those, both Christine & Jen are fiery redheads. Someone made the comment that redheads in an Irish pub the day before St. Patrick's day ought to get some sorta discount.

Paddy Coyne's is really cute inside, but I wasn't too terribly impressed with the food—except the fries. They have quite, quite excellent fries. It isn't really worth going there when we have the Parkway nearby, though.

When we were only about a block or so away from our house, Carrie got a flash of inspiration and insisted that we go buy a dozen Krispy Kremes and a couple of melks. Who was I to argue?

Labels: Life

Friday, March 16, 2007

Get Back in the Game

I h'ain't written fer quite awhile, ha'e I?

Well, that's because I'm still (after nearly three months) having trouble putting blogging back into my daily routine. I should really do it in the morning when I wake up, but in the morning my brain almost always subconsciously thinks, "I could get up now and write in my website, or I could sleep for another 15 minutes." Which do you think it chooses?

Anyway, this week has been spent almost entirely recovering from a bizarre medical procedure. Don't worry! I was never in any sort of danger or anything.

But I didn't eat anything from Sunday midnight until 5:00 PM Wednesday. That was difficult. I was on a liquid-only diet, and let me tell you, it's difficult to take a bunch of pills that are labeled "Take With Food" when you can't eat food. Consequently, I threw up Monday night due to a less-than-well-protected stomach.

I stayed home from work on Tuesday to recover, and then on Wednesday I actually had Carrie drop me off an hour early. I got all set up to start working, went in the bathroom, and ate a large sammitch. And when I say "ate a large sammitch" I really mean "Threw up a whole bunch in the sink." So Carrie had to come on back and pick me up and take me home where I slept a whole bunch and tried not to be TOO hungry.

Fortunately I was able to get a whole bunch of work done later in the day, and at midnight *gasp* the new Ever After website went live: www.everafterstore.com

I was actually able to eat in the evening, so I had some chicken drumsticks that Carrie had cooked up, and some banana/apple bread that Carrie had cooked up, and some other stuff. And it was all good.

Yesterday (Thursday) I went in to work as per usual. Carrie had to stop by and steal the car from me in the middle of the day, though, to take stuff to the Lareau homestead. She came back and picked me up after work, and as we were driving home we spotted Lawrence walking up the road, so we pulled over and gave him a ride to the Starbucks on the corner near our house.

Then I took a couple of nice naps in the afternoon, while Carrie took one gigantic one that lasted the entire afternoon until 6:00. Well, she was tired!

In the evening I worked on some stuff for websites, not that I have any visually-apparent results from any of it. I also watched Andy Richter's new show, Andy Barker: P.I. It was very funny. And very Conan. I also watched some of Raines, which premiered right afterwards. I liked that it looked like it was gonna be another lame Ghost Whisperer type of show. But it turned out that Jeff Goldblum's character can't actually see ghosts; he's just batsh*t crazy and is hallucinating them.

I tried to cook up a yummy stroganoff-style dinner, but the beef had gone horribly wrong and tasted rather rancid, so that put me off of food for the entire rest of the evening. Until Carrie came home from teaching class. Then she made a gigantic pot of extra-cheesy mac & cheese, of which I did partake.

In bed I played some Tetris DS with me wife, and she soundly whupped me 4 games to 2. Since she started playing online with people she's improved dramatically. Plus, I hadn't played it for probably a month.

Labels: Life, Links

Monday, March 12, 2007

Weekend Apology Pizza

On Saturday Carrie & I went over and hung out with the Tarbet girls for a while. Linnea made us lunch, which included sammitches made with ham and "horseradish cheese." I can't verify the veracity of the "cheese" part of that (it might have been processed; I'm not sure), but it was extraordinarily tasty.

Carrie & the girls then went off to the zoo and I came home and got ready for Fools Play. I went down at the early time to do the workshop, then Jake, Mike, and I went to El Nopal for dinner before heading back to the theater. We did "Fools Play Princess Party," which went pretty well but the audience was rather unresponsive. And a little small.

Afterwards I went out to Rib Eye, but I really should have just gone straight home because the roads were so wet that it was a rather frightening drive. Much hydroplaning. I'm shocked I didn't see any accidents on the way.

On Sunday I went to practice, but my brother forgot that daylight savings had happened the night before, so he was out buying Little Caesar's pizza at the time. I went and visited my folks for just a couple of minute before going back. In order to apologize for not being there to let me in to his apartment, Mike bought me a pizza. Which was very nice. And very good. I really have always loved Little Caesar's pizza. And nowadays it's so hard to find!

While I was out, the back deck was completed. Voila!

We're gonna hafta wait for the weather to be consistently dry, and then we'z gonna paint it. Probably the same pale cream colour that is used as the accent colour on our house. Also, the pile of old wood from the demolished deck still has to be drugged away.

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Pictures

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Olympian Sk8land

Friday after lunch I actually went back to Ever After to work some more there for another hour-and-a-half or so. I came home when Carrie usually gets off work, but she stayed late.

But after she did get off she decided to go out for a beer with Jennifer for a little bit... a little bit that stretched into three hours. She called me when she was walking home and I met her halfway, and then when we got back to the house it was time for me to immediately turn around and get in the car and drive down to Olympia for...

Princess Amber's birthday party at Skateland!

It was a fun time, even though I didn't strap on a pair of skates at all. I hung out with Mathias and Caiti, who also don't roller skate. Mathias beat me at air hockey by two points (7-5)! I was also crammed into a photo booth by Sandy and Lisa (Totoro). Hmmm... I wonder if Sandy's made copies of them photos yet?

After Skateland most of us went to The Reef in downtown O-Town and crammed around the largest table in there. I got a Monte Christo-style sammitch that they called the Monte Carlo for no discernable reason. The service was unfortunately really lousy, so it took me a full half-hour just to get some jelly to spread on my Monte Christo.

I got home way later than I'd planned (due to the aforementioned lousy service).

Labels: Life

Thursday, March 08, 2007

What I Learned from Television

On Wednesday evening I went up to Seattle with Carrie, Melissa, Heather, and Chris to see the live, touring, stage-version of NPR standard "This American Life" with Ira Glass.

It was a really good, funny show, although my right knee was cramping up something terrible in those Paramount Theater seats. They had a live band performing, the "Mates of State," that Carrie and I both really dug. We was gwine t'buy their CD after the show, but there was just such a mob that we didn't want to bother. So when we got back home I bought their latest album off of iTunes instead.

Labels: Life

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

My Voice Is My Passport. Please Verify

On Monday afternoon Carrie & I went over to the Tacoma Mall area so that she could get her photo taken for the new passport she's gonna get, and so that I could go to Sears and get a new battery for my watch (which I've been without for about a month now).

That evening for din-dins Carrie made the most absolutely kickass meal: Sausage-and-onion meatballs stuffed with mozzarella cheese, tossed with penné pasta in a vodka/tomato/cream sauce. Wowza! And she just basically made the recipe up from several different ideas she'd seen on Food Network and the like. She didn't have a recipe book in front of her or anything. Sometimes I really wish I could improvise with food as well as she does. For some reason it seems like the more I improvise, the blander the food starts to taste.

Anyhoo, later that evening I watched most of the new episode of Heroes, but then Devon called. He was back in town (from Chicago where he currently lives) for a couple of days, and wanted to hang out with us down at The Spar.

So Carrie & I went down there and met him, and also his friend Nikki (don't know how she spells it). We had some beers (I only had one so as I could drive) and a good time. Nikki is very nice; she's also one of them creative types. She lives in Olympia, so she said she'd come out and see Fools Play over the weekend! That'd kick ass.

Then on Tuesday Carrie called me just as I was about done with work. She said she and Devon were going down to the post office so she could fill out the whole passport application stuff, and wanted to know if I would meet her there. So as soon as I got off of work I walked down to the downtown post office (my car was an equally distant distance in the opposite direction, so it was easy enough just to walk) and met her them there. Carrie & I went through much paperwork and paid much money, but she should easily have her passport before her trip at the end of next month.

Then we all collected Nikki from Watermark and went to this little hole-in-the-wall phở place right smack in the middle of Hilltop. It was so good! Apparently Carrie & Devon used to eat there back when they worked together, but she completely didn't even think about taking me when he moved outta town. Huh.

Carrie taught class in the evening, and I remember being particularly busy, but I can't for the life of me remember what I was doing now. Probably some important web design stuff. Oh, well. I ate more of them meatballs with pasta & vodka sauce for dinner. I definitely remember that.

Labels: Cooking, Life

Monday, March 05, 2007

Decked Out

Over the weekend the Gouker/O'Reilly clan (Chris, Cat, and Jake) came over and tore out our old, rotting deck and started to replace it with a new, shiny deck.

Old, rotting deck:

Show it who's boss!

Where him gone?

There is her!

Labels: Life, Pictures

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Ubuntu? I Buntu!

For the past year or so I've been looking for a good way to abandon Windows for an Operating System that, y'know, actually works. Because of that I've been looking heavily into the Mac frontier, because of all operating systems, it looks like the one that you have to work on the least in order to get it to run correctly. It just works.

The problem is that Macs are damnably expensive. If I were to get a Mac, it would have to be the MacBook Pro, the cheapest of which is $2,000. However, I could get a regular laptop with similar tech specs for under $1,500, onto which I could install a different OS.

What OS, though? I've always shied away from any Linux stuff because all of it seems like a pain to put together. I don't wanna hafta compile kernels and use command prompts and all that crap. I don't even know what a kernel is, really (I have some vague notions). I just want my OS (like Mac OS) to simply work. And I don't want to have to learn a new programming language for it. I don't want to have to work to get my OS to work.

So recently I stumbled upon Ubuntu. This seems to be pretty close to being the best of both worlds. It has the inherent stability of a Linux platform with the ease-of-use of the Mac OS. Plus it has incredible community support, so if I ever need to figure out how to do something on it I can ask somebody and probably get a pretty good answer. It looks like I could use Ubuntu without knowing anything about Linux, too!

So I am seriously, seriously torn. Mac OSX still is the OS that seems to just work the best. I'd still have to fight with Ubuntu now and again (getting some programs to run seems tricky). Going Ubuntu would be cheaper (which is appealing considering we're getting a new deck put in right now), but in the long run would it make me happier?

I burned a boot CD of Ubuntu and ran it for a while on this computer (this computer is a little too old and slow to handle it well), and it does look cool. But not quite as cool as a Mac.

Any advice would be helpful! Seriously! When I ditch Windows this May, in what direction should I run?

Labels: Life, Updates

Friday, March 02, 2007

Tiny Robot Has No Legs

Yesterday I picked Carrie up from work and took her straight to her doctor's appointment. I walked from the doctor's office to the taco place where Nyki works to buy Carrie a juice. It turns out Carrie has a sinus infection, which is totally clear-up-able. After I dropped her off back at the house I went and filled her prescription.

I made potato & cheddar perogies with a gorgonzola potato sauce for din-dins. Then after I took Carrie back to teach at the store (even though she's sick) I drove up to Seattle to hang out with Sandy & Mathias and do a new crafts project.

A while back Sandy got this completely awexome Japanese book about making tiny felt plush things, and so we decided to get together and make tiny plush robots! It's a lot of work hand-stitching something, even if it is relatively tiny.

Here's what I made!

I think it's pretty frikkin' cute. We watched American Idol (which I'd never actually seen an entire episode before in my life) and that smarter than a 5-year-old show. That one was pretty funny, although some of the questions were legitimately difficult. Do you know the name of the constellation that contains the big dipper? I do. But I could see how that wouldn't be common knowledge. Do you know how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon? I don't. Unless you cook an awful lot that's probably not common knowledge. Do you know what element on the periodic table has the initials NA? I do, but I'm rather good at science.

The funny ones are when a woman was asked how many states touch the Pacific Ocean and she said, "Three."

Anyway, I didn't have time to make legs for my tiny robot, but I brought the li'l legless guy back home to show Carrie, who absolutely loved it.

Labels: Life, Pictures

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Oh, And Also It Snowed

Yesterday (Wednesday) was a day I made many appointments by phone—doctor's appointment, haircut appointment, hang out with the Purtlebaughs appointment.

Speaking of doctor's appointment, I went and talked to my doctor a couple of days ago and we decided to try a surgery technique that involves NO CUTTING ON MY BODY. It has a less than stellar success rate, but I thought we should at least try it before cutting on my body. 'Cause what if it works? Then my body doesn't have to be cut on.

In the afternoon I took back all of the Bead Factory books that I'd collected over the years of me putting them on the website. It was quite a hefty stack! Liana apparently needed one of them, so I just hauled them all in. Oh, and also it snowed. It frikkin' snowed! It was like 40-degrees outside so it didn't stick or anything, but still there were big, fluffy flakes floating around.

Carrie hung out with Cat after work and so she didn't get home until around 6:30. Neither of us were hungry by then, though, so we delayed din-dins (crab cakes and macaroni & cheese) until after 7:00. There were some Mythbusters and some making of mix CDs for Ever After and working on web stuff that I haven't had much time to work on lately.

Labels: Life

"Of the Month" March '07

Link of the Month:

Uncanny X-Men dot Net
Want to know what happened in a specific issue of an X-Men comic? Or how about a comic book in which an X-character made a cameo? Chances are they'll have the issue summary (both a brief and a very detailed version) at this site. They have an ungodly amount - over 3,000. Plus they have in-depth biographies of some of the movers and shakers in the X-Men's world. Insane amount of content.

Book of the Month:

The Monk From Brooklyn by Antonio Graceffo
Stick a very un-PC Brooklyn native in the Shaolin Temple and watch the cultural harmony fly! Graceffo has a very engaging writing style, says exactly what is on his mind, and is not afraid at times to be bluntly offensive. The result is a fascinating outsider's look at the inside of one of the most legendary places in the world, and a very non-reverent comparison of the perception and reality of the Shaolin Temple. I wanna read some of Graceffo's other books now.

DVD of the Month:

Teen Titans - The Complete 1st Season
I know a lot of people who don't like this show because they like all the iterations of B:tAS so much, and this show is still different. Well, they're right - Teen Titans is a completely different kettle of fish, and is unrelated to B:tAS. I also think that it is the most thoroughly enjoyable superhero cartoon to be produced since B:tAS ended. The first two seasons are out on DVD now, and I've been watching them like a mo-fo.

Labels: Of the Month

This is Chris dot com

Saturday, March 31, 2007

The Whedon Wall

I Taste Like Bread

Friday, March 30, 2007

Nice Day

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Lethargy

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Tax Time

Sunday, March 25, 2007

God of the Spatula Eats at Restaurants Quite a Lot

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Happy Birthday, Jen... Again

Friday, March 23, 2007

Tiny, Cute

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Accidentally Cake

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Jetting the Days Away

Monday, March 19, 2007

Over the Weekend and Through the Woods!

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Two Redheads In an Irish Pub the Day Before St. Patrick's Day

Friday, March 16, 2007

Get Back in the Game

Monday, March 12, 2007

Weekend Apology Pizza

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Olympian Sk8land

Thursday, March 08, 2007

What I Learned from Television

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

My Voice Is My Passport. Please Verify

Monday, March 05, 2007

Decked Out

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Ubuntu? I Buntu!

Friday, March 02, 2007

Tiny Robot Has No Legs

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Oh, And Also It Snowed

"Of the Month" March '07

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