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Monday, April 30, 2007

It's Not My Birthday 

It's not today! Nor was it yesterday (Sunday), but that doesn't mean that I didn't get a whole bunch of presents!

First things first, I got up in the morning so I'd have enough time to completely clean the living room and wash all the dishes. I succeeded.

I went to practice, and Mike & I were joined by Jed, a guy from the troupe (I can't remember what the troupe is named, but it has monkey in the name) with whom we're doing the co-show this weekend (that reminds me, I have to update foolsplay.net) about that.

During that Carrie called me and so I left to go pick her up from the aireoporto! Hooray! Carrie is back! She had a great time in Amsterdam, and she brought back a whole bunch of stuff, much of it for me, and she couldn't wait 'til my birthday to give it to me.

Japan is to Hello Kitty as Holland is to Miffy, a little rabbit with whom Carrie fell absolutely in love over there. So she bought a tonne of Miffy stuff, but not so much for me. For me there was some beer, some cookies, some chocolates, and an entire shelf of the fridge full of FROMAGE from HOLLAND! She also got me a t-shirt from the Heineken Experience.

Linnea and her girls came over shortly thereafter so Carrie could give them what she bought for them. They hung out and I hooked up the digital camera to the TV so Carrie could show off her pictures.

For dinner we had toasted cheese sammitches. We're going to have a lot of toasted cheese sammitches for a while. And y'know what? I'm perfectly okay with that.

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Sunday, April 29, 2007

It's Difficult to Use Tortilla Shells as Eating Utensils 

Yesterday (Saturday) I didn't really sleep in very long. I got up and went to the Fred Meyer to deposit Carrie's paycheck. I also brought along our jar of accumulated change and dumped it into one o' them CoinStar machines. It popped out a ticket worth over $60! It pays to save yer change, kids! Seriously!

I spent $10 of those $60 on flowers for the backyard and laundry detergent.

I came home and... um... I can't rightly remember what I did until 2:30. I probably just played with my MacBook here.

At 2:30 I headed down to the Fools Play workshop. After that me, Mike, and Jake went to the El Nopal drive-through for din-dins. They gave us our food, but when we got back to the theater we discovered that they hadn't given us forks! Jake got tacos, so it wasn't such a big deal for him, but Mike & I got enchiladas. It's difficult to eat enchiladas with only using tortilla shells for utensils, so Mike left and came back a few minutes later with plastic forks for each of us.

Geoffs showed up at 6:00 and we set up my new MacBook to play the pre-show music and to record the show. And it worked! Well, almost. It only recorded an hour and six minutes, but I think that's because the hard drive is set to turn off after a certain amount of time if it doesn't get any input. I'll need to check all them settings before the next show.

The format itself was Robot Repair Shop, and it was much better than the last one we'd done. There were some problems with the characters not getting along as much as they're supposed to, but it made for some good comedy. So did the bubblebot that breathed fire at the fair.

Afterwards we went to Rib Eye and I sat with Tia, Tim, and Siobhan. Always good to see those crazy kids.

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Saturday, April 28, 2007

Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends 

Yesterday after work my dad came over again. We went out to The Rosewood for lunch, where I had the special sammitch, a sub piled hight with absolutely delicous ham and red bell peppers and yummy.

Then we came home and worked in the yard for a little bit longer, digging up the newly conceived flowerbed. He also brought over a couple of flowers to get me started! Very cool. I really like the way the yard is shaping up this year.

At 4:00 I headed up to Seattle once more and hung out with Sandy for a bit before we left and got Mathias from Cobalt. We then met my brother at this cool little Japanese restaurant called Takohachi. It has a sign with a big red octopus on it (octopus is "tako" in Japanese, hence "Takohachi"). According to Sandy & Mathias, the food in there is authentic Japanese food, the kind you'd find at regular ol' diners and non-fancy restaurants. I had "croquettes" and pork cutlet, both of which were good. And not expensive. My brother had been holding the table for a while, and right after we got there a whole bunch of other people showed up and there was no room for them! There were easily eight people waiting for tables the whole time we were eating. If you go to Takohachi, get there before 6:00!

Originally a couple of other people from Cobalt, as well as one of the Purtlebaughs' friends, were going to meet us there for dinner, but they all crapped out, so it was just the four of us. I guess they heard I was coming...

Anyhoo, after dinner I went back to Sandy & Mathias's place. Sandy parked and when we got out of the car she saw her other Chris friend walking up the street (this Chris was one who was supposed to meet us at Takohachi). We chatted about turtle soup, and then he left to go eat oysters. The rest of us hung out for a bit before Chris came over, then we all went to Daiso (again for Sandy & me). I bought a notebook for work and also some paper kite hanging decorations. Dunno quite what I'm gonna do with them, but they's cute.

After that we went back to S&M's apartment, though Chris went back up to his own apartment. The rest of us hung out and watched some YouTube stuff—they'd never heard of the thing with Mentos and Diet Coke, so we found the video of the two guys in lab coats putting on a fountain show:


We read all about Daiso. Sandy made warm fudge sundaes. At 10:00 we all watched Numb3rs, which S&M had never seen before. I like that show—this was the one where Larry comes back from space.

After that I drove on home and played with my MacBook. I'm writing this blog entry in it right now! Tee-hee!

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Friday, April 27, 2007

At Long Last 

Well, it's finally happened. The thing that I said would happen for my 30th birthday. yes, folks, that's correct: I got myself a new laptop computer. Or notebook computer, howsoever you wanna say it.

I got myself a MacBook.

I got it immediately after work, and the first thing I did when I turned it on was install Firefox. I played with it for a half hour or so, and then I put it in my murse (it fits!) and drove up to hang out with Sandy in Seattle. We ate a tonne of strawberry shortcake, blew bubbles out the window (which was unreasonably fun), and then drove downtown to go to Daiso, a Japanese store where most things cost just $1.50 or $3.00 (I think it's called Daiso). We then went to the Starbucks next to Cobalt and waited just a bit for Mathias to get out of work.

For dinner we went to a little Mediterranean place that was really, really tasty. And for dessert we all had baklawa. It was a different version than I've had before, though; it had a square base, and its four sides were triangular, and then the ground nut mixture was all in the middle. Very tasty.

I hung out at their apartment afterwards for a little bit. I took this photo with the built-in camera in my MacBook!

Sandy has to get up at like 3:30 in the AM for her new Starbucks job, so she went to bed at 9:30, which is when I left.

I came home and finished up a bit of work, and then played with my new MacBook. I need to think of a good name for my new computer! Something better than "Christopher Harris' Computer." My old laptop was named Raichu. My two tower computers are named "Optimus" and "Totoro."

What should my new laptop be named? Suggestions, please!

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posted by Christopher at 7:26 AM

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Thursday, April 26, 2007

Garfnin Uvluvv 

Yesterday (Wednesday) when I got home from work my dad was already there, working away in the backyard. He'd left too early and gotten to my house before I did. We went down to E-9 for lunch, where I got my standard mushroom/gorgonzola burger, which was good as always.

Then it was back to the house where we entered a "Blue Sky" planning phase, as they call it at Disney (basically it means you plan for the ultimate ideal of what you want, regardless of things like cost, technological limitations, and time). I got out a pad of paper and figured out what, ideally, would I like my backyard to be like?

It was not as nice a day as I would have liked, and at one point it drizzled a little bit, but my dad & I got a good bit of work done. We outlined a new flowerbed area (actually an extension off of one end of the row of trees) and cleaned out the corner shadow flower bed.

I had a pizza for din-dins after he left, and in the evening I did some work and watched a new episode of Mythbusters where they worked on ninja myths, which was rather entertaining.

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posted by Christopher at 7:15 AM

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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

On Her Way 

Yesterday was my 1,300th post. Jimminy Christmas! That seems like a lot to me.

Anyhoo, I left work at 10:15 so I could collect Carrie from home and take her to the airport, where she could catch an airplane to Amsterdam. Yep, Carrie's in Amsterdam right now as I type that, and she'll be there until Sunday.

After I dropped her off I went back to the store and finished out my shift. I spent the afternoon working on some cool WordPress coding stuff, and then in the evening I had a meeting with a client at their house. They fed me dinner and everything! Tasty steak.

In order to make up missing an hour-or-so of work yesterday, I'm going to go in early today, which is why I'm up at 7:20 writing an entry in this website.

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posted by Christopher at 7:20 AM

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Batteries Chargin'! 

Yesterday (Monday) we got a phone call from Laura! Hooray! It doesn't, unfortunately, look like she and Carrie will be able to meet up when Carrie is in Europe. Boo!

Carrie dropped me off at work and then went and got a cute chunky haircut. After she picked me up we came home and played some Mario Kart Double Dash.

Linnea & the girls came over shortly after that, and Carrie made some grilled cheese sammitches and a veggie tray for all of us for lunch. All the girls (Carrie included) then walked down to Starbucks and hung out there for a bit.

After she got back, Carrie & I made a circuit that included Bartell's, the Proctor Library, and then Best Buy, where Carrie used some gift cards to buy an extra battery to charge her portable devices.

For din-dins we walked down to Primo Grill and used our gift certificate (lots of gift cards and certificates yesterday, eh?). Carrie had the sausage pizza that she likes very much. I tried something new: the Guinness-braised lamb shank. Very good! Slow cooked, like stew, so that it just fell right off the bone.

In the evening Carrie did lots of laundry and made a big ol' list of everything she'll need to take to Europe with her. I watched a new episode of Heroes and helped her charge all of her portable batteries and do some iPod stuff.

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Monday, April 23, 2007

Fish & Photos 

Yesterday (Sunday) Carrie & I got up at a relatively reasonable time so we could make a tour of tech. We started at Office Depot, then Chét Targét (where Carrie also picked up various other sundries she needed for her trip), and ended at Fred Meyer's (where Carrie picked up various groceries).

The point of this Tech Tour was to price and compare various digital cameras. I'd gone onto Digital Camera HQ and found all of the highest-rated, ultra-compact cameras under $250. Fred Meyer's had all the same ones that were at the other two places, and at the same prices, so I decided to get one there. I settled on the Casio Exilim EX-Z75. It's very cute, very intuitive, has an "easy mode" for Carrie and has enough options to suit all of my needs. It's also more than 3 times as powerful as my old camera, and doesn't take 30 seconds to turn on or a full second to take a photo when you push the trigger (it actually takes only about 0.01 seconds). I like it so far.

We then ate some Mandarin chicken, and I went to Fools Play practice. We worked on recurring character stuff, re-tooling a couple of character bits and coming up with a couple of new ones. A really good idea and a really, really bad idea. 'Twas a lots of fun.

When I came home Carrie & Lawrence & Christine already had the coals going on the barbeque, and Carrie & Lawrence had prepped 3 types of salmon: Lemon/garlic salmon, Teriyaki salmon, and Plumb BBQ sauce salmon. They were also making brownies and a big veggie tray, and Carrie even made guacamolé. I put the salmon on and it cooked away.

As the even went on, more and more people started coming over, including the likes of Carly, Liana y Robbie, Melissa y Travis, and Jen w/Lila. Liana & Robbie even brought their two dogs over, which delighted Carrie (but made Fantastico none too happy).

It was a very fun evening of barbeque, beer, and video games (Robbie brought over two more GameCube controllers and we mostly played Bomberman Jetters and Mario Kart Double Dash, although at one point Travis actually brought out a working 3DO system). And since we'd used paper plates and disposable cups, cleanup was a snap!

Here's a pic of a whole bunch of peoples playing video games (taken with the new camera, of course):

After everyone was gone, Carrie then watched the season finale of The Apprentice while I finished up some computer stuff, and then we went to bed.

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Sunday, April 22, 2007

Eva's B-Day Par-tay 

Yesterday (Saturday) Carrie & I slept in until 10:30 or so. Around noontime Carrie went up to have tea and finger sammitches with her grandma whilst I stayed home and did some laundry.

I also received the new CD from The Wastelanders, BlackHearted American Water. Very exciting. I popped that in my 'puter and gave it a wissen.

Carrie came home whilst I was in the shower, and after I got out I wrapped some birthday gifts for Baby Eva. Carrie bought her a cute li'l sundress and a book about trucks. I got her... well, actually I made this for her:

It's a felt lizard! I cut out all the shapes by hand and sewed it all by hand and everything! I only gave her the big lizard (about 7" tall); I'm keeping the small lizard for mineself.

At 3:00 we went over to their house for Eva's birthday party. We were the first people there, and I didn't really know anybody else who showed up. But it was fun and both the girls were cute, especially when Eva would French kiss the lizard I gave her. And also when she discovered the bubble maker.

Carrie & I came back home and she made some lasagna for me for dinner. By "make" I of course mean "put in the microwave." I ate some of it and got ready for Fools Play. Shortly before I left, Carrie's folks picked her up and they went to Drake's for dinner/hangout time.

I went down to Fools Play where we performed the "Conversation Starter" format, which is very enjoyable. And my singing didn't completely suck this time. It just mostly sucked. Which is a great feat for me. There was one hilarious scene in particular that I remember, where I was haunted by a "sexy ghost," and also another ghost who haunted me because she wanted to be close to the sexy ghost.

Afterwards we went to the Rib Eye, where I had French toast. And also a whole bunch of free food that got passed over the wall from the people at the table over there. Tots, bacon, bleu cheese, part of an omelette (Mike ate at that), and ice cream!

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Saturday, April 21, 2007

Within a Reasonable Distance 

Yesterday (Friday) I called Brandy to wish her a happy birthday while I walked back to BFE to get my car. Always good to talk to her. I got home and collected Carrie, and we went and had lunch at The Rosewood Café.

While we were there of course Melissa & Travis also came in to eat there. Of all the places in T-town, the Rosewood is the one where we most often run into other people we know, because everyone we know likes to eat there!

We swung by Linnea's on the way home so Carrie could pick up an Amsterdam book she'd left there. Linnea also gave us back our air mattress, which we'd let her borrow so Erin could have someplace to sleep when she was in town. I played with Lena on the rope swing out front while Carrie & Linnea visited. Eva seemed to be doing pretty well considering that Thursday was her 1st birthday.

We came home and I worked on work stuff, and Carrie mostly just relaxed. I took her to the store so she could teach her class, and I printed out her handout and stapled it and ever'thing. Then I came home for just a bit before heading out again.

I met my entire family + Jason & Alexis at the Azteca's in Federal Way. Why? For to celebrate my mom's birthday, which is really unusual, because it's within ten days of her actual birthday. For the past few years this time of year has been so busy (EVERYBODY seems to be born during the last half of April and the first half of May) that my mom has postponed her birthday celebration until August. But not this time!

After dinner (at which I had three cheese enchiladas) we went back to my folks' place where presents were opened. Mum got a Kitchenaid food processor thing and a knife sharpener and some books and a DVD, and I got her a gift certificate to The Rock AKA "Rock Pasta."

My brother recently picked up a copy of The Planiverse, a book I read many, many years ago but vividly remember about a 2-dimensional world. Apparently 2-D universe writing is an entire subgenre of Science Fiction. Anyway, I thumbed through the book and, yes, I had remembered it very vividly, down to remembering several lines of dialogue with 100% accuracy.

Here's something very unusual that happened as well: Sitting on the dining room table when I got to my folks' place was the CD/DVD set of Venue Songs by They Might Be Giants. See, last year for my birthday Susan ordered that set for me, but it hadn't arrived when I had my family celebration. It arrived a while later and was promptly mis-placed. People at my folks' house swore they gave it to me when I picked up some boxes of my junk from their garage, and I swore up and down that I had never been given it. Well, apparently it was found still out in their garage only a short while ago. So now I have Venue Songs, almost an entire year late. Better late than never, though! My car's CD player has been throwing tantrums, though, so I didn't get a chance to listen to it while I was driving around.

At 10:00 my brother & I headed down to the Supermall to go see Hot Fuzz. The craziest thing happened: As Mike & I were buying our tickets, out of the theater walks Geoff and one of his friends. They'd just gotten out from watching Hot Fuzz. Geoff said we'd love it. We thought it would be funny if he said we'd hate it while we were buying tickets for it.

Well, Geoff was correct. I've only seen three movies in the theater so far this year, which sucks, but so far all the movie's I've seen have been incredibly excellent:
  1. Pan's Labyrinth
  2. Grindhouse
  3. Hot Fuzz

If the rest of 2007 keeps up this pace (which is impossible), this will be the best year for movies EVAR.

By the time I finally got home it was after 1:00 in the AM.

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Friday, April 20, 2007

Happy Birthday, Eva (yesterday); Happy Birthday, Brandy (today)! 

Yesterday (Thursday) after lunch Carrie & I walked down to Starbucks to grab some drinks. Then we walked back to our house, although only I went inside; Carrie continued on to Linnea's because yesterday was Baby Eva's 1st Birthday! Happy Birthday, Eva!

Also, today (Friday) is Brandy's Birthday! Happy Birthday, Brandy!

Anyway, shortly after I got back home Derek (our insurance guy) came over, and I switched our car and house insurance over to him. With all the multi-policy discounts and stuff, we should be saving a few hundred dollars a year. Good!

In the afternoon I fixed up all those coding problems that were plaguing me on Wednesday, and everything came out looking pretty rosy. I also worked a bit on a class handout for Carrie.

After I dropped Carrie off to teach her evening class, I headed to Michael's (the store) and bought some more supplies to finish off Eva's birthday present. I then swung by another place and bought my mom's birthday present before getting distracted for several minutes (but not finding anything) in a used CD store.

I came home, made myself a less-complicated version of my grilled salmon sammitch, and finished up making Eva's birthday present. I put away some dishes and washed some pans and other terribly exciting things like that before Carrie finally came home at 11:30.

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Thursday, April 19, 2007

Expert Meal #2 

Robert Rodriguez advises that every person should know how to cook at least three meals really, really well, and should have all the ingredients for those "expert" meals on hand as much as possible so that one can always cook them at the drop of a hat (in case company comes or your dinner plans fall through).

Well, #1 on my list is macaroni & cheese from scratch.

#2 on my list is what we had for din-dins last night: Salmon sammitch with sharp cheddar cheese and lemon-garlic sauce on grilled sourdough. It's a monstrously delicious sammitch. I grilled the salmon patties on the barbeque whilst Carrie went to the library to get books on Amsterdam (for her upcoming Amsterdam-related activities).

Just when I was about to grill up my sammitch, though, Carrie got suddenly called into the Bead Factory, so I accompanied her down there. We only stayed for 15 minutes or so, then when we came back I finished grilling up my sourdough and ate up my sammitch (with a side of fire-roasted vegetables in some sorta seasoned butter sauce).

In the evening I tried to integrate a design for a website into a WordPress account. I've done it before with no problems, but this was really frustrating me because for some reason when I copied the code into the wordpress templates it completely broke the height attributes I'd set for certain elements. I ended up staying up until a frustrated 1:00 in the AM trying to fix it to no avail.

In good news, though, Season 3 of Teen Titans came in the mail a couple of days ago, so I got to watch that when I went to the bed.

P.S. - #3 on my list would probably be omelettes. I'm pretty durned good at making those nowadays.

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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Wouldya Lookithat! 

Last night I did a minor redesign here at thisischris.com - so minor that you might not notice. I widened the site by a whopping 80 pixels, and I also centered it. 80 pixels may not seem like a lot, but now I can embed YouTube videos without having to manually resize them. That save me a lot of headache, I tell you what!

Here's an example:


Anyhoo, it was such a nice day (finally) that Carrie y I took a walk in the late afternoon in the neighborhoods to the north. There are WAY fewer homes for sale this year than there were at this time last year. We stopped by the Neighborhood Market on the way home and picked up some chicken breasts. I started the barbeque as soon as we got back home, and Carrie cooked up some barbequed chicken!

In the evening I did a whole bunch of catching up on stuff I've been putting off because of the craziness of last week. I also finished up this redesign. Carrie went to bed way early but didn't end up falling asleep until after I came to bed at normal time. Umm... yeah, that's about it.

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Monday, April 16, 2007

Damn It All to Hell 

http://www.faireconomy.org/research/CEO_Pay_charts.html

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Whotta Week! 

Last week was car-azy. I worked worked worked. Last week included such notable events as working until 6:00 in the morning. Also, a bunch of pretty flower things started happening to my house!





Things calmed down quite a bit on the weekend. On Saturday morning Carrie & I went to Macy's and put some stuff on hold for Melissa to try on (during the annual event where some Bead Babes take her out shopping for her birthday). Then Carrie was out-and-about for most of the rest of the day until my brother came and picked me up for Fools Play.

Between workshop and show we drove around Olympia for a while until we finally ate at McMinneman's Spar, or however it's spelled.

Then we performed Fools Play Audience Party, which is always, always a lots of fun. And Leia was there from Friday Harbor! Hooray! It was nice to see her again. And also her sister, who was also in town. Probably not a coincidence.

Leia & Kedar drove me home after Rib Eye.

Then yesterday (Sunday) Carrie & I went out for breakfast at Knapp's with Steph & Jamie. I had a Monte Christo omelette, which was rather tasty. Then I went up to Fools Play practice, and by the time I got home Carrie had already left for the Bead Factory Fashion Show. So I didn't see her again until I went and picked her up after 10:00.

In the meantime I watched the premiere of Drive starring Nathan Fillion. Y'know, I really wasn't at all impressed. It was just kinda... meh. It wasn't a total waste, though, because I worked on Baby Eva's birthday present while I watched it. It's almost done now, and it's so frikkin' cute.

I'm 100% positive that I'm forgetting something, but that's what I get for not writing down what happened within a day or two of it happening...

Edit: Now I remember what else happened! Carrie & I cranked up the barbeque and started grilling our dinners! Yes, the weather has (finally) cleared up enough this spring so that barbequeing does not seem like an idiotic thing to do. There were pork chops and steaks, and green beans cooked with bacon (also zucchini cooked with bacon). And then just tonight there was barbequed chicken breast, thin-sliced potatoes, and grilled broccoli florettes. Good stuff, and you don't have to dirty multiple dishes cooking it all up!

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Thursday, April 12, 2007

Look Around You 



There are a total of eight (8) episodes of this wonderful British science show. I suggest you watch them all.

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Easter Recap 

Haven't written in a while because I've been biz-zay. I think I left it hanging at Easter, right? Right.

So Easter was a lots of funs. Around 10:15 (thought it was s'posed to be 10:00) we left and picked up Carrie's grandma and brought her to Carrie's folks' place, where there was much munchy food (good shrimp, too). We played a game of Fascination all the way through, and there was an enormous leg of lamb that was barbequed up and served to us all.

Shortly before 4:00 we left there and headed over to my folks' house, where all us kids dyed eggs. When Jason & Alexis came over we gave her the Hello Kitty Easter basket we'd made up, and then she initiated some plastic egg hunting. There was also some Mario Golf (very briefly) and Mario Tennis.

Dinner was some quite excellent port tenderloin with baked potatoes and yams and the usual holiday assortment of crudité.

Carrie & I eventually left around 9:00, and I actually had to work when we got home.

The past couple of days have been spent working at work and then going home and working at home, so nothing too terribly much of note to report.

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Sunday, April 08, 2007

Finger Play 

Poor Fantastico! My kitty was throwing up all day yesterday (Saturday). All over the place. And there wasn't any curling ribbon in her vomit like usual, just regular cat food (and not any of the kinds that were recalled for killing pets, thank you).

But anyway, Carrie went in to work in the morning, and came back at about 11:00. We decided to go to the Hob Nob for blunch. She called Cat to see if she and Chris wanted to maybe join us, but Cat decided just to come by herself and told us to have a bloody Mary waiting for her. It was a muchly-lot of funtimes with Cat there.

In the afternoon I worked and cleaned up some more kitty vomit (I managed to get her to go on the linoleum by the front door once—much easier to clean up than on the carpet).

I left for Fools Play around 5:30, and immediately the currently-in-effect Curse of Saturdays struck. It had been an exceptionally beautiful week, getting up to the high 60s on Thursday. Yesterday, though, it rained as though we were in Florida during the wettest of wet seasons. Just a solid sheet of rain. Like being underwater. None of us can figure out what's going on. Why, no matter how nice the week is, does it always turn horrible and wet and miserable on Saturday? And, true to form, it's a lot better today (Sunday).

Anyway, it was Fools Play's 14th Anniversary Special. I made a nice placard and Mike found a whole bunch of super-cheesy award show music. We played it off as if the whole show were an Inside the Actor's Studio-style interview show, hosted by Jeremiah Alwurm (in a full suit and tie). I thought it went very well.

I did one of the best Peep Shows I've ever done. For the few of you who don't know what a Peep Show is, it's when I perform a scene using only marshmallow peeps for the characters. Umm... okay, here's the link to a Peep Show on YouTube from a few years back.

Anyway, the one I did yesterday was a Western:
A purple peep rode his horse into a town populated entirely by green peeps. He was just tired and looking for a drink in the saloon, but because he looked so differently they threatened and bullied him, and when someone pulled a gun on him he was forced to defend himself, and he ended up killing his assailant. He had to shoot his way out of the town, leaving his horse behind.

Stuck in the desert with no horse or supplies, the purple peep is on the verge of succumbing to dehydration and heat stroke when a group of Native Americans (who are all also purple peeps) find him. In order to gain safe passage through their land, the protagonist must defeat the natives' strongest warrior. After a dramatic fight in which the peeps repeatedly punched each other in the face (this was seriously the most emotion I've ever been able to get out of marshmallow peeps), the protagonist looks to be defeated by the native warrior. But then he kicks the warrior's legs out from under him and rockets into the sky, coming down and decapitating the warrior!

The Chief comes forward and says something to the effect that he already knew that this would happen, because the protagonist peep is really one of them—just look at how he looks just the same as the other natives! They're all purple!

Just as the protagonist is getting integrated into the tribe (and is given water), a posse of green peeps from the town shows up and begins to slaughter the natives. They try to flee but they're all killed to a man until only the protagonist is left. The posse taunts the protagonist. One of them asks, "What are you gonna do about it?"

The protagonist replies, "I'm going to kill you all."

Then there is a massive gunfight in which the protagonist takes out five or six green peeps all by himself. Finally, only the protagonist and the leader of the green peeps are left standing. The green peep suggests they have an old-fashioned duel, where they start with their backs to each other, take ten steps, turn, and fire. The green peep, however, turned and fired at 8 steps, but the purple peep anticipated this, dodged, and shot the green peep dead.

After looking at the field of corpses (about twelve total I think), the purple peep says a couple of heartfelt words and walks off into the sunset.

Keep in mind, of course, that most of the dialog during and for a while after any action scene was completely garbled, because anytime a peep got shot and killed I would stuff it in my mouth. I think this was actually the most peeps I'd ever been able to get into my mouth at once!

Then, at the end of the evening, when Jeremiah asked us what we saw in the future of Fools Play, I suggested that we recruit about 50 more fools and then before each show we have a single-elimination tournament of finger jousting, and the final four would actually get to perform that evening. What is finger jousting? It's this fascinating sport I recently discovered. Here's a video of the World Finger Jousting Federation in action:



It's an absolute hoot to play, and Geoff and I actually went a round live on stage! I won, but only because I was so absolutely jacked-up on sugar from consuming close to 20 peeps in a five-minute time span.

After the show we went to Rib Eye, but I just stayed briefly and didn't get any food because I was still full of Peeps. I actually got home some time before midnight!

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Saturday, April 07, 2007

I'm Gong to Eat Your Brains and Gain Your Knowledge 

Well, it actually worked out! I actually got to go see a movie in the theaters. Well, kind of two movies.

Carrie had a split-shift, and a while after I dropped her off for her evening class I drove up to my brother's place, and then the two of us went and caught the 9:30 showing of QT's and RR's Grindhouse. Good times, man! I'm definitely going to write a review of this one. Fan-frikkin-tastic.

The flick didn't get out until almost 1:00 (yes, it's over three hours long), so I didn't get home until about 1:30. I was out a lot of late nights this past week, huh?

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Friday, April 06, 2007

I'm Just Grumpy from Bathroom Over-Usage 

Yesterday (Thursday) Carrie drove me in to work in the morning, then at 1:00 I was met there by her AND both of my folks. We went and had lunch at Vin Grotto and then my folks came back to the house to look at the new deck briefly.

Y'know, for a long time now I've been trying to get someone to go see a movie with me. ANYbody to go see ANY movie with me. And I've been met only with frustration and failure. Take yesterday evening for example:

The plan was I would go down to Olympia and meet up with a small group of people:
  • Mike
  • Princess Amber
  • Tiare
  • Taisha
  • Kevin

and we would go see a movie in the evening.

Like what seems to happen about 90% of the time when I try to plan something with my Olympia friends, it did not happen.

Mike swung by the house after Carrie went back to teach her evening class. We carpooled down to Olympia in my car and met Taisha & Kevin at Kevin's house. Then we went and met Tiare at The Reef (look through some of my recent posts to see how I feel about The Reef) for just a second, then we went and picked Amber up from her work. She got out later than I'd been told she would get out, so by the time we grabbed her and got back to the Reef it was almost 10:30 at night already. And then by the time food and everything happened it was way too late to go see a movie. Grrr. And also why does EVERYbody in Olympia have at least one tattoo?

Anyway, I got home very late and had a bad night wherein I had to get up and go to the bathroom four or five times before dawn. So that's probably why I'm so grumpy in this entry.

I should have better movie news to report to you tomorrow... so stay tuned.

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Thursday, April 05, 2007

Happy Birfday, Melissa 

Yesterday (Wednesday) Carrie worked from home all day, making the handouts for the up-coming fashion show (hand-written and drawn handouts that I turn into professional-looking handouts). When I came home and started working on them as well.

Later in the day Melissa picked Carrie up and the two of them went (in our car) shopping and then to a salon (pronounced SAL-on) so Melissa could get herself a purdy haircut for her birthday (which is actually today—Happy Birfday, Missa!). Then after the salon there might have been more shopping or something, but at any rate they ended up at the Parkway. So Travis swung by and picked me up and the four of us had some foodstuffs and some drinkstuffs down there as kind of a mini birfday celebration for Melissa.

When we got home I was going to work some more on fashion show stuff, but I just absolutely crashed. I was completely zonked.

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Wednesday, April 04, 2007

The Fast Can't Last; Computer Recast 

Carrie spent the whole day in her pajamas on Monday, recovering from the Bead Festival over the weekend. She deserved the rest! Nothing much else to report.

Yesterday (Tuesday) neither of us had any breakfast whatsoever. We weren't allowed to. That's because after work (at 2:00) a lady came over and did some medical stuff on us so that we can get life insurance. Simple stuff, like peeing in a cup and drawing blood and getting blood pressure and measuring height and weight. I'm 5'11" in my shoes! The lady was very good at drawing blood—so good, in fact, that I was actually able to watch the needle go into a vein in my arm without feeling a thing. I bet Geoff fainted just from reading that last sentence. But I've had a lot of experience with bad blood-letting, so a competent needler is greatly appreciated.

Whilst the exam stuff was going on the entire Tarbet clan just happened to walk by, and Lena pounded on the door. They were on their way to Starbucks. I told them that Carrie was currently getting her blood pressure taken (which was true), so they continue on without us. A few minutes later, though, we were all wrapped up and healthy (my blood pressure was something like 110 over 70 or 80), so we walked on down to Starbucks to join them. Then we all walked back to our house and split up there; they went back to their house and Carrie & I got in our car and drove to the Parkway for lunch. It was a good thing, too, 'cause lack of food plus blood being drawn equaled weird low blood sugar wooginess in both of us.

Carrie had her quesadilla and I had a cheeseburger dipper, which, despite the fact that it was just French roll, mayo, cheese, and beef, was one of the best cheeseburger dippers I've ever had. Really, really good. Maybe not eating for 18 hours or so makes you appreciate it more...

Carrie had a split-shift, so she didn't have to go back to work until 6:30. In the meantime we both took naps, though mine was awfully full of unrest due to some nagging agorophobia-type feelings. Nothing major, though.

After I took Carrie back to the store I drove on down to Olympia, to a house practically within spitting distance of Brandy's old house down there. I went down to talk to Kevin about the future of my computing life. Basically, a while back I decided to abandon Windows entirely, and was trying to decide between Mac and Ubuntu, which, not coincidentally, he had a computer that ran each for comparison. We came to what I think is a good decision, and I'll let you know what that was as soon as I have something exciting to report about it. Which shouldst be soon.

I drove back up and hit Fred Meyer's on the way, getting some frozen foods and cheese and toilet paper and stuff like that. Then after I got home and put away all the groceries, I settled in with Runaways, Vol. 1, which Kevin let me borrow, and which is quite, quite excellent. Carrie came home shortly thereafter.

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Monday, April 02, 2007

Back on Home 

Yesterday (Sunday) I actually skipped Fools Play practice to do work that needed to get done. I also managed to squeeze in quite a lot of dishes and a small portion of laundry.

There weren't nothin' but crap on the TeleVision all the live-long day. Thankfully at 10:00 I went and picked up Lawrence and the two of us met the returning Bead Factory crew at the store, where we helped them unload the truck. Due to the inclusion of some Bead Boyz, the entire truck and all the cars were unloaded in about three minutes flat. Then I took Carrie back on home with me.

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Sunday, April 01, 2007

Slammed 

I woke up this morning and my inbox was jammed with requests from almost all of my clients wanting things changed (some of them major) on their websites ASAP. I'm totally slammed! Yikes!

Anyway, yesterday (Saturday) I slept in quite a bit, ate the remainder of my tuna casserole for blunch, showered, etc., and then went to the bank to deposit some cheques. I then headed on down to the Fools Play workshop. They seemed to have a bit more trouble this time compared to last time.

Mike & I went to an Asian place for din-dins, where I had a nice bowl of Phở while Mike told me all about Meet the Robinsons. Sounds like a plenny strange movie that I'm not really planning on seeing. Besides, it's not like I can find anybody to go see movies with me anymore, so it's probably a moot point. Sigh.

We got back to the theater where Geoffs was setting up the musical equipment for our format, Fools Play: The Album. It was a technically crazy night, and both Mike & Geoff said it was more difficult to do than the one they did last August. It'll also take longer than one day to mix and edit, so it won't be released until sometime later this week, probably.

After the show (which, by the way, had a very disappointingly small audience—c'mon, everybody, where were you?) we went to The Reef instead of The Rib Eye. I honestly do not know what the attraction is. The burgers and sammitches taste maybe slightly better, but the fries suck, and the service sucks, and the ambience sucks (case in point: there was almost an out-and-out drunken brawl while we were there), and the service REALLY REALLY REALLY sucks. Completely and 100% sucks. I would not have tipped at all had our waitress not been the sister of an audience member. As it was, I tipped below 15%. Oh, and also? The way the restaurant is laid out it's almost impossible for everyone to sit near each other. Sigh.

I do not see the attraction. They do have a pretty good Monte Christo, which is my favorite sammitch (and they're kinda hard to find for some reason). Jake had never even heard of this French-toasted sammitch before!

After I took Mike & Amber back to his car I drove home and went to bed by my lonesome.

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Of the Month: April ’07 

Link of the Month:
My Wish List!
It's that time of year again: Time for you to buy things for me for my birthday! BUY THINGS FOR ME!

Book of the Month:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 8 #1 by Joss Whedon
Buffy's back, in comic book form! And this isn't like that old Buffy comic out there. This is the official story of what happens after the end of the TeleVision series, written by series creator Joss Whedon hisself! Due to comic length and pacing, this issue is more like the first fifteen minutes of a season premiere rather than a complete episode (it basically encompasses the teaser, and then up to the first commercial break).

Album of the Month:
Mates of State: Bring It Back
I discovered Mates of State through the live This American Life stage show. They're a hard to describe but thoroughly engaging duo. A real-life couple, she plays piano/keyboards and he drums, and they both sing exuberant, joyful songs with good, quirky, eclectic, irresistible hooks and exquisite harmonies. This is their fourth and most-recent album.

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