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

Tuesday (my actual birfday) I got a bunch of cupcakes at work, and my boss gave me a gift certificate to NoiseBot. There were several other good ones, but in the end I selected this T-shirt:

Carrie had to work late (until like 6:00 or something), but then after she got off we went down to Gateway to India for my birfday dinner, where we were met by Christine & Lawrence. I had Gosht Korma! Very good!

Later on in the evening Carrie & I went out and saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Another "Blanking Blank" title movie!). It was very funny and incredibly intelligent. Now I have two movie reviews to write.

Wednesday we cleaned the house and then in the evening went downtown to The Harmon restaurant, where we met my whole family, which came to 9 entire people around one table. Carrie & I hadn't been to The Harmon in a few years, and we were pleased to find that it was still very tasty (and they still had their beer ski). I had a steak with a green peppercorn reduction on a bed of crispy onion straws.

Then everybody came back to our house, where we were joined by Neighbor Gary. I then opened presents. I got cool stuff!

Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
2 books by Anthony Bourdain
Juno on DVD
A book on do-it-yourself home maintenance and repair (very useful)
A Bluetooth headset so that I can legally talk on the phone while in my car
Point by Cornelius
Many cards and some moneys

Carrie made me some lemon cupcakes with chocolate frosting (my favorite cake combo), and after those I played some Smash Bros with my own Bro and Cassie.

Thursday in the afternoon Lawrence took me out to see Iron Man. I now have three movie reviews to write. When I got home I got a package from Amazon.com, which I thought was odd because I hadn't ordered anything from them. Turns out it was a birthday gift from Taisha, Battlestar Galactica - The Complete Epic Series (Limited Edition Cylon Head Packaging)

Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday in person, online, over the phone, and/or by giving me a gift!

Labels: Anthony Bourdain, Birthday, Books, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Iron Man, Juno, Life, Links, Metroid, Movies, Pictures, Restaurants, Super Smash Bros, Video Games

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

It's My Birfday Today

But it felt like it started yesterday. I'll explain: Our friend from Guam stayed with us the last couple of nights (she's not originally from Guam. I believe she's originally from Alaska. She went to college with my wife. Then she lived in Togo for a couple of years. Then she moved to Tacoma for a couple of years. And now she's been living in Guam for a couple of years, but it looks like she might be moving back to the Seattle-Tacoma area soon). Yesterday afternoon after Carrie got off of work, the three of us all took Suki down to the dog park and walked around. She was very well behaved, although two other dogs snapped at her. She's been much more well-behaved these last couple of weeks. We stopped by Trader Joe's on the way home and picked up fixin's for dinner.

After we got home the two of them went out on "errands" (which meant getting me some birthday presents). I fired up the barbecue. While the coals were getting warm I unlocked "Mirror" mode in Mario Kart Wii.

When the girls got home I cooked up some teriyaki salmon while Carrie made a salad consisting of spinach, blueberries, pine nuts, cheese, steamed asparagus, and poppyseed dressing. We all (including Suki and Fantastico) sat out on the front porch and listened to music from the ’90s while we ate. It was very nice. For dessert I ate a cookie that my co-worker had made when she was drunk the night before. It was good.

Carrie gave me one present at midnight, a very cute little pouch that could hold something like an MP3 player or my digital camera. The pouch has drawings of weird animals/creatures and robots on it! Hippy Barthday to Me!

Labels: Life

Monday, May 05, 2008

My Favorite Verb

"Would have had to have been being"

As in: "He would have had to have been being eaten."

Labels: Life

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

It is One Week Until My Birthday

This post has nothing to do with the title. It's about mowing the lawn! Yesterday (Monday) I took the lawn mower out of the garage to tame the backyard lawn. I was having a heck of a time getting it to start (due to the fact that it's been sitting in my garage for half the year). At one point I wondered if any leftover grass in the blades had hardened to form some sort of preventative blockage against the blades spinning, so I tipped the mower on its side and took a (safe) look. It seemed to be okay down there. So I returned the mower to its upright position and tried it again. It worked this time. Apparently my lawn mower needs to be periodically tipped over onto its left side in order to work. Something about distributing the gasoline; I dunno.

Labels: Life

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Footprints Leading to Good Food

Yesterday (Friday) when I got home from work this is what my front yard looked like:

Yes, it looked like some kinda crappy inspirational footprints poster. It snowed basically from the time I got to work until the time I got home. This was continuing the last two days of snowstuffs. This freakishly weird winter weather at the end of March came as quite a surprise to my small cluster of tulips! Look at them:

They're so surprised! They're all like, "What the!?" They totally thought it was spring. Whoops!

For lunch I had leftover chicken soup that Neighbor Gary had made the night before whilst I was in Seattle. Have I mentioned that Gary is staying on our couch for his Spring Break? No? Well, now I have, suckers!

Then for dinner I pulled out all the stops and made a full-on gourmet meal. It looked soooo tasty that I had to take a picture of it. Here is that picture, in all its splendiferous glory:

From the top of the plate going clockwise we have:

Greek-style potatoes (leftover from Taki's Mad Greek).
Carrots sauteéd in butter and seasoned with pepper. Then at the very end of the cooking process I poured in a couple of dashes of soy sauce and let it get all caramelized on the carrots.
Pan-seared, salt-and-pepper steak smothered in sauteéd & caramelized onions.

Whoo-eee! Them's good times! It tasted oh-so-very good.

Labels: Cooking, Life, Pictures, Snow, Weather

Friday, March 28, 2008

Hard To Drive a Bus in the Snow

Yesterday (Thursday) we woke up to snow on the ground. This was no big surprise considering that it was snowing Wednesday evening. It was kind of a surprise that it was snowing at all this close to April, though. This never happens 'round these parts. I got Carrie off to work nonetheless, and from there she left for Portland for the weekend (boo).

After work I came home, had a sammitch, fed Suki, took care of a couple of sundries around the house, then I headed up to Seattle. It started to snow again while I was on my way up there!

I hung out with Sandy a bit and then we went and got Mathias and proceeded to have dinner at Taki's Mad Greek. This has got to be one of my favorite Greek restaurants evar. Especially the Oven Baked Feta appetizer. And their pork is cooked just right: not too much, but not too little. And everything just tastes really, really tasty.

I also took a photo of the decorations in the men's room:

On the left there we have a completely nude Poseidon, but on the right we have Theseus covering his privates with a leaf! I wonder why. Does he not measure up to Poseidon? I just thought it was funny.

After dinner we parked near their apartment and then walked through the bitter cold (though it wasn't snowing at that time) to Neumos, where we met up with Jason and his wife Jennifer, as well as Geoff and Lisa!

Why were we there? Why, to see Busdriver, of course! Look:

The man moves as fast as he raps; it's difficult to get a good picture of him. Just look at the blur lines on his left hand in those pictures!

When we got to Neumos we were basically the only people there. Everybody else was in the attached bar. When Busdriver took the stage we were still practically the only people there, but Busdriver plunged ahead anyway. A handful of other people trickled in after he started (30 to 40). Last time I saw him the place was packed so we all thought it was weird, until we figured out that this was a 21-up show, and he usually plays to all-ages at Neumos. I guess only the kids like the Busdriver.

Anyhoo, it was a great set, and he did that cover of Man, It's So Loud in Here by They Might Be Giants that I really like. He played for just under an hour. We all met him over at his merch table, where Sandy bought the last copy of his rarities CD. He told me he'd go to his car and see if he could find another, but I wasn't able to catch him again before we left. I talked to him a bit about that TMBG song he does, and he said it was pretty old and he was thinking of retiring it. He's very shy and awkward off the stage. Hopefully he'll have another copy next time he comes into town.

Sandy kinda creeped him out by showing him a picture of the Busdriver Bot magnet that she made.

An hour after he left the stage the "main attraction," the Gray Boy All-Stars took the stage, and suddenly the theater was swarmed with frat boys, bros, and similar early-to-mid 30s types (and the kind of women who hang out with them). They were a jazzy kind of quintet, with drums, bass, guitar, sax, and keyboards. They were all very skilled musicians, but it was just not what we were in the mood for, and also didn't really sound like what they offer on their MySpace page. They sounded like they were straight out of 1985. Seriously! They even looked it.

At one point Sandy turned to me and said something to the effect that she felt like they were a band that the Huxtables would go and watch on the Cosby show. Mathias summed it up best by saying they were "Sportscoat and Bluejeans" jazz. They didn't go with Busdriver at all, so it wasn't a big surprise that none of their fans came out to see Busdriver go crazy.

We left after four or so songs. Jason gave us a ride back to S&M's apartment, and from there I drove on home.

You can read Mathias's "version" of events over at his website. He's got some really crazy pictures up, too.

Labels: Busdriver, Life, Links, Music, Pictures, Restaurants

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Hope Y'all Had a Happy Irish Day!

Yesterday (Monday) Carrie, Laura, & I went over to Carrie's folks' house for din-dins. I had corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, 3 pints of Guinness, and green pistachio pudding!

Then while walking to work this morning, I passed this on the street:

Seems likely that a transient is gonna have a happy day today!

Labels: Cooking, Holiday, Life, Pictures

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Oh Baby, You Got What I Need, But You Say He's...

Almost every day that I work in downtown T-town, I park a few blocks away where there is free, all-day parallel parking. Near where I park is a building under construction (they only have 1½ more stories to go).

Yesterday (Friday) after work as I was walking back to my car I passed this construction site. Suddenly, from about five stories above my head I heard someone start belting out the chorus to Biz Markie's famous song Just A Friend entirely out-of-tune and at the top of his lungs.

Very amusing.

Labels: Biz Markie, Life, Music

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Shameless Self-Promotion & Vacation Dreams

I just discovered that if you type "Samus Aran" into Google, my site is the 2nd listed! holy crap! Just because I wrote a humorous article about the endings of the various Metroid games... like three years ago! Take a wook:

So, if anybody wants to know anything about Samus Aran, it's either Wikipedia or me!

Anyway, let me tell you about a dream I had a couple of nights ago. It involved Carrie, Me, and my whole family going on vacation together. First off we went to one of the San Juan Islands, which was historically famous for having the first-ever freeway onramp in America. It was also famous for having the first-ever comic strip written about a freeway onramp (my dream people actually showed me a closeup of the comic strip, and it was drawn in a glorious 60s-futurism style. Very cool).

After the excitement of the freeway onramp, which was strangely high-tech, we all headed to the area between Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens, which (you might not be aware) is a large desert basin that stretches for miles and miles, ringed with rocky hills.

While we were wandering around the cartoon-style sand dunes in this desert, all of a sudden Mt. Rainier erupted. It wasn't an all-ash eruption like St. Helens in 1980. It was more of a single, quick, but very large explosion. Very fiery and red. It wasn't at all scary. It was just kind of like, hey, look: Rainier finally erupted. huh.

A few moments after rainier erupted we all saw the shockwave from the blast as it caused the desert floor to swell up like a big wave (which we all calmly and un-eventfully rode out). We all stood there and watched as the shockwave traveled south across the desert, until it disappeared in the distance. Then a couple of seconds later we saw Mt. St. Helens erupt in a big cloud of ash. We all kinda nodded knowingly, like, "Yep, the Rainier eruption caused a huge earthquake, and once it reached St. Helens of course it erupted."

Then the aftershocks started hitting, and the whole desert was going up and down in waves. Then one of the waves actually broke like an ocean wave—it broke right over Susan's head, burying her in the sand! She was easy to find, though, because when the wave settled down there was a susan-shaped mound in the sand. She was just a couple of feet down, and it took me only a second of non-worried digging to get her out.

The whole family then decided to head somewhere else, but I woke up before we actually got anywhere.

Labels: Dreams, Life, Links

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Winterfest Approaches; I Go Away

Officially now (well, after dinner) begins my week-long build up to my appearance selling my Thirsty Robots Stuff at Winterfest 2007.

So, other than working on that, working on stuff for my web design clients, and going to Fools Play on Saturday, I'll pretty much not exist until Thanksgiving. During which I will probably still be etching stuff.

So I hope to see some people at Winterfest, otherwise I'll re-emerge after.

Labels: Life, Updates

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Sick Days

So, this whole past week I've been sick. And it was a kind of sickness that got worse as it went along instead of better. So for the past few days my wife has basically prescribed bedrest. No work (I wasn't even able to go in to Ever After very much at all during the week), just lie around and get better.

Now I'm finally starting to feel better, and I have a stack of 30 unread emails in my inbox and a whole bunch of people I need to call tomorrow. So if you've been one of those people who has been trying to get a hold of me recently, my apologies. I've basically been non-existant for the past week.

Labels: Life, Updates

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy H'ween, Everybody!

Today (Wednesday) is Halloween! Hooray!

On Friday Carrie got me a Wii because I'm an awexome husband. Take THAT, all you lousy husbands! Har har! Score! She also got me The Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess. Boo-yah!

Gina came and stayed with us over Halloween weekend, because Halloween weekend was also the Bead Factory's 15th anniversary weekend. They needed extra help, so they paid for Gina to take the train up from Portland for the weekend. She slept on our couch. I cooked breakfast for us (scrambled eggs & sausage on Saturday, Li'l Smokies and orange rolls (Christmas breakfast) for us on Sunday). We like her. It was nice having her around, even though we really didn't see her that much because everybody was working so mucho.

Saturday evening was Fools Play Trick or Treat, our annual Halloween show. Not as many people came as usual, but here's what us Fools dressed up as:

As Cactus Jack - Jake Ynzunza the Pink Fool:

As the victim of a pillow fight - Taisha McFall the Jade Fool:

As James, ½ of Team Rocket (with the very lovely Tia as Jessie of Team Rocket) - Mike Harris the Blue Fool:

But I know what you're asking: What whas Chris Harris the Purple Fool's costume? And what awexome punkins did he carve this year?

Well, lucky for you all, I wrote a new Article all about that! What was my costume? What were my punkins? What new H'ween craft did I do this year? And what could possibly make The Ocean Shores Pirate cry a single, gigantic tear? You can only find out by reading...

A Halloween Surprise for The Ocean Shores Pirate

Well, my in-laws are coming over soon for our annual H'ween tradition of soup, Reuben sammitches, and handing out full-sized candy bars (not them crappy little dinky things) to everyone who comes to the door!

Labels: Fools Play, Holiday, Life, Links, Pictures, Video Games

Friday, October 19, 2007

Wet Popcorn Windstorm

Yesterday (Thursday) was an huge windstorm all the live-long day. Okay, well, it started just after noon and went until, um, very, very late. We didn't lose power, but apparently a lot of people in the Puget Sound area did.

As I was walking home from work down Broadway, I passed a gigantic tree. The wind had blown a tonne of crab apples down out of the tree and they were coating the nearby street. As cars drove down the street I could hear the crab apples pop as they were run over. Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. Like wet popcorn.

Labels: Life

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The Cutest Graffiti Ever

I work downtown T-town at 9th and Pacific, but I usually park near 4th and Broadway (5 blocks up and two blocks over).

There is a lot of construction happening on Broadway (they're building this). I've recently noticed while walking to and from the car that there are some really cool instances of graffiti popping up on some of the storage units for the construction. This one of an adorable jellyfish is by far my favorite:

I've seen this jellyfish elsewhere around Tacoma, like on a picnic table in Jefferson Park.

Another pretty cool graffiti piece just popped up of a whole, repeated line of monsters holding up a clawed hand in front of their faces. Very cute. I'll try to get a photo of it as well. There are a couple of graffiti signatures that pop up in these areas: Düm and Rubr, so it might be one of them.

Labels: Life, Pictures

Sunday, October 07, 2007

It Went "Whoomp" And my Whole House Shook

Around 3:00 yesterday (Saturday) I was watching John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars (horrible movie, but it stars Ice Cube) when there was a big noise like a gigantically close sonic boom. It went "Whoomp!" and my whole house shook. I could see the big bay window actually flex a little bit. It startled Suki quite a bit.

I went outside and looked to make sure a tree didn't fall on my house or something, and noticed that the sky was full of birds—they'd all fled the trees and were screeching around overhead. Then I heard dozens and dozens of sirens way off to the south.

Read this news story.

Watch this movie:

That was almost two full miles away from my house. The explosion created enough of a shock wave that it was felt at least as far away as UPS, which is another half mile further away.

Thankfully Carrie came home via Stadium Way and not Highway 16, because a piece of tanker truck actually flew up in the air and landed on the highway, hundreds of feet away.

And somehow nobody was killed.

Update: 10-16-07

Here are a couple of views of the explosion:

And here's a remarkable video where you can see cars driving on the freeway (highway 16) as they're silhouetted by the explosion behind them.

Unfortunately the driver of the propane truck died Sunday morning: http://www.thenewstribune.com/1001/story/179347.html

Labels: Life, Links, Videos

Friday, August 10, 2007

Calendar System Courtesy Jerry Seinfeld. Used Without Permission.

Yesterday (Thursday) evening I implemented my new calendar-based chore system. I think it's really going to work well, because it makes us both visually accountable for what goes on. This system is for the kitchen/laundry room, and also has watering the outdoor plants on it. Take a wook:

You can see that yesterday I washed a load of laundry, dried a load of laundry, put a way a load of laundry, scooped the kitty litter, watered the plants, hand-washed some dishes, filled up and ran the dishwasher. All I didn't do was put the dishes in the dishwasher away. Not bad, eh? I think this will work much better for us than Chore Wars would.

We're having trouble getting Suki to go bathroom outside. When we woke up yesterday morning there was poo on the dining room rug. We tried to walk her in the evening to get her to go potty, but at one point she got spooked at some random little noise and bucked really hard, ripping the leash right out of my hand. She started whining and running around, but fortunately after a couple of blocks she ran right up to us and let us walk her back to the house.

Hopefully we'll be able to convince her that when she goes outside, that that's when she's supposed to potty. Hmmm... I wonder. Oh, well.

Labels: Life, Pictures

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Must Have Been Some Impact

Aight! It's late. I need to go sweeps. Peeps! Let's see what happened yesterday (Wednesday (it's after midnight after all—double afters)). Carrie went in to work a little late (on purpose), so I didn't have to drive her there before heading to work myself.

Work itself was relatively uneventful, but it was the walk back to the car that was startling. I'd parked on Stadium Way, so as I was walking back up there I was eating some blackberries here and there. When I got to the section of the road where 4th I noticed something odd. See, 4th is a rather steep hill that points directly down to and ends at Stadium Way. Opposite 4th is just a super-steep hill covered in blackberries, with a fence and a guard rail. I noticed as I was walking up the sidewalk that the blackberry bushes seemed a lot farther away from the sidewalk than they were the day before. They used to be right up against the sidewalk, but now they were like eight feet away.

It was at that point that I actually started paying attention to my surroundings and noticed that the guardrail, the fence, and in fact the entire area at the end of 4th had been pushed away from the sidewalk. It looked as if something horribly heavy had come roaring down the hill and gone straight across Stadium Way, over the sidwalk, and into guardrail, pushing it, the fence, the blackberries, and a tree about eight feet from their usual position. It'd uprooted the guardrail's posts completely out of the ground and also completely flattened a road sign.

Isn't that amazing? It must have been one hell of an impact. Look at how crazily the tree is leaning in that first picture, and notice the completely-flattened sign and broken guardrail posts in the second picture. That guardrail should be right up against the sidewalk, maybe 2 feet away at its greatest distance.

The strangest thing of all, though? There was a toy guitar at the scene, just leaning up against the railing:

I didn't notice any broken glass anywhere at the scene, though, so I'm really curious as to what could have possibly happened.

Labels: Life, Pictures

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

The Walk from Work

On the way walking back to the car parked on Stadium Way there was a wonderful aroma wafting up from the hillside beneath me. Here's what made it:

Sooo good! I ate a handful and picked another handful that I brought to Carrie when I picked her up from work.

Labels: Life, Pictures

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

What The!?

So the last couple of days have been pretty un-eventful. Yesterday (Monday) Carrie & I went over to her folks' house and barbecued a whole bunch of good food. There was, let's see, Yoshida salmon, zucchini, potatoes with onion & garlic, and green beans with bacon. Carrie went and picked up Grandma K. from her place; I went straight to the Hamm house; and Carrie's folks met us all there, straight from the airport. They'd been in Kansas visiting Jim's mother, and their plane only arrived that...

Whoa, wait a minute, what was that? Was that a picture of a dog? In my yard? What the!?

Let me take another look:

Hey, waitaminute, what's that dog doing in my car now? That must be how it got to my yard. But why would a dog go in my car?

Well, the answer is probably pretty obvious. On Saturday, Carrie & I got a dog. We went in the morning to Ikea and bought dog supplies, then in the early afternoon we went to the Tacoma Humane Society and when we left an hour later, a dog came with us.

We named her サツキ (Satsuki), but we just call her スキ ("Suki"). She's a four-year-old, 43 lb Spaniel mix (probably mostly German Spaniel). She'd been living in the wild for upwards of five months, so she's still VERY skittish and shy, but she's getting steadily better as the days go on. She has a mild case of "kennel cough," but that's hardly surprising considering she was at the Humane Society for four days before we got her.

Carrie is very excited. She's been wanting a dog for YEARS. Fantastico, however, is not so excited. She's mostly just confused as to why that thing is still here. Dogs have been over to our house before, but they've always left after a while. Suki's been here three nights running!

So anyway, yes, we have a dog. Yes, you can come visit her. But, no, she can't hang out with your dog(s) until she's over her kennel cough and no longer contagious (two weeks from now).

Labels: Cooking, Life, Pictures

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

From Shelton by way of France, Italy, Croatia, England, and New York City

I came home where Carrie had already started cooking some Mandarin chicken for lunch. Then she got a call from Laura Kinney, aka X-23, the clone of Wolverine! She was home from her 8-month journey around Europe and her post-Europe, one-week stay with Brandy & Friends in NYC! And she wanted to hang out with us!

So Carrie put on some rice and added some chicken potstickers to the pan so there wouldst be enough lunch for the all of us, and Laura came over and indeed did hang out! She regaled us with stories of cell phones and Mormons, a hostel with no bathroom light switches, and dates who were lates. We all three walked down to Mandolin and hung out there for a bit as well. I got all sorts of sleepy, unfortunately, so we walked home and I rested a bit before doing a handout for Liana.

Laura left whilst I was making the handout. Boo! But she's back basically for good (though we're exchanging her for Gina in a few days). Hooray!

In the evening I went out and bought Hot Fuzz. They were all sold out at Target, so I had to go to the Fred Meyer's to get it.

Labels: Life, Movies

Monday, July 30, 2007

Nostalgia Digging

On Thursday evening I went over to my folks' place and went through several boxes in their garage. I did really well; I only came home with one box of stuff. A lot of it was old coloring books that I vividly remember from when I was a kid. Also the Color, Cut-Out, and Fly series of books. I think tomorrow (Saturday) I'm going to look around and see if those books still exist in any way, shape, or form. If not, I might just write an article about them.

I also found an entire screenplay that I wrote: Relentless. I think it actually has a good (in a crappy way) story in it. I just need to make it take place in an ACTUAL location. Either that or in the future (which is how I originally envisioned it).

It was pretty cool finding all those old things from my childhood. I vividly remember the coloring books. I'll update this post with pictures as soon as I get 'em scanned in.

UPDATE: Here are the first couple of scans!

Labels: Life, Pictures

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

No, You Can't Have a Beagle. Not Yours.

Fantastico is very lucky. Yesterday (Monday) we almost brought home a puppy.

Well, it would have been 2 years old. Lemmie essplain:

One of the Bead Babes has a friend whose mum has a bunch of pets, and for some reason (medical, probably) she had to get rid of all of them. Carrie has been itching to get a dog since the Bead Festival ended, and one of the pets was a Beagle. Seemed like a perfect match.

But because Carrie went away to Canada for the weekend, the Beagle was already given away to someone else yesterday. Which I think is actually for the best, because I read several articles that cautioned about having a Beagle if you have a cat ('cause Beagles are bread to hunt small game like rabbits and hares and bunnies). And I've always made it perfectly clear that even when we do get a dog, Fantastico has to be the #1 pet. She's going to hate it for a while no matter what, though.

Labels: Life

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Impromptu Canadian

On Wednesday Carrie had the day off, and in the afternoon she had a dentist's appointment. After I picked her up from that she got a call from Melissa saying that Viki wanted Carrie to take the rest of the week off 'cause she was over on hours.

That would be okay. Carrie & Melissa joked that now that Carrie had the rest of the week off, she should go to Canada with Melissa and her family. Then suddenly it clicked and we all realized there was no reason that that should be a joke. Carrie totally SHOULD go to Canada!

We both went last year, and I didn't particularly enjoy it—it just really wasn't my cup of tea (and I had many commitments for the weekend already), so we decided that Carrie would go. So she spent the evening packing, and Thursday at some ungodly hour like 5:15 AM she was picked up by Melissa and left for Canada for the weekend.

Impromptu!

Labels: Life

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

What's Going On!!

The Puget Sound Bead Festival continued for the duration of the weekend. I actually went and walked around the show on Saturday for a bit, and saw the out-of-town girls (in order I saw them) Nicole, Brandy, and Gretchen.

That evening Fools Play did an ambitious new format called "Learnin' the Ropes" in which we try to get our apprentices ready to perform in the span of five (5) days. It had a really large audience, due mostly to friends of the apprentices wanting to see them perform.

Sunday I left Fools Play practice early so I could help tear down the classrooms at the PSBF. Then I drove up to Issaquah for Mike's birthday diner at XXX Root Beer. Man, that place is so good. I had a bacon burger the size of my plate. Then afterwards I went and ordered onion rings.

Carrie & I both took Monday off so we could recover from the PSBF, but also for another reason: we needed to buy a car. A couple of our bead colleagues had bought a car just last week from Toyota of Puyallup and highly recommended the salesman, so we went down there as well and talked with him. And ended up buying the exact same car that they'd bought. They didn't have our 1st choice color available at all, and our 2nd choice color was down in Portland, so it would have to be driven up and so wouldn't be ready until Tuesday. But we were also satisfied with the salesman (though the paperwork department for some reason took for-freakin'-ever). So if you ever want to get a Toyota, go to Toyota of Puyallup and ask for John Martinez, and tell him that Chris Harris & Carrie Hamm sent you (we'll get some sorta kickback if you do).

Monday evening Carrie & I went out on a date and saw Ratatouille.

That brings us to Today, when, after an afternoon nap, Carrie & I went and picked up our new car from the dealership. And here it is:

It's a brand-spankin'-new Toyota Yaris 4-door sedan. Only 400 miles on it. And it's so freakin' cute! I made Carrie drive the rental home from the dealership just so I could drive the Yaris home [evil laugh].

I bought a new car! In the past 8 months I've bought a house, a MacBook, a new mattress set, and a new car. I'm a grown-up! All I need to do now is get a dog.

Then after I dropped Carrie off at the store to teach her evening class (I dropped her off with my NEW CAR) I headed back home and noticed a car in front of mine had the same Toyota of Puyallup dealer plates that I had. "Hmm," I thought, "they got their car at the same place I got my car. That looks like the same type of... hey, wait a minute!" Indeed, it was Robbie, the friend who bought the same kind of car last week! He pulled over at our house and we talked about how cool the Yaris cars are. What's plural for Yaris? Yarisses? Or Yari? Anyhoo, I also gave him back the couple of Gamecube controllers that we'd borrowed, oh, quite a while ago.

I leave you with a pretty picture of the clouds reflected in my new car's hood:

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Links, Movies, Pictures, Restaurants, Updates

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Happy Birthday (Party) to Mike

Yesterday (Friday) Lisa actually drove me in to work in the morning and then picked me up immediately afterwards. I drove her to the Convention Center where I dropped her off, then I came home.

Carrie came home a while later, and I went out into the backyard to do some gardening, trimming and pulling weeds and the like. While I was out there Derek came by and saw me back there. He had a paper for me to sign (life insurance stuff).

Carrie went back to the show later on, and then a while after that I drove up to Kent for my brother's birthday party! I brought refreshment for the party—a can of root beer for everybody to share. I know, I'm so generous!

When I got there only Josiah & Cambry were there. I played a lot of Sky Kid for the NES for Josiah, but soon other people started trickling in until it was a rompin' stompin' full blown party. There were several people there I hadn't seen in quite a while, including Mike's "college friends" (Jen, Suzi, & Bryan of Frankenseuss Labs, who does a lot of the artwork for Buckethead's albums) and Chelsea, and I met キ, who is actually legitimately really good at drawing animé-style things. Also, Susan & Jason were there. Jason made a couple pizzas but didn't get to eat very much (at all), so Mike actually left his own party(!) and got some more pizzas. I ate a lot of pizza. Kevin brought a Wii, but we could only get one of the controllers to turn on, so a few of us played some Excite Truck. Interesting game.

I left around 11:30, which was unfortunately very shortly after Tia & Tim showed up, so I didn't get to hang out with them very long.

I went straight home and straight to bed.

Labels: Life, Video Games

Friday, July 13, 2007

What Split-Shift?

Yesterday (Thursday) I went straight from work to Katie Downs to join Carrie & Lisa there for lunch. Carrie was supposed to then have a split-shift for the day, but she ended up going on a search for flowers and never ended up actually coming back home.

Around 3:30 I went down to the Country Insurance offices and picked up the cheque for my totaled car. I then immediately went to the Fred Meyer bonk and deposited it. I also bought some Gatorade and a book of stamps whilst I was there.

I dropped Lisa off at the Convention Center in the evening to teach her class, then I came home and blissfully rested. This is a stressful time of the year, so it's nice to have an evening to myself!

Labels: Life

Thursday, July 12, 2007

It Begins...

Yesterday (Wednesday) was mercilessly hot. It was also the first work day for the Puget Sound Bead Festival. Carrie left for work much earlier than I did. I went to work as usual, but afterwards I walked to the south three blocks (three double blocks) down Broadway until I got to the Greater Tacoma Convention Center on 15th Street.

Christine let me in, and I joined many other Bead Boys (and Gary) in putting together the classrooms: gaffing power strips and extension cords, plugging in and testing lights, and the like. I also did a stint ferrying materials from the U-Haul truck in the back of the building. In order to do that, though, I had to go outside the air-conditioned building and spend several moments in the 95-plus-degrees sunshine. I didn't enjoy that so much.

I was there for a couple of hours (the other Boys had been there since about 9:00 AM) before Travis showed up with foodstuffs from MSMII! I got a Mike's Deluxe, a very tasty sammitch. I hadn't quite finished half of it when Carrie informed me that she and Cat were leaving and were willing to give me a ride back to my car way up on 4th Ave.—saving me a 30-minute walk in the sun! I was very grateful.

On the way back to the house I stopped by the Bead Factory and picked up a couple of Lisa's boxes that she'd had shipped there. I came home and shared the rest of my Sammitch with Carrie when she arrived.

Then I went and got my hair cut at Julie's Hair Care place. I look awexome now!

I came home and then Carrie & I pretty much immediately left for her folks' place. They weren't home; they were out seeing Harry Potter. But they'd said that we could borrow their Nissan for the duration of the Festival, so Carrie snagged that car. I drove the rental back home while Carrie continued on north to the airport to pick up the arriving Lisa.

I cleaned up a little more until they got back to the house, then I started up the barbecue. People then began trickling in—Christine, Travis, Steph, Gary, Melissa, and even Erin Miner from NYC! And Jeff Pines! And even more people than that! We went through two six-packs and two bottles of wine, and I grilled up a whole bunch of sausages of all varieties, including some with cheese in 'em.

The reason everybody came over to enjoy my cooking was our weekly gathering to watch So You Think You Can Dance. I didn't actually see very much of it due to my cooking and hosting duties, but that's okay; I enjoyed the evening thoroughly.

Labels: Cooking, Life, TV

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

That's Not Very Queenly

The in-house thermometer says that it's 88 degrees inside right now. It's close to 95 outside. So forgive me if my memory ain't what it should be, but it's too durned hot to think right now.

Yesterday (Tuesday) Carrie got off work before I did and went straight home. I got off work and swung by the Bartell's to pick up a couple of things and then met Carrie at the house. I arrived only moments before the lady from Dana's Housekeeping showed up. Yes, that's right, Carrie & I had our house professionally cleaned yesterday thanks to the gift certificate we got from Viki at Christmastime.

While she was there cleaning, Carrie & I swung over to University Place. She dropped me off at the DMV (more on that in tomorrow's entry) while she went to Trader Joe's. The DMV was packed, so I was nowhere near being called up by the time she got back. It looked like it would be hours more, so we decided to call it quits and that I would go in the next morning to try again. We drove on home where I unloaded the groceries.

Carrie left to go get a super-cute haircut and get more groceries from Safeway. The cleaning lady finished and left and then Carrie got home. Arount 6:30 a big pickup truck pulled into our driveway. It was filled with our new mattresses. Neighbor Gary showed up shortly thereafter and helped to bring in the new mattresses and bag up & remove the old ones.

The funny thing—Carrie & I have been sleeping on a Queen-sized mattress for since we've been sleeping together. Turns out, though, that we didn't have a Queen-sized bed or box spring. Those were full-sized. So the new Queen-sized mattress set didn't fit on the full-sized bed. Whoops! The guy from Mattress Mania was very helpful, and ran up to the store and came back with a queen-sized bed frame. In the meanwhile we disassembled the old bed frame with some well-placed karate kicks! Hyaa! Gary & I took it out to the Garage. Soon the new bed was all set up.

It's crazy—it's so cushy that it's actually about eight inches taller than our old mattress. So now our bedside tables are way below the level of the bed, so we have to reach down to get stuff. But it is oh-so cushy.

Umm... Gary & I hung out for a while longer and watched some TV. Then he left and Carrie & I watched The World Series of Pop Culture before going to bed on top of the covers and eating ice cream and putting a bowl of ice in front of the fan and all sorts of other things to try to keep cool.

Labels: Life, TV

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Zombified

I hate the heat. And yesterday (Monday) it was hot.

Heat makes me cranky. And tired. And vegetative. It is difficult for me to do much of anything other than sit around and be vaguely aware that I'm hot. So that is what I did for most of the day yesterday, though I did get some work done in the later evening (when it started to cool down).

We ordered in a pizza from Pizza Hut (extra cheese, sausage, & mushroom—a classic combination that is up there with pepperoni & black olives) for dinner. There really wasn't anything good at all on TV, so we watched some on-demand stuff and then Carrie watched her three hours of Friends and cleaned during commercials while I tried my best not to let the heat zombify me. Not terribly successful.

It's only going to get hotter over the next couple of days, too. Joy.

Labels: Life

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Home Cookin'

Gaahhh... my memory is horrible right now. I can't even remember the first half of Saturday. I know I did some cleaning, but I can't remember specifics. Ah, well.

Michael came and picked me up about 45-60 minutes early for Fools Play so we could practice the new format that I'd failed to practice on Sunday due to being in that whole car accident. The whole way down we talked about Transformers and just what a conundrum of a movie it really is.

Then we ran/talked through the format a few times before people started trickling in and we had to set up the show.

The new format was called Home Cookin' it went pretty well considering how damnably complicated it is and how little time we'd actually had to go over it.

After the show we went to Rib Eye where I sat with Sandy, Mathias, and Amber and ate bean-less chili. Mike took me home around midnight (so I got home around midnight:30).

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Friday, July 06, 2007

Jam Packed

Yesterday (Thursday) when I got home from work my dad was already there, working on the backyard patio. Carrie & I took him out to lunch at El Toro up on 26th. A short while after we came back he left, and then I did as well. I headed out across the hills to Auburn's frightful Auto Row to get all of my personal belongings out of my totaled car. Amusingly, on the way there I actually drove right by the place where I pulled over after failing to catch up to the white pickup that hit me.

I found the place no problem, and was led by a young man who called me "Amigo" through a series of back rooms, a repair floor, a paint shop, and finally into the back lot where there were rows and rows of defunct vehicles. Funny thing, though, I had parked basically right next to this lot, so I didn't have far to walk with all of my belongings.

So here it is, the last any of you will ever see of my car.

You can easily see where the impact took place.

But the reason it was totaled was because the impact was so severe that it actually caused damage to the opposite side of the car:

So the whole entire front of the car would have had to have been replaced, including most of the engine, the entire frame, the front axle, and both front wheels.

I made a thorough search through the entire car and grabbed everything of any possible interest, including the old, ratty Jack in the Box antenna ball. I had a Sealab 2021 air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror, and it was a b*tch to get that thing untied. We also had a small pair of bells from Cat's wedding. I figured that was a sentimental item, so we should probably save it. It proved to be impossible for me to untie, though, especially since it was approaching 100 degrees inside that car sitting in the hot sun.

After several struggling minutes I got a flash of genius. I grabbed onto the rear-view mirror and applied torque until it popped right off of the windshield. Then I simply pulled the bells right off. It's not like the car's gonna need a rear-view mirror anymore!

So I loaded everything into the rental and paused to use the restroom inside the place before heading back to T-town. It took me just about two-and-a-half hours round trip to do all of that.

So I needed something fun to do. So when I dropped off Carrie at the store to teach her evening class I went directly to Lawrence's place and picked him up and we went and saw Transformers. I'm going to write a movie review of it on Monday, ya hear me?

After the flick I noticed that I had a cryptic phone message from Gina, something about not going galavanting after the movie because I was needed to take her home. The message was a little bit garbled and cut out a bit. So Lawrence & I headed to the BF and caught Carrie's eye for some clarification. She just wanted to make sure I didn't go out of town or become unavailable like that time that Mike & I went and saw Grindhouse on a whim and she'd tried to call me to get a ride home but couldn't reach me because I'd turned off my phone like a responsible movie patron.

So I took Lawrence over to Christine's and then came home. Carrie called after a while and I picked her and Gina up with a hearty, "Hi, cute girls!" and drove Gina to her folks' house. Then I drove us on back home. Whew! Quite the day!

Labels: Life, Movies, Pictures

Thursday, July 05, 2007

4th of July 2007

Yesterday (Wednesday) was, of course, the 4th of July. We got up at a reasonable time so Carrie could go meet her friend Erin and give her all of the jewelry she'd designed for her wedding. I worked in the meanwhile on gathering supplies for our day-long cookout. I also baked brownie bites (brownies baked in miniature muffin pans) which were very, very tasty fish.

Carrie brought Erin back to the house to give her some CDs for wedding music, so I got to see her. I had seen her before, but many, many years ago. She left, then Carrie & I continued gathering things and supplies (and a lot of food). Christine & Lawrence went down to Point Defiance Park and after a false start found an absolutely fantastic place where we could all set up. So as soon as Melissa was dropped off at our house we loaded everything into the rental car and headed down to the park to join them.

It was a great spot, the first barbecue area after you pass the area that has all of the playground equipment in it. It was really nicely shaded, and there was a big enough open area that I could actually set up a badminton net for some Two-Sticks action later on.

So by the time 1:00 rolled around we had the coals a-burnin' and everything all set up. That was also, unfortunatley, the time when Christine had to take Lawrence away because he had to work on the 4th. Honestly, why is Starbucks open until 9:00 on the 4th of July? Lame.

Soon other people started trickling in, and Travis brought Christine back, and there was much cook-outing and frivolity. The whole Lareau clan even stopped by with their two pugs and three kids and hung out for quite a while. Lila really liked Gabby, the puppy. She learned how to say "Gabby" (and apparently she's been asking Jen, "Where Gabby?" pretty much nonstop since the 4th).

There were several games of Two-Sticks throughout the day. Julian & I actually had a pretty successful team ("Team Broken Backs") that won three games in a row. It was fun explaining all the rules to everybody.

Oh! And Chris Fantz showed me the iPhone his folks had gotten for him. It is pretty spiffy, but there's no way I would every pay that much for it (especially right now), nor would I really want to switch to AT&T. T•Mobile is so very cheap!

Anyways, after almost eight hours of cooking out things started to wind down. So we packed up our group, got a grip, came equipped, pack our proton packs on our back, and we split! We took Christine with us, and after we got home we drove down to Starbucks to wait for Lawrence to get off of work. It took a while due to somebody messing up a till or something. I dunno. But then we picked him up and drove through the northern Stadium district looking for a parking spot within easy walking distance of the intersection of Yakima & Carr (here), which is a primo place to watch Tacoma's annual 4th of July Fireworks Display. We met up with the entire Lovejoy clan there and all watched the fireworks together. I discovered a while back that my camera actually has a "fireworks" setting. I think it might work better if the camera is on a tripod, but here are a couple of good shots:

Anyway after the big show the four of us (Carrie, Christine, Lawrence, & I) all walked back up to the Rental car and took everybody home.

Here is a photo album I made of the day's festivities in case anybody is in the least bit interested.

Labels: Cooking, Holiday, Life, Pictures

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Totaled

Yesterday (Tuesday) I left work a little early because Carrie had a dentist appointment, so I picked her up and took her to that. I played a lot of Kirby Squeak Squad while I waited for her in the waiting room. I think I'm almost done with that game, which is very impressive considering I only really play it when I'm in a waiting room or something like that.

Anyhoo. In the afternoon I stopped by the Bartell's. It was a rare Tuesday that Carrie didn't have to teach in the evening, so that was cool. She did end up working rather late, though (It's the week before the Bead Festival; that's par for the course this time of year).

I got a call in the late afternoon from the insurance company saying they'd decided to total the car. Now I have to go down there on Thursday and get all my personal belongings out of it, and then at some point in the near future shop for another car!

In the evening we walked down to E-9 to join Christine & Lawrence for a couple o' rounds. That was nice. Leia called while we were there to inform us that she & Kedar were going to be moving into a house in Renton! Renton is a LOT closer than Redmond, so we're very excited for them (plus the house sounds absolutely awexome). In fact, they'll actually live closer than Sandy & Mathias! Hoorays!

Labels: Life, Restaurants

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Bit More of a Boat

Yesterday (Monday) I walked with Carrie to work in the morning, where she was given Christine's car keys so she could drive me to work. After work I walked up to the Enterprise place on St. Helens and picked up our temporary rental car: a white Nissan Altima. It's not bad. A little bit more of a boat than a Corolla, though.

The rest of the day I basically spent working. We had pizzas for dinner, and much later in the evening Carrie sent me out to buy some iced cream. I kept on having antsy feelings, mostly because I would have preferred not to have to deal with all this insurance stuff almost immediately after spending huge gobs of money on a new mattress set.

We put on Buffy Season 5 to fall asleep to. Awkward sentence.

Labels: Life

Monday, July 02, 2007

Did Anybody Get the License Plate Number of the Truck That Hit Me?

So yesterday (Sunday) there was some excitement in my life, though not really of the good kind.

I woke up at a regular time and got ready and all that, then got in my car and drove down towards the Supermall, where I was meeting Mike so we could go see Ratatouille. I got off Highway 18, went down West Valley Highway to 15th St, and from there took the little one-way side street to the left that winds around until it dead-ends at Supermall Drive.

As I was pulling up to the light at Supermall Drive, I noticed that my brother was in the middle of the three lanes (the left two lanes are left-turn only lanes, and the one right lane is right-turn only). So I pulled over to the left-most lane and pretended I was shocked to see him there. He laughed, then we waited at the light for a little bit until it changed so that we both had green left-turn arrows. I let Mike go a couple seconds before me because after you turn left there the two lanes on Supermall Drive merge into one, and I thought I'd let him merge in front of me there.

Then as I pulled out on my green arrow a white pickup truck came from the left, ran the red light, and hit my car right at its driver's side front wheel.

It spun my car sideways a little bit so I could see that the truck continued through the intersection. I quickly straightened my car and pulled up behind the truck so that I could pull over near it when it pulled off the road.

It was at about that time that I realized that the truck not only wasn't slowing down, but was rapidly accelerating.

I hadn't gotten a make, model, or license number on it yet, so I slammed on my own accelerator and gave chase all the way down Supermall Drive. When the truck turned right onto 15th St I pulled out my cell phone and quickly dailed 911 and continued the chase while talking to the emergency operator, turning onto 15th right behind the truck.

I couldn't get close enough to ready anything on the truck because my front driver's side tire was rubbing up against the mangled side of my car. I just couldn't accelerate fast enough to catch him.

He obviously knew I was chasing him because he took the next right onto the freeway. I chased him up the on-ramp and then decided that I really shouldn't drive freeway speed with a tire rubbing up against the side of the car (I could smell burning rubber), so I pulled over and informed the operator where the truck was heading. She said she let the Highway Patrol know where it was going, so I pulled over on the side of the freeway.

Here's a map of exactly where the im

This is Chris dot com

Friday, May 09, 2008

Birfday Funtimes Continue

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

It's My Birfday Today

Monday, May 05, 2008

My Favorite Verb

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

It is One Week Until My Birthday

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Footprints Leading to Good Food

Friday, March 28, 2008

Hard To Drive a Bus in the Snow

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Hope Y'all Had a Happy Irish Day!

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Oh Baby, You Got What I Need, But You Say He's...

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Shameless Self-Promotion & Vacation Dreams

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Winterfest Approaches; I Go Away

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Sick Days

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy H'ween, Everybody!

A Halloween Surprise for The Ocean Shores Pirate

Friday, October 19, 2007

Wet Popcorn Windstorm

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The Cutest Graffiti Ever

Sunday, October 07, 2007

It Went "Whoomp" And my Whole House Shook

Update: 10-16-07

Friday, August 10, 2007

Calendar System Courtesy Jerry Seinfeld. Used Without Permission.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Must Have Been Some Impact

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

The Walk from Work

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

What The!?

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

From Shelton by way of France, Italy, Croatia, England, and New York City

Monday, July 30, 2007

Nostalgia Digging

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

No, You Can't Have a Beagle. Not Yours.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Impromptu Canadian

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

What's Going On!!

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Happy Birthday (Party) to Mike

Friday, July 13, 2007

What Split-Shift?

Thursday, July 12, 2007

It Begins...

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

That's Not Very Queenly

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Zombified

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Home Cookin'

Friday, July 06, 2007

Jam Packed

Thursday, July 05, 2007

4th of July 2007

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Totaled

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Bit More of a Boat

Monday, July 02, 2007

Did Anybody Get the License Plate Number of the Truck That Hit Me?