Yesterday (Monday) was the 10th Anniversary of the Powerpuff girls. Did you know that? I didn't know that until I happened to be flipping through channels and saw that there were several episodes on in a row.
"Hmm," I thought. "I haven't seen that show on television for years. I wonder what episodes they're playing"
Turned out they were playing Craig McCracken's favorite episodes, so they were all pretty good. I watched a handful and then at the end of the marathon they played a brand-new episode.
Holy crap it was funny.
There were many surprising things that happened in it, such as Mojo Jojo singing a Tears for Fears song. Look!
There was also a very pleasing Mario Kart reference, some very wacky reaction animations, and they actually showed Ms. Bellum's face for one frame. Click here if you wanna see it! Don't click there if you don't wanna.
But far more important than all of that stuff was the fact that the timing of the episode was impeccable. Just spot-on. It was fast, it was funny, but most importantly it had what we at Fools Play call "heightened telling." It just served to illustrate exactly how excremental most of the cartoons on TV are right now.
So good job, girls. We miss you. And—hey! Put your movie out in widescreen format for pity's sake!
So this new(ish) website Hulu is offering a whole bunch of TV shows and movies that you can watch online for free (some have limited commercial breaks). There are some really interesting choices, such as Andy Richter's cancelled Andy Barker, P.I. show!
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.
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.
Yesterday (Wednesday) Carrie did not come home for lunch due to some work meeting stuff. Left to my own devices I... y'know, I can't even remember what I had for lunch. Sigh. My memory has really been pretty crappy lately.
Anyhoo, I went to Safeway in the afternoon. We were gonna have people over in the evening to BBQ and watch So You Think You Can Dance. Carrie left me a grocery list of things to buy. She helpfully labeled the list, "So You Think You Can BBQ."
I got everything no problem, though it was surprisingly difficult to find the charcoal. It was all hidden in an aisle that was not appropriately labeled, i.e., it was under the fresh meat.
I came home and cleaned and cleaned, the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen and everything. I even let Roomba run around until he ran outta batteries and yelled at me.
Carrie was home much later than usual because her old friend Erin stopped by the store to pick out stuff for her wedding jewelry, wedding jewelry that Carrie is going to make for her! So Carrie was there helping Erin for quite a while.
Carrie came home for a bit, then went and got Lawrence and taught him some more driving stuff out at Point Defiance. Whilst she did that I got the coals all a-blazin' in preparation for barbecue funtimes. Lawrence & Carrie came back and soon thereafter Christine showed up. There was a chance that Jen might have come too, but her enfant was too fussy and grumpy to enjoy hanging out, so she decided not to come after all. But Melissa and Travis did show up.
I qrilled up some burgers and bratwursts. Melissa brought a salad. Christine brought a bottle of wine and a Key Lime Pie for dessert. And there were a couple of bags of chips. And another bottle of wine. I like Wednesdays a lot.
And even though there were a tonne of people over here with a tonne of food, there is very little cleanup because we used paper plates and plastic forks. The only things that need washing are some tongs, a spatula, a platter, a knife for the mustard, and several wine glasses.
I forgot to water my flowers before I went to bed, but that's okay because it rained pretty much all morning today.
Yesterday (Tuesday) Carrie had a split-shift, but she also had a meeting that started and therefore ended late, so she wasn't home until a couple hours later than she usually would have been.
I watched a whole heap of BSG 2.5 during the course of the day. Curses to Carrie for giving me one of the best TV shows evar when I should be more productive!
In the evening I worked on some work stuff, and realized when I was halfway done that I was doing it a stupid way. So I started over and did it an intelligent way instead. Carrie came back home during this time and made us some macaroni to eat, and then scooped up some ice cream for dessert. It was pretty late by the time I finally went to bed.
Anyhoo, yesterday was a weird day. In the afternoon I successfully did my new regimen of afternoon Konpyūtā work, shot of a blog, and did my daily grind.
Then I picked up Carrie from work and watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica 2.5. A while later I noticed a handful of news reports online (starting with a blog post on Michael Tanner's MySpace page) saying that Chris Benoit and his family had been found dead in their home. Wait a minute, I thought, wasn't he supposed to have fought for the ECW championship on Sunday? Sure enough, he'd dropped out of the match at the last minute. Needless to say, this put a damper on the rest of the evening.
At one point I went to Fred Meyer to drop off Carrie's paycheck at the bonk (and to buy some laundry detergent). Rachel at the bank declared that she wasn't looking forward to going to the midwest with Linnea & the girls this week, because apparently it was 90 to 95 degrees over there. Yikes! Don't blame her for not looking forward to that. They're all gonna be out of town for ten days.
As I was walking back to the car my brother called to see if I had heard the news about Benoit. We all agreed that it certainly seemed like it should end the whole "Mr. McMahon is Dead" angle that they had going on in WWE.
When I got home I mowed the lawn, but I had a devil of a time getting the mower to start at all. I had to prime it an awful lot before it would finally catch. A little unnerving, considering this is only the third time I've used it. Well, it ended up working, so I guess nothing to worry about yet.
Don't recall too much what happened in the evening. I did turn on Raw for a few minutes. They had quickly whipped up a tribute to Benoit (their archive crew is phenomenally good at doing super-high-quality work at a moment's notice), but I couldn't watch very much of it because people like Tazz and C.M. Punk getting teary while trying to talk was too much for me. I watched some more Battlestar Galactica instead.
Nothing really interesting happened on Tuesday. To me, at any rate. I'm sure other people had wonderful Tuesdays. Mine just kinda happened. Nothing bad, y'know. Other than work stuff it was just kinda there then gone. There wasn't anything appetizing in the house for dinner, so I was bad and swung by Jack in the Box to try their new sirloin burger (not bad). I watched a li'l bit of ECW. Y'know.
One thing I did get done was that I updated the right-hand bar on my links page. I divided the blogs list into people I actually know in RL versus people I've never actually met. So if I know you in person and you have a blog (a non-livejournal, non-myspace, non-loowa, etc) but your site isn't on the list there, let me know and I'll put it up for everyone to see!
Yeserday (Wednesday) Carrie went straight to the Trader Joe's after work. We both just had a li'l bowl of cereal at 6:00 because we were hungry but didn't want to ruin our appetite for later.
Around 7:15 Carrie picked up Lawrence and began teaching him how to drive at UPS. Apparently (I wasn't there to verify) Lawrence drives a whole lot better if he sings about what he's doing as he's doing it. "Oooh, yeah, I'm puttin' on my turn signal / Now I'm turning left!"
They drove straight to Christine's, and I walked to join them there at 8:00 so we all (Me, Carrie, Lawrence, Christine, Steph, and soon Melissa and later Travis) could watch So You Think You Can Dance and eat some Lasagna that Christine made and salad that Melissa made, and drink a bunch of wine that Carrie brought and eat a bunch of ice cream bon-bons that I brought. And have a really good time. Which we all did.
Yesterday (Wednesday) in the evening Carrie had to go up to Fife to watch the Lareau kids. I did not accompany her. Instead, I stayed home and mnowed the lawn with the lawn mnower that I now own! See, earlier in the day (after I took Carrie to work after lunch) I went and filled up a gas canister with some gas. I then put that gas into the lawn mnower so as it would actually work.
In the early evening I mnowed the entire front lawn, the strip of land on the other side of the sidewalk, and about ten square feet in the backyard. That was about all I could do; the grass was so tall that the mnower's bag filled up after just a few feet, and I finally had to stop when the "yard waste" trash can filled up. I took a photo of it all with my phone, but my phone doesn't seem to be Mac compatible or something; I can't get photos off of it and onto my 'puter here. You'll just have to trust me.
Umm... after that I was sniffly like crazy due to my allergy of freshly-cut grass. It's actually a very mild allergy, but I was exposed to a LOT of freshly-cut grass, so I was real sniffly.
I watched the Ghost Hunters marathon. Jason and Grant chose their favorite episodes, so it was only ones with really good stuff in 'em. That was cool. I also finished cleaning all the dishes in the kitchen. See, I'm trying this new thing where I wash dishes as they get dirty instead of letting them pile up. We'll see how long I can keep it up, but it's working pretty well so far.
Monday was almost a complete wash. When I got home I was really, really lethargic, and one of my knees was really hurting (as well as a nagging ingrown toenail). I broke out my toolkit and took apart the taillight of my car—one of the brake lights had burned out. I walked down to the car parts store on the corner and dropped less than six bucks on a pair of replacement bulbs, which I then walked home and successfully installed. It made me feel kinda manly, using tools and fixing car parts.
After that I didn't get anything done, really. I did watch the season finalé of Heroes, though. I thought the final fight was anti-climactic.
<spoiler>You've got these two guys who've each absorbed dozens of other people's powers, and the fight consisted of a couple of punches and a couple of telekinetic stunts. About two minutes worth of stuff, when it could have gone on for 15 minutes and been fascinating watching them select opposing powers to use against each other.</spoiler>
I thought the Nathan thing at the very end, while cool and unexpected, was completely unnecessary. What was wrong with Peter's plan involving Claire? It probably would have worked, and if not, then Nathan could do what he did.
Anyhoo. Yesterday (Tuesday) about all I got done was a load of dishes. I also finished up my report on Friday Harbor. Then in the evening I watched the very last two episodes of Veronica Mars (they tried to play it off like it was one two-hour season finale, but it was very obviously just two episodes that they played back-to-back). The first one was great. It was nice seeing Weevil in the spotlight again. The second episode was difficult to watch. It was really good, but it was so tense and such badness that for several hours afterwards my heart was still tied up in knots. I was very glad when Carrie came home because that last episode made me feel very lonely.
Yesterday (Tuesday) after work Carrie called me to say that she was going to Starbucks with Linnea. I drove by on my way home and looked, but didn't see them even though they were there. I went home and ate a hot pocket (the sub sammitch style one), and Carrie came home shortly thereafter with a gigantro chocolaty drink for me, and the news that we were going to go to the beach with the Tarbet women.
So we drove over to their house and had them follow us to Owen Beach in Point Defiance. Yes, Tacoma does have a beautiful, sandy beach. And since it was in the 80s yesterday, there were plenty of people out sunbathing away the Washington winter paleness.
We forgot to bring some stuff with us, like towels, sunscreen, and our digital camera (and Linnea forgot the same things), but that didn't stop us from having a good time, or stop me from taking pictures; I have a camera phone!
It was a lot of fun, and I managed not to get sandy at all.
I came home and worked for a short while. Then I downloaded They Might Be Giants' new album "The Else" from iTunes. The physical CD doesn't come out until next month, though!
I took Carrie back to work so she could teach her class, and I myself went to the Fred Meyer for to go to the bonk, get sammitch baggies, and buy some newer, more expensive stamps. I came home, made some turkey dogs for din-dins (which I ate with some macaroni salad), caught the last ten minutes of the last-ever episode of Gilmore Girls, and then watched a new episode of Veronica Mars. It was very good! It had a couple of twists that I did not see coming at all. And one that I kinda did, but it was still good.
While I was watching all of this TeleVision I was still very busy etching a high-heeled shoe martini glass for some sorta auction that Carrie's mum is doing for the Broadway Center (she wanted a matching set, and I already had one etched, so I only had to etch one more). And after the TeleVision programmes were over I did some more work until Carrie came home, and which point we went to bed.
Having been a rather hot day, the bedroom still retained much of that temperature. So I cracked the window for the first time in 2007 and we slept with the overhead fan on. Carrie had some pretty bad allergy stuff going on, too, and didn't get nearly as much sleep as I did.
Where was I? Ah, yes, I'd gotten sleepy while writing the previous post, so now I'll continue from where I left off.
I seem to remember us eating breakfast out at the Parkway on Saturday morning, but I can't be 100% for sure.
At any rate, my brudda picked me up for Fools Play at 2:30 so we could do the whole workshop thing, then we went to Mekong for some Phud Thai, then back to Studio 321 to do a Fools Play Co-Show with the group known as "Quiet Monkey Fight." There were a grand total of eight of them, and only three Fools!
Carrie came down and saw the show, and brought Trevor (because it was his 15th birthday) and his friend Andrew. It was overall a thoroughly enjoyable show. Everyone thought that the first scene of the night was one of the best, but for some reason it's almost impossible to remember what it was. I've forgotten once again.
We all (including Carrie and the boys, but excluding anyone from QMF) went out to Rib Eye afterwards, before I drove Trevor and Andrew back up to Fife and then Carrie & myself back home.
Sunday was my birfday! The plan was to get some people together in the early afternoon and go see Spider-Man 3. Unfortunately the show sold out so early that only four people (other than me and Carrie) got into the show. Fortunately one of them was Geoff, my co-birthday buddy, because I'd gone to the theater early and bought tickets for me, Carrie, and Geoff. Unfortunately I'd managed to lock my keys in the car when I did that. Fortunately Carrie was able to get the Tarbets to drive her to the theater.
Anyhoo, after the movie people started coming over to my house, and I started up the coals in the barbeque. Carrie and the rest of the Bead Babes had a store meeting at 6:30, and it didn't get over until after 9:00. But in the interim a whole bunch of people did show up, and I made 20 hamburgers on that grill. I ran out of both buns and bread before the last one was made, so Jamie had to have his low-carb style.
We all had a pretty durned good time, and some of my friends who had never been to my house before were able to come! I like people to see my house.
Everyone started trickling out between 11:00 and 12:00 (because the next day was a Monday, and most peoples work on a Monday). Somebody left a DS at my house (see this post). Neighbor Gary spent the night on the couch 'cause he was meeting a friend at 8:00 in the AM at Metropolitan Market, and it made no sense for him to drive all the way down to Oly just to have to drive all the way back up in the morning.
That brings us to Monday, which was thoroughly uneventful. I can't remember a thing about it right now, but my brain is a little fuzzy this early in the AM.
Then yesterday (Tuesday) after work my dad came over and we took him to Katie Downs from lunch. Then he and I worked in the backyard, creating a new flower bed next to the lilac tree. We went to the Fred Meyer and bought a whole bunch of flowers which we then planted. Take a look!
Doesn't look like much now, but that's 'cause everything was just planted! Give it a few weeks to grow and you'll be amazed at the riot of colour in my backyard!
Carrie went to teach class in the evening and I went to Trader Joe's for food supplies (other than cheese, which we still have a tonne of thanks to Amsterdam). Then I watched the episode of Numb3rs that I'd missed on Friday, and then a new episode of Veronica Mars guest-starring Paul Rudd! Very funny episode.
Carrie called me to pick her up shortly after that, and we at the leftover pizza slices from Katie Downs.
When I came to bed (after ECW) I started my new tradition: writing before I go to sleep. Now that I am 30 years old I am entering a new phase in my life. I am going to start writing up a storm, for reals. In the past I've dabbled with writing, but (aside from in college) never really put aside any time to write consistently. Well, from now on I'm going to be writing almost every night before I go to sleep. I'm going to start with stuff for this website: Movie Reviews and Articles that I've been long neglecting. Then I'm going to be moving on to other writing endeavors. I'll keep you posted.
Two of my favorite writers, Robert A. Heinlein and Haruki Murakami, started writing for reals when they were 30. I think I'm in good company.
Did you know that it's basically impossible to just go somewhere and buy microscope slides? You have to order them from somewhere. That's what I learned yesterday (Tuesday).
After work I got Carrie and she made a really yummy pasta with Amsterdam cheese sauce. Then I took her back to work and went on a quest for my new craft skill. I ended up not finding any microscope slides after a rather exhaustive search, so when I came back home I ordered some from teh intarwebs. I then watched Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. The reviews I heard about that film are pretty much spot-on. It's not bad, it's got some funny moments, but it's rarely laugh-out-loud material, and it just kinda... happens. Nowhere near the caliber of Nacho Libré or School of Rock.
Carrie stayed at work late, until 7:00. After I went and got her I made us some din-dins. We'd eaten nothing but cheese since Carrie got back from Amsterdam, so we took a break and made a non-dairy meal: Potstickers with mixed vegetable melange.
There was a new episode of Veronica Mars on in the evening! Hooray! It had some very funny bits, and for once Carrie did not have a class on Tuesday afternoon so she actually got to watch it! Awexome!
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!
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.
