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

Saturday the 13th was our annual "Early Christmas" that we do with Carrie's bosses' family. This year was much lower-key than some previous years.

The logistics of it threatened to be a little wonky, though. Carrie's mum threw a home show that afternoon, where Carrie sold her jewelry and I sold my glassware. How would I go to Fools Play while Carrie simultaneously went in the opposite direction and picked up the kids? We only have one car. Her dad might have had to drive me to a rendezvous point in Federal Way where my brother could pick me up on his way down to Olympia or something like that.

Fortunately Laura also came to the home show, so she was able to drive me back to my house where I was able to leisurely prepare for Fools Play before my brother came and got me. Which he did.

We went down and performed the Fools Play Holiday Special at Mud Bay Coffee. Carrie & the kids came down and watched it. It was an interesting show — it was just me and Mike doing 2 improvised Rankin/Bass-style holiday specials. We'd never done it with only two of us before. It was a hoot! But, man, it was a lot of work, too. Fun work, though!

The first special was based on "Jingle Bells" and was about a music instructor trying to get Santa back on track, and we learned that jingle bells are made out of magic freckles or something. The second special was based on "O Come All Ye Faithful," and was supposed to be a religiously-based special. But I made it a Science Fiction special instead, my reasoning being, "The Bible is Science Fiction, right?". It took place way in the future in a distant galaxy (the "Angel Galaxy"). Turns out Jesus's mum was an alien queen who fled back in time from an evil warlord, and the 3 wise men and Joseph were actually assassins sent to kill them both.

During the show it started to snow. Like a Christmas magic had occurred.

After Fools Play I crammed my stuff into the car (which was still full of the stuff from the Home Show) and we all drove up (through the snow) to the Red Robin in Tacoma for a late din-dins. We were joined by other people I like, such as Christine, Lawrence, Melissa, Travis, and Laura again. After din-dins most of us took the kids on home and hung out there for a bit. We weren't s'posed to exchange gifts this year (taking the kids to Fools Play and buying them din-dins WAS the gift), but we still ended up with stuffs: Carrie got a bottle of wine and I was given a bottle of Diddy Vodka! By Diddy Vodka, I of course mean Cîroc, the vodka endorsed by Sean Diddy Combs. I wrote a song about it:

When you're drinking up the hooch
Just try not to screw the pooch:
If you drink the booze to quick
Diddy Vodka makes you sick.

It's actually really nice vodka! It's made from grapes. Very interesting.

Labels: Christmas, Fools Play, Holiday, Life, Thirsty Robots

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Cheez-Its Make the Pain Go Away

Labels: Fools Play, Videos

Monday, August 25, 2008

Wotta Weekend!

This last weekend was crazy/awesome! Let's see...

Thursday was Melissa's rehearsal/dinner thing. To my surprise Mr. Sanders was there for the rehearsal! I hadn't seen him in like four years.

Din-dins was at Gateway, which is always rather tasty. To my surprise, Brandy was at the dinner! I hadn't seen her in more than a year! Okay, so I'd heard she was coming into town, but I'd only learned like a day or two beforehand, and I didn't know she'd be going to the dinner, so it was kinda a surprise.

I was wearing my shyguy thermal, but it was much, much too hot for the crowds. Fortunately I live only a couple of minutes away from Gateway so I was able to book it home and change into a comfy TMBG t-shirt.

Friday was the ACTUAL wedding. Carrie got herself all prettified and headed on down to the Ballet school around 4:00. I went down to the end of the Link light-rail at 6:00 and met up with the other two Bead Boys named Chris (and Josh, who is NOT named Chris). Our job, other than to look good, was to drive guests from the light-rail station up to the Ballet school. See, the wedding was at the Ballet school, but the reception was gonna be at the Museum of Glass. So Melissa had people park at the museum and then take the light-rail to the end closest to the Ballet school. Then one of us guys named Chris (or Josh) drove them the rest of the way to the school. It worked pretty well.

The wedding was pretty and funny and nicely short, which is good because it was a li'l hot in there. My favorite moment was when a woman dropped her program and it slid out into the middle of the aisle as Cat was walking down it. Thinking quickly, the woman stuck out her cane and dragged the program out of Cat's way just in time! It was really funny.

After the wedding I jetted back to my car and drove people from the Ballet school back to the light-rail station so they could get to the reception. After the school was cleaned out I picked up Carrie and we drove down to the Museum of Glass ourselves, where the reception occurred.

Carrie & I helped put centerpieces on the table at the reception hall part of the reception, and then went upstairs (outside) to where the first part of the reception was happening.

Anyhoo, it was a nice evening, and it was cool to get everybody together in one place. Here's a picture of the newlyweds:

Saturday there was another wedding thing: the post-wedding barbecue. It was at 1:00, and it was closer to 1:30 by the time we finally found it at Point Defiance (we actually got there before anybody else, which is why we couldn't find it at first). I basically had enough time to drop Carrie & Suki off before Brandy drove me on home so I could meet up with my brother, who drove me down to Olympia for Fools Play.

Fools Play was at the Midnight Sun in downtown. Midnight Sun is a strange, black-box-like performance space. It's weirdly laid-out (for instance, the only bathroom is behind the performance area, so you'd better hope your audience doesn't have to potty during the performance). The show was, of course, FPRL. We got down there so early so we could set up the space and all the technical stuff (and so I could get some final footage for the FPRL Introduction) and then practice everybody's moves.

Then at 5:00 Mike, Josh, Esa, and I all went three doors down to the Thai place for some Phud Thai.

After dinner we went back to the Midnight Sun and got ready some more and then performed Fools Play Rasslin' League: Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight!. Here's what happened.

Afterwards it was off to Denny's.

Sunday you'd think the wedding stuff would be over, but you'd be wrong. Around 1:00-ish we went over to Melissa's folks' house for to help her open her myriad wedding gifts! Honestly, so much happened this weekend that I can't remember anything else right now.

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Pictures, Weddings

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Fools Play Rasslin' League - This Saturday!

Do not forget to come and see FPRL this Saturday at the Midnight Sun in downtown Olympia! Also, the FPRL site has been conveniently re-designed and has info about all of the many, many new characters that we're planning on debuting.

Forgetful though you are, do not forget.

Labels: Fools Play, Updates

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Fools Play's Mariah Arts Finalé

Yesterday (Saturday) was the final show of Fools Play at the Mariah Arts School. And what a show it was! Not only were 6/7 of the Fools in attendance (Taisha had some sorta family thing pop up at the last minute and so couldn't make it), but we also had three special guests:

Ed Gibbs the Red Fool of the New Fool Order!
Erik Melver, who performed with us about 9 years ago!
Joel Dale of Improsia and formerly a Fool!
John Griffin of Under the Mailbox Theater fame!

It was a free show, so it attracted a biggie audience, and it was a heckuva hoot. It was on the same day as Leah's bridal shower, so she came bedecked in a sari and a veil. It was also the day of someone's bachelorette party (we're not sure who's), so that was a strange coincidence.

I was very pleased at how well the show went, especially when you consider that there were an unprecedented 10 people on that li'l stage (though John was only in a couple of scenes; he co-hosted the night with Mike).

Towards the end of the night there was an exciting announcement. Look here:

We'll see you then!

Labels: Fools Play, Videos

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

FOOLS PLAY IS FREE THIS SATURDAY!
You'd Better Come See It…

…because it might be your last chance for a while. See, Fools Play is leaving the Mariah Art School because, well, the owner of the Art School is basically batsh*t crazy and keeps on making nutzy accusations about what we do there without bothering to talk to us first. At any rate, we don't want to be associated with her anymore, and the feeling is rather mutual.

We haven't completely lined up a new theater yet, and though there are a couple of tenuous leads we'd greatly appreciate any leads you can throw our way.

So as is tradition, our last show at any venue is a FREE SHOW! So there is NO excuse not to come and hang out with us. Who knows when we'll be performing again?

(The answer is probably: “Soon”)

Labels: Fools Play

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

A Very Special Fools Play Message

Labels: Fools Play, Videos

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

One Hot Weekend

Friday evening Carrie & I went with Jen, Pete, and Lila to see Kung-Fu Panda. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Saturday was miserably hot and Carrie had to work (she taught two classes). Geoff & Lisa (and a bit later Gary) hung out with me for a bit. For some reason they all met up at my house without telling me they were going to do so, which is fine. Just strange.

I picked up Josh and we drove down to Oly in my wonderful, air-conditioned car. We performed Fools Play Conversation Starter, which is a fantastic format that is just a blast to do. We had a great audience; although on the small side, they were all highly receptive to all of the crazy, crazy stuff we were doing (example: a scene in which two lawyers or businessmen (I can't remember which, but it doesn't matter) have a serious discussion about urine, intercut with one of their co-workers watching a trailer for the new Batman movie). It was a big hit.

Sunday was a really great day. Carrie & I got up kinda early so we could take Suki for a walk before it got too hot. Well, it was pretty much already too hot even before we got up, but we went for the walk anyway. Then despite my swollen eye (see this post) we decided to go down to the Parkway for breakfast, and Christine joined us there.

They dropped me off at the house and continued on to Costco. I picked some of the strawberries that were growing in our backyard and relaxed until Carrie got back.

She took me to Josh's for Fools Play practice. About halfway through practice we discovered that the basement of the house was about 30 degrees cooler than the upstairs, so we shifted down there. I played quite a bit with my MacBook's voice synthesizer, which is very funny. It was one of the more fun practices we've had recently.

Carrie & Suki picked me up and took me home, where I started some coals in the barbecue. We closed the gate on the driveway and around 7:30 Christine & Lawrence came over. They brought their dogs to play with Suki! We all sat outside and ate grilled scallops wrapped in bacon (and basted with Yoshida's sauce) with a caprice salad and drank some wine. When the inside of the house finally started to cool down there were even some games of Mario Kart going on!

Eventually the evening wound down and Christine & Lawrence left with their dogs. Only moments after they left, though, Laura came walking up to the house, much to my surprise. She and Carrie informed me that they were taking me to see WALL•E! See, movie theaters tend to be air-conditioned, and it was still a rather hot night. Also, we all really wanted to see WALL•E. So two lovely ladies escorted me to the theater. WALL•E is much better than Kung-Fu Panda.

When the movie let out the night had cooled down considerably. It was also rather late, so we went basically straight to bed when we got home.

It was a very fun weekend despite the ungodly heat. I am now, however, five movie reviews behind (and The Dark Knight comes out soon):

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The Incredible Hulk
The Fall
Kung-Fu Panda
WALL•E

So this week I'm going to try to crank out as many of these as possible. Look for them soon!

Labels: Cooking, Fools Play, Life, Movies

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Wow, You Really Missed Some Important Stuff

If you missed Fools Play this past weekend, well then shame on you! Not only did you miss some really hilarious stuff, but you missed some horribly important changes to the status-quo of the show!

First off, Mike Harris the Blue Fool was fired. Yup! He and Fools Play's business manager, Dana Cox, had an improv showdown, which Dana won. She then summarily fired the Blue Fool! Mike left to become a secret shopper, which he seems to have combined in his head with secret agent.

Dana Cox was then hauled away by a rival improv troupe, The Intellectualles. So both Mike and Dana are gone! But... for how long?

Not to worry, though. Fools Play did gain a new member:

Actually you should probably worry, because that right there is the Improv Spawn, an evil mythological creature that was birthed by Josh Hird the Maroon Fool and has pledged to return to Fools Play week after week and use its mystical powers to make Fools Play's scenes un-funny.

Plus, its a freakin' puppet! Fools Play Improv has a puppet in its cast! OMGooses!

How will the Fools ever be able to stop their new arch-villain, the Improv Spawn? Nobody knows, because it's all improvised!

Labels: Fools Play, Pictures

Monday, May 26, 2008

Oh, Okay, There's Spring

So last week was much more comfortably Spring-like than the weekend that led up to it. Unfortunately I got horribly sick on Wednesday and spent it and the next two days at home trying to recover. But since I wasn't able to really do much more than sit on the couch and hold stuff in my hands, I was able to practically complete Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

My dad also came over Wednesday morning and worked more on the patio outside. It could be actually finished as soon as this Wednesday! Wholly crap!

I was feeling better on Saturday, but still not well enough to go to Fools Play. I did go to practice on Sunday, though. While I was gone Carrie made delicious potato/leek soup, which we ate for dinner.

Labels: Cooking, Fools Play, Health, Life, Metroid, Weather

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

What Happened to Spring?

Wow! It seems like just a month and a half ago that the ground was coated in snow. After that it was just plain-old cold weather up until Friday, when all of a sudden out of nowhere it was 90° outside!

Friday was a fun day nonetheless, as a bunch of people came over to our house to enjoy barbecued food and Mario Kart Wii racing. Leia & Kedar even stayed until almost everybody else had gone home!

Saturday, unfortunately, continued the heat wave to such a degree that I couldn't do any durned thing. All I could do was sit around and be miserably hot until Fools Play, which was a fun new format called "The Naked Brain."

Sunday was a bit more manageable. In the evening Carrie & I went over to Laura's for a graduation barbecue. We got there much later than we wanted to, though, because we had to wait for a bunch of Bead Babes to get done with work so they could come to our house to get a ride and/or follow us to Laura's house.

In sync with the heat was a sudden attack of severe allergies! It's really bad this year. Maybe if, y'know, we'd had time to adjust over the course of, I dunno, a Spring season, we'd be a little bit innoculated to the pollen count. Silly me; I like my seasons to be three months long each, not six months of Winter and then straight into Summer.

Anyway, I unfortunately also took up playing Metroid Prime 3: Corruption over the weekend. I don't know what I was thinking; I'm going to have to put all of my creative endeavors on hold now until I finish the durned game!

Labels: Cooking, Fools Play, Health, Life, Mario Kart, Metroid, Weather

Sunday, April 20, 2008

The Return of Under the Mailbox Theater

For those of you who missed Fools Play Improv last night, you missed something a li'l incredible.

More then 10 years after it went off the air, Under the Mailbox Theater was back! In Fools Play form!

That's right, John Griffin, host of UtMBT, hosted last night's episode of Fools Play. There was a mailbox and everyone's favorite sourpuss, Bill the Mailman. There were even cameos by Mr. Speederbike and the Postmaster General! There were a whole bunch of Fools Play characters who originated in UtMBT, including Jerry the Spy, Horace & Cecil, and Dr. Daniel Poddleoppoly (sp?).

We learned what happened after the show ended: John left the mailbox. He and bill had a falling-out, which caused Bill to go "upriver" and found a utopian society (of, it turned out, paper cutouts of John's face). Dr. Daniel Poddleoppoly gave John some insightful advice about the situation, including, "You can leave the mailbox but still bring the mailbox with you," and, "There is a hole inside of you that only a mailbox can fill."

Bill the Mailman got some sense beat into him (literally) by the Postmaster General, and he and John finally made up after all these years. John concluded by hoping that they helped the audience to find the mailboxes within themselves.

The show was a huge hit. We'd love to be able to perform Fools Play: Under the Mailbox every so often, because it's a great format. It was totally awesome (dude) to go back and revisit something else that is having its 15th anniversary (!!) this year. Yes, I started performing a weekly, improvised, sketch-comedy stage show AND producing a weekly, scripted, sketch-comedy TV show when I was 15 years old. How the Hell did any of us have time for that?

Labels: Fools Play, Under the Mailbox Theater

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Fools Play Funtimes

This Saturday, April 5th 2008, is Fools Play's 15th Anniversary! We're having a big 15th Anniversary Show, and to go with it you can enter our online 15th Anniversary Contest!

Also, have you met this character on Fools Play Island yet?

If not, you should go dig around the Format Forest RIGHT NOW until you do! It's seriously the craziest, coolest, and most fun quest you can undertake on all of Fools Play Island. You think you've seen it all on Fools Play Island? THINK AGAIN!

Labels: Fools Play, Links

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

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Farewell to Studio 321

But fear not! Fools Play has a new venue: starting September 29th, Fools Play Improv will be at the Mariah Art School across the street from Garfield Elementary on Olympia's west side.

Mariah Art School
1403 Garfield Ave NW
Olympia, WA 98502

The show will still be every Saturday night at 8:00, and will still be only $5 a person ($4 if you wear your Fools Play T-shirt).

Labels: Fools Play, Links, Videos

Monday, August 27, 2007

Welcome the Pink Fool

Fools Play was a very exciting show because it was the show where we officially announced that Jake Ynzunza was becoming the new Fool. We also revealed his color:

PINK

The show had a very funny ending. We watched "clips" from all the apprentices, and then announced that we were going to decide who would become the next Fool... via a waffle eating contest! We then announced the color of the new shirt, and neither Esa nor Josh were terribly thrilled about becoming the Pink Fool. But Jake was so excited at the waffles that he didn't even notice the pink shirt, so when we said "go" the other two apprentices held back while Jake went hog wild. But after he won and we tried to give him the pink shirt he was so horrified at the thought of becoming the Pink Fool that he tried to refuse... until we revealed that as a Fool, he will get a weekly allowance of $200 from the till ever week.

It was then that Josh and Esa exclaimed their displeasure. We tried to point out that they didn't even try to eat the waffles. But eventually we decided that we needed another way to decide the next Fool. I settled unilaterally on a Ladder Match, much to Mike's hesitation. But Jake won the ladder match.

Afterwards Josh & Esa cut a wrestling-style promo in which they decided that they could no longer continue as apprentices, but they would find some other way to become a part of Fools Play by founding their own "renegade" improv troupe, the "New Fool Order." They'd had T-shirts made for just such an occasion—the Fool head with X'd out eyes and an upside-down smile.

As they stormed out they said cheerfully that they'd see us all at Rib Eye.

Very funny.

Labels: Fools Play

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Government Agent

Yesterday (Saturday) was an... interesting episode of Fools Play Improv. Mike & I started out by doing World in a Box, but during the 2nd scene a guy wearing a tie stormed in and demanded to know what we were all doing here, as Studio 321 had reverted to the city on Aug 1st and everyone was supposed to be out by now! This city government agent even called the cops on me and Mike, so we got out of there.

After we left the apprentices confronted the government agent and came to learn that the reason the gubment wanted us all out was because a private organization had donated a tonne of money to expand the Oly waterfront. Who was the private organization? Well, it turned out to be the Whales, who went to the theater to make sure everything went okay with kicking us out and all.

The Apprentices challenged the Whales: if the Apprentices could do better improv scenes than the Whales, then the Whales would leave Studio 321 alone. The whales accepted, but named the government agent as the judge! However, the apprentices held their own, and the stone-faced judge (he didn't laugh—not once) declared after four scenes that the Apprentices had won!

The Whales, however, had the last laugh. They withdrew their entire donation to the Waterfront project. The city had already allocated substantial resources to the project and now they were screwed because they didn't have enough money to pay for the work already done! The city would have to raze Studio 321 immediately and sell the land in order to raise the needed capital. The Apprentices cursed his icy heart—after all, he hadn't laughed once during the whole show (even though he claimed to find some of the scenes funny).

The agent explained that he had some sort of disorder that didn't allow him to cry at all. Even when he was a kid! The other kids would make fun of him and laugh at him, and he would be really upset. But not because the kids were laughing at him, but because he couldn't laugh along with them!

So the Apprentices got him to agree that if they could somehow get him to laugh he would push back the bulldozer date. But how could they get him to laugh? He'd just sat through a whole show of their comedy without laughing. Wait a minute! He hadn't seen the Fools perform yet, and they're way funnier than the Apprentices!

So Jake called Mike and me while we were at Pizza Hut, filling ourselves with food until we couldn't feel our sorrows anymore. But when we heard the plan we rushed back to Studio 321 and confronted the gubment agent. We got him to agree that for every time we got him to laugh he'd postpone the bulldozer to the first of the next month. Mike & I settled on me doing the "Guy Who Can't Wink" routine, and I actually got him to laugh four times, pushing the bulldozer date all the way back to November 1st! Then as I shook the government agent's hand I not-winked at him again, forcing him to push the date back to December 1st! Hooray! Now we have Studio 321 until December 1st! That should be plenny o' time to find a new venue.

Mike & I decided to celebrate by doing a big scene with the apprentices. The government agent said, "Oh, I see, just with them, huh?" and kept on insinuating that he wanted to join the scene, too. So after asking the audience if it was okay we invited him to join the scene as well, and we did a big final scene that had some parts done as homage to The Last Starfighter.

Labels: Fools Play

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

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

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Good News, Suggestion Card: The President Signed You, and Now You're a Scene

So yesterday (Saturday) was another exciting day in my life. Carrie got up a little early and actually went in to work for an hour or so. She came back and got me and we went to Trader Joe's for grocery supplies.

When we came home I made an humongous pasta dish for lunch. It had a ricotta & marinara sauce and turkey meatballs. So tasty.

In the afternoon I did some konpyupyu work and then did a huge stack of bills while Carrie took a nap. Excitement!

I took a shower and had more of the pasta for din-dins before heading down to Fools Play. It was just me and Mike, and we did Fools Play Revolution, our 4th of July format. It was a really funny show, and a couple of times I made Mike just absolutely crack up on stage, which I love doing because it makes the entire audience bust up watching Mike try not to bust up.

There were a lot more people in the audience than last week, including Tiare, Leia & Kedar, and Tia, though only Leia & Kedar came to hang out with us afterwards (Tia due to being exhausted and probably sick).

We went to Rib Eye and I sat with Sandy, Leia, & Kedar. Sandy was really loopy for some reason, and it was really funny. We both ended up getting the hot roast beef sammitch, which is really tasty. I even got a side salad and ate half of it! Wow for me! I really miss salads, and it looks like I can start slowly working them back in.

The show ran a little long, and I tarried at the restaurant a little long, so I was a little later getting home than usual, but I made it home just fine and dandy.

Labels: Cooking, Fools Play, Life

Monday, June 25, 2007

Steaks!

Yesterday (Sunday) Carrie & I did not sleep in quite as much, and actually got some cleaning done in the morning. I only made some scrambled eggs for breakfast, not no fancy French toast this time.

I left for Fools Play practice around 12:30, but right before I left Brandy stopped by to pick up her laptop and a stack of CDs. It was good to see her.

Practice was fun. We talked a lot about FPRL and practiced a new format we're gonna call "Home Cooking." We also worked on Nostalgia Podcast. Jake had to keep going into the other room to keep from laughing too loudly at that. It's funny!

After practice I went straight to my folks' house, where my dad was barbecueing despite the fact that it suddenly began pouring! It was weird weather all weekend; I don't think it even cracked 60 degrees yesterday.

Anyhoo, what was my dad cooking? Steaks! And potatoes! And corn! Well, I didn't care about the corn so much (I haven't eaten corn in over two years). But the steaks and the potatoes were quite excellent, and I even had a li'l bit of salad.

When I was leaving Alexis gave me a couple of Hello Kitty coloring pages to give to Carrie and asked if I would tell Carrie that she missed her. I assured her I would.

So then I went home and gave Carrie the pictures and relayed the message. In the evening we watched some BSG 2.5 before switching over to Home Movies for sleep.

Labels: Cooking, Fools Play, Life

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Macmergency

Yesterday (Saturday) Carrie & I slept in a little bit. Not a lot, really. But then we languished for quite a while before actually getting up. In fact, she languished while I made some breakfast. What did I make? French toast. From scratch. That's right! You heard me. I made French toast from scratch. Well, okay, I didn't make the bread, but I did take the sourdough bread, dredge it through some egg/cream/nutmeg funtimes, and fry it up in some butter. And to go with it I made some scrambled eggs. It was all really, really tasty.

After that the plan was to spend the afternoon cleaning, but I unfortunately had to spend the afternoon doing an emergency save of my MacBook here. I somehow managed to actually screw it up so that when it started up it gave me a "panic" message and said I had to restart my computer. And then it would give me the same message every time I restarted it. So I went online and discovered that there are about a dozen effects you can do if you hold down different keys while starting up a Mac. One of them came in especially handy, because i discovered the fix for my problem involved inserting the OS X Install disc into the disc drive... the disc drive that had a disc already in it... a disc I couldn't eject because the computer would never fully start-up. So holding down the "C" key at startup forced the disc to eject! Neat!

I was then able to run the stuff from the install disc that I needed to, and a couple of hours later the computer was up and running with no loss of data (a couple of my third-party-installed programs aren't working anymore, like GiMP, but I can just re-install them and they'll be fine). So, a very distressing problem with a very effective fix. Honestly, right now it's like nothing ever happened to my MacBook.

But by the time that was all fixed and whatnot it was almost time for me to leave for Fools Play! I was able to wash some dishes before I left, so that was good at least. Oh, and also Carrie gave me BattleStar Galactica Season 2.5 just because she likes me! She totally roxorz!

Taisha came to this episode of Fools Play, but unfortunately not very many audience people showed up. But I still had a blast performing "Fools Play: A Life," especially for me a scene where I was doing an infomercial for my new line of cookware. I kept making Mike bust up. We also debuted the new recurring character bit "Nostalgia Podcast."

After the show we all went to Rib Eye as per usual. I talked to Jake about my idea for a Professional Wrestling video game that isn't kayfabe. I just think it would be really cool.

When I was paying I brought out my NES Controller Wallet in which I keep all my methods of payment. Josh saw the wallet and exclaimed how cool he thought it was.

"My wife gave me that for Christmas!" I said proudly. "She also today gave me BattleStar Galactica Season 2.5!"

"Can I marry your wife?" Josh asked.

The answer was, of course, no.

Labels: Cooking, Fools Play, Life

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Surprise!

Yesterday (Saturday) Carrie woke me up in the morning and informed me that she was taking me to breakfast. But first we were picking up Lawrence and taking him to get his learner's permit at the DMV.

I wisely grabbed my DS before we left, because the whole DMV process took two-and-½ hours. At one point when we were wondering just why it was taking so long, Lawrence joked out loud, "It's because I'm black, right?" It took the ladies sitting next to us a few seconds to figure out he was joking. But soon they were on our side and rooting that Lawrence's number would be called next. When he did finally get called up they all applauded for him. Very funny.

By the time that was all done with it was time for lunch, not dinner. We went to the Pine Cone Café again. I had a Monte Christo sammitch! My favorite sammitch! With raspberry jam and everything. Lawrence had pancaces, and said they were some of the best pancakes he'd had in years and years.

We stopped by the dollar store on the way home so I could get some supplies for the evening's episode of Fools Play. While I was in there Carrie let Lawrence drive the car around a mostly-empty parking lot for a bit, then we all met in the bakery section of Safeway so I could pick up a cake, also for Fools Play.

When we were walking back to the car I realized that I needed disposable plastic forks for the cake. So while I went back to get those, Carrie and Lawrence went across the street to the pawn shop to see if they had a part Lawrence needs for his guitar. They didn't. So instead he got a PlayStation 2, a couple controllers, and a Grand Turismo game. For "driving practice."

We took him home and came home ourselves. I had to rest for an hour or so, then gather together all of the various sundries for Fools Play in the evening. It was a lot more stuff than usual.

That's because it was a special show — Fools Play Surprise! The surprises included:

The Red Fool is here—but he's not going to perform!
Chris is hiding somewhere in the theater, and whoever finds him wins a prize! (I was dressed like a Tamagotchi
We've been training our apprentices at the Fools Play Compound! Let's take a look at that footage...
It's YOUR birthday! Here's a cake and a birthday present!
Easter egg hunt!
One of the Fools has a suggestion card hidden on their person. You get to find it!
Shave-off!
Roomba Fight!
And, finally, at the end of the show Mike gets a limo!

After the show there was a lot of tear-down, but Mike thankfully came back from the limo and helped out a bit. I was the last person to arrive at Rib Eye, and there were no more spaces at any of the occupied tables! Thankfully Sandy (and later Jason) helped me start a NEW table.

I also gave Jason my digital camera to take photos during the show, so here's a slideshow of those photos!

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Pictures, Restaurants, Videos

Monday, June 11, 2007

Theremiah

Yesterday (Sunday) I got up early-ish in the morning and successfully did some good bit of cleaning. I went to Fools Play practice in the afternoon, but only stayed a couple of hours because I had to leave to pick Carrie & Christine up from the airport! Hooray! I like them.

I dropped Christine off first, then took Carrie home so she could gather all her things inside and relax for a tiny bit. I then actually dropped Carrie off at the Babe Factory to see if Carrie could help out, because apparently they were severely short-staffed while Carrie & Christine were gone. But they were apparently doing all right, because they sent Carrie home only a few minutes after I left. She walked back to the house and met me there.

At 6:00 we went back up north to my folks' house where my dad was barbecuing some hot dogs and brats. Yums. We hung out there for a little while. Susan & Jason were out of town, but Alexis was staying with me mum and da, so Carrie colored some Hello Kitty stuff with her, and I briefly played hide-and-seek with her.

After we came back home I shut the house down and we got into bed and watched Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which, by the way, was given to me as a birthday present by Jeremiah. Jeremiah does this really cool thing where instead of giving birthday presents to his friends on their birthdays, he sends out all the presents at basically the same time, regardless of when your birthday actually is. The note that came with the package said something about happy either late or early birthday.

He also gave me Esquivel's Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music. Thanks, Jeremiah. Theremiah.

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Movies, Music

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Hosted by a Puppet of Quetzalcoatl

Yesterday (Saturday) I had planned on spending the vast majority of the day cleaning and cleaning and mowing the lawn. Well, it rained all day, so mowing the lawn was pretty much out. And when I was hanging out with Geoff on Friday he mentioned that he kinda wanted to host Fools Play as Quetzalcoatl, but he didn't want to have to spend so much time on the ground. He'd do it if he had a puppet, though.

So I spent much of Saturday making a Quetzalcoatl out of felt. I watched the special features of PotC:DMC while I cut and sewed. The puppet came out looking pretty good, but I stupidly forgot to take a picture of it! (Geoff, if you're reading this, is there any way you can take a picture and send it to me?)

I did spend the rest of the day doing dishes and laundry, and I got a substantial amount of cleaning done before I left for Fools Play.

It was Geoff's final Fools Play before leaving for China, so all five of the Fools showed up. We did the Fools Play Tribute format, which consists of doing one scene and one recurring character that showcases each of the Fools (for example, my character scene was The Odd Cuppo, and Taisha's was Cororan & Son). We did a Nanamo in which we used only characters that we'd never gotten to perform before. I played Nanamo's penpal, with whom Nanamo refuses to converse in person.

At the end of the night we did a clip segment wherein we re-created actual things that had happened on stage that prominently featured the Yellow Fool.

The night was a huge success with a very large audience, including Steph & Jamie from the Babe Factory, and Erik Melver—even though his wife is extremely pregnant and due next week!

After the show I went and picked Tia up from her place and took her to Rib Eye with me. It was cool to see her! So many people came out to Rib Eye that we took over every single table in the big half of the place. That's 10 tables! There was a lot of funny that evening, including Geoff wearing Tiare's coat and a pair of Red Robin glasses (see the videos in the previous post). Mike sang Geoff a song in which he apologized for eating his sandwich several years ago. Jason had a four-minute conversation with me, which is going to be used as background noise in a song he's gonna make. I wore Lacey's extremely metrosexual hoodie, which made me look like a complete tool.

I ended up staying until 1:00-ish, which is about an hour-and-a-half later than I usually stay. Then I headed on home.

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Links

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

S/M/T

Playing catch-up here...

SUNDAY
Carrie unfortunately had to work all freakin' day, despite having bad body ache problems. I went in with her in the morning to help her set up her classes. Then I went to the Fred Meyer and bought a gift bag and some mini eclairs.

Can't remember what I ate for lunch, but shortly thereafter I left for Fools Play Practice, which consisted of Me, Mike, and Jake. We actually worked on the performance mechanics of an awesome new recurring character bit we're calling "Wayward Wave 5." It's working out really well, especially considering it has an enormous character who is completely mimed—none of the Fools actually plays him, we just hear his voice and react to him as if he were really there. Very cool stuff.

I helped Carrie out some more in the afternoon by Wrapping up Gina's Babe Factory Birthday Present: a mini fridge for her college dorm room. It took an entire roll of paper to wrap it! I drove it down to the store and carried it inside and everything (along with the gift bag that had some fridge magnets in it), but I forgot to bring along the mini eclairs! Oh, well, they're in our freezer now.

After I dropped off the gifts I headed immediately up north again, to eat some of my dad's yummy barbecued chicken. Carrie did not accompany me because he had a mandatory store meeting (like I said, she worked all freakin' day). Susan, Jason, and Alexis were all there, though. Jason said that Alexis had been asking all day, "Is Carrie gonna be there? Is Carrie gonna be there?" Very cute. The barbecue food was all very tasty.

When I was walking back to my car to drive home it started raining! But it was almost completely incompetent rain. The raindrops were HUGE and coming down hard, but they were so spread out that I only got hit once ever few seconds. It was bizarre.

MONDAY
Monday after work I picked up Carrie for lunch and made some gnocchi. I took her back to the store and decided to unwind a bit by playing some Final Fantasy I. I was actually really close to the end, and I got up to fighting the final boss of the game when the stupid thing actually froze up! It also dumped all of the saves that I had made that afternoon, so I was basically back to where I was the day before.

I picked Carrie up from work at 3:45 and drove her to her doctor's appointment. I played some Kirby Squeak Squad while I waited for her. She got a prescription, but their prescription printer was out of order so they said they'd call it in to the Bartell's for us.

So I dropped Carrie off at work so she could quickly finish up a couple of things, then I went to the Bartell's to get her prescription. Only they hadn't called it in yet. And I'd left my cell phone at home to charge, so I couldn't call them and tell them to call the Bartell's. So I drove back to the Babe Factory and picked Carrie up. We decided to go later in the evening. Which we did.

But first I made us some pizzas for dinner.

Then Carrie called the Bartell's to make sure that the prescription was there before we headed on down. While I waited for the prescription to fill Carrie got various sundries for her trip. Everything with off sans hitch, and we came back home, where Carrie basically went to bed (she had to get up by like 4:00 in the AM in order to get ready for her flight).

I stayed up and watched a fascinating film: Brian DePalma's Femme Fatale starring Rebecca Romijn and Antonio Banderas. I enjoyed it thoroughly, even through the fantastically surreal last 20 minutes. I did much laundry in the evening while Carrie slept due to the influence of her prescription.

TUESDAY
I got up briefly around 4:00 to help Carrie get ready for her trip to Milwaukee. Then I went back to sleep and slept until 7:30.

After work I noticed that my car was low on gas, so I thought, "I'll fill up on the way home." Next thing I know I've habitually pulled right up into my driveway like usual. I sighed, back up, and drove to my usual gas station.

When I got back to the house I called Sandy to see what the Purtlebaughs were up to on Thursday. She said that there were actually a couple of things going on: it was bowling night for her Starbucks, and Busdriver was playing a show at Nuemos in Seattle! Awexome! I've never seen Busdriver live, so that's very exciting news for me.

Anyway, I asked what Sandy was doing right then, and she said she was taking her car in to get the radiator looked at, but I could come hang out with her if I wanted. I wanted, so I drove up and met her at the apartment. We walked over to the car place and picked up her car, and on the way home we stopped at the Elysian Brewery for a couple of burgers. Really good burgers! They have sauteéd onions and your choice of cheeses. I chose bleu, Sandy chose feta!

Then we went back and hung out at the apartment and ate pickles and push-pops.

I drove Sandy down to Cobalt to pick up Mathias. We went back to the apartment and tried to figure out where we wanted to have dinner. The problem with living in Capitol Hill is that you have an incredible amount and variety of choices. We eventually settled on Greek, and we all walked over to Byzantion on Broadway. I liked it very much! I got a combination plate that had souvlaki and meatballs and that yummy stuffed grape leaf thing, really excellent potatoes and a couple of other things. We all also got an appetizer, which was a whole bunch of other really good stuff. I even really enjoyed their hummous, which I usually don't like very much. Goot!

I got a phone call from Carrie while I was at the restaurant, so I did the polite thing and walked outside to talk to her.

After dinner we walked back to the apartment. It was actually starting to get cold, and I'd left my jacket in the car. Whoops! We hung out in the apartment for a while longer before Sandy went to bed and I packed up my stuff and went home.

Or at least I tried to go home. For some reason all of the downtown entrances to I-5 were inaccessible! I had to go all the way down to SafeCo Field to find an entrance to the freeway. Crazy!

Now I'm home typing all this out, and it's late and I'm going to try to get six hours of sleep tonight.

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Movies, Restaurants, Video Games

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Year of the Cone

Yesterday (Saturday) Carrie & I got up relatively early in the morning. We drove out to have breakfast at the Pine Cone Cafe in University Place. The readerboard there proudly proclaimed 2007 as the "Year of the Cone." I had CBH with pancakes. Carrie had French waffles, which are waffles that have been French-toasted with cinnamon and sugar. And then you put syrup on them. Mmm... syrup.

On the way to and leaving the Pine Cone we passed the staging area for some sorta parade or something that was going to go up Bridgeport. We didn't know what was going on, but there were a lot of old cars and a couple of high school marching bands.

Umm... let's see... after that there was some of my family stuff, after which Carrie was not feeling at all well. The massage she got on Friday really screwed up her musculature. So she laid down for quite a while in the afternoon, until about 4:00.

In the meantime I brought out all of my soldering stuff and got cooking. We'll see why in a moment.

Around 4:00 Carrie & I went down and joined some other Bead people (and some non Bead people) at Gina's house for her graduation party! Her house has a deceptively big backyard. You go out there and you think you know how big it's gonna be, but then you look at a corner and realize it keeps going. And also that it has chickens in it.

We sat outside on a swing seat couch thingy, which shielded us somewhat from the rather hot weather. I gave Gina a graduation/birthday present: I soldered her a pendant with Robot & Bird #3 inside of it:

She was very happy. She was so excited that she ran inside and immediately strung it on some chain and wore it. Very, very cute. She couldn't have actually been surprised, though, because she'd hinted to me a few times in very un-subtle ways that she wanted me to make her a pendant.

Anyway, we stayed there for maybe an hour. I ate a whole bunch of deviled eggs, potato salad, and a hamburger. I was on vacuum-cleaner mode for sho'. Then I dropped Carrie off at home and continued on south to Fools Play.

We performed Exhibition, and there was a surprisingly large audience for that format. It was most likely because it was Geoff's next-to-last show. We did a very excellent episode of The Espionager. I'll paraphrase my favorite story that I told:

I was hired as a bodyguard for a London mob boss. We got wind that the Espionager was gonna try to assassinate him, so we set up a trap. We took the mob boss to an abandoned warehouse. The Espionager, being as bold as he was, walked right through the front door as we knew he would, and stepped right into our trap: We'd rigged a solid steel box to drop and trap him inside. The inside of the box was lined with explosives, which went off destroying everything inside. I heard a sound behind me and when I turned around I saw the Espionager stabbing the mob boss through the heart. When we opened the steel box, we discovered that the Espionager had survived the explosion by shielding himself with the body of the mob boss, which was now a charred corpse.

It was a really funny show and a lot of fun to do. Afterwards we all went to Rib Eye, where Jason Brunee for some reason had brought a Fireman puppet. Geoff got his hands on it for quite a while, which was quite hilarious. My phone just happens to have (crappy) video capabilities, so I recorded some of it. I uploaded it to YouTube this morning. Unfortunately they're kinda hard to hear:

There are actually a couple of more. I might upload them later. Or not. Whatevs. Anyway, I sat with Devlin and Becky and ate a Cheesburger Dipper. Very tasty. Before I left a whole bunch of people gave me their tots, and I might have gotten a lead on a new client. It was a very fun evening.

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Pictures, Restaurants, Videos

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

A Wonderful Weekendly of Deliciously Horrible Food

It all started on Sunday. Carrie & I had originally planned to go lawn mower shopping in the morning, but we slept in some instead. I don't remember what exactly happened for lunch, though I feel that something did. Hmm... I'll have to ask Carrie when she gets home.

Anyhoo, then it was off to Fools Play practice. After that I stopped at Fred Meyer and continued on to the Tarbet house where there was a barbecue going. I took this absolutely adorable picture:

You may be able to tell by the photo that it was plenty windy out. It was a might bit cold as well! Fortunately Jay had the outdoor fireplace thing going pretty well. So well, in fact, that we made s'mores in it. Soon we will have one of those things for ourselves... plans, plans...

So I ate a hamburger, a hot dog, and some chips and a couple of brownie bites.

Linnea's brother brought over his Wii (he's an even bigger geek than I am), so after the food settled a little bit I played some Wii Tennis and Wii Golf vs Jay. Then I played some Wii Bowling with Lena.

It's sideways but I'm too unconcerned to fix it. Just tilt your head. Lena's pretty good at bowling! But then after that we played Wii Boxing, and that little 4-year-old girl whooped me but good. She's frighteningly good at Boxing. I finally managed to beat her once, but I had to really, really work at it. Whew!

When we got home it was before 9:00, but as soon as we got out of the car I felt something inside of me go away and I became instantly, unabashedly sleepy. I went to bed and fell asleep and didn't get up until the next morning.

Carrie had to work on Monday, but I did not. In the morning I drove to a few places and found the best price/quality ratio on a new lawn mower. I guess I should say a first new lawn mower, because it's the first one I've ever actually owned. Pretty exciting. I got it at Home Depot. I had the sense to ask for help getting it off the shelf but not getting it into my car, but I manned up and stuffed it in there all by myself. I a big boy now!

It was much easier getting it out of the car and dragging it up the stairs than it was putting it into the car.

At noon I went up north to Grandma K's place for a big barbecue they were having for Memorial Day. I had a hamburger and a hot dog and a bag of chips. And an ice cream bar for dessert. They had a live band, the Cow Chips. They did old cowboy/ragtime type of songs. Stuff that Gene Autrey would sing (and did).

I came home and assembled the lawn mower and filled it up with oil, though not gas.

Then after Carrie got off of work we were picked up by Christine and Lawrence and we all went to Jefferson park just to hang out in the nice weather. We played some frisbee and no-net badminton (with extremely short racquets).

They're so cute!

A while into that we were joined by Melissa. Then a while after that we all started getting hungry, so we went down to The Spar and had fish and chips. Well, I had fish and chips. And so did Carrie. Other people had other things, like burgers and chicken fingers. But they missed out, 'cuase Spar fish & chips are some of the best in T-town. Anyway, Travis joined us there as well.

By the time we got home it was pretty late, but I still did an hour's worth of work on stuff that I needed to work on. Then I went to bed.

So over the course of the weekend I ate several hot dogs and several hamburgers, and some fried fish. It was all rather tasty, but I am not feeling at all healthy right now.

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Pictures, Restaurants, Video Games

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Maim-more-ial Day Bleak-end

Yesterday (Saturday) Carrie & I did not sleep in. Well, we slept in about ten minutes longer than we were s'posed to, but we were still up and going before 9:00 in the AM. We drove over to Cat's house where we met up with her, Melissa, and Heather. Then all of us went over to the Gig Harbor Farmer's Market.

It's a nice little market, with about 80% of the vendors providing potted growing pretty/tasty things. Carrie & I ended up getting three tomato plants. Cat got a whole bunch of stuff, including a gigantic bag of horse manure. I also got an Onion Dog, which is a polish sausage wrapped in fried bread and covered with sauteéd onions. I got the same thing last year when we went to the Gig Harbor Farmer's Market. It's still very tasty.

On our way home we stopped at a Big K to look over lawn mowers. They only had two models, one with a bag and one without. We didn't buy anything, because we want to do some more comparison shopping first.

I made some Mandarin chicken for lunch, and then a short while later it was time for me to head down to the final Fools Play workshop of the season. Then Mike & I went and got some phud Thai at Mekong in downtown O-town. Then it was back to the theater for setup and performance of Fools Play Rasslin' League presents May Meleé: Maim-more-ial Day Bleak-end.

We tried to keep this one tighter and more focused than the last one, and it worked really well; it was about 40 minutes shorter. The only characters who didn't show up were Incredible Bastard, Huggernaut, and Beekeeper (which is a shame because it was the last time he had a chance to show up). Once again Shooting Star won the championship, only to have to give it up due to having a severely broken neck.

Afterwards I went out to Rib Eye. Becky took this frightening photo of me and Lacey:

That is not appealing! I look like a crazyman.

An audience member I hadn't seen in a while was there, and off-handedly mentioned a Fools Play T-shirt they'd gotten in 7th grade. I'm old!

In somewhat-related news, I learned yesterday that two people I know had benign canker things instead of the life-threatening kind. Good news!

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Pictures

Monday, May 21, 2007

Where Carrie? Where is Her?

Yesterday (Sunday) Carrie & I had originally not planned on sleeping in too terribly much so we could clean the house and whatnot, but we were so tired from our journey to Friday Harbor that it was close to 11:00 by the time we finally were up and going.

And go we did, up to Carrie's Grandma's place, where we joined Carrie's folks (and Carrie's Grandma, obviously) for a pizza lunch. Pizza from It's Greek to Me. That's good pizza! It was some of my favorites: mushroom, sausage, pepperoni.

I left from there and went straight to practice at my brother's. The two of us were joined by Jake "Last Name Unpronounceable" Ynzunza for his first-ever practice! Later on we were joined by an Ed "80 Hour Work-Week" Gibbs V after a three-month absence, and then even later we were joined by Geoff "Huh? Whazzat?" Gibbs. We worked mostly on getting ideas for a post-Geoff Fools Play. We came up with a really cool format that involves a restaurant/café on the bottom floor of an apartment building. All the restaurant people and all the apartment people get along really well and like the situation... everyone, that is, except the owner of the restaurant and the owner of the apartments, who both want the other out of business, and threaten firing/expulsion to anyone they discover is associating with someone from the "other side."

After practice my dad was going to be cooking for the fambly. I didn't know whether Carrie was going to be up to it or not due to her hurty neck/shoulder area. I knew she was going to work a little while I was at practice, and there was a good chance that she would be hurting quite a bit after that.

So I called her to see if I should pick her up or not. She didn't answer. At all. I tried four times. I called her folks to make sure that they'd taken her home safe and all. They had. I called the Babe Factory to see if she was still there. She wasn't. So I drove on home. She wasn't there, but her phone was. Carrie, it seemed, wasn't anywhere. I called around until someone remembered overhearing a conversation between Christine and Carrie wherein it sounded like Christine said something to the effect of, "Are you ready to go?" So I called Christine's phone and Carrie answered! There was her! They'd gone to JoAnne so Christine could buy something or other, and were on their way back. And, yes, Carrie did want to go eat with my fambly.

So we drove back up the I-5 corridor to my folks' house. Everybody was already there, including Jason & Alexis, and they'd mostly all eaten already. Original pa was gonna barbecue, but it was raining pretty crazy yesterday, so he cooked inside instead. There were burgers, corn on the cob, asparagus, potato salad, regular salad, and potato chips. It was all rather tasty (I can't vouch for the corn, of course, as I haven't eaten corn in well over two years).

Afterwards we hung out for a while and then all of a sudden I just absolutely crashed. I was completely out. It was crazy! Fortunately Carrie was feeling steadily better, and she was able to drive on home.

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Sunday, May 20, 2007

TGI Friday Harbor - Day 2

On Saturday we got up around 8:00. Carrie's shoulder was really hurting her from her fall the day before. We showered, but there was a problem with the hot water. The problem was that it would only stay hot for 30 - 60 seconds. Then you had to turn the water off and wait for a minute before you could have any more hot water. Strange that the "water" section of Elements would have problems with its water...

Anyway, after that inconvenience Leah picked us up and drove us to the other side of the island. We saw an actual, real-life fox on the side of the road! It was a nicer day than Friday, with more sun and slightly warmer temperatures. We ended up at another cute little beach alcove at the foot of a gentle slope and book-ended by cliffs. Here are Carrie and Leah and Leah's much-too-large sunglasses on the beach:

We were at this beach to go looking at some super tidepools. These weren't no wussy tidepools. These were the real deal:

This is what much of the weekend consisted of, looking down into water while Leah pointed out all the cool things in it:

Around the corner of a big ol' rock we stumbled upon this chiton that was way too far away from the water. Look at that crazy thing:

That's its foot! You couldn't see the plates on its back because they were covered with skin, but you could feel them underneath there. The skin had an interesting texture, kind of like Floam. After we were done looking it over, Leah put it back in the water. Well, it would be more accurate to say that Leah flung it about 50 feet into the water.

We kept on poking around the tidepools, seeing cool things like entire colonies of anemones all curled up on themselves:

And this really bright orange sea star, which Leah tells me is called Henrecia leviuscula, or "blood star:"

Whose blood is that orange, though? At any rate it was a really pretty morning by this time, so here are some pretty pictures. Enjoy:

After we were done poking around the tidepools, Leah took us back into town and we had breakfast at the Front Street Café. Carrie had the Eggs Benedict, and she said that it was some of the best Benedict she'd ever had in a restaurant. I had the chicken fried steak, which was really, really excellent. The breading was really thick and crunchy and tasty. Leah had French toast.

We walked around town after that, poking into all the touristy shops along the way. We found a wine shop that sold an exclusive line of wines that you can't get in any other store, so we picked up four bottles (actually we just bought them and had the guy hold them). We also went into a bookstore up on the 2nd floor of the pier area so Leah and Carrie could buy Father's Day presents. There was a universal air of exceptional service all over the island. Everyone was friendly and jovial and jolly. Probably because tourist season hasn't ground them down yet. Cynical? Not at all!

Eventually Leah left us because she had to go back to the laboratories and do some stuff for the open house they were having on Saturday. Carrie & I poked into a couple of other stores and then walked to our hotel and picked up all our baggage. We walked the three blocks back to the waterfront and passed on the way an ice cream shop that Leah had recommended. I got a cone of Butterfingers ice cream and Carrie got a cherry limeade. Really good! We walked down to a bench on the waterfront and ate/drank our stuff there. Then we picked up our wine and walked onto the ferry.

This ferry had come from Canada, so when we got back to Anacortes we had to go through customs. Here was the extent of customs: We showed our IDs to the guy, he asked us each where we were born (Carrie said, "Cleveland, Ohio." I said, "Rentuhn!").

We used the restroom in the ferry terminal. Carrie went first, and then I went, and when I came out I was surprised to find Carrie standing with Kedar. He had missed his ferry over to Friday Harbor and now had to wait over two hours for the next one! Whoops! We wished him luck and hauled our stuff to the parking lot where our car awaited us.

I drove because Carrie's shoulder/neck injury prevented her from turning her head very far. She decided she still wanted to go to Fools Play, and called Trevor to see if he wanted to go as well. He was over at his friend Andrew's house, and they both wanted to go. So on our way down south we stopped in Fife (after a stop at a Starbucks in Federal way to go to the bathroom) and picked the two of them up. They had just seen Robin Hood: Men in Tights and were talking about how hilarious it was. *Sigh* It's nice to expose them to Fools Play so they can see stuff that is actually funny. Hopefully soon they'll become comedic snobs like me!

We didn't stop at our house on the way to Oly because I'd thought ahead and packed all of my Fools Play stuff. At least, I thought I'd packed all of my Fools Play stuff...

We got to Studio 321 shortly before 7:00, and Carrie took the boys off to buy something to drink. It was then that I realized I didn't have the box office with me. I tried calling Carrie, but she'd left her phone in the car (a recurring theme of the entire weekend, as it would turn out). When she got back she agreed to go out again and get some change with the $50 bill I had in my wallet. So it all worked out after all.

The show was Fools Play Character night, and highlighted all of Geoff's recurring characters to the fullest. It ended with an extra-length episode of Nanamo.

I did not hang out with people after the show because I was tired from having such a long weekend, and we had to get the boys back to Fife at a semi-reasonable hour. We went through a Jack-in-the-Box drivethru on the way back. We dropped Trevor & Andrew off and then went on home ourselves.

Wotta weekend!

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Pictures, Restaurants, Shopping

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Special Delivery!

Yesterday (Saturday) I got up in the morning and went and uploaded my latest movie review! You should go read it now. NOW!

Grindhouse (2007)

Carrie & I were originally planning on going out to breakfast, but we ended up getting up and getting ready so late that it was more like going out for lunch.

We went to The Spar down near the waterfront. As we were walking up to the building Carrie noticed somebody in the kitchen who looked familiar. Turns out it was Chris, our downstairs neighbor from back when we used to live in the apartment (the one with stained-glass windows). We also ran into Katie, which we kinda expected.

We had deep fried seafood and Spar chips, and it was a very good lunch.

We came back home and I got ready for and left for the Fools Play workshop. After the workshop Mike & I got a pizza at Brewery City Pizza. They do make some tasty pizzas there. We ate it back at Studio 321 before setting everything up and working out the kinks in the new format.

That's right, Mike & I were the only two Fools who could make it to this show, so we invented a brand-new format: Fools Play Special Delivery! In it, Bill the Mailman goes around delivering mail to people, but not before he opens the letters and reads them! In the end he discovers a vast conspiracy and sets off to stop it Hot Fuzz style.

It was a frikkin' hilarious show. There were several scenes where both Mike and I could not stop busting up while we were performing them. And thankfully the audience was busting up right along with us.

After the show we went to Rib Eye, where I sat with Mathias, Sandy, & Amber. I had a French dip and two Pepsis, on account of I needed the caffeine so that I wouldn't fall asleep on the way home.

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Restaurants, Updates

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Insert Coin to Continue

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.

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Movies, Pictures, TV, Updates

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.

Labels: Fools Play, Life

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.

Labels: Cooking, Fools Play, Life, Links, Pictures, Shopping, Video Games

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!

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Monday, April 16, 2007

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!

Labels: Cooking, Fools Play, Life, Pictures

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!

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Videos

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.

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Sunday, March 25, 2007

God of the Spatula Eats at Restaurants Quite a Lot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Monday, March 19, 2007

Over the Weekend and Through the Woods!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Monday, March 12, 2007

Weekend Apology Pizza

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Pictures

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Digging [Pronoun] Graves

So on Saturday Carrie had to work due to the Bead Factory's pearl sale (it's going on all week—go check it out if'n you need freshwater pearls). In the later afternoon, though, I went down to the store to pick someone up. Not Carrie! One of the other Bead Babes was feeling horribly sick, so I brought her back to my place so she could sleep on the couch (she didn't have her car with her).

I picked Carrie up shortly before I left for Fools Play. It was a another co-show, this time with the Taisha-trained "Digging Our Graves Improv," four junior-high-aged people (hey, I started doing improv when I was fifteen, so it's not like I think they're too young or anything). It was a very funny show, and I think most, if not all of them enjoyed it thoroughly. One of them was jumping up and down backstage because he was so excited about how well it went.

After the show I met Lisa, who has one of the coolest tattoos I've ever seen: Totoro, Chu-Totoro, and Chibi-Totoro! Totoro is holding an umbrella, Chu-Totoro is playing a flute-like instrument, and Chibi-Totoro has a little branch with a leaf on it.

SOOOO COOOOL.

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Covered [preposition] Bees

So last night (Friday), Fools Play actually had a show! I know, weird, but we went down to Olympia to join Covered... hold on, let me go look up the proper preposition. I can never remember whether it is "with" or "in" or... according to their MySpace page, they're called "Covered in Bees!"

Traffic on the way down was unbelievably ungodly, so most of us got to Capital High School only moments before the show started. I, on the other hand, arrived about one scene late. Fortunately I was able to join the end of the second scene.

'Twas an enjoyable show, despite Esa taking a rather scary header off of the stage and landing on his face. Fortunately the only injury he suffered was a mildly skinned elbow.

Afterwards there was some Red Robin action with upwards of 15 people. I hadn't been to that Red Robin in a couple of years now.

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Sunday, February 11, 2007

I Beat Her Home For Once

Yesterday (Saturday), even though we wanted to get up much earlier, Carrie & I ended up sleeping in until 11:30. After getting up and briefly getting ready, we went to Target to do some gift shopping for a certain someone whose birthday is today (Sunday).

Right as we were leaving Target I felt a sudden headache coming on, and I could tell it was gonna be a bad'un. So we came back home and I slammed some Tylenol and sat down on the couch whilst Carrie heated up some chicken dumpling soup for me for lunch.

Around 2:30 Carrie went over to the Tarbet house and picked up Lena so that the two of them could go to the airport and collect the arriving-from-New-York Erin Miner! Hooray! She's in town for a week, which is very cool. She's staying at the Tarbet house, just a couple of blocks up and a couple of blocks over, so I'm sure I'll see her a couple of times before she has to go back. When I talked to Brandy a couple of days ago she was a little upset that she and Erin didn't end up being back in T-Town at the same time (Erin is a whole month late).

I dozed and tried to deal with my headache pretty much all afternoon. I took a shower and got myself all prettified. Carrie came back shortly before 5:00, and I ate a big sushi platter for din-dins. Michael picked me up so that Carrie could have a car.

We went down to Fools Play, which was the Valentine's Day Special. I was playing for some guy named Blake. It was our first-ever performance of Strip Club Sub: The Next Generation (SCS:TNG). It went over pretty well. Mike was playing for Amanda, and he won due to some very suspicious math (4.5 + 2 does not equal eleven in my book, but whatever), so Amanda chose to go on her date with him. This was the first Valentine's Day Special in which we had a camera and actually got to film the date (Megan brought her camera, bless her) and it actually worked. The results were pretty funny: Mike & Amanda went to a drive-through, where Mike tried to order a "Black Angus Shake." Then they went to Amanda's apartment, where Tia & Tim were. Then, during a "romantic" walk through the park, Tia (who was supposed to be dressed as a yeti) attacked so that Mike could chase her off and look like a hero to Amanda.

There was some problem with the vertical tracking on the monitor during playback, but it didn't take too much away from the experience. After the show I gave out a handful of hand-made valentines to the girls there.

After we were done tearing down we three (Me, Mike, and Amanda) went and picked up Tia & Tim and we five went to the Rib Eye to do the hanging out with the other people there. Because not EVERYBODY would fit in the car, Mike took Tia, Tim, & Amanda back to their apartment first, then came back and took me to my house and Taisha on up to his apartment.

For once (and even though I got home much later than I usually do) I actually beat Carrie home by about five minutes! Why? Because whilst I was out Fools Playing, she, Erin, and Carly went to this bar way out in Enumclaw to dance to The Boinkers! She said it was a lot of fun, although apparently towards the end some crap went down with police and liquor board. But it thankfully did not affect the trio of Bead Babes, and they all made it home safely.

Now everybody go wish Laura a happy birthday!

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Don't Worry; Everybody is Okay

Yesterday (Saturday) Carrie & I got up at a reasonable time and went and worked out. After that we swung by Trader Joe's so I would have foodstuffs to eat whilst Carrie was an out-of-towner. We came home and I showered while Carrie dyed her hair, then she showered after that. Then as we were getting ready we got a call from 'Nea.

We were glad to hear from her, because we hadn't talked to her in a while. But we weren't so glad when we heard that she had brought Baby Eva to the hospital because she thought she might have pneumonia. Lena was there as well, and apparently had eventually said that she "wanted Carrie."

So the two of us drove down to the hospital and found them there, and we took Lena to the commissary for lunch. I had a cheeseburger, Carrie had a grilled cheese sammitch, and Lena had a salad (and a bag of Cheetoes). She also got a sammitch and a banana for her mom, which we brought back to her. They hadn't gotten to see a doctor yet, so we took Lena again.

We took her on our errands to Fred Meyer's to look for Project Runway Season 1 for Carrie, and to buy macaroni and cheese for me. We also went to the bank there, where Lena's aunt Rachel just happens to work, so those to chatted for a while.

After Fred Meyer's we went to Chéz Targét so carrie could look for her DVDs and so that I could go to the bathroom. She didn't find Season 1 anywheres!

After Target we drove to Liana's house just up the street a bit. She was having an open-house for all her family, friends, and co-workers to see their new house. When we walked in I noticed her husband and a couple of friends were playing Wii Tennis, and they almost immediately said they needed a fourth player. Who was I to turn them down?

Unfortunately I lost. But fortunately Liana's house is incredibly cute! And it has a tonne of extra rooms downstairs. It has secret rooms opening up off of secret rooms. Very cool.

We were going to drive back to our house after that, but we got a call from Jay saying that he was home now and could take Lena. Lena initially didn't want to go to her own house, but of course as soon as she saw Jay she was all, "Daddy! Daddy!" and huggy and happy to see him.

After all of that we came home and relaxed for quite a while. I don't even really remember what we did in the afternoon, though I do remember playing some Mega Man X4. Linnea called to say that they'd seen the doctor and Eva had some sorta bronchitis-like thing (I don't remember what it was called). But she was doing much better and they were back home at their house relaxing. So that was good. Don't worry; everybody is okay.

Carrie cooked the Trader Joe's pizzas for din-dins. I ate half of mine and then took the other half down to Fools Play.

It was Fools Play Dream Hotel, the first time I'd performed as a main character in that format. It was a pretty fun show, but the audience was strangely cold. They enjoyed it, but for the most part it was really hard for me to tell if they liked it or not. It was only afterwards in talking to them that I learned how much they enjoyed it. Weird.

After the show Cupcakeface, Tia, and her boyfriend Tim all piled into my car and I drove Cupcakeface back to her apartment because she wasn't feeling well. Then I took Tia & Tim to the Rib Eye and hung out with people there, getting my customary Patty Melt and taking the tots to go.

I dropped Tia & Tim off at her apartment and then drove on home to give the tots to Carrie.

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Monday, January 22, 2007

Pajama Party

Yesterday (Sunday) apparently Carrie did not get good sleep at all, due almost entirely to the "fact" that I was snoring constantly. At one point she event went out to the couch, but that hurt her neck too much to sleep out there so she came back and suffered through the noise.

I only remember her waking me up about my snoring once. She said it happened many, many times. I'm kinda miffed; I thought my snoring was gone, baby, gone. We'll have to see if'n it continues on.

Anyhoo, we went to Safeway in the AM and bought some groceries. Then after we came home and I unloaded the car I took it up to my brother's apartment for practice. We worked on the upcoming Dream Hotel, as well as more Strip Club Sub: The Next Generation, and more kidsplay stuffs as well.

Pretty much as soon as I got back home Carrie & I left for Trader Joe's to do some more shopping. And then pretty much as soon as we got back from that I had just enough time to put on some pajama pants and head over to Christine's for her pajama-themed Birthday Party! Hooray! I brought her a pretty bouquet of flowers.

'Twas a very fun party! There was a lots of 80s music (provided by Carrie), a lots of wine, and a lots of pretty girls in pajamas! And there was also a good bit of pizza that showed up via delivery. And there were party hats and balloons and everything (I got a pirate hat and an eyepatch).

Happy birthday, Christine!

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Shopping

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Grump!

Yesterday (Saturday) something was off with my blood sugar, because I was a complete grumpy-puss for like the first half of the day. I went with Carrie to the Bead Factory at 8:30 so she could help Jen set up for her class. Then we went straight to Trader Joe's. I played some Animal Crossing in the car on account of I hadn't played the night before.

Carrie actually went back in and worked for a couple of hours, about noon until 2:00, while I worked on a bunch of miscellany. After she got back and made some Mandarin chicken for lunch, and I took a shower, I started to feel less grumpy.

We went to Target and I spent all of my remaining Christmas moneys on new clothes. And especially new black socks. I swear I have dozens of black socks and no two of them match, so I've decided just to throw them all out and start over, only buying one kind of sock so that it doesn't matter which two I grab; they'll all match.

Carrie found a new workout outfit, too, and it's super-cute!

Anyway, we got back home and I got ready for Fools Play and Carrie & I hung out. Then I left (I actually ran a little late—whoops).

Mike had some sorta fever cold, so he wasn't even sure he was gonna perform. But the Tylenol kicked in and the fever went way, way down, so he was right in there mixing it up with me and Geoff. We did "20 Questions," a format I really like. It was good, pretty tight show (time-wise), and we repeatedly made each other bust up on stage. So that was good.

It was also a really large audience, but very slight on the regulars. A lot of faces I didn't really recognize. Tia, Cupcakeface, and Tiare were all not there, for example.

Afterwards I went to Rib Eye and hung out at the same table as Leia & Kedar and Mathias. Apparently there were two people who didn't come in to work that evening, so our waitress was stretched pretty thin. But I took my tots home, and also got an extra order of cheese tots to take home.

But by the time I got home I was just so danged sleepy that I was out practically before my head hit the pillow!

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Shopping

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Rassle Dazzle 2007

Yesterday (Saturday) Carrie & slept in a little bit, but we were still really tired in the morning. We haven't been getting good sleep at all lately.

I made eggs for breakfast/lunch, and then we braved the ice and snow (yes, it's still around) and headed down to a discount medical supply place at 6th & Proctor so we could rent a wheelchair (which will come in handy today—check tomorrow's post for a mention of that). The place was pretty unbelievable; it was like something out of a weird, quirky comedy movie, like a Wes Anderson film or that movie Be Cool. The two guys in there (especially the older one who delivered a weird laugh after every raspy thing he said) were so unusual that Carrie & I both commented on it as we walked back to the car with the wheelchair.

Anyway, I ate an entire pizza for dinner, then gathered my many equipments and headed down to Fools Play, which was the fabulous Fools Play Rasslin' League presents: Rassle Dazzle!

The crazy thing was, as soon as I left Tacoma the ice and snow cleared up dramatically, to the point that down in Olympia it was bone-dry and ten degrees warmer than it was in T-town. So odd! Usually it's exactly the opposite; Tacoma tends to be a dry spot, and Oly usually gets slammed by storms.

Anyway, over 30 people came out despite the cold and enjoyed the show, which ran really, really long. But it was still really good. You can read the results of it on our results page.

Afterwards I was going to just go straight home due to the poor conditions, but since road conditions in Oly weren't poor at all, I actually went out and hung out with people at the Rib Eye and ate a patty melt. It was fun! And as I was leaving both Cupcakeface and Bethesda, Maryland loaded me up with the tots from their meal, so I brought almost three full orders of tots home to Carrie!

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Monday, January 08, 2007

I'm the King Now, Baby

Yesterday (Sunday) was much more of an active day than was Saturday. Around brunchtime we went and met Steph and Katie Felesina at The Spar, where Katie Stricker works, to have a brunchy-type thing with them (Katie flew away later in the afternoon, so this was our last chance to see her). I had biscuits & gravy and a lot of hot tea. It was loads of fun!

We stopped by the house just very quickly, then headed to the Tarbets' so we could give the girls their Christmas presents (finally). We got socks and a little plush cow/hippo thing for Eva (well, really, the socks were more for Linnea). We got Lena a whole bunch of play food for her play kitchen in her closet. She really liked it, though when we left she refused to hug me because she said her daddy was the only boy she could like. It was very funny.

I dropped Carrie off at the house and continued on up to my brother's for Fools Play practice. We did some beginning-of-the-year business, figured out some FRPL things, and then Ed brought a whole mess of ideas to the table based on a children's theater thing he saw recently. We got an hilarious bit and some interesting techniques from it.

Meanwhile, Carrie had gone with a couple other Bead Babes to shop for Christine's birthday, which the store is celebrating next Sunday.

I drove home, then Carrie took the car and went to workout. A while after she got home I went to Fred Meyer's for some staples: Cheese, butter, toilet paper, half-&-half. I also got a fresh pineapple for Carrie, which I can't eat on account o' bein' allergic. To make up for that, I spent some of my Christmas moneys and bought Teen Titans - The Complete First and Second Seasons (DC Comics Kids Collection) on the Digital Video Disc format.

I came back and hung out with Carrie for a bit before she drove up to the Lareau homestead to watch the premiere of the new season of The Apprentice with them (the kids, especially Trevor, really like that show). When she came home it was time for bed.

I had to inform Carrie that I couldn't play any Tetris with her that evening. We'd been playing it so much that all during the weekend I was seeing tetris blocks fall wherever I went. It was like that Tootsie Roll commercial, except with Tetris instead. Even during parts of Fools Play on Saturday. It was bad. I need a couple of days off. Instead, I played my Mega Man ZX (which I'm pretty close to beating), then some Animal Crossing: Wild World. Very exciting: I actually saved up $1,200,000 and bought the King's Crown item! Then I ordered the King's Beard, so now I'm running around my town as the King, baby!

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Shopping

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Sleepin

Yesterday (Saturday) Carrie & I slept in until 11:00. Whoo-boy, that was nice. We didn't really do much of anything for the rest of the day, either. Some Tetris DS. I clicked around on teh intarwebs. Very lazy.

Fools Play was just a regular exhibition, but it was a huge crowd. It was also a ve'y funny show. Afterwards I said goodbye to everybody, stopped by the Rib Eye just to say hi to the people there, and then went straight home to spend more time with my wife.

Not a terribly bad way to spend a Saturday. Not at all productive, though.

Labels: Fools Play, Life

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Hark Your Heart Out

So this weekend was the Christmas Weekend (duh). It was loads of funstuffs and funtimes. Let's start with:

Saturday

Saturday I spent basically the whole day getting ready for Fools Play, by making/wrapping gifts for my fellow Fools and my favorite audience members. While Carrie was out doing some last-minute shopping, I painted three new paintings:

<INSERT PICTURES>

I thought it would take me until, you know, noon or 1:00 to finish them, but I weren't finished until after 3:00.

At that point we thought that Susan's boyfriend and his daughter were gonna be in Texas during Christmas, visiting an aunt or something. But we then learned that they weren't able to make their stand-by flight, and so they were planning on being at my folks' place for Christmas! So Carrie & I went to Cost Plus World market so I could grab up some shotglasses for Jason (and so Carrie could get some last-minute stocking stuffers).

Instead of etching the shotglasses when I got home, though, I worked on the six juice glasses I was etching for me granmaw.

Then it was off to Fools Play for me! It was Santa's Lap, one of the more fun formats for the audience, because after every scene an audience member gets a prize, and another one gets to sit on one of our laps and ask for a gift. And then at the end of the show there's a spectacular, half-hour-long section where many, many of the recurring characters come out and sing carols. My favorites are when Pete & Bob sing "O Holy Night" (or "O Holy Blom" as Bob sings it), and Professor Horace & Cecil's rendition of the Chipmunk Christmas Song. There were many, many others, of course, and we ended with several FPRL people singing "Do You Hear What I Hear" while having a series of wrestling matches. Really, really good times.

After the show I handed out presents to everybody for whom I brought presents (including Brandy, who showed up just after the show ended; I had a feeling she might, so I brought along the present we were gonna give to her on Early Christmas). I got a couple in return, including some cloudy sake and cookies from Sandy, and this enormous, hand-sewn pillow from Leah!

<INSERT PILLOW PIC HERE>

Everybody was really, really dawdling, and I didn't want to be out too late, so I went off to the restaurant and gave my presents to the people who slipped away before I could catch them at the theater. In return I got some yummy chocolates (and a pencil) from Tia & Cupcakeface. I ordered some cheese tots to go and ended up leaving right after everybody else from the theater arrived.

I got home and worked on Jason's shotglasses before hitting the proverbial hay.

Sunday (Christmas Eve)

In the morning I finished working on Jason's shotglasses, and then we met them and my family at Diamond Jim's in Federal Way for my family's traditional Christmas Eve Breakfast/Brunch out at a diner. Carrie & I both had the really excellent stuffed French toast (stuffed with ham and swiss cheese), while most everybody else got the #2 or #3.

When we first walked into the restaurant (we were the last to arrive) we were standing around for almost a full minute before Alexis saw us, and she gasped in delight and jumped up and threw her arms around Carrie. It was very, very cute.

Breakfast was a lot of crazy fun, as always whenever you get my whole family together.

We came home and straightened the house some, but then got a phone call from Linnea saying that they had some sorta stomach flu (this would feature prominently on Christmas as well; read on) and so couldn't come over in the afternoon and exchange gifts as planned. So Carrie & I had more leisurely time to finalize all of our gifts and wrappings and stocking stuffers and whatnot. I feel like something else happened during the afternoon, but I can't rightly recall now.

At 5:00 we headed to Mark & Viki's for their traditional Quebequois Christmas Eve dinner. It was basically the same menu as Last Year, which is A-OK with us! Delicious as always. We brought a cheese ball with us for the hors-d'ouvre table, and Nancy & Brian had their new-ish (seven months?) baby with them. It was the calmest, most docile baby I'd seen in a long, long time. It didn't even cry at the sight of me like most babies do at first! In fact, she actually let me hold her without even a fuss. I swear, a burglar could break into their house and ransack the whole place and she wouldn't make a fuss. The opposite of colic.

After dinner we went to Carrie's folks' house to stuff the stockings. As usual, there were about three times as many fully-wrapped stocking stuffers as there was room in the stocking.

Finally, after all that it was home, where Carrie & I exchanged gifts. Carrie gave me some nice new cargo pants; I gave her 'Twas the Night Before Christmas on DVD. It's her favorite Christmas special, but they hardly ever play it on TeleVision anymore, and when they do they edit out an entire song. So here it was, uncut and without commercial break!

Monday: Christmas

Christmas morning Carrie & I headed on over to my folks' place at 9:00 in the AM so we could (in this order) open stockings, have breakfast, then open presents. Bad news of bad news was that Susan had a horrible, vomitous stomach flu and did not think she would be able to make it, and therefore neither would Jason & Alexis (Carrie's very sympathetic response to his news: "It's Christmas; suck it up!"). We were unfortunately forced to plunge ahead without them.

Breakfast was the traditional Harris Family breakfast: Scrambled eggs, Mandarin oranges, li'l smokies, and orange rolls. We ate and ate and ate, especially Mike, who ate more li'l smokies than most of the rest of us combined. Man, what a great combination of breakfast foodstuffs.

Then it was prezzy time! The way it works in my family is that a present is given to each person there, then each person takes turns opening the present. These rounds continue until there are no more presents. It usually works out that all of one person's gifts are given out at once, i.e. in one round Mike will pass out the gifts that he got for everybody, then the next round Susan will, etc.

I got some cool stuff, including Mega Man ZX and TransFomers Season 2 Part 2. I also got a Hello Kitty waffle maker, which is extremely cute. Cute to the X-Treme! The coolest thing of all, though, was a new Nintendo wallet. Carrie got Project Runway Season 2, Stick It, and a new flax seed pillow (made personally by yours truly).

<INSERT PIC OF NES WALLET>

At 11:30 we trundled over to my grandma's place for her portion of the day, where I received some Batman comics (the ones based on the animated series).

Then at 1:00 it was off to Carrie's folks' house for their segment of the day. It began, as per usual, with opening of the ungodly number of stocking stuffers. I received one INCREDIBLE stocking stuffer from Carrie. I can't actually believe it's a stocking stuffer:

<INSERT PICS OF STOCKING STUFFER>

After the stockings was the exhausting process of opening the gifts. In this house, one person hands out one gift to each of the other people there, and then one to himself/herself. Then everyone opens their presents simultaneously and then shows them off to each other. There were many, many more rounds at Carrie's folks' house than there were at my folks' house, but it always ends up that way. And this was actually a smaller Christmas than last year!

Anyways, I ended up with more really cool things, including tonnes of geeky video game T-shirts, the complete Adventures Brisco County on DVD, and Yoshi's Island DS.

Carrie got a tonne of stuff as well, including Tetris DS (from me!).

After that I was very, very exhausted, so I took a nap in the later afternoon for an hour or two while the rest of the family played the card game "fascination." It took my entire nap for them to finish.

Around 6:00 was a very excellent dinner of goose, parmesan mashed potatoes, broccoli casserole, frozen cranberry salad, and Gulliver's corn (which I did not eat).

After dinner there was another card game, this one of Skip-Bo. I participated in this one (in fact I dealt), and came within two cards of actually winning it. By the time that game was done everyone said it felt like it was practically midnight, even though I don't think it was even 8:00 yet. The day had just been a marathon up to that point. But we decided to call it a night, not least of all because I was beginning to feel a cold coming on something fierce.

So we packed up all of the gifts from that house (so many bags) and headed exhaustedly on home, where we just lined the front of the fireplace with our un-packed gifts before going to bed.

Labels: Fools Play, Life, Pictures

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Decorate the Halls / The Solstice Christmas Special

Yesterday (Saturday) Carrie & I went out shopping at such places as Chéz Targét and J.C. Penny's. For Christmas stuff. Y'know. It is that time of year after all. Then we hit Trader Joe's and swung by a liquor store on the way home.

We both then spent much of the afternoon working on our gifts for the Bead Factory Christmas Party (which is tonight) as well as Early Christmas (which is tomorrow). I took a shower and then helped Carrie to make one of the Early Christmas gifts. I suppose I shouldn't say what it is yet.

Carrie made a really good Arroz con Pollo dish for an early dinner, then I went down to perform the Fools Play Christmas Special(s). Taisha was at the show this week! Hooray! We did (as always) two Rankin/Bass-style Christmas specials. The first one was called "Decorate the Halls" and was about the origin of Christmas decorations. Plot synopsis follows:

In the north Atlantic there was an island so remote that it had never even heard of Christmas. It was ruled by an evil Miser who lived in a manor on the edge of a volcano. He was superstitious and lacked common sense (as did everyone who lived on the island). Fearful that the volcano might some day erupt and destroy his manor (as well as the town below at which the volcano was aimed), the Miser had his Chief of Police (unfortunately named "Phallus") collect everything pretty in the town and throw it in the volcano to appease it. Therefore the town was a very drab place.

One day a fisherman from this drab island caught something strange: a magic fish that could turn anything into valuable and beautiful gems and precious metals. Realizing that he couldn't take the Fish back to the Drab Island (for the Fish was so splendid that it would be thrown in the volcano right away), the Fisherman rowed away to parts unknown.

The Fisherman soon came upon the home island of the Fish, where it could talk and sprout legs. They realized they had to somehow stop the Miser from destroying everything beautiful, and they decided to set off to find some help. They rowed into the Forbidden Fog and got quickly lost.

Soon they stumbled upon an island populated by boring, nerdy scientists, who believed in reason. Realizing that his people had no ability to reason (why else would they think throwing stuff in a volcano would keep it from erupting?), the Fisherman and the Fish gathered Dexter Clayton III and they decided to go back to Drab Island, where Dexter's reason would conquer the Miser's superstition.

However, since they had to pass through the Forbidden Fog they got lost again and ended up at the North Pole. It was so beautiful there that the Fish's ability to make things prettier didn't work; there was no way to make it any prettier! Dexter Clayton III stumbled upon Santa's workshop. Santa was surprised to see anybody because it was still 10 months until Christmas. Dexter explained the predicament, and after inspiring Dexter with the Christmas spirit, Santa gave him, the Fisherman, and the Fish a sleigh ride back to Drab Island.

Meanwhile the Miser and Phallus had run out of pretty things to throw in the volcano. Miser realized that the island was still covered in trees, and they were pretty, so they proceeded to chop them all down and throw them in the volcano. All of the trees except for one, that is. There was one tree near the center of the island whose trunk was so thick that there existed no saw long enough to cut through it. The Miser decided to use explosives to fell the tree, but he and Phallus had so little common sense that they kept on exploding the bombs early, damaging only themselves and not the giant tree.

Just then Santa dropped our three heroes off at the island. Dexter Clayton III realized that he could use all those explosives to make a breach into the volcano's magma reservoir, so that when it did erupt all of the lava would spew harmlessly out to see instead of all over the island. He and the Fish stole the explosives and did just that. When the Miser saw that his manor and island were saved by reason, Dexter was able to convert him away from superstition and over to the side of reason.

The Fish then made the giant tree to be covered in gems and baubles and beautiful things. And then in turn the Fish made the entire island just as splendid to behold. It was so beautiful that the islanders decided to decorate their island just like that once every year. Since Santa was the one who delivered Dexter, the Fisherman, and the Fish to the Island, they decided to decorate every Christmas in his honor. Also, they ate the Fish because it was being really annoying and kept randomly turning people's body parts into heavy metals.

Then every year the islanders would go to another island and teach them how to decorate for Christmas. And that island in turn would tell two more island, which would each tell two more islands, and so on until the whole world knew how to decorate for Christmas

When I type it out like that, it sounds frighteningly accurate to a real Rankin/Bass special. Except for the Police Chief being named Phallus. And them eating the fish at the end.

Then Mike did an Island of Misfit Toys bit, which are always rather funny. This is when Geoff showed up from his Nutcracker performance. I briefed him on the second special and he performed in it. It was a cautionary tale about how you should beware of the other holidays that happen around the same time as Christmas. This one was about watching out for Solstice:

A very Christian father tells his increasingly homosexual son about Solstice: A long time ago, the moon didn't wax and wane as it does now. It was always full.

Since only idiots don't worship Jesus, a whole bunch of them banded together to form a Council of Idiots to decide what to worship instead, and they eventually settled on worshiping the moon. A Roman Centurion overheard them, and ran and told Yum-Yum the Christian-Eating lion. If these idiots succeeded in converting people to their pagan worship of the moon, then there would be no more Christians for the lion to eat! So the lion set out to stop them.

The idiots made their way to the moon by way of a tube, though exactly how was never really explained. They asked permission from the moon to live on it and worship it, and it said that'd be okay. They were idiots, though, and they were worried that Yum-Yum might find them, so they asked the moon if it could disappear. Slowly, in phases. Also, they convinced it to hide behind the earth on the longest day of the year so it would be hidden for the longest possible time.

Yum-Yum noticed the moon slowly disappearing and made his way to the moon via the tube (somehow), and attacked the pagan idiots there. Being idiots, they all threw themselves in Yum-Yum's mouth. But since Yum-Yum was a Christian-eating lion, the pagan idiots were like poison to him, and he vomited them up and was defeated.

And that's why pagans celebrate solstice, in remembrance of when a bunch of idiots defeated a lion on the moon during the longest day of the year. And six months later the shortest day of the year happened, and since they were idiots they celebrated then.

Whoo! That one was not at all like a real Rankin/Bass special, but it was very, very funny. At one point the Father and his Son sing this song:

When a fork touches a spoon down there It gets embarrassed And that's what we call Buffoonery soup!

Good times. Afterwards we all went out to Rib Eye as usual. Some people were saying they still didn't have power, like Leia & Kedar.

Since Taisha isn't going to be at the show next weekend, I gave her her Christmas gift early. I gave her a Ghostie Pint Glass. She lubbed it! She gave me one of those Kinder Eggs. It had a samurai monkey inside. Tiare also gave me a gift, a light-switch frame with raw chickens doing Olympic sports, and a couple of cool magnets.

Labels: Fools Play, Life

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Saturday, December 20, 2008

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

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Home Cookin'

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Wednesday, June 06, 2007

S/M/T

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Year of the Cone

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

A Wonderful Weekendly of Deliciously Horrible Food

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Maim-more-ial Day Bleak-end

Monday, May 21, 2007

Where Carrie? Where is Her?

Sunday, May 20, 2007

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Sunday, May 13, 2007

Special Delivery!

Grindhouse (2007)

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Insert Coin to Continue

Sunday, April 29, 2007

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Monday, April 23, 2007

Fish & Photos

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Eva's B-Day Par-tay

Monday, April 16, 2007

Whotta Week!

Sunday, April 08, 2007

FOOLS PLAY IS FREE THIS SATURDAY!
You'd Better Come See It…