I am so lame. I was Featured User again over at Red vs Blue and I missed it completely.
OK instead of laying out the Belushi monologue of “Its not my Fault”, I will tell you I have been busier than a one legged man at a soccer match (wow! how sensitive is that?!).
I have been building a theater set for a play called “Die, Mommie, Die” by Charles Busch at Silver Spring Stage. Its a fairly simple set except for 2 things:
1) The main focal point of the play is a set of stairs the the main character likes to be ‘Dramatic’ upon (ala Scarlet O’Hara or any of the long grand stair entrances). Nice idea. Now imagine trying to build a stair case in a theater that has a ceiling of 8 and one half feet. Not so much a stair CASE and a stair…singular. I have worked it out to make a curved set of 3 stairs. I told the Director he wasn’t allowed to cast anyone 6′ 6″…So he cast 2 people…one 6′5″ and the other 6′4″ I told him I would not pay for band aids from all the bumped heads.
2) Building a set requires a certain need to actually be able to get to the stage to build the damn thing. That was next too impossible with the blizzard convergence we had a few weeks ago here in Washington DC. Oh the laughter we had…
I say laughter, but it was much more like that scene with Jack Nicholson in “The Shining”. The fact that I was carrying an axe, and I did say “Here’s JOHNNY!” did not reinforce that. Everyone else in the metro area was in full on stir crazy mode!
But we are almost caught up, I need to lay out some carpet and fix a door or 2 and the construction part is done.
Speaking of Crazy, here is my opinion of snow at the moment:
I say crazy also because this weekend “The Crazies” opens. It is a reinterpretation of the George Romero ’70’s film. I don’t know anything much about the film…except that IF there is a flamethrower in the movie…it is the same one as I have pictured. Its funny when you sit around a Christmas party and someone says “what I really need is to find someone with a flamethrower…” and its even funnier to actually have a picture of one on your blackberry and be able to say “You mean like this!” So yes I introduced the special effect guy from the movie to an acquaintance that happens to have a flamethrower.
I might want to see the whole original before seeing the new one…but then again I might never get the time.
It must be bad if I am getting around to posting on the site here.
I do have ideas for the site but moving them from thoughts to reality is not easy for me. I am trying to straighten out my rather cluttered life and help Garrett with the same thing. So this site could be used for GOOD or it could be EVIL!
Luckily I have my bud Mollie up here from Durham and she is helping to get the house in a working order. Which is good because we are pretty well stuck in here.
So if you have ever seen my one whole Youtube post of Star Wars Droids meets Indiana Jones you may know that Garrett has more than a little fascination with 2 things – Star Wars and Legos. (note there are other things but these events are present but next to impossible OR observe. We are applying for a grant at CERN to see if we can slow him down enough to watch)
So with that at some point I will do more because he wants to know how to make them. But as soon as the legos come out…it becomes a lot of running in circles and explosion noises and “Daddy! Look at this! Indiana Jones now has clone trooper legs and he cut the head off of Jar Jar”. I will admit a certain kinship to that, or a good burning. But I digress.
So A certain section may become dedicated to Stop Motion and Lego Stop Motion. If I can get the goods away from Garrett.
Also I would like to dedicate a certain amount of this site to my other life a a Teaching assistant at Montgomery Community Television, also known as AMTV19 and AMTV 21. I really want to pump the website to get more traffic its way. It is really a hidden gem. I say that because my friend Cliff is now getting it into a work piece that.
But I teach the Studio there and I think in a long drawn out way I feel like having a site, blog, tube, that explains it to me and everyone else may be a check in the good column. Now of course, at first, this will be a summary of the Access Montgomery studio control room. That is my focus. I also do sets and lights but that is much more theory for a web tube.
But who knows maybe someday when the snow melts I will be bored again and do something about all this.
So Autumn is my favorite time of year. It reminds me of the only good thing there is for carrying around the extra 10 inches of polar bear insulation around. I never minded feeling a little chill but now days it seems my joints are protesting and forming discussion groups without me. I am worried they are going to go on a sit down strike.
Sam has now learned a valuable life lesson from our cat Tokui. She wakes up in the morning and drags a comforter to the vent in the dining room and sleeps there until my carcass gets out of bed. Mind you the cat is none to happy about this being old and curmudgeonly at the loss of the warmest place in the house. Gar just becomes more zombie like.
I am becoming narcoleptic after all the physical activity of late. If the words “I will just lay my head down for a second” pop into my head; I should run to the nearest defibrillator and hook myself up. At Williamsburg this last weekend I said “Dinner isnt for an hour and a half, Ill just close my eyes for a sec…” 10 hours later I realized I missed dinner; I slept on for another 5+ hours. Is this important?
But after the MS walk and next weekend doing Williamsburg in bad Rev war shoes, I have only a few shots of back pain. More notable are the bones in my feet are aching, but even that is better than the normal.
So this was, as my logorrheaish son would say, the “BEST DAY EVER”! I can temper that comment by saying really it does rank as a one of the best. I can sum it up in one word…
The SURLY cross check is a cyclocross bike that fits my need to have something fast for the road, but is sturdy enough to hold up to the abuse I can level on a bike. Cyclocross races look like a blast, but I need to get my broken down self back into working condition before anything else.
I got the bike Monday night and played around yesterday. Today was the real deal, a commute to work.
This picture was an afterthought. I had happily ridden off, made it out about 2 miles then remembered I forgot my I.D. badge to get into work. SOOOOO what does any out of shape, busted up guy do? Continue on and get a visitor badge? NO! He turns around and rides home, gets his I.D. and camera and the camera clamp and logs his first day in. My normal 6.5 mile commute turned into a 10-11 mile commute. And I didn’t drop my bike why playing with the camera.
I felt great on the bike. It tore up hills that I hated on my Mountain Bike. On the flat ride of Beach Dr the bike almost felt like it was doing all the work.
I was hoping that a new bike would get me motivated to get back into it. Well if this mornings ride is the average, I think it will. OK maybe if you read a post next week, I can make a better call.
But he just thinks they are the best, and I really like them too. Well Garrett had a great weekend of actually seeing them in person. They used one of his stories and did a little show for him. It was just hilarious. I can see what John Stewart likes about them. If you dont know about them, it is an Improv group based out of the Drama Bookshop in NYC. Their mission is to encourage creative writing in schools. I was told that they performed at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, and that they will be back in September.
I wish there was something I could show you pictures but I forgot my camera.
Here is the only picture I have from the Blackberry of Garrett. All the others involve Garrett moving at Warp Factor 3. He was more than excited.
I am hoping they put something up on Youtube or some such. I am going to get a DVD of the show, but who know when I will get it.
But here is a little something to tide you over during these tough economic times.
It is interesting to see what makes us do the things we do. Not the ultimate underlying reason but the little day to day things.
Garrett went to see Star Trek with me on Saturday night. He really liked it, which is good because I would hate the extra therapy bills from the behavior modification I would put him through. But the telling thing was, I hate to say, from the previews. The preview from “Transformers: revenge of the Fallen” came on. Well I knew it ma be a bit scary for him, but he kept ducking and watching. So I asked him what he thought about it. He said it was scary but he wanted to watch the movie because it was “COOL”. That really struck me as to what motivates him. Here is a boy who wont walk on the grass for fear of mushrooms (Mycophobia), and of late I have found out he is ursaphobic (fear of a bear market…no..I mean fear of being attacked by bears while camping). But he wants to see a movie because its got COOL robots and stuff. I am soooo glad I dont do irrational things. OR DO I.
I am riding my bike again. OK it is the total of 2 days but we have to start somewhere. But I had to think back to why did I start commuting to work by bicycle. I always liked bikes. I used to do stupid stuff in college on bikes. But I was off them for a LONG time. Started up some not serious biking around Frederick MD in the early 90’s at NCI because our lab shut for a few months. But that when I got the Masters degree, so not really commuting 37 miles to work kind of biking. More like take a long lunch and bike some of the mountain trails.
What got me to really start was a particular Doctor I worked with when I started at NCI Bethesda. I will put his name here because I want him to know that I blame him for this. Dr Graham P. Hayhurst of Institut Pasteur and I will put it again so Google finds it more relevant Dr Graham P. Hayhurst of Institut Pasteur. He is the wanker who goaded me into commuting from Twinbrook into NIH. Not sure if its a British thing but I really think he was setting me up for a competition with money involved. Then I found out that John Condray was commuting into NIH further than I had to go, then I found there was a fellow in the NIH Bicycle Commuter Club that commutes in from out in Fairfax. I cant complain about my 13 miles from Aspen Hill. Its less than the Twinbrook commute, and Beech Drive is real pretty this time of year. But being embarrassed into riding, is that a good reason to do something? I actually want to thank Graham alot, Merci! your still a wanker.
Samantha did her play this weekend. She also did a 100 degree fever. The Gazette did a nice little article on the play.
She now says she can never do theater again because plays end and she didnt want it to end. She suffers from mild stage fright but still got up there and did it. She did because she didnt want it to end? kinda makes my brain hurt. Wow…I guess I am more neurotic than I thought (wait isnt that a neurosis in itself?). I think we can put it down to fever and stress and a long rehearsal run. But I am incredibly proud of her and all the kids, they did a great job. Amazingly good from a middle school production.
I want to leave this on a why I became a scientist. And again I point to XKCD the webbie that really understands me.
