Category: Life

Last night we were again treated to a discussion group, led by Richard and his famous answering a question with a question to show you already knew the answer technique, but just hadn’t reasoned it through. Also mixed in the pot was some nifty historical details that most likely had escaped casual notice.

After Richard left, I snagged Mike, Tamara, and Danny and we all went to 7-11 to get slurpries. We even got one for Michele, whom on return was doing puzzles from Johnathan’s gifted and talented class.

We watched an episode of the Outer Limits and then talked Danny into a game of Ice Towers. Michele joined us and stomped us; after that it was difficult to tell which strategy was working, but we always had a clear winner.

Danny took off and I showed Michele some logic books with interesting puzzles in them. She stayed up pretty late working on them.

Danny’s got me all worked up on creating a new game extension for a popular game we both enjoy very much. The trick will be to see how much of Danny’s time I can snag before he takes off.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go to The Big Apple Circus dress rehearsal, thanks to Michele Henderson.

The Big Apple Circus tends to work it’s way around, and I was pretty disappointed when they stopped going to the Reston Town Center because a huge building was put on the lot they used. That disappointment completely vanished when the new home for this area’s visits was in front of Dulles Town Center, minutes away from my back yard.

The acts this year didn’t seem to deal with death defying feats of dropping from the roof, nor did they derive from artsy-fartsy origins. Instead they came from raw skill. That meant that a lot more things could go wrong, and wrong they did.

Jugglers dropped things — but it was still so amazing you just didn’t care. One guy worked his way up a ladder while twirling it, however he fell on three different attempts and threw in the towel. On one occasion he fell, carried the ladder, and swooped it over the audience. The problem there was that I was holding a standing baby, and he was coming right at her head level — he didn’t see her until the last moment.

Luckily, I managed to lower the baby, and he stopped his swinging arc mid stream right as he got over my wife’s head. The baby was a near miss. My bet is that part will be cut from the act, or at least he’ll be looking before he swings in the future.

Finally, in the “did I lose my job” department, when one of the trapeze artists dismounted into the net, the net collapsed at one corner, and he grazed the ground. It was obvious the safety manager in the corner was really pissed, and he aborted the rest of the act, sending people down on ladders. This meant the troop had actually been working without a net and didn’t know it. Someone was going to get a reaming when the audience left.

All in all, we had a really good time — we sat up front, and Mike got to interact with “Grandma” (a clown). Grandma had been splashed in the face a few times, and after being unable to seek revenge on another clown, he enlisted Mike’s help. Mike threw the water at Grandma instead.

It’s very interesting to observe the mechanics behind the art. We were so close, and there were so few people in the tent, that it was possible to hear the instructions as they conversed. You’d think the clown would be using a silly voice or miming action. Nope. Just a regular calm voice, but where you’d expect dialog, instructions were being passed instead.

Grandma walked toward our row, as he homed in on Mike, he said “you, please stand up” – Mike did. And as he was acting silly, in the calmest voice you heard “I’m going to hand you a glass of water, then point at him, when I do, you throw just the water at me.” Mike followed instructions exactly on cue as instructed, and the rest of the tent out of earshot burst into laughter.

When the clown returned with a hose to exact revenge, Mike did an improv and grabbed the nearest daughter to use as a human shield. The crowd loved it, the clowns laughed, and the daughter crossed her arms — she didn’t realize it was all an act. A few cheers of “good job!” to her ear, and she caught on and went back to sucking in the circus experience.

Thanks for everyone who showed up last night to the Buffy and Smallville party.

Originally, Tamara and I decided we were going to do a date night since two of our favorite season premiers came on. Since Danny was stuck at the castle by his lonesome, we invite him over too.

I had mentioned to James that I needed help with X-Windows, and offered dinner in payment, however he had plans with Pete who’s in town doing training. But, he committed to a strong maybe after the pizza thing in Tyson’s was over.

Passing the news, Pete got the invitation just in time, but didn’t feel that comfortable bailing out on his new friends, and so got permission to bring them. How was I not surprised they were all female?

By this time we had critical mass, and Tamara decided to turn this into a welcome to autumn party. When I got home, she and the Hendersons had decorated the house in fall attire, including corn-cob wreaths on the door!

Tamara made two huge lasagnas and Danny brought over some sodas. People started showing up around 6:30, so we took in the season finale of Smallville.

Alan managed to make it out of NIH a little later than normal, but got there before Buffy started. On his way over, who did he see pulling into her driveway but Bonnie! The two rode over, and Bonnie shared with us her recent daily adventures.

Tamara got a call from Michele who had a status report about SAIC, and since there was enough time, extended an invitation to her and Mark. They took us up on it, and about 40 minutes they showed up with the most amazing cheese cake you’d ever tasted.

I was starting to feel like a real schmuck, because earlier that day I had talked to Jim by phone: Pete had called him and told him there was a party at my place, and I just flat out denied it. I even put a post on WWCo to see how far Jim would take the bait.

As I was about to call Jim, guess who drove back from Roanoke! Laurie made a surprise visit, apparently arranged by Tamara, as a surprise for Danny. Danny had found another roll of pictures and brought over photos from DC with Tamara and Michele in them that we hadn’t seen yet. He’s still waiting on two more to get developed.

Chris called with a Linux question regarding Apache, and it didn’t seem right ignoring the guests, nor did it seem right to not extend an invitation to our spaghetti night hosts. So we did. And they accepted, bringing Doug (who was visiting) with them.

Excluding the Hendersons, we had 16 people there. When Buffy came on, house rules requested silence, and we watched it and Smallville, only having to use the TiVo once to pick up something that was missed. I have to point out this wasn’t the fault of anyone, but rather we all couldn’t understand the zombie like ghost thingy taunting Buffy, so we had to turn on closed captioning for a moment. It was basically your old “you can’t save her, you didn’t save me” threat.

Michele H. came home from work early, apparently they had a corporate meeting offsite. She hadn’t gotten the news about the party, but clued in with as many cars packed around our house as there were. I felt kinda bad she had to park further away than normal. She happened to come in a few minutes after Smallville started and joined us.

When the shows were over, we pulled out the ice-cream and watched the bonus materials on Monster’s Inc., which included the new short “Mike’s New Car.”
Dan brought over his Outer Limits DVD with four travel episodes on it, and we watched one about the holocaust.

Afterward we broke out Robo Rally and had a timed game of capture the flag. Chris won, but only because he pushed my robot into a conveyor belt when Michele shot me and I had a choice to either move or heal. It was be dead, or come in second.

It started getting late, but Bonnie asked if we could play the game we did at her Chalet, so we did. It was much more fun with a larger crowd. So, I introduced the mafia variant to the group. I tell you, you folks are just plain evil.

People finally started leaving around 12:30am and we kicked the last out at 1:00pm. That’s when it dawned on me, due to all the distractions, we never got to call Jim or Loralie back.

I’m sure I’ll hear about it today, cause you know, if there’s a party, they always HAVE to be invited. 🙂

Let’s see if I can recap all that’s happened this weekend.

Thursday I got to demo some cool source code I’d be dinking with, during which Pete called and confirmed he was coming up for the weekend. He’s got training this week in Tyson’s Corner.

Meanwhile, my wife, James, and Alan had been helping Jim move stuff all day from his apartment to his new townhouse. I got there just in time to help the guys move, transport, and carry the heavier furniture.

I’m not sure if there’s a conspiracy going on or not, but kind of like the hot dog makers don’t seem to have any form of communication with the hot dog bun makers, when it comes to packaging counts, so it seems with house builders and furniture makers.

After getting the smallest sofa Jim had into the house by literally turning it on end and stuffing it through a small door-frame, crushing Jim’s fingers in the process, we actually toyed with the idea of lifting his larger sofa onto the roof of his van and hauling it over the balcony.

It seems home makers simply make doors too small for furniture and standard appliances to go through, and when you do get them to budge, they won’t go down the hall or up the stairs, and when you do get them that far, you can’t navigate them around corners, banisters, and hand railings. Heaven help him if a new kitchen stove or refrigerator is needed.

Apparently while I was at work, Tamara spent her day helping Jim clean his apartment as to retain the security deposit. She’s such a sweetie. Friday evening Shawn rolled in for a military event the next morning. We got the gang together and went to Unos. The music was too loud, they’ve switched from Coke to Pepsi, and Shawn couldn’t get them to make a milkshake — no wonder the place is vacant.

We managed to talk Michele H. into joining us, too. Turns out, we’ve got to watch out for her. I was telling Tamara that one of my favorite authors had just come out with a new book, and that I’d like to pick it up. Saturday morning when we woke up, Michele had snuck out extra early, grabbed the book, and had it waiting right outside our bedroom door. I was extremely touched; we were planning on doing the same to her, but she beat us to it!

Saturday Tamara and I were extremely sore, by then all the moving and lifting had finally kicked in. See, not only does Jim have good taste in matching furniture, he also goes for sturdy and multi-functionality. At least one of those sofas had a portable bed in it, so we were lugging a lot of iron disguised as a hollow wood frame.

Figuring that Jim had been burdening a lot of the mental and physical load, I suspected he was probably running on empty. So, I took him out for an all-Jim-could-eat dinner. We got potato skins smothered in cheese, chicken platters, milk shakes, sodas, water, beef kabobs, and the like. Jim managed to get the best seat in the house, offering the best view of eye-candy.

Sunday morning Pete arrived. He’s got training in Tyson’s Corner this week, so he’ll be around until Wednesday. Pete needed some distraction time, so we got in his car and drove to Springfield Mall to hit the Time Out.

Pete, Tamara, and I managed to shove in a little over $25 into Gauntlet, only to have our tooshies fried by a huge red dragon at the end of level one. Tamara made it to a 7th level yellow-person, but even then it wasn’t enough.

We did a little shopping and found a little book store, a great gaming store, and swung into a few other interesting places as well. We even got assaulted by a vendor trying to sell us head massagers shaped like a wire octopus.

In another TimeOut, we blew $5 on saving StarTrek’s Voyager from being over run by Borg. We were pretty successful at the shoot’em’up, but when we boarded the Borg ship we had to make a command decision. Which was more important: saving the lives of hundreds of innocent crew men, or tending to the calling of our bellies. Hunger won.

So, off we went to eat at TGI Friday’s in Springfield. I used my power coupon card again, and the entire meal for the three of us was $1.83. I can’t recall when I’ve had a charge that low put on my charge card, especially for a three person meal.

We did a little exploring for Pete as well, locating his hotel and also where he was to go for training. Just as it was physically draining for us, it was emotionally draining for Pete. Rather than get together in a big group, we opted to keep it small and simple.

We watched the shorts and bloopers on Monsters Inc. and decided to do some games instead.

I brought out a new game called Ice Towers, which involves taking multiple sized pyramids that stack and trying to capture progressively growing towers made by your opponents. There’s a trick, however: there are no turns and there is no official end to the game (the players just have to know). It doesn’t require speed or dexterity, just a lot of real-time strategy on a dynamic, unorganized playing field.

Michele H. saw us and joined in. After several rounds, we switched to Flux — where the rules keep changing as the game progresses. When that ended, we went to Aquarius, and Pete and I kept zapping cards and swapping goals. Then we brought out Twitch. Now we were throwing colored cards into a popcorn bowl as fast as we could, only player order was important. Thing were fine until left meant right and right meant left; this was enough to confuse Michele, but in the end she won after a few rounds. Then we flipped to Plague and Pestilence, and no sooner than we started, the Ship’O’Death pulled into port and we all got killed off, except for Tamara’s population of five people making her the winner.

The was five different games, brand new to many, played in the course of about two and a half hours. We went to bed exhausted.

Pete said he wanted to be occupied, it was just unclear how much the rest of us would be sucked into the fun!

This had to have been one of the best weekends I’ve had in a good long while. I had quite a number of hours banked up at work, so I was able to beat traffic home. My wife and I got to spend some time together as she wasn’t swamped with projects, and she had made substantial advances on the landscaping while I was at work. Meanwhile the roofers showed up and had repaired the hail storm damage.

On Saturday, Mark, Michele, Jim, Loralie, Tamara, and I went to Six Flags for the SAIC picnic. Jim and I started the day doing roller coasters, then we all got together for lunch and ate more ice-cream, popsicles, and soft-drinks than a human should, and then went on a few more rides coasters for good measure.

Superman, Bat-Wing, Joker’s Wild, and Two Face were the hits of the park for those of us who were willing to let our feet off the ground.

We went home bruised and totally exhausted when my cell phone reported 46 calls. Apparently my brother-in-law went to join up with us… only he headed to King’s Dominion. Oops.

Then the next morning Danny, Laurie, Alan, and Michele showed up on my doorstep at 8:00am and we all rode out to the Maryland Renaissance Festival and spent the whole day there watching shows, eating bread bowls filled with soup, downing smoked turkey legs, and tossing back sodas. I took lots and lots of photos to commemorate the day — I guess Danny is rubbing off on me.

With digital cameras, film is cheap (think about it for a second), so I walked around the whole day taking pictures of people, costumes, animals, scenery, skits, and of course us. Whatever was blurred to the point of non-recognition or was just simply unflattering, I simply deleted. Just under 180 pictures survived and are pending distribution to the group.

As with the coasters, there were some notable high points in this day as well. This had to be the first time ever I’ve gone and not see O Fool’s show. The format of it changed, and there are three things that strike me as problematic. The first is that during setup time there is an awful lot of dead time happening on stage — you don’t get to see what’s happening and there’s no actor out there. The second is he’s given up a lot of stage time to his son, but O Fool is the accomplished actor; this destroys the contiguous flow that once was there in prior versions. The third is that for portion of his skits, O Fool is wearing a mask to emulate other characters; this covering up his face is a sincere disservice to himself, as it blocks out virtually all of the non-verbal communication which is a necessity for his show.

But this left us with more time to catch some other acts, two of which were Shakespeare Scum and The Bloody Theater (which had nothing to do with Blood whatsoever). The former does plays at lightning speed (sometimes in reverse) with several strange twists, and usually once someone forgets their lines it all spirals out of control. The latter starts deliberately out of control and goes into straight improv for the whole show. The featured actor there is “Bob” who, by all accounts, is the “nicest guy” both on and off the stage.

We spent quite a while talking with Bob after he was done for the day. We walked away with the feeling of “Bob’s a nice guy.” I don’t know whether he just has a high tolerance for annoying audiences or whether the Dana Carvey smile planted on his face genetically gives him an advantage over the rest of us.

The 70% chance of rain that was supposed to flood us out, but was stayed by the poncho’s hidden on our persons, managed to scare off the majority of the crowds. There were ever slight sprinkles to keep the heat down, but nothing that constituted rain in its own right. Only after we were in the car and heading home did the skies unleash the furry.

Once home I was way too tired to go get something to eat and curled up on the floor watching Lathe of Heaven on A&E. I’d been trying to finish that show for about 2 weeks; thanks to TiVo, I could slice it into pieces and do so in my spare time.

This weekend has set new highs for being able to hang out and jam a lot of fun and excitement into a 48 hour period.

Last night I came home from a busy day at work, and got a pleasant surprise: I didn’t have to wait 3-7 hours to see Tamara. It rekindled that warm feeling inside knowing that I’d no longer be coming home to an empty house.

That said, she had a really rough day, and a rougher weekend, and through it all managed to get by without sleeping. I figured it best not to disturb her than to see if she was up to taking Jim up on his invite for BBQ at his place. She was zonked and I went alone.

That spawned a second surprise. Jim answered the door immediately — no muffled ruffling, muted calls of “hang on a sec,” and no awkward moments of “did you know this was on the sofa?”

He and I hung out and chatted, joked, and had a blast. It was like GNO all over again, and it was Monday to boot.

Jim cooked a fantastic (and I do mean FANTASTIC) steak dinner on a small grill out on his balcony. As we pondered whether or not this was actually permitted, Striptease started playing on FX.

I know what you’re thinking… I know… “These two fine, young men of upstanding stature and roles as model citizens will most certainly advert their eyes and change the channel.”

Well, we didn’t.

The reason we didn’t was that we saw no conceivable way that FX would be able to show any skin-scenes from the movie, and bluntly put, that’s why the movie was made. It was an excuse for Demi Moore to get naked, held together by a weak plot.

Whoever did the editing at FX deserves a bonus, if not a promotion. They snipped, and cut, and edited, and panned, and used every editing trick at their disposal to present a G rated version of Striptease. Now here’s the interesting part: it was better than what came out in the theaters.

The pacing was better, it wasn’t distracting, the story was more cohesive, and her ‘job’ didn’t get in the way. It reminds me of the Star Wars: Episode 1 that was re-edited by a fan for his personal enjoyment; by cutting out the junk, fluff, inconsistencies, (and Jar-Jar) he made the movie into a masterpiece.

Someone outside of the copyright jurisdiction could really make a mint by opening “Cutting Room Cinemas Presents…”

And, tying this all together nicely, given that the theme is my-wife-is- available and also movies, there’s a really good chance I’ll get to go to spaghetti night with her again on a more frequent basis!

This Friday I got word from my sister that her husband was going to be working a really long shift, and as such she wanted to come up and visit with her two kids. Since Tamara has been working her butt off since as long as I can remember, I knew it was going to be up to me to entertain the lot.

Luckily for me, Madison and Marni hit it off really well, and that lessened my load considerably. Picking up and tossing one three year old is a lot of work, according to my lower back — but surprisingly put two of them together, and you just have to herd them rather than entertain.

Unfortunately, we forgot to clear *all* the monsters out of the house, so when Madison woke up crying from being chased by one, we had to move her to another room as not to wake the other kids.

In the morning, Mike caught a baby rabbit with his bare hands and we had a BBQ later that night. Perhaps I should add we let the rabbit go and ate cow instead.

In the morning (now Sunday in the story) my parents came over, and Marni had to go to church. Madison wanted to go very badly, and just didn’t understand why mom felt it so important to go home and see dad near the same time.

I taught Madison a new trick; after learning to drink from a straw, she now knows she can blow bubbles. She also knows if she blows really hard, she can make the liquid shoot out of the cup. With this knowledge, we went outside, and I showed her how to suck up water in a straw and then shoot it (or at least dribble it in a nasty mess). We practiced a lot.

Madison got so good she wanted to show grandpa. So, we egged my dad outside, but instead of shooting at the rose plants as we had done before, Madison unloaded a mouthful all over him. She’s now officially ready to send home to my brother-in-law. I bet she’ll be moved back to sippy cups within the week.

The evening concluded with my wife joining Mark and Michele in seeing Riverdance at Wolftrap. We started off the night with a picnic. One squirrel was acting a little weird, and was draping it’s self all over picnic tables, trash cans, and tree trunks the way a dog wipes it’s rear on a lawn when it has worms. Michele tried to ward off the squirrel by throwing food at it. It had about the affect you’d expect, the squirrel started stalking Michele until Tamara chased it off.

The show was fairly well, but the band looked further away and smaller (which usually happens when you put something further away). I don’t know what it is about Riverdance, but each show I see gets worse and worse. The timing between people is off, sometimes I swear I hear clicks and stomps when there is no activity (or the reverse), and symmetry and equi-distances just degrade. It’s unlike the very first show I ever saw.

It could be me, but it seems like the troop size is decreasing as well. I heard that in 2005 they’re returning with a cast of just five. And in 2009 it’ll just be one guy doing quick changes and running back and forth to simulate the appearance of multiple people on stage.

The best part came when we exited the theater and walked back to the parking lot close to the woods where we ate. I took my water bottle, snuck up behind Michele, ran it up the outside of her leg starting at the heel very quickly, and screamed out “Oh God it’s an attack squirrel!” Michele flipped and flailed screaming “Get it off me!” Yes, the squirrelhad targeted just her out the the crowd.

She paid me back by filling my shirt pocket with ice when we got back to her place. Which reminds me, I need to set up Tamara’s glass cutter.

This coming week you’re going to hear a rumors about my wife quitting her job. That much is true.

Be advised there there’s a handful of details that’s not in the public version.

Well, my wife came home announcing she had a LiveJournal. That was pretty much all I needed to see that if I was ever going to converse with the rest of the group, I’d need to jump on board the bandwagon as well. Just remember folks, this is how Microsoft sucked us all in; the next step in the evil plot, after giving away a free token, is to entice people other people to join, then when critical mass is hit, revoke the free token. Poof. Captive community.

I still intend on maintaining livejournal.wwco.com, but more as a migration project.

You guys can just look at this as me caving into social peer pressure, with the added benefit that I no longer have to be anonymous to you.

UPDATE (6-Feb-2006):  I did the LiveJournal thing on our servers, willing to pass out free full-featured accounts to anyone that wanted them.  Turns out that was an interesting social experiment… no one, save Danny, wanted one.  It turns out that LiveJournal has an established audience, and the authors there count on the perception that there will be voyers.  So, in fact, it was not about having an online diary after all.  The biggest hurdle was migrating content from the official LiveJournal site to the local one, a feature that was added a number of years later.  Since people were willing to pay (and for less features) to use an existing service, I’ve abandoned the project.  I’ve just finished importing my own LiveJournal entries into my blog, which seems to provide a much richer environment.

Actually, I was literally sick and tired. I didn’t get any sleep the night before and work up with one really bad dry throat. I ended up taking the day off and consuming cold medicine, which had the affect of knocking me out and leaving me dazed and groggy whenever I came to.

I’m not sure what the plans are this weekend, though I’ve gotten a number of calls and emails from people scheduling to do one thing or another all this month. I’ve stuck them into my online calendar and the WWCo events page, hopefully they’ll sort themselves out.