Archive for December, 2005
Funniest Joke Ever!
This is the greatest blonde joke ever. I’m still grinning!
The internet feeds my amusement once again.
Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes! (part two of a series)
Immediately following lunch, we had our one and only stage-time rehearsal. Our lines were in a pretty good state of known, and we were in a pretty good state of silly. When Eric(a) attacked me, (s)he leapt over a bench and I backed away before realizing that I was supposed to fall back. When I fell back, I was too close to the front row of chairs, and once again was attacked by a chair. Ow! “I’m fine! Let’s try that again.”
Between stage-time and tech, I managed to coerce Chris-with (not Chris-without, who was playing my boyfriend in the play) to help me learn my lines. She was a huge, huge, awesomely huge help for me when I had to learn the lines for Mrs. Antrobus in The Skin of Our Teeth, and she came to my rescue once again. She helped drill my lines with me while the other casts had their stage time.
Our tech began at 3:00 (only eight hours after I had arrived that morning and only six hours and fifteen minutes after the read-through). Everything was going quite well, until the end of the fourth scene. The scene ended, the stage went to a complete black out, and I exited. I got most of the way off-stage, and realized that I was also in the fifth scene and should have remained on stage. So I whipped around and ran back for the stage.
*BONK* Ow! “Who did I just bump into? I’m sorry!” Freddy replied, “It was me.” I apologized again, held up four fingers, and the tech went on. As soon as tech was over I begged our illustrious director to beg the techies for a less black blackout. We settled on a nice dark blue, and then I saw Freddy. The poor guy had a bump on his cheek just below his eye. I gave him a shiner! On the side of his face that he didn’t have an eye patch for!
I apologized and apologized. Some people laughed. His wife alternately threatened to take me out to the parking lot and asked me if she could take credit for it. I didn’t live it down. I’m still sorry! Freddy seemed to think it was funny… I hope so…
I promised Kelly, the tech director, that I wouldn’t hit my head more than five times. I’ll tell you now that I succeeded in that.
My knee hurt. I didn’t look.
Then, the waiting game began. Lines were rehearsed. The other two plays did their techs. Lines were forgotten. Lines were re-memorized. People who hadn’t gotten a single minute of sleep were walking around like zombies. Costumes were donned. Audiences arrived. The producer introduced the production and explained the insanity to the audience. And, we were on!
The audience laughed! Yay! The fight went relatively well, though I forgot to kick off a shoe and I did lose my hair band. A small thud may have been heard as I smacked my own head into the ground (while not even falling!). Diane still won the fight by hitting Eric(a) over the head with my shoe. I didn’t notice the pain.
We watched the two other plays, which were also very good. Then it was time to kick out the audience and clean up our mess. This went rather quickly, despite the overall lack of sleep in the room. I apologized to Freddy another twelve dozen times. I showed some people my dislocated kneecap. I accidentally relocated it while they were looking. They were not impressed. I felt a lot better.
And still, my ass hurt most.
We went out for dinner, a group of sixteen (which was about half of the people involved, the other half went to go watch some show or other or something). We amused and confused our nice waitress with our sleep-deprived humor. We went home. Sleep.
As I stood under the soothing hot water of the shower the next morning, refusing to move, lest the pain be too strong, I sang to myself, “Head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes!”
Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes! (part one of a series)
After dropping off my stuff in Riley Commons, the large room adjacent to the new Little Theatre, and picking up my script, I was told that we would not have access to that room after 9:00 AM. So I picked up my hangers full of clothes and my backpack, and went into the Little Theatre. It was pitch black with the exception of one light. I could spot someone shifting its cast around the floor, while a disembodied voice said, “Can you straighten out the bottom of that?” Ah… focus. Theatre is awesome.
I inched around the light’s cast and over to the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, I could see the glow from the ΑΨΩ ρκ Green Room. I rounded the corner half way down the stairs, just in time to see a glimpse of a hand closing the door. Of course, I was looking at the door, not my feet, and my next step sent my straight down on my ass. Ow! But I made no sound, clamored back up onto my feet, and reopened that door. I tiptoed around the overzealous cast that had already started their read-through, twenty minutes early, and hung my costumes on the rack.
It was barely 7:30 in the morning, I had gotten nearly four hours of sleep, I was freshly showered, and I had a freshly bruised ass. What a beautiful way to start the day!
I rubbed my ass as I hobbled back up the stairs, through the Little Theatre, and back into the Commons, where my director and fellow cast members were hanging around reading the scripts. I had already given mine its first read, and knew I was in for a wild, wild ride. I wondered allowed, “Do you think there’s a highlighter in the office?” to no one in particular, while walking up the stairs into the sketchy hallway. I peered into the Masque office, making sure no one was passed out on the sofa or carpeted floor. It was unoccupied, so I started rummaging through the desk drawers.
I saw a hint of bright orange, and grabbed at it. Victory! I marched out of the office, around the corner, and down the stairs into the Commons holding my conquest high in my left hand. I took it over to a table and began my highlighting.
Soon, we were all ready. I pulled my boots back over my calves and we all went on over to the dressing rooms next door for our read-through. We each played characters with our own names, which made things somewhat easier.
Diane is a mental health professional and caretaker of Freddy. “Freddy thinks he is a pirate all of the time.” Freddy’s brother Chris is dating Diane. Chris’ best friend Eric has split personalities. The dominant personality loves football, action movies, beef jerky, and nachos. The other personality is female, goes by Erica, and is a southern belle. Erica thinks she’s been dating Chris for several years. Chris doesn’t believe a word of it. “Freddy does miscellaneous pirate things.” Erica thinks that Chirs is a man she is “willing to give [her]self to.” Erica and Diane have a bitch-fight over Chris. Diane wins the fight, but Erica wins Eric’s body. Freddy “be a might confused.” Chris wonders who he is “going to drink beer and watch porn with.” Diane “like[s] beer.” Freddy helps up his new “playmate” Erica, and carries her offstage. “What kind of games are they going to play?” “Shivering the timbers.”
The play is hilarious in every way. It’s too bad you missed it.
Anyway!
We did a couple read-throughs before we had to move on to a different rehearsal space. The second space was the ΑΨΩ ρκ Green Room in the basement of the Little Theatre, which isn’t much larger than the dressing room we had just come from. But we started moving around anyway. The real blocking began in rehearsal three (which started forty-five minutes after the read-through ended… we move fast!).
Our first attempt at the bitch-fight was a lot of fun and games… until I smacked my head down on the ground. Ow! It hurt, but not too much not to try it again. Tuck in the chin. Don’t fall straight back. Victim is in charge of the battle. Stage fighting 101. I caught on pretty quickly, and learned how to fall and attack without getting hurt or hurting anyone else.
We took a break, during which I noticed that I had a nice rug burn on my left elbow. I decided I was glad I had a long sleeved shirt to wear on stage, and vowed to not take off my sweatshirt for the rest of the rehearsals. At our fourth rehearsal (two hours and fifteen minutes after the read-through ended) we did the first four scenes off book. It was pretty awesome. Between the fourth and fifth rehearsals, I tried to memorize the fifth scene (where I had the most lines). Due to my odd mechanisms for learning lines I didn’t learn the middle of the scene, but only the beginning and end.
Our fifth rehearsal is back in the biggest rehearsal room, so we resume practicing the bitch-fight. A chair was left in an inopportune place. My shoulder and my head clunked on it as I fell to the floor. “I’m fine! Don’t worry!” Ow! We work out some awesome funniness just the same.
Lunch followed that rehearsal, and I ate food that was really, really not good for me. I took a bruise count. It was high. But I didn’t feel any pain. Well, except for my ass. That still hurt from the early-morning stair incident…
White Knight
or… “Would You Like a Blizzard with That?”
When I woke up on Friday morning, the snow was already coming down. But I had things to do, and I wanted to be able to leave work early, so I got my ass in gear. I was out the door plenty early that I should have been able to leave at 3:30, given a normal full-day’s work and a standard length commute. Of course, I didn’t factor in the need to sweep the snow off my car. I did that, and was quickly… I mean very slowly like crawling… on my way.
The drive the work was uneventful, if ridiculously slow. My 12 minute commute upped itself to 35. But I did get there, and I carefully backed into a space so I’d be able to pull out forwards. I was the second person in. I decided to go chat with the first person who arrived, because I was seriously covered in snow and didn’t really want to sit in my chair until I dried off.
I told him about the evening’s plans. Mike’s company holiday party was that night, and we were supposed to get there at 6:00. He wasn’t sure if he was going to go in to work or just work from home, so I had to be prepared for all eventualities. We started making guesses as to who would be the next person to show up. We were startled to find out who it was!
The day crawled on by. At noontime, a bunch of crazies from the test department went out for lunch. In the blizzard. Crazies. When we got back upstairs from our cafeteria lunch, we stood by the window looking for our cars. I spotted mine, and it was completely devoid of snow! Everyone was jealous.
Mike IMed me and told me that he had, in fact, stayed home. But the weather was crappy, and we had to get to Boston for 6:00, so I should come home soon. I decided I’d leave at 3:00 and make up for it later. (Like today.)
When 3:00 came, I was scribbling some notes to myself so that I wouldn’t forget what I was doing come Monday. Mike IMed me to make sure I was leaving, and told me a sobering piece of information – my cell phone was at home on the coffee table. I am such an idiot! I told him I’d take route 9 home, rather than route 30, because 9 is straighter, so I don’t need to see as well.
I bundled up as best I could, grabbed my Rubbermaid box that my lunch had been in and my water bottle, and prepared myself for the zero visibility blizzard. Am I a moron? Why are you asking that?
My car was, as we saw before, not covered in snow, but that snow had to go somewhere. And “somewhere” was a big snowdrift in front of and over my car’s bumper. I swore a bit, and then realized that the person who was parked behind me had already left, so I would be able to back out through that space. Start the car. Throw the stuff in the passenger seat. Brush off the snow. Back in the car.
I pulled back, got stuck. Pulled forward, got stuck. Back. Forward. Rock, rock, rock, and roll! Back I went, and I carefully went on my way. I rolled through the stop sign in the parking lot, because I didn’t see anyone coming and I knew momentum was key to getting out of the unplowed parking lot alive. When I got to the road, I saw a car coming, and I had to stop. After it passed… doom.
My front tires of my front-wheel-drive Jetta were in the dip between the end of the parking lot driveway and the road. And they weren’t going anywhere. 1-R-1-R-rock-rock-rock-spinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. This is not good. I got out and surveyed the situation. I stomped down the snow in front of the tires, and got back in to try again. No good. Time for the four-ways! I brought out the brush and tried to push snow away from the tires. Several cars went by. I tried again. Still no good. I yelled and swore, and got out again.
I then noticed the door of the white F-150 opening behind me. The driver had a scarf wrapped around as a face mask and gauntlet-like gloves covering his hands. He came up and asked what was wrong. “I’m screwed.” Okay, I didn’t say that, but that’s how I felt. He offered to help me push. That didn’t work. He offered a bump. I heaved a sigh and said we may as well try. After several false starts, we were both on my way. I stuck my hand out my window into the white-cold and gave him a thumbs-up and a wave.
My hero.
My knight in shining white armor with a blue oval seal reading “Ford.”
I will never know your name.
Let’s Go to the Fair!
Saturday was the day we had been working towards on successive Tuesdays. It was the day of the Christmas Fair at church. And I had no idea what I had gotten myself in to.
Perhaps I should back up. On Friday night, I stopped by the church to drop off my cookies for the bake sale table. I went in through the back door, into the basement, and found myself surrounded by people putting out table cloths, putting up dangling snowflakes, organizing ornaments for sale, putting price tags on wreaths, and one nice lady trying to move a table by herself. I quickly set down my piles of cookies (9 dozen to the church, 4 for me, 20 for Mike – that’s a lot of cookies!), and helped her with the tables. This particular lady, Nancy, had been very nice to Kate and I during our forays into crafting at the church. She was responsible for the silent auction, and discovered that she needed another table. We set up the table cloth for it, and once I had put my cookies in the choir room along with the piles of pies, cakes, cookies, and other sweets, we started arranging the items.
I’m not entirely sure how I got myself so involved in this whole thing. Oh, wait, yes I do. Kate! She is in love with Christmas. When they talked about having workshops for making Christmas crafts, she knew we were going to have to be involved!
Next thing I knew, I had been volunteered to work at the silent auction with Nancy. Kate arrived at the church on Friday night about when I was going to go home to drop off her cookies. I was glad to see her, as it would help me actually walk out the door. We had to get sleep so we could be ready for Saturday’s insanity!
Kate came by at quarter-’til-nine to pick me up. She said she would have made me drive, but it was cold out, and her car was already warm. After a tremendously long three mile trip down Main Street, we were pulling into the parking lot, which already had several cars lined up in it. We made our way inside, and were immediately greeted by insanity.
One of the fair co-chairs had also been very nice to us on our Tuesdays with crafting. Her name is Kathy. There are a lot of Kathy’s at church, so everyone calls her by her full name. Kathy saw us come in and said, “You need aprons.” I had heard about these mysterious aprons, but didn’t know what they were or where to get them. Luckily, as Kathy wandered away to solve thirty-five other crises, another lady who we hadn’t met before showed us the way. She brought us to the chapel (which I didn’t know existed), where piles of aprons with a graphic poinsettia on them were laid out. Kate and I both chose a large apron, due to it having pockets, and went back out into the main hall of the basement.
We immediately started helping Nancy make sure that everything was set and ready to go in silent auction land. She had been up late the night before, preparing, so everything was in fact in perfect order. The bake sale room, however… they desperately needed help. Kate and I both went in to help put things in baggies and stick on price tags. Kate eventually got herself roped in to working at the bake sale, smelling sweets all day long.
At five-of-ten, the minister went up to the microphone and we all prayed together. Then everyone hurried themselves to their spots (I joined Nancy and another lady who’s name I don’t remember).
“Open the doors!”
They had tried to warn us about the people. That when the doors open they just come pouring in. But it really was a sight to behold. The silent auction tables were very near the doors, but blocked off a bit by the jewelry table. Those poor people were massacred! Their artfully arranged necklaces, bracelets, rings, and brooches were in disarray in seconds. But the money started pouring in!
It took people a little while to figure out what exactly our corner was for, but once they did, we had a constant stream of people. One of the first people over was a kid who found a gift certificate for a local fancy restaurant. He was very excited, and wrote down a bid for exactly how much money he had in his pocket. Throughout the day, he periodically checked back to make sure that his bid was still winning. He told us that it was his mother’s favorite restaurant and that he wanted desperately to take her there for Christmas. We spent most of the rest of the day quietly urging people to bid on other things.
The two most popular items were a handmade, reversible fleece blanket with Red Sox logos emblazoned all over it and a gift certificate for the 111 Chop House in Worcester. I decided that I was in the perfect position to snipe anything I wanted, but also decided that it would be unfair for me to snipe more than one thing. So I made it my goal to get the 111 Chop House certificate. I also put one bid on a pretty glass Nutcracker ornament, which was one of a set of five pretty ornaments. Those were also quite popular.
I did successfully snipe that certificate, for a 10% discount of actual value, and I also “win” the ornament. After we announced the “winners,” and the fair started winding down, I brought Mike out to check out the wreaths. He selected one of the ones Kate and I didn’t make, but we forgave him because we didn’t make any that had the particular color ribbon he liked. At this point, I realized that I forgot my check book.
Woops!
But with the magic of cars, I went home to get my checkbook, wrote out a couple checks to the Women’s Fellowship, pouted about how I had accidentally gotten involved in a “Women’s” group (ugh), and went home to crash. Okay, not really crash, we spent the rest of the day preparing for the purchase of our first live Christmas tree. And that was awesome. And here it is!
For the Sake of My Laziness
I’m posting this because I’m too lazy to make a separate web page to put these pictures up. I’m going to be acting in a Show in 24 Hours this weekend, but I will not be available for the “auditions.” The “auditions” in this case involve people parading around in costumes and the writers and directors seeing the costumes and looking for inspiration. So, these pictures are the three outfits I’ll be bringing with me on Saturday, so that the writers and directors can get inspiration for writing the show.
Yes, that’s right, the show is not yet written, and will not be complete until early in the morning on Saturday – at which point I will get a script and learn my lines by 6:00 PM. This is my third year of acting for these, and I think it’s a huge amount of fun. If you are interested in seeing a play that did not exist twenty-four hours before it was performed, check us out at the Little Theatre at WPI at 6:00 PM on Saturday. One performance only!
Now down to business.
Here we have a sundress with bright pink flowers and green stems and pink and green ribbons for a belt:
Here we have a “going out” outfit – red pants (they are actually much redder than the picture shows, I used my cell phone to take the pictures, forgive me) and a black boob shirt:
And here is the “work” outfit – kakhi colored dress pants and a purple, blue, green, and white striped buttondown shirt:
Fabulous.
Merry Christmas, Assholes
That title probably comes across wrong. Seriously, I do wish you a Merry Christmas. And I know it is not in the Christmas spirit to call someone an asshole. But I am finding it difficult to express my jealousy in any other way. Almost all of my favorite bloggers are on their way to Vegas for the World Poker Blogger Tour Winter Classic II. This, coupled with Nickerblog’s hiatus, leaves me with so very little to read!
As such, I’ve decided to get back into webcomics. I used to have a serious addiction to them, keeping up with 19 on a very regular basis with 6 on reserve that didn’t update as often. That’s a lot of comics. But being that I am a very easily distractible person, my obsessions turned to poker during the WSOP and I haven’t really looked back. Time that had previously been spent catching up on the archives of webcomics and pretending to try to learn how to draw was re-devoted to reading the backlogs of poker blogs, and I started playing poker online for real money (real pennies, but whatever). Yes, that’s right people, I’m obsessed with obsessions.
I really don’t know how long it is going to take me to catch up on six months of webcomic publication. I mean… some of these people update every day!
Now, don’t worry your little heads; I am sure I’ll keep up with my addiction to poker. I hope to have enough time to read everything in the morning, and if not, there’s always that down time that comes up while I’m compiling.
Actually, speaking of poker, I had a pretty good run of it this past weekend. I played three separate times for an hour or two each, almost entirely at Omaha 8. The best poker feeling: scooping a 25 big blind pot with the high and low nuts and two people raising and calling all the way to showdown. The worst poker feeling: realizing that you are in fact the sucker at the table. The stupidest poker feeling: being determined to get your money back from the shark who took your stack. An acceptable comeback feeling: placing second in a 5-handed SNG after the shark incident. A redemption feeling: doing the same shark thing so some fish smaller than you after returning to Omaha 8.
Back to the title of the entry, let’s talk Christmas. Last night, the Christmas tree was finally finished. We bought the living thing (yay real tree!) from Lowe’s on Sunday, and started with the lights, garland, star, and decorations that required no hooks. I lost the hooks I had bought in advance, so we had to go get new ones on Monday. We hung up the rest of the decorations then.
The tree skirt we got from Target on Saturday sucked. It had no hole cut out for the trunk of the tree, let alone the tree stand (and we got the biggest tree stand ever to be found). So on Tuesday, I went to JoAnn’s and bought six yards of red fleece, six yards of white ribbon, and twelve yards of magic iron-on stuff. When I got home, I cut everything to size and washed the fleece because it was very static-clingy and covered in various bits of other fabrics from the store. Last night, I finally assembled my beautiful tree skirt, using the magic iron-on stuff. It truly is magical! I’m so glad they had such a thing for idiots like me who cannot sew. Maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll put up a picture of the tree.
Other awesome Christmas things happened at the church Christmas fair on Saturday. I suppose I’ll wait and write a complete entry about that. But do know that it went very well and was a lot of fun.
It’s supposed to snow tomorrow, which makes me both excited and sad. It’s things like snow that make me really wish I could go back to elementary school. Everything was so much simpler and Mom always had hot cocoa ready when we came in from the cold.
Mmm… Hot cocoa. Now I want some!
But, instead, I will have my left over tortellini for lunch, with some water, and maybe a slice of bread if it doesn’t look too stale.
Just a Short Thing Today
I’ve been listening to Phil Gordon’s WSOP podcasts. Yes, I know the WSOP was over like six months ago. So what. I’m occasionally out of touch with the internet. Forgive me.
Anyway, I was listening to the June 22 broadcast, and he was interviewing Richard Brodie:
Phil Gordon: “Do you think your training as a computer scientist helps you or hurts you in professional poker”
Richard “Quiet Lion” Brodie: “Well, first of all, I wasn’t trained as a computer scientist. I’m a college drop out. I am a self-taught computer programmer and an amateur scientist, maybe. You know, the math helps… but I think what really helps is the focus on what works – the pragmatism that is necessary to write a computer program. Because you can have all the highfalutin theories you want, but if you’re wrong, your program won’t run. And the same with poker – there’s a lot of people with different theories about how to play the game, and if they’re wrong, then you won’t win. Well, you might win, but you shouldn’t win.
– Transcribed from Phil Gordon’s WSOP podcast for June 22, 2005
I like that. I like that a lot. I may write in on a sticky and post it on my monitor. I think I’ll do that right now. In red ink. Yeah. That’s the way to go.