From the bedroom window
Snow in Redmond
Vaca key, Florida
What is it?
Cambridge, February 2004 - the MA ceremony
Awake for over 24 hours at this point, but triumphant!
The cast of "No Sex Please We're British"
Greenlake, Easter 2004
Pasadena/LA, April 2004
Mount Rainier
Mount St. Helens
Caltech
View from Mulholland Drive
Port Townsend, May 2004
On the left is Gennie's youngest brother, Mike.
So we went to see Stephen Wright (no, not Steve Wright) at The Moore last week. My belief that he is the funniest person in the history of the universe was confirmed. I have never laughed so hard for so long in my life - it felt so good. I laughed so much I nearly had to be carried out of the theater on a stretcher - no really! I was getting so much oxygen that my hands and legs started tingling due to the change in pH of my blood. Fortunately I recognized the symptoms - the same thing had happened to me on a boat in Florida on New Year's Day - I was breathing deeply to try to combat the seasickness, and ended up laying on the deck unable to move or see, and almost passing out.
So I tried very hard to laugh/breathe less, which was really hard because the guy was so funny. Some highlights: "They have digital numbers now", "She was wearing unscented perfume - the sort that comes in a little empty bottle" and "I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography".
If you really want to understand British people, you could do a lot worse than reading this. What a chore researching that must have been...
I have reached new heights of laziness. Instead of standing up, walking to the other end of the table (which is, ooo, a good 6 feet away) and changing the track on Winamp I used VNC to log into my other computer and changed the track that way.
I am so proud of myself.
There are some very, very odd fish deep in the Tasman sea.
However, mad scientists (or possibly mad photoshoppers) haver created some even stranger animals (note that that site might have non-work-safe banner ads, if you're lucky).
We're going to see Claudine's play in Everett this evening. Should be fun.
If you liked watching "airline" you'll love this: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System incident reports. Fascinating stuff. Their monthly safety bulletin, Callback is also great reading (and more readable).
This weekend was the 7th quasi-annual Microsoft Puzzlehunt weekend. This time the theme was Lewis Caroll's "Alice" books. Our team ("The Badgers' Parade") came 36th out of 51. Not bad, but not as good as we had hoped. However, we did score a couple of good coups: we were the first team to solve a puzzle, and there were 3 puzzles that we were the first to solve (only the top 4 teams equalled or bettered that). I was pretty exhausted by the end - I only got 4 hours of sleep on Saturday night, and that was on a sofa in the atrium of building 18.
Ah, a quarter century already.
I feel so old.
I have a new dirty pleasure. Oh don't look at me like that - it's not that sordid.
When I first received my MP3 player I didn't think I would have very much use for it - my computers at home and at work have speakers so I don't need it in any of those places, and listening to it in the car would be dangerous. However, it has found a niche in my life giving me music while I'm walking to and from work (on days when it isn't raining).
Generally, on the stretch of 156th Ave between my apartment and my office building, there really any people within earshot. There aren't many pedestrians around (I guess that's true of most of the East side in general), the buildings are all quite far away from the road and don't have openable windows, and for those in passing cars the engine/road noise and radio will drown out most external noises. It's kind of like I'm in my own private world, at least as far as sound is concerned.
So, I can sing my heart out to the tunes on my device without disturbing anyone or embarrasing myself. Usually. I did have the slightly unsettling experience the other day of a jogger coming up behind me and surprising me mid-song. If you were that jogger I would like to apologize for inflicting my singing voice on you.
Last night my musical selection was:
Tori Amos - 1,000 Oceans
Dar Williams - The Kid
Dire Straits - Romeo & Juliet
Awesome.
The play went great - we sold out all but one of the shows (and crammed quite a few more people in as well), and our performances just kept getting better and better as we experimented with how to say certain lines to get the most laughs out of them. It was nice to be the star and the center of attention for a while.
For your pleasure I bring you cute Japanese dancing robots (apologies to those of you reading this over a slow modem link).
Now, down to business. I mentioned a while ago that I was going to be in a play. It's a riotous comedy called "No Sex Please, We're British" and it's playing at Seattle Center House Theater 4 from the 4th to the 13th of March. There are more details here. I hope that all of you who are in the greater Seattle metropolitan area will come and see it. Tickets are selling fast so buy now to be sure of getting the date you want. If you want me to get tickets for you (so you can avoid both a trip to the box office and the "convenience charges" for phone/online booking) just let me know how many you want and which performance you want to see.
Hope to see you there!
I'm off to England tomorrow. For the weekend. To get another Master's degree. It's going to be pretty hectic - it'll be a miracle if it all goes according to plan.
I just had to come out of hiding briefly to point out that SparkMatch is back! (thanks to Jo for pointing that out). Okay, it's not called SparkMatch anymore, but it's the same idea and done by the same people. It also has a lot more features, and the matching seems to be a lot more scientific now.
