Posts Tagged ‘food’

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Unmistakably different animals

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

My team fell a few points short of the challengers this weekend, so our run was short-lived. It was still a fairly solid show on the whole… I don’t think I showcased my best work but I did a decent job and had a fun time doing it.

I had a moment of weakness a while ago and purchased a stick-on decal for my laptop. I’m not normally the kind of person who abides this kind of thing, but I simply couldn’t resist the idea of having Yoshi eating the apple in the middle of my Macbook Pro:

Yoshi Laptop

The construction continues on my condo; my building is now fully naked of its siding and wrapped in clear plastic. I was supposed to move my barbecue out of their way a while ago, but was unable to because I had lost the key to the cable I’ve used to secure it to the patio. They offered to cut the padlock for me and finally got around to doing so, and today I went to put the barbecue into my storage locker. I hadn’t been to my storage space in at least a year, and was shocked to discover that someone had apparently attempted to break into it. I don’t think they succeeded as the lock is still in place, but the metal hinge it’s on is all mangled from someone attempting to break it off. Unfortunately, their tampering deformed the hinge in such a way that I can no longer open the door, even after removing the lock. I tried using a couple of tools to bend it back close enough to its original shape that I might be able to open it again, but I think short of grabbing a hammer and bashing it clean off the door it’s beyond my abilities. I’ve notified the property manager, though, and I expect they’ll take responsibility for repairing it. In the meantime I’ve had to leave the barbecue in the hallway with an apologetic note for those it winds up obstructing. Oh well.

Moving to the States from Canada gives you a lot of perspective. As countries around the world go it is nearly identical to our own, but the differences are still so very striking… I think about how in the species of dogs you can have two labradors that are more alike to each other than to any of the terriers, poodles, beagles, etc. and still be completely and unmistakably different animals.

The subtler cultural and regional differences notwithstanding, I thought I had a firm grasp on the superficial differences when it came to brands and products. No Shreddies, Rowntree-brand chocolates, ketchup chips, Harveys/Swiss Chalet, Tim Hortons or President’s Choice to name just a few. Well after more than five years of living abroad in the States, I finally discovered another: frozen yogurt.

It’s not like I go out for frozen yogurt very often. The few times I’ve gone, though, I’ve been surprised that the places I’ve ended up only had soft-serve machines with pre-mixed flavours in them. The experience I’m used to and that I’ve had my entire lifetime before moving to the United States is far more robust: they have a machine that they drop a bar of plain frozen yogurt and a cup of fresh fruit into, which then proceeds to pulverize, grind and mix the two together so that what comes out is a made-to-order flavoured frozen yogurt. It’s an evolutionary leap forward in terms of quality, as not only can you have any flavour you choose instead of just picking from whatever few they already have prepared in the soft-serve machines, but the fresh fruit ground in there tastes immeasurably better than the pre-blended stuff.

At first I thought I was just having trouble finding the right chain, as they have quite a few out here. I furiously Googled, thinking that somewhere nearby must offer the genuine confection I was craving and not merely some pale shadow of it, but it turns out that in these parts, soft-serve is simply what frozen yogurt is understood to be. I even found an article about a Yogen Früz that had opened in San Francisco, and this innovative, futuristic technique they had for blending custom-flavoured frozen yogurts (which has, of course, been the status quo my entire life).

I am beside myself, apoplectic with disbelief and sadness. I mean, these cro-magnons are thumping around trying to figure out which end of the spear sticks into the animal, while everyone else is tilling soil, raising cattle and sleeping on beds instead of cave floors. There’s nothing to be done about it… but next time I go to Canada, I’m definitely paying a visit to Dutch Dreams.

Dan.

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Knee-deep in nostalgia

Friday, December 11th, 2009

My pages of Night Zero are out! I am positively tickled by them, in particular how I am left begging my associates to kill me on the page immediately following their callous and lethal betrayal of me. (I was given a summary of each shot we were taking, but didn’t fully comprehend just how spectacularly undignified my character’s end would be.)

I went to San José for two days last week on business. It was a pretty productive trip, although we have an intense road map ahead of us. My return to Redmond was graced with my new work computer finally arriving: a beautiful 27″ quad-core iMac (with a secondary 24″ cinema display). The story behind these computers is that they were introduced a couple of months back as the latest-and-greatest iMac entries, but in doing so they killed the 24″ model line which I had been using at my previous job, leaving me the rather undesirable options of either going down to 21″ or up to 27″. If I wanted the quad-core, though, there was no choice but to get the 27″ model. Which means I now nearly have to strain my neck in order to read the time in the menu bar. Man, is it beautiful though, especially with Parallels technology that lets me run my Mac on one screen and Windows simultaneously on the other.

Turning thirty has been on my mind as of late. My birthday is barely a week away, and I can feel it creeping up alongside the various holiday business that otherwise occupies my free time. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s been bothering me a whole lot, but it’s hard for me to ignore the milestone, no matter how contrived it may be.

My parents sent me a very nice care package to celebrate which had me wading knee-deep in nostalgia. Among its contents were an outlandishly Canadian tuque and mittens, a block of 6-year-old Balderson cheddar, Mennonite salami from the St. Jacobs’ Farmers Market, President’s Choice white cheddar macaroni and cheese, and perhaps most interesting a wall calendar of various gorgeous shots of Ontario, including places like Webster Falls that I used to go to back in university.

Tonight I return to Theatresports with my team that won last week. It’s been terribly hard to get cast in the show with all of the new apprentices and my general dislike of manually setting up teams, so it was a relief to win last week and get a chance to play a second time. There is also talk of returning to the randomized teams one night a week, which would make me very happy. Next week regular Theatresports is being preempted by a special show, so it doesn’t really make a difference if my team wins or loses tonight.

The temperature has been below freezing all week. It mercifully hasn’t rained and as such the city remains functional, but there’s talk of it snowing tomorrow in which case I might as well batten down the hatches and hunker down until spring arrives, as there’ll be no hope of going anywhere or doing anything until it does.

Dan.

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The most juvenile sport

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

The party on the 4th with folks from Unexpected Productions was just about the most fun I’ve had in months. The weather was scorching hot and we were on one of the ensemble member’s houseboat, a modestly-sized bachelor pad parked at a marina right next to where the fireworks were to be on display.

I was one of the earlier arrivals as I had gone to work beforehand so I would be able to park in the vicinity. It was still a good 25 minute walk or so, and I was ready to hit the lake pretty much on arrival.

Turns out there was a boat across from us on the slip where a bunch of folks were having a blast harrassing the legion of tourist ducks that were creating almost constant traffic, entering and exiting the water from the boat ramp right next to us. We got into it, loading up waterguns, swimming up to the ducks and firing mercilessly at the passengers as the boats kept crossing by. The reactions were mixed, but most of them seemed to take it pretty well. Word got out we were doing it, though, and some of the drivers tried firing back at us with their own waterguns, while a few of the more boring ones lowered the window covers on their vehicles in an attempt to block us out entirely.

It was about the most juvenile sport I’ve been a part of in a long time, but it was great. I took a few photos of the view from his houseboat:

7/4/09 1

7/4/09 2

7/4/09 3

Everyone brought meat of some form to the party, and the barbecue was fantastic. I’m not normally a big pork eater but the owner had marinated a huge tenderloin that got grilled by one of the ensemble members who doubles as something of a chef, and was without a doubt the most succulent pork I’ve ever tasted. Others brought sausages, steak shishkebabs and more. Once we were loaded up on meat and drink we hung out on the rooftop patio of the boat to watch the fireworks:

7/4/09 Fireworks 1

7/4/09 Fireworks 2

… I suppose that’s about the best quality I could expect from an iPhone taking pictures at night.

Anyway, it was pretty spectacular and a blast of a time with some fantastic friends. So glad I could make it out this year!

On Monday we shipped my big project to Apple, where it’s been in review ever since. If agreements hold up, it’ll be available on the 14th, which is when a massive advertising campaign begins.

It shipped with a few known and understood bugs and with some feature compromises in order to keep from jeopardizing stability of the build, but on the whole we managed to get it pretty damn stable in time for launch. I’m proud of it… the client is getting one hell of a deal from us. I’ve been taking it a bit easier this week, although they’ve already got me working on some other side projects while we negotiate and get a contract signed for versions 1.1 and 2.

Weather has been pretty great on the whole, with a few exceptions here and there. It’s as though we’re finally getting some payback for the lousy summers we’ve had the past couple of years. I was glad for the good weather Thursday morning, when I was on the highway driving to work and out of nowhere my front passenger-side window shattered in on me.

I shouted an epithet or two and navigated my way off the highway and into a nearby parking lot. I never saw what caused the glass to shatter but I assume it was a small rock or something kicked up by another vehicle. None of the glass hit me and fortunately there was nobody in the passenger seat, but I couldn’t very well continue the drive to Seattle. The next hour or so was spent learning what one does in these situations, as I called around to my parents, my insurance company, the car dealership and other glass repair places. There was no use going through insurance and the dealership said they could fix it for $300-$500, but also offered that an auto glass place might do it cheaper. They recommended a shop and I called them, and sure enough they would do it for $190 plus tax, but I became frustrated as the guy there had to make a call to check if they could get the glass for my car the same day or not, and after fifteen minutes still hadn’t called me back. I called him and asked how much longer it was going to take, as I had to make a decision about what I was going to do. He told me that it shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes… I think he said it, though, too quickly to stop himself as he realized in that same moment that fifteen minutes had already gone by. He quickly added he’d call the guy over there again in another five minutes, and I accepted that, a little beleaguered that it took them so long just to check the inventory over at their warehouse.

I checked on my phone for another auto glass place, and the woman there was able to put me on hold less than a minute while she checked their warehouse inventory. She told me they could have the glass in by 2 PM, and they were five bucks cheaper to boot, so I gladly made an appointment and was half-way home when I finally got a call back from the first place and was able to tell them thanks-but-no.

So by the end of the day I was 200 bucks poorer but now have a new passenger window in my car. I know it won’t stay this way, but at the moment it’s eerily clean and without any sign of wear, and is so transparent that it still kind of looks like my car is missing a window.

I’ve been away from Theatresports ever since Fiddler opened and on since it closed again as I’ve been so burned out from work, but I made something of an unexpected return last night when an ensemble member emailed me asking if I could take her place. I agreed, and it was good to get back on stage and do what I love. My team did a respectable job and we wound up winning, although I think the judging was wonky. So it looks like I’ll be going back again next weekend.

I had a horrible time getting there, though, as the I-90 bridge has been closed heading into Seattle this week for maintenance, which means traffic on the 520 has been brutal. In fact, I wound up staying and working from home on Friday, the bridge traffic was backed up so far. My plan was to wait until the middle of the day, or the afternoon, or any time other than rush hour to get into the city, go to work, and then head to the theatre from there, but there was not a single point in the entire day where the traffic maps weren’t blackened out. So I left an hour earlier than normal and made my way in. Of course, on the way home they unexpectedly opened the 520 bridge (how they can see fit to do that when the only other bridge is under construction I have no clue), so I wound up taking about a 20 minute detour because of that. On the whole, Seattle traffic and the constant construction we’re experiencing right in the way of my commute are pretty high on my pet peeves list.

That’s about all there is to report. Gonna go outside now and enjoy the summer while it’s still here.

Dan.

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Fraulein Teacup

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

First five days at Übermind went quite well. Had a working prototype going by the end of the week that has our client using words like “ecstatic” and “beautiful”, so I’m clearly off to a good start in the right direction. I’m a bit bemused by how far a little magic from the world of video games goes with these marketing types… not that I think the stuff I’m doing isn’t impressive, but the really impressive stuff I’m doing is all under the hood, in the 3D gaming engine I’ve been developing that makes what I’m doing efficient, scalable and portable to other projects. The stuff at the surface is cool, but in the gaming world could hardly be considered revolutionary.

My coworkers seem like a good a bunch. They obviously care about what they’re doing and they don’t balk at taking the necessary initiatives to get the work done, which is something I appreciate. There are a lot of interesting restaurants in the area I’ve been checking out with them during lunch, which is great… there’s an Indian buffet as well as a Thai place and more than one organic/hippie venue, although the most interesting one I found on my own: a seemingly authentic Jewish deli, which is practically unheard of in Seattle. Before this discovery, the only place I could go for matzah ball soup or a hot pastrami sandwich was the I Love NY deli right next to the Market Theatre (where I do improv with Unexpected), which has great food but I can almost never go to as they are only open until 5:30 or so, and I’m rarely at the theatre before 7. So, score.

Fiddler rehearsals have begun, although I’ve only been able to attend the meet-and-greet and one vocal rehearsal so far. It’s awkward for me, as I’m one of only two members of the cast who aren’t veterans of the rather tightly-knit group. Not that they haven’t been welcoming or anything (quite the contrary)… I’m just a bit weirded out by it. They also just did Fiddler about four years ago, which is awfully recent for a company to be restaging a show, so I think they share a common vision for it that I’m not necessarily a party to. The director already said he’d get me a DVD of it so I could pretty much learn my blocking from it… which is fine if it’s what he wants; I just hope this production has legs of its own and isn’t too trapped in the shadow of one that’s already been and gone.

Improvise Your Own Adventure also opens this week, so we have some madcap rehearsal going on for that. That one scares me a bit as we’ve been focusing mainly on fundamentals so far and haven’t had a chance to run the entire format yet. I’m able to have a lot more confidence in this group, though, having worked with most of them for over a year and knowing first-hand what they’re capable of, so I know it’s going to be good even if we wind up having to wrestle with the format for the first couple of performances.

I performed in Theatresports for the first time in a few weeks last night, and my team won by a narrow margin, which means we get to come back as returning champs next week. (We might have come up with a less abstract and arbitrary team name than Fraulein Teacup if we knew we’d be returning.) The team was randomly thrown together and consisted of myself, a woman named Rebecca who I love to play with for her commitment, spontaneity and joie de vivre, and a guy named Brandon who is one of the sharpest and most clever improvisers I know but rarely ever perform with as he does a lot outside the ensemble. We had a really fun audience which made things easy… I don’t know that any of our scenes achieved anything resembling greatness but they were respectable on the whole and we were suitably entertaining. I got an ovation from the audience when we played “Kick It” and I broke out rapping in the scene for four or five consecutive rhymes… it was just a shame that was the beginning of the scene; it would’ve been great to end it there. The other team was in extremely good form as well and I think it was a strong show overall, which is always nice.

I’m trying to relax as possible this morning, as between Fiddler and Improvise Your Own Adventure I’ve got about 6 or 7 hours of rehearsal this afternoon and evening. Maybe I’ll see if I can make it into that I Love NY deli before it closes and make it worth my while…

Dan.

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Reek of delish

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

People seem to still be downloading iProv, which is cool. The Seattle Festival of Improv Theater is coming up, and I may try to promote it there. I’ve started work on a casual game in the meantime… it’s coming along well.

I’d been away from Unexpected a couple of weeks, and when I came back to play this past weekend I was amused to find a certain photo printed out on the managing director’s desk, with the caption “UP alum Joel McHale gives Dan Posluns a noogie”. It never takes much of an absence for me to feel the nostalgia when I return.

My washer finally got repaired today, nearly two weeks after I first set out to have it fixed. The repairman missed our first appointment because he was sick and I was never notified. He came two days later and identified the problem, but it required ordering a replacement part. He was supposed to come back with it on Monday, but phoned and told me it had arrived busted and they were going to have to order another one. Finally, today, I was able to do laundry again and stop smelling like a hobo.

In the end the affair cost me nearly three hundred dollars, with about half of that just for a new dial control. Admittedly cheaper than buying a new washer, but not enough to keep me from feeling really jilted if anything else goes wrong with it.

The Superbowl was this past weekend, and for someone who’s normally not very entertained by football, I found it enthralling. In fact, the game was probably more interesting than the commercials, which were an unusually paltry crop this year. Some were worse than others, but the one that angered up the blood most was the one that was criminally ignorant of some of the most fundamentally basic geometry:

Someone at the party was following Wil Wheaton on Twitter and I think he summed it up best: “It’s like a million geometry nerds cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”

My parents sent me a very excellent birthday gift I meant to blog about some time ago. One part of it was a bottle of the jalapeno vodka my grandmother’s brother brought with him in his most recent (and in all likelihood final) visit from Russia. Unlike normal vodka (which is normally pretty flavourless and used mainly as a mixer), this stuff has a really nice, mild taste to it that makes it great for shots. Plus the jalapeno sitting at the bottom of the bottle is all kinds of awesome.

The other, far more valuable part was a package of slices of the salami obtained from the St. Jacob’s Farmer’s Market, which is more than an hour’s drive west of Toronto. This is an aged, all-beef Mennonite salami that is unlike anything else -- I need to keep it shut up in a cupboard or my entire condo will reek of delish. I’ve been rationing it carefully but I’m already more than a quarter of a way through the stuff. My parents had to sneak it across the border (beef is prohibited) when they drove down to Florida for their vacation and shipped it out from there. It took nearly a month to arrive, and I had assumed that it had been confiscated by the post office (since it had a Canadian return address on it), but it was a very pleasant surprise the day when it turned up.

I could use more pleasant surprises! Get on that, blogosphere.

Dan.

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