Posts Tagged ‘seattle weather’

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In solidarity with the houseboat owner

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Been a hectic couple of weeks, as usual. It was nice to have a four-day weekend for the July 4th holiday, but the weather was very uncooperative, especially compared to last year where it was like the middle of summer. Instead this time it was more like April temperatures and even a bit rainy. I once again spent the holiday on the houseboat of a colleague’s from Unexpected, and while the friends and food were all excellent I got really cold, in no small part due to my jumping in the water several times in solidarity with the houseboat owner.

Immediately following the holiday I had to spend the entire remaining week on a business trip to my company’s headquarters in San Jose. The work itself went fine, but the trip was fraught with bad judgment and timing. As this was a longer trip than normal I thought I might stay in a nicer suite instead of the hotel I normally bunk at – the cost is the same to the company, but the suite is farther away so I normally don’t bother with it. I was thinking Elizabeth might join me for the second half of the week as she still had a little time off before her classes began, and the extra comfort and recreational amenities of the suite would have been perfect for that. I confirmed availability and priced out the tickets, slept on it to be sure, and when I went to book the next day the suites had become entirely booked up overnight, and the flight had gone up $100. So that plan went out the window… then to make matters worse, I managed to book my own flight for the wrong day, which caused a whole additional heap of last-minute stress.

Things have calmed down a little since then. Last week we finally had some nice summer weather (although nowhere near as hot and brutal as it apparently had been the week I was gone in San Jose), and I even cracked the barbecue out of storage this past weekend as they’ve finally gotten around to painting most of my condo. There is a light at the end of the tunnel for all of the construction in my condo complex, and it is a welcome sight.

I’ve been managing to do some improv pretty much every weekend, which has also been good for me. This past Saturday I had one of the best Theatresports shows I’ve had in a long time… it was a full, boisterous house and the most epic scene of the night was between myself and another improviser in the style of Dr. Seuss. Both teams did well but ours edged out a victory, which means I get to go back next weekend. It felt really good to experience that kind of success on stage again… I was in need of a night like that one.

Dan.

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The cost of getting things done

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

I guess there wasn’t a lot of note that happened in February, seeing as I didn’t manage an update all month long. I’ve been busy, but not with any one thing in particular. I also haven’t been sleeping well. It’s a Sunday afternoon and I could easily go back to sleep now for another few hours except that I have places to be all too soon.

Work is good overall; progress is slow but definite. The other people on my team are busy putting out fires on other projects, so I don’t see or hear very much from them. I flew to San José for some meetings over a couple of days back in February, a routine I am getting used to, although I still dislike flying. I think I am doing some good stuff behind-the-scenes on this project that will be very appreciated when the spotlight is back on me and what I’ve been up to.

In the meantime, construction has continued on my condo and it’s been nice to see some progress being made. There is actual siding on one of the buildings now and I’ve had three of my windows replaced with new ones (the remaining should be done this coming week). It’s annoying because of all of the noise early in the morning, and I’ve had to remove all of my blinds and deal with construction workers coming inside from time to time, but that’s clearly the cost of getting things done. We have our annual homeowner’s association meeting coming up this week and while I usually dread it, it will be interesting to hear the state of the union as far as the construction project goes.

Next weekend should be interesting. It’s the Emerald City Comicon and as a result of affiliations between Theatresports friends of mine and the guy running the event, I will be performing there as a part of “NERDprov”: improv themed around nerdy subjects from TV, movies, comics and wherever else popular sub-culture takes us. I’m also doing a special Saturday Theatresports with two of the Internet-celebrities from The Guild (and before you ask, no, it’s not Felicia Day, it’s Zaboo and Vork, both of whom have excellent improv backgrounds and should be fun to play with). Today I am going to a “research party” of sorts with the rest of the cast where we will be boning up on our geekdom in preparation for the two events.

Also coming up in a couple of weeks is the wedding of two friends, for which Elizabeth and I will be flying out to North Carolina. While there we’re going to drop in on my parents who are vacationing in Hilton Head. It’s a long way to travel for just a few days, but you gotta take the opportunities you can get, I suppose.

We’ve been having some insanely nice spring weather, with sunny, bright skies and mild temperatures hovering around the fifties (that’s the tens for you Celsius folk). I don’t know if it’s global warming or just random spurts, but it’s been very welcome.

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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A crashing halt

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Too much going on these last few weeks. Big news, big changes… but I think the announcement is going to have to wait just one more week, so kindly stay tuned.

In the meantime, Cannibal is rocking way more than perhaps any of us thought it would. We’ve been having excellent houses and getting plenty of compliments and appreciation from just about everybody. It’s a ton of fun and you should come see it if you can; we still have two more weekends.

I’m not exactly sure when summer ended, but it came to a crashing halt whenever it did. Leaves have changed and the world is damp, grey and cold again. It could be depressing if my life were moving slowly enough to pay it any attention. Life is too good at the moment, though.

Dan.

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Weirding out any number of patrons

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

This has been an unlucky week for my wallet. I accidentally knocked off my driver’s side-view-mirror, which will probably cost me $300-400 to replace, and received two $38 parking tickets (one which I didn’t realize I had been in error and am paying uncontested; the other I disagree with and am fighting). Then I was at the Apple store because my DVD drive has been on the fritz… they informed me to my surprise that my AppleCare hadn’t expired and they would replace it for free. Just as I was thinking to myself “hooray, I’ve probably saved about two hundred bucks”, I lost my grip on my phone and in less than a second its face shattered on the floor (their stone tiling was apparently more rugged than the InvisibleSHIELD cover it wore). A replacement cost me two hundred bucks. Then I made it home and found a ticket in my mail from a red light camera that depicts me doing a rolling right turn… $124 if I decide to pay it, although I think I may fight it. All in all one of the most unintentionally expensive weeks I’ve had… I can afford it, but I can’t afford too many more weeks like it. It feels like the world is nickel-and-dimeing me to death… I’m trying to avoid spending excessively but it’s hard.

In that vein, I just ordered a wall mount for my television, something I’ve been thinking of getting for quite a while and was on sale for only $26 (so how could I resist?). I’m a little nervous because these things need to be properly secured to a stud, and I’ve never been too trusting of my stud finder. So I may have to spend more money on a better stud finder as well. Sigh.

The creation myth of how I got my hair style is short but interesting if you’re one of the many legions of fans I like to believe I have. I’ve always hated my hair since I was old enough to care about what girls thought of me… if I let it behave naturally it parts in a way that makes me look like I’m in third grade. In high school I tried gelling it back but didn’t really know what I was doing and it just made it look stupid. In university I wound up giving up entirely and shaved my head for several years (I was repeatedly told I had a “good head” for shaving). I eventually let it grow back out again and returned to gelling it back, but never liked it.

Then shortly after I moved to New York City, I found myself commuting home on the subway one day when I saw someone with hair straight forward but gelled up to be spiky in the front, and thought to myself, “hey, I could do that with my hair.” So I proceeded to stare intently at the top of his head for the entire half-hour subway ride, burning the image into my brain and quite possibly weirding out any number of patrons. The next morning I whipped out some gel and attempted to sculpt what I remembered. To my surprise it worked and – in my humble opinion – actually looked good on me. I’ve since worn it or variants of it depending on the length of my hair, and been pretty content with it.

I’m right now at the length where I would normally chop it back down again, but on the recommendations of some ladies I trust I’ve been piloting out something new, which is letting my hair grow long and just flop forward without any gel. I must confess I’m not very comfortable with it… it seems dumb-looking to me, but I’ve already had a few compliments, so I’m giving it a shot. I don’t know if I have the willpower to stick it out, though. Change is so very scary.

We had our first couple of rehearsals for Cannibal this week. It looks like it’s going to be fun, but it’s hard to get past what a deliberately dumb show it is. Our rehearsal period is very short – we only have twelve on the schedule, and just about everyone except myself is going to be absent from a bunch of them – so I just hope we don’t wind up turning the quality of the script into an excuse for the quality of our performance. It’s far too soon for me to be making any assumptions there, though.

In the world of improv, it seems I can’t get cast in a Theatresports show lately. Granted my schedule hasn’t been as open as usual and there have apparently been a lot of teams calling in (which is the preferred route to getting cast), but I still feel a bit slighted. Both last night and tonight I did the 8:30 show, though, which is just short form with the new apprentices to the company, and they were both a lot of fun, and the apprentices are a very solid bunch. It’s amazing how much I miss doing improv after being absent only for a while.

After a week of cool, damp and thoroughly mediocre weather today was a beautifully hot and sunny Saturday. The meteorologists are calling it “summer’s last hurrah”. If I had faith in higher powers I would think they used this week to set us up to appreciate it. One of my more enterprising friends thought to have a barbecue at the Golden Gardens beach, and while I could only attend for about an hour it was a good time and a chance to get caught up with some old friends from Griptonite. I miss those folks, and I will miss summer.

Dan.

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