Category: People

Last night I forced Ken to eat the worst chicken parmesan I’ve ever made (Maria, wisely, pleaded a weak stomach) and then we made DC come over and randomly watched Empire. Which, you know what? Is a pretty funny movie.

For instance, up until Cloud City, somebody dies every time Darth Vader is on camera. He strangles people who take responsibility, he strangles people through the TV screen, he strangles people while other people pretend not to notice. And then there’s the part where one of the Star Destroyers gets hit by an asteroid, and its captain in the little holo-display looks horrified and disappears, and Vader doesn’t bat an eye. Or doesn’t act like it, anyway. Finally, at the end, after they barely lose the Falcon, Admiral Piett (who’s been standing around nervously as others fall like wheat the whole movie) watches Vader walk off in a cold silence and just swallows once. The expression on his face is great.

Maybe that’s the problem: thinking about the last two movies, I can only remember two jokes that didn’t involve Jar Jar.

Gave blood today. Hoping this doesn’t bode ill for the Street Legal debut later tonight. I’ll try not to throw anybody. Also, because of the way my blood sugar finger-prick and today’s blood iron finger-prick are positioned, I can squint at the middle and ring fingers of my left hand and pretend they’re a hammerhead shark.

Oh, and yeah. Project Improv is putting on a couple of non-improv comedies this weekend and next: Peace by Aristophanes and Fools by Neil Simon. I’m running sound for both, as is my wont, and Yale plays an old woman in the latter, so that pretty much guarantees all the fun you can have with or without pants. There’s some kind of afterparty thing (after every show) at Bearno’s, and Street Legal has been chain-ganged into performing something or other (after every show). Thus the debut. I won’t get to change clothes between now and then, so I’m going to be the only one not wearing jeans. Like… most of my life.

Have I ever mentioned that I don’t wear jeans? Well, I don’t.

Peace runs tonight, Sunday and next Saturday, and Fools alternates with that. I’d see Fools, if I were you, unless you’re really into Greek comedy. If you want to see anything at all. I’m… I’m just gonna leave, okay? We’re not really getting anything accomplished here.

  1. The day before yesterday, Maria made carrot cake, and just moments ago, we used it to have carrot cake soup for breakfast.
  2. Yes.
  3. Oh God yes.

So last night, me and Alison and Evan and some other people went to this hot new club? And I GOT US KICKED OUT.

I’d like to say it was because I put a bouncer through the mirror in the hallway, but actually it was because I was wearing tennis shoes. “Good catch,” they said to each other as they hustled me out. I laughed and went home.

Whoa! Moon shot!

If this ever comes to anything, it could actually make things really convenient for a certain movie franchise that has yet to be written.

As today’s Stone Soup points out, it’s actually pretty silly to even think about working today, but for some reason I did, and dragged myself out of bed at 6:30 just as normal. It was a little strange to be one of like four (as opposed to eighty) people waiting for an elevator, and a little stranger when all the lights on our part of the floor were deliberately off. When I read that comic strip and waited an hour and still only tech support was there, I took off like one of the wiser characters in a survival horror movie.

After that I mostly… slept? And played Double Dash. Maria got a GameCube for Christmas, so unless she bans me from using it I’ll probably never accomplish anything worthwhile again. We actually unlocked almost everything on New Year’s Eve, along with our stay-in-and-snack companion Lisa, but we lacked a memory card at that point and were bereft of saving ability. I got one of those on the aforementioned trip home from work today, so now we get to do it all again. This is a fine and noble thing.

Tonight it’s out to dinner at some fancy place where they make you eat so slowly that it takes two hours to finish the soup, then Strizzle Lizzle rehizzle, and finally sometime after midnight Ian and I will drive to the hinterlands and crash (as in sleep, not… hit things). The next morning, we and forty of our closest relatives will race tiny cars down a track for eight hours until one emerges supreme. Seriously. We’ve been doing it every year since before I was born.

Right, Christmas. It was good! The Adkins-Wood Collective borrowed the infamous Deb’s house (she was out of town, and we’re homeless) for the fastest gift-opening we’ve ever had, then left in the afternoon to come to Louisville and have dinner with Joe’s sister Laura. Who I guess is now my aunt? She’d probably be weirded out if I called her that. While there, I met her stepdaughter, who I guess is now my cousin?

Normally I’d make some crack now about the new definition of family units in the new millennium, but to tell the truth, I feel kinda behind. I just got my first step-cousin-in-law, man, everybody else has had theirs for years.

But yeah, the dinner was good and Joe embarrassed Ian and me (but mostly me) at the pool table. I got warm socks, emo hoodies, the first season of Highlander and as many copies of Finding Nemo as I have hands. Mom was at least a little taken in by our we-got-you-DVDs, what-you-don’t-have-a-DVD-player, oh-well-you-get-this-present-too gag, and that was good. In grand Brendanian tradition, I forced Blankets on Ian and Daredevil: Yellow on Caitlan, things with which they seemed cool.

Man, have you heard about Blankets? Just… just google it and read a little. It’s pretty much everything they say.

Drove to Urbana, Ohio. Saw paternal family. Paternal family had small babies. Babies were cute. Very happy to see babies. Drove back.

Long drive to Urbana, Ohio. Even when your brother does all the actual driving.

Going to bed now.