Viking Game Day live at the Dome/Halloween

Today was pretty much nothing but Game Day. It was too early to be up. Being that it was Halloween, I dressed up as Indiana Jones again. Why again? Well, thats what I dressed up as last year. Joe Schmitt doesn't take the time to learn the production crew's names. Last Halloween he saw me and obviously recognized the costume because for 1 year he has called me Indiana. So I wore it again for him today.

The show went fine. Not as good as when Burt showed up. But I did get some air time in the last block. Joe had me come up on stage and introduce me as the floor director and I gave my whip a couple of snaps on the set. It was alright.

Game/Costume Party

First thing I did today was go to the Army Surplus store on 1st. Ave in down town Minneapolis to find the rest of my costume. Found everything I needed there! A ranger vest, a belt and a 'holster'. I then picked up some pizza for gaming. Pizza is almost the staple for gaming.

The game was pretty good. I had missed the last one so it was a bit awkward getting my character caught up with the party. There is a new player in the group named Ron. He creates a whole different dynamic to our party and our gaming group. Nice guy. The game went on pretty much as usual till the end when Jason's character and Bobo's character faced off in an argument and just let it out. They happen to be half brothers in the game and this was almost genuine sibling rivalry. It was great roleplaying.

Later was Cara's costume party. I arrived before anyone else... including Cara. So I put on Star Wars: A New Hope while I waited. Pam was the first one to arrive and we got to know just how high each other's geek flags flew. Her's is pretty high, but not as high as mine. She had stars glued to her shirt- she was the 'center of the universe'.
The party was pretty good. Cara looked amazing as Princess Leia. I guess I was a pretty good Han because we won the costume contest. Eric was a cowboy with a HUGE beltbuckle. Mike D was Indiana Jones. Salo was the pirate she was the weekend before. Had a good round of CRUno.

music - John Williams- various theme songs of movies containing Harrison Ford

Date Night

After work I went to The Source to find a Star Wars Blaster and lo and behold, they had one. The last one. From there I went to Cara's house. We planned on going out tonight, having dinner and watching a movie... in the theater!! So thats what we did.

Had all you can eat shrimp at Red Lobster. Then, we went to a mall to find some clothing for my costume for the costume party on Saturday. Cara suggested JC Penny's or something and we found what we needed. Then we went to sports stores like SportsMart or REI to find other elements of my costume, but got no further because we were running out of time. We abandoned the search for more costume parts and went to Team America: World Police. That movie is hilarious and far from wholesome. It was really nice to have two nights to be together.

When I got home, before I went to bed, I spray painted my Star Wars Blaster black, because it came in a what-the-heck/politically-correct orange!??!

A Night to Just Be - 8 Months

Cara and I finally had a night to just be. Today marks our 8 month anniversary. We measure our dating by the lunar month since it was a full moon on our first date. Leesha was in bed already and Cara made a simple candlelight dinner for us. It was very nice. We watched a movie after we ate and guess what she chose... X-Men (how did I find this woman??!!). After the movie we watched a video tape I borrowed from a co-worker he taped off of public television - The Question of God: Freud vs Lewis. It was fascinating and had a lot of relevance with the Before-You-Say-I-Might class we're in with all the talk of love (you know, Lewis's Four Loves book and all).

Obviously, Schmitty had taped the show on an old tape because after the recording was done, the remainder of Black Stallion was on the tape, taped from a 1984 Christmas broadcast. The best part of that was seeing the vintage commercials. We figured out the date because there was a commercial for The Chorus Line coming to theaters that Friday. Looking it up in IMDB.com pegged the year. Its funny to see how non-politically correct everything was then. Ahh, the Reagan era.

music - Enya (Cara had Enya playing when I got to her house. With that playing and seeing Ian McKellen, I'm feeling an urge to watch the Lord of the Rings movies soon!)

LOST and eBay

Tonight's episode of Lost was pretty good. This show is proving itself worthy of addiction. There are some very small details that could be more realistic, but even with those, this show is WAY better than pretty much anything else I've seen on lately (which isn't much, actually).

After that, I pretty much dedicated this night to catching up and posting more things on eBay.

music - Nowhere Again - Secret Machines

Breaking News Day/Before-You-Say-I-Might Session 4

This morning was relatively normal at work, but as soon as the Midday show was over it seemed like the world fell apart. We had three potential breaking news stories happen- only one was worthy enough to actually cut into programming, but behind the scenes, we're all on standby when we go on or not. First one was the Amber Alert kid was found- actually he escaped and returned home on his own. Crafty. The second was a wall collapsed in Somerset WI and the third was a fire in a St. Paul house. Strange day. We go for weeks without any breaking news and then we have a day like this.

Tonight's class was probably the most valuable one yet. It was about intimacies- how they can be good and/or bad for a relationship. This is the meat of why marriages often fail, I think. It was interesting. Our breakout group even split by gender to further discuss the topic. It was interesting and I feel I've connected with others in my small group on a deeper level. Very interesting.

After we got home, Bobo and I took a walk and smoked a couple of stogies and talked some more. Nice night out. We really ought to do this more while we can.

music - Blame It on the Rain - Milli Vanilli (due to the Ashley Simpson lip-sync story)

Bobo Gets Engaged!!!

After about 10 months of dating, Robert and Laura are engaged. He asked her last Thursday on Honeymoon Bluff along the Gunflint Trail in the Boundary Waters in the last moments of sunlight and she said yes. They will be married next August (so I have to start looking for a new place to live soon). They met in the bible study that I inherited and now lead with Cara. We're all currently attending a before-you-say-I-might class about marriage. This is so awesome. Congratulations!

oh, and he asked me to be a groomsman and of course I said yes.

Dasher Goes Home/Medieval Birthday Party

Today was the last day I watch Dasher for jenny. She picked him up right from the airport. My time with Dasher was interesting. He has an insecurity that can get annoying. He needs to be on one's lap almost all the time, which would be fine if he would stay still, but he can't seem to.

As soon as Jen left, I threw on my costume and flew down to Keesha's house for a collective birthday party of various FOCUS people. I got there a bit later than most and missed some of the activities like jousting and sword fighting. Everyone looked great in the costumes, Eric had full chainmail and people were sticking magnets on him, Rob Kistler (spelling?) came in full tin-foil armor that kept tearing, etc. Cara looked great. I've been missing her lately because of our schedules. I had to leave a bit early due to Viking Game Day early tomorrow morning.

I have a friend over tonight and tomorrow till Saturday. My little friend Dasher. Dasher is Jen's dog- half Basenji and half Jack Russell or something like that. He is a funny little dog, Bobo and I think Dasher hasn't experienced much dude play. He doesn't seem to know how to roughhouse. He's a little girlie dog. Oh well. Its fun anyways.

music - theme from On the Road

What do you do when there is something at work that saps your energy like a sponge? Not just my energy, everyone involved was drained. An energy vampire is among us.

I brought home the tech manual for the video switcher today.

Bible study was fine, tonight. Everyone was tired. These busy weeks are wearing on us all- having class Monday nights and then bible study Tuesday nights. Romans chapter 5 is short and very repetitive of chapter 4 so we allowed a lot of tangents tonight.

I chucked a digital alarm clock tonight. A clock I received from my folks upon graduation from 5th grade (I think). It still works- sort of. The clock part works, but the alarm had no control for volume. The only setting left is MAXIMUM VOLUME. So I chucked it. I have a new small digital one anyway. One that automatically resets itself every morning at 2am. It receives an AM radio broadcast from Fort Collins, CO that updates the exact time from the atomic clock there.

music - Election Day - Arcadia

Cara and I have returned from the small group leader's retreat in Alexandria. It was a good time. On the way up, Friday night, Hwy 94 was packed all the way till around 8pm. We almost turned around and came home. Its been such a crazy week and we were tired. Once we got there, it was clear that we belonged there. Like the Woodland Hills retreats that I've been to before, this was just so much fun. Its license to be a kid again. There was a treasure hunt on Saturday evening that we had to dress up like pirates for (I won the pirate costume contest, thanks to Bobo's selection of renaissance apparel). We stayed up late playing games and talking and laughing and it seemed like we ate and ate and ate. While the ride up there was so slow, the ride back was very fast it seems. Good times.

This evening I packed up a couple more sales on eBay. Another collectible game action figure and a battle axe!

music - I had Shake the Disease by Depeche Mode in my head most of the time while there, but Greg Wollen's song Glorybound was, for sure, the song of the weekend.

Yeah, tonight was a bit of an adventure. We'll get to that in a sec.

First. This was a Viking Game Day day at the Mall of America. The best part of these days is over time and 4 player chess. After we set up the set its becoming tradition the four production people (Scott, Josh, me and another- rotating person, today it was Robin) play chess against each other with a special board made for four. It is really fun and it leads to chess theory discussions.

The show went fine and packing up the set is getting faster and faster. We're hitting our stride. Tonight's was the last one in the Sears rotunda. Next time we're there it will be in the giant Sam Goody rotunda. We may have to find our stride again.

After we were all packed up I went to a Halloween store to buy cheap swords. Cara and I are going out of town this weekend. We're attending a small group leader's retreat up in Alexandria. They told us to bring pirate costumes for some reason. So I bought swords.

When I got home, Bobo and Laura were upstairs. Not long after I got there, she left. Soon Bobo comes downstairs. Lets go check the trap- I say.

So we go out and look and sure enough, Bobo caught an opossum (he had seen one around and picked up a rather large trap). So as soon as I was packed for the weekend, we took the opossum in my jeep across the river and let him out. We figured it would have to cross the Mississippi on Hwy 694 to come back and that probably wasn't going to happen. He was a strange looking chap. "marsupials do, though". Didn't smell good either. But once we got the trap opened, he was gone -"'cause, they're fast!"
yeah, that was the adventure.

music - song from Night at the Roxbury

I mailed the first sale from Bobo's line of eBay products today. The HeroClix Silver Surfer is away!

[warning... venting ahead!]
Work was fine. There is one guy (the guy who always clears his throat) in engineering who has gotten on my nerves. I guess he sees me as the most willing to help in the production department or something, but come on. He has no care if I'm on my break or not. He expects me to drop whatever I'm doing and help him every time. The thing that is annoying is the difference in nature of our department's days. His department- they have all day to work on whatever they need to. Our department is very dependent on what time it is to if we're available or not. We can only take breaks at certain times. I don't think he sees that.

Infact, he is an interesting person in that he is one of the most self centered people I've ever met. I don't mean that in an insulting way, I mean that in a most littoral way. He has a strong need to show you how you are wrong and he is right. Condescending. I recall one morning, there were about 3 of us production people sitting at the table. The other two guys were reading or something like that. I was eating breakfast. He comes over to our table and sits down and asks if I could help him with something. I say sure- between bites and he says, ok, I'll wait for you to finish... and he sits there, watching me eat until the moment I swallow the last bite. It was incredibly awkward and annoying. aaaaaaarrrgggg!!!
[/vent]

We had social night at bible study tonight. No study, just play games. First we did our highs/lows and for Erik's praise report, he pulls out a ziplock back with a mouse caught in a trap, quite dead and says- "answered prayer!" (which, obviously was a prayer request last week or the week before), quite hilarious, though, Laura didn't appreciate a dead mouse in bible study. What game did we play tonight? Taboo- boys vs girls. I found I kick ass at Taboo. We laughed a lot. Then we got on a strange kick about carnivorous and making puns with all the food names that could apply to humans as food. Fun odd night.

Found out that disk 2 of the Jeremiah DVD set doesn't work. That was a bummer. I'll have to figure out how to resolve that problem with the eBay seller, get all hard-assed and mean.

Bobo got me the 1st volume of collected out-of-print rpg books Greg, Terry, Orion and I used to play way back in the day. Twilight 2000 volume 1. Very nice presentation with more than I had before. Brings me way back.

music - Love, In Itself & Shake the Disease - Depeche Mode

2nd night in our couples class. There was some kind of grouping problem with Bobo and Laura's group and maybe Erik and Keesha's as well so they took the 'problem children' (the Woodland Hills folk) and made a new group, consisting totally of us. So its the six of us and our small group leaders, Ethan and Robyn Craig, who are awesome people. We all kind of knew something was going to shift around but none of us saw it coming out like this. I like it. It seems like God is directing us down a path where these three couples [Keesha and Erik, Bobo and Laura, and Cara and I] are growing into a group of friends. Sort of like when you'd see your parents go out with friends, it feels like that.

Bobo and I watched the first episode of Jeremiah last night. Cool show. Its a post-apocalyptic setting, so I gotta love it. Looking forward to seeing how the show continues.

The events around that accident are fading. Thank you, God, for time and the effects time has on the mind.

music - Growing Up - Peter Gabriel

I saw a man die today.

Cara and I were in Woodbury visiting her friend Kristin and his husband, Matt. They just moved into a house and we returned Sadie, their dog, that Cara was watching for the weekend. We stayed for a good chunk of the Twins game. We took off at about the 10th inning. Took 494 north which becomes 694 as it turns west. It seemed like a lot of people were driving recklessly all over and I even made a comment to Cara like "What's up with people tonight!?". Then we had just passed 35E and a red SUV was merging into our lane about 50 yards ahead of us- perfectly fine. Then, very very fastly, a large grey pickup truck, weaving between cars behind us, whips around my jeep and obviously wanted to get in our lane ahead of us, but the red SUV had just merged there. Too late. The back of the big grey truck clips the front of the SUV causing the truck to redirect perpendicular with the highway and he keeps going off the highway to our right, hits the ditch, rolls over on the frontage road. The red SUV manages to pull over on the on-ramp of Rice Ave. they were fine. Cara starts to call 911, I park the jeep on the side of the highway, hazard lights on and run down and up the ditch, jump the fence and join the 3 or 4 other people assessing the situation. The truck was on its roof, pieces of truck and glass all over. Another car comes up the frontage road and in its headlights we see the driver of the truck kind of hanging out of what was the rear window. There is blood and he is moving a little. It seemed like 4 or 5 minutes and a cop arrives. In his flashlight beam we see just how much blood has pooled. It doesn't look good for this guy. The red SUV guy comes down and he is superwired-in shock, but he is physically fine. By now more cops and ambulances are there. Cara was up checking on the red SUV guy's son, he's fine too, a bit shaken up. She gives a cop her report, I give mine and eventually we're on our way.

music - Too Much Rope - Roger Waters (Give any one species too much rope and they'll f* it up!)

Happy Birthday Gregory!

Worked out at the Mall of America for Viking Game Day and it went rather well (unlike the last two times). Stopped by the Franklin Covey store- which has become a tradition this year. After we set up the set, Josh, Scott, Zach and I played 4 player chess. We've been doing that on and off all week and its been a blast. Somehow, I became the designated liaison between us and the cheerleaders. One of the regulars calls me Indy because she heard Joe Schmit call me that (Joe doesn't know my real name so he calls me Indiana because last year I was Indiana Jones for Halloween). And I broke my leatherman.

I'm scheduled to work at the Metrodome tomorrow evening for a Twins pregame show. After that I'm going to Greg's and Mandy's again this weekend to watch the nice guys (see below).


music - Hold Back the Reigns - Duran Duran (Rio) and Here is the House - Depeche Mode (Black Celebration)

Happy Anniversary, Greg and Mandy!

Its been a while since I updated this blog. I've been at Greg and Mandy's hanging with the nice guys. Hanging with the nice guys is kind of like a miniature vacation for me. It forces me away from my usual routine and gives me a period of time to just sit on my ass and watch movies or tv. Thats half of why I haven't posted for a while. Those dogs are wonderful. They even got to chase a rabbit this weekend!

Tonight was the first Before You Say I Might class (of 7). Its a couples class for those who are involved in a serious relationship and are thinking about marriage. It was interesting and I can see the potential for how this could help Cara's and my relationship. I have homework. I'm due to write more, but I'm feeling quite unmotivated tonight, so I'll just have to write more tomorrow.

music - Downside Up - Peter Gabriel (been listening to a lot of Pete lately)