The Year In Review!
Ok, I admit, I'm not a huge updater. I write here once in a while, just for shits and giggles. But some folks say they want to know more about what I'm doing, and that I should update and stuff, so here's my review of my life in the year 2006. That's right, all 24 days of it. Fear the summary. FEAR!
The Hive partied hard on New Years Eve, as is tradition. This really is no different from what anyone else did New Years Eve, so I'll move on.
On New Years Day, we began the second annual Hive Scavenger Hunt, brought to us by the creative wisdom of perkyczarlet and shepholland. Our missions: search the length and breadth of the greater Ithaca metropolitan ecosystem for items of rarity and curiosity. Three teams- nay, fellowships- were dispatched in heated competition with each other. The conflict was great and terrible. Well, no, not really; we all just went shopping.
Alpha Team consisted of fizrep, his paramour Astrida, vulgarbarbarian, Mrs. vulgarbarbarian, and renospalace. They struck a bold mark, earning points by baking pancakes for everyone and finding a young boy in the middle of the commons holding a Roman Candle. They crowned him Pope and then summoned an army of belly dancers to celebrate his coronation.
The picture of Alpha Team standing on ice in their underwear will not be posted for obvious reasons. Use your imagination. It was pretty hot, though.
Beta Team consisted of perkyczarlet, shepholland, mshenzi, her main man Terry, and Andrew. They too made a fine attempt, breaking into a science lab and stealing Pyrex glassware and a live hissing cockroach. I wish I had a picture of the cockroach. perkyczarlet liked the cockroach so much, she took her home to hug it and squeeze it and call it George. Or Betty. Or something. They also attempted to earn points with a group handstand, although shepholland was somewhat challenged by the athletic endeavor.
Though not up to scoring par with Alpha Team, their artistic rendition of "Goldilocks and the Three Tornadoes" was most impressive, and the reenactment of the White Witch feeding Edward Turkish Delights (with two team members as antlered reindeer, no less) was spot on.
Gamma Team consisted of chaosvizier, katieledge, dancingsaracen, Anthony, and Leighann. They opted for the artistic approach, earning points by attempting to imitate a sculpture, and then trying to jam the entire team in a tree. In the latter event, they looked like they'd been treed by coon hounds. Oops.
Our reenactment of the lightsaber battle between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi (episode IV, not III) was worthy, and thanks to cleolinda's book being in my back seat we were able to reenact a scene from "Movies In 15 Minutes":
SAURON- So how's my army coming along?
SARUMAN- Pretty good.
SAURON- Sweeeeeet.
Finally, I took one for the team and consumed one of my most hated of foodstuffs, the dreaded marshmallow peep.
And with that, Gamma Team barely eked out a victory over the powerful Alpha Team.
January was made hectic by a lot of things. Driving around. Working. Burning off a week's worth of bad eating. That kind of thing. Ok, it wasn't really that hectic at all, now that I think about it. Although time spent attempting to fix up my apartment to habitable standards made me realize that I needed new sofas. Curses. The dread horror of furniture acquisition is once again upon me. IKEA could make me a very sad panda. But that's an issue for another day.
katieledge and I did go out to see "Spamalot", the musical based upon "Monty Python And The Holy Grail." Now, while not the Greatest Musical Ever, it does earn points for bringing about the core essence of the movie (which personally I think is the best of the Python films, though others disagree) and adapting it to the stage with equal amounts of Python-class silliness. One might recall the movie's subtitled credits inviting everyone to try a lovely holiday in Sweden and warning of the perils of moose bites; Finland becomes the Scandinavian target of jest in this musical, with entire pages of the programme devoted to a faux Finland-based production.
The musical goes on to answer such pressing questions as "Is Launcelot really gay?" and "What was Sir Galahad's first name?" and "Is John Cleese actually a deity?", all the while bringing back the classic Knights of Ni, French Taunting, and Swamp Castle scenes in their near-original splendor.
While we did miss the times when Alan Tudyk (Wash from TV's "Firefly" and the film "Serenity") was playing Sir Launcelot, we did get to enjoy David Hyde Pierce (Niles from TV's "Frasier") as Not-So-Brave Sir Robin. His song about Jews on Broadway was priceless.
Overall result: A whole lot of funny. Not perfect, hammed up at times, overdone at others, but still Monty Python-class comedy with musical charm to boot.
But still, all this slacking had to end, and I had to get back in shape. Or something that resembled shape. Actually, I'm still fairly shapeless. Like a ham with arms and legs. Mmmm, ham.
Since I resolved to be a bit more useful at karate, and by useful I mean be a better teacher, I showed up to help at our school Break-A-Thon. The primary goal was to teach the students (mostly children) how to break boards, which sounds and sometimes looks easy, but is occasionally harder than it looks. Sensei makes this more of a family-style event by having the children write down their challenges on the boards and then having them break them, symbolizing their ability to overcome things that are difficult or that they need to improve. It sounds corny, but the parents love that sort of thing, it's got the whole feel good positive attitude aspect going, and much as I hate that, I have to admit it gets the crowd going.
So there I am, helping little children break boards.
Wait, let's back up a second. There I am, watching as Sensei demonstrates to the parents what they'll be doing, and setting up a breaking station and explaining stuff. One of the adults near me looks over and asks, "Sir, how many will you be breaking?"
"Depends on how many kids they can stack on the breaking station."
That set the mood properly.
So, back to helping. I'm there to help. Sure, in the back of my mind I recognize the likelihood that Sensei will call upon all his black belts to demonstrate some more advanced breaks, even using concrete patio bricks instead of wooden boards. I'll deal with that when I get there.
Some of the junior black belts start doing their thing. They're really good at it; such is the way of infinite youthful energy and exuberance. We'll see how they are when they're twice that age. Like me.
Sensei comes up to me. "What are you breaking?"
I'm an idiot. "Whatever you want, sir."
"Have you done bricks?"
"I've elbowed one and sto-"
"Ok, you'll elbow three."
Jumping from one to three is quite a leap of... of brick, I guess. I was not quite certain my skills were up to the task. Three? That's a lot of patio bricks. Heavy patio bricks. Also, I'm not really known for my herculean stature. I'm small and not bulky. I don't have enough mass to simply power through stuff like some people do. Only my body is like a ham, not my forearms. Mmmm, ham.
But I digress. What happened is shown here. It's a 15 Meg movie, so it takes a while to load. In summary:
Surprised as hell, I was. Surprised that I didn't break my arm in twenty places.
And that's about it for this month. Tune in next month for another of my oh-so-rare posts. Or maybe I'll try and update more this year. Hahaha, who am I kidding?
The Hive partied hard on New Years Eve, as is tradition. This really is no different from what anyone else did New Years Eve, so I'll move on.
On New Years Day, we began the second annual Hive Scavenger Hunt, brought to us by the creative wisdom of perkyczarlet and shepholland. Our missions: search the length and breadth of the greater Ithaca metropolitan ecosystem for items of rarity and curiosity. Three teams- nay, fellowships- were dispatched in heated competition with each other. The conflict was great and terrible. Well, no, not really; we all just went shopping.
Alpha Team consisted of fizrep, his paramour Astrida, vulgarbarbarian, Mrs. vulgarbarbarian, and renospalace. They struck a bold mark, earning points by baking pancakes for everyone and finding a young boy in the middle of the commons holding a Roman Candle. They crowned him Pope and then summoned an army of belly dancers to celebrate his coronation.
The picture of Alpha Team standing on ice in their underwear will not be posted for obvious reasons. Use your imagination. It was pretty hot, though.
Beta Team consisted of perkyczarlet, shepholland, mshenzi, her main man Terry, and Andrew. They too made a fine attempt, breaking into a science lab and stealing Pyrex glassware and a live hissing cockroach. I wish I had a picture of the cockroach. perkyczarlet liked the cockroach so much, she took her home to hug it and squeeze it and call it George. Or Betty. Or something. They also attempted to earn points with a group handstand, although shepholland was somewhat challenged by the athletic endeavor.
Though not up to scoring par with Alpha Team, their artistic rendition of "Goldilocks and the Three Tornadoes" was most impressive, and the reenactment of the White Witch feeding Edward Turkish Delights (with two team members as antlered reindeer, no less) was spot on.
Gamma Team consisted of chaosvizier, katieledge, dancingsaracen, Anthony, and Leighann. They opted for the artistic approach, earning points by attempting to imitate a sculpture, and then trying to jam the entire team in a tree. In the latter event, they looked like they'd been treed by coon hounds. Oops.
Our reenactment of the lightsaber battle between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi (episode IV, not III) was worthy, and thanks to cleolinda's book being in my back seat we were able to reenact a scene from "Movies In 15 Minutes":
SAURON- So how's my army coming along?
SARUMAN- Pretty good.
SAURON- Sweeeeeet.
Finally, I took one for the team and consumed one of my most hated of foodstuffs, the dreaded marshmallow peep.
And with that, Gamma Team barely eked out a victory over the powerful Alpha Team.
January was made hectic by a lot of things. Driving around. Working. Burning off a week's worth of bad eating. That kind of thing. Ok, it wasn't really that hectic at all, now that I think about it. Although time spent attempting to fix up my apartment to habitable standards made me realize that I needed new sofas. Curses. The dread horror of furniture acquisition is once again upon me. IKEA could make me a very sad panda. But that's an issue for another day.
katieledge and I did go out to see "Spamalot", the musical based upon "Monty Python And The Holy Grail." Now, while not the Greatest Musical Ever, it does earn points for bringing about the core essence of the movie (which personally I think is the best of the Python films, though others disagree) and adapting it to the stage with equal amounts of Python-class silliness. One might recall the movie's subtitled credits inviting everyone to try a lovely holiday in Sweden and warning of the perils of moose bites; Finland becomes the Scandinavian target of jest in this musical, with entire pages of the programme devoted to a faux Finland-based production.
The musical goes on to answer such pressing questions as "Is Launcelot really gay?" and "What was Sir Galahad's first name?" and "Is John Cleese actually a deity?", all the while bringing back the classic Knights of Ni, French Taunting, and Swamp Castle scenes in their near-original splendor.
While we did miss the times when Alan Tudyk (Wash from TV's "Firefly" and the film "Serenity") was playing Sir Launcelot, we did get to enjoy David Hyde Pierce (Niles from TV's "Frasier") as Not-So-Brave Sir Robin. His song about Jews on Broadway was priceless.
Overall result: A whole lot of funny. Not perfect, hammed up at times, overdone at others, but still Monty Python-class comedy with musical charm to boot.
But still, all this slacking had to end, and I had to get back in shape. Or something that resembled shape. Actually, I'm still fairly shapeless. Like a ham with arms and legs. Mmmm, ham.
Since I resolved to be a bit more useful at karate, and by useful I mean be a better teacher, I showed up to help at our school Break-A-Thon. The primary goal was to teach the students (mostly children) how to break boards, which sounds and sometimes looks easy, but is occasionally harder than it looks. Sensei makes this more of a family-style event by having the children write down their challenges on the boards and then having them break them, symbolizing their ability to overcome things that are difficult or that they need to improve. It sounds corny, but the parents love that sort of thing, it's got the whole feel good positive attitude aspect going, and much as I hate that, I have to admit it gets the crowd going.
So there I am, helping little children break boards.
Wait, let's back up a second. There I am, watching as Sensei demonstrates to the parents what they'll be doing, and setting up a breaking station and explaining stuff. One of the adults near me looks over and asks, "Sir, how many will you be breaking?"
"Depends on how many kids they can stack on the breaking station."
That set the mood properly.
So, back to helping. I'm there to help. Sure, in the back of my mind I recognize the likelihood that Sensei will call upon all his black belts to demonstrate some more advanced breaks, even using concrete patio bricks instead of wooden boards. I'll deal with that when I get there.
Some of the junior black belts start doing their thing. They're really good at it; such is the way of infinite youthful energy and exuberance. We'll see how they are when they're twice that age. Like me.
Sensei comes up to me. "What are you breaking?"
I'm an idiot. "Whatever you want, sir."
"Have you done bricks?"
"I've elbowed one and sto-"
"Ok, you'll elbow three."
Jumping from one to three is quite a leap of... of brick, I guess. I was not quite certain my skills were up to the task. Three? That's a lot of patio bricks. Heavy patio bricks. Also, I'm not really known for my herculean stature. I'm small and not bulky. I don't have enough mass to simply power through stuff like some people do. Only my body is like a ham, not my forearms. Mmmm, ham.
But I digress. What happened is shown here. It's a 15 Meg movie, so it takes a while to load. In summary:
Surprised as hell, I was. Surprised that I didn't break my arm in twenty places.
And that's about it for this month. Tune in next month for another of my oh-so-rare posts. Or maybe I'll try and update more this year. Hahaha, who am I kidding?