March 31, 2009
Try this the next time you’re in a crowded station….
Here’s a little something from my favoritest move ever, “The Sound of Music.” (Thanks to Josh for sharing.)
Next will they do Thriller?
March 30, 2009
Storytelling Arts of Indiana offers two-for-one tickets to Indy Arts Card holders
If you are an Indy Arts Card holder, you can get two tickets to Saturday night’s performance for the price of one ($18).
It’s Saturday night at 7:30 p.m at the Indiana State Museum auditorium. It sounds like it’s going to be great — here’s a little info about the storyteller and her topic that evening:
An ancient tale of timeless beauty will be brought to vivid life when Megan Wells performs “Helen’s Troy” at the Indiana State Museum. Helen of Troy is the classic epic about the “face that launched a thousand ships,” a compelling story of pride, passion and fate that has intrigued audiences for thousands of years. Retold many times in many forms, the oral tradition comes full circle with Ms. Wells’ spoken word performance that brings fresh vitality and a modern perspective to this ageless legend. With a mesmerizing touch, she takes listeners into the complex emotions, contradictions and conflicting loyalties of one of the greatest romantic heroines of all time.
Megan Wells is a celebrated storyteller who draws on her experience in the theatre to present stories with dramatic force and immediacy. She has been referred to as the “Kate Hepburn of storytelling,” and describes her style as a quest for a “story eclipse” in which “the light of the world gives way to the light of the imagination.” Her accomplishments include the National Award-winning collaboration with singer/songwriter Amy Lowe, “Fire in Boomtown,” about the Great Chicago Fire. She has also crafted new versions of other classic tales, including an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.”
Ms. Wells’ storytelling has been described as “intimate and epic in equal measure.” That balance is ideally suited to the story of Helen of Troy, a heroine in a world of gods and heroes in whom Ms. Wells yet finds a humanity to which all can relate. In developing “Helen’s Troy,” her goal was to avoid the superficial portrayals of the famous beauty and instead to unfold the complexities of the character as a real person. The result is “a powerful, powerful piece, . . . poetic and densely filled with imagery, but also very accessible.”
I hope you can join Storytelling Arts of Indiana for this great performance! For more information about Storytelling Arts of Indiana, visit www.storytellingarts.org.
My bathroom has the chicken pox!
Or at least it looks like it does. This morning I painted the first coat of green (well, it’s really “pewter tray,” according to Home Depot — it’s the same color as my bedroom) and then used joint compound to touch up all the spots damaged by the wallpaper removal. I had already done one skim coat, but my past experience has been that it’s easier to further repairs after the first coat of color goes on, since it’s easier to see the flaws. So, now I have green walls with lots of spots that have to be sanded. Reminds me of bad poison ivy or the chicken pox.
The other great excitement of the weekend was that I cut away some of the drywall where the second sink will go, and was thrilled to discover that the drain line was already roughed in. I had been hoping, hoping, hoping for this, since I discovered the supply lines below the floor when I ripped out the carpet five years ago. So, for once, a pleasant surprise!
I’ve started telling people that the bathroom warming party is May 9, so I need to get the cabinets installed in the next week or two so the countertop people can come measure and start manufacturing. Now that the drain line is going to be so simple (just have to figure out if the cap screws off and I’m not strong enough or is glued on and will have to be cut), I think I’ll be able to get that done, no problem!
For reference, here’s what it looked like before:
March 9, 2009
Expand your vocabulary
In case you missed it, here is the Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. (Thanks to Mom and Dad for forwarding on….)
The winners are:
- Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
- Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
- Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
- Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
- Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
- Foreploy: Any misrepresentation a bout yourself for the purpose of getting lucky
- Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
- Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
- Inoculatte: To take coffee! intravenously when you are running late.
- Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
- Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
- Karmageddon: It’s when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, and then the Earth explodes, and it’s a serious bummer.
- Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you
- Glibido: All talk and no action.
- Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
- Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
- Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosqui t o, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
- Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.
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The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. And the winners are:
- coffee, n. the person upon whom one coughs.
- flabbergasted, adj. appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
- abdicate, v. to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
- esplanade, v. to attempt an explanation while drunk.
- willy-nilly, adj. impotent.
- negligent, adj. absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
- lymph, v. to walk with a lisp.
- gargoyle, n. olive-flavored mouthwash.
- flatulence, n. emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
- balderdash, n. a rapidly receding hairline.
- testicle, n. a humorous question on an exam.
- rectitude, n. the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
- pokemon, n. a Rastafarian proctologist.
- oyster, n. a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
- Frisbeetarianism, n. the belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
March 4, 2009
Studs in my bathroom
Sadly, the studs are not the kind that will wash my back for me. Instead, with a few hours and a lot of hearing protection, I used my sawz-all to remove the tile and drywall from what used to be the shower stall. In its new incarnation, it will be a linen closet.
The second major milestone for the project is that there is now not a single square inch of wallpaper in my house. Never again will I buy a house with wallpaper and think it will be a cinch to remove it.
Where there once was a shower....
