We had a fun new year's eve over at Duncanne and Warner's. Dancing, Hula hooping, pool, pinball machines, silly string, molten lead, and a guy with miniature bottles of alcohol strapped to his body like a string of bullets all made for a fun time. Kory used mind control to make John dive through a hoop and execute a near-perfect faceplant into the floor, raising a nice knot on John's head and causing him to declare the party "a real success." We're going back to Duncanne's next year, whether or not they're having a party.

We also had our share of car trouble this week. We took one of our cars, Gimik, up to Joe and Meg's so Joe could help John change the brake pads and shoes, but found out the real problem was a bad CV boot.  We took Gimik in to our local mechanic, and as John was dropping Gina off at work in our other car, Dippy, we discovered we'd just got a nail in the tire. John quickly drove Dippy back over to the mechanic, who got all ready with a plug only to discover Dippy had tire rot on all the tires (the tire he tried to plug actually ripped!). So NTB and Greenbelt Mobil got piles of our money.  But that's okay, it's only money. Which reminds us, thanks go out to CooperDad who was very generous this Xmas.

Our HMR this week is for Man on the Moon. Eric Zuckerman sent us another for Boys Don't Cry, which he recommends wholeheartedly:

The title's a lie.
Wise viewers will bring kleenex --
Girly or macho.

Ginohn went to an Icehouse assembly party at Looney Labs, so if you are missing a piece from your Icehouse game set, it might be our fault! We're big fans of quality y'know. Then after working in the Icehouse mines, we went (with the looney crowd and Kory too) to see Galaxy Questagain, yeehaw! But we HMR'd that already, so just read the old one. This week we watched and reviewed a movie that we missed last year - Drop Dead Gorgeous. It definitely has its funny parts.

Zagami is finally ready for its beta test with the Icehouse fans out there. Check out Kory's site for the rules (hopefully he'll put them up tonight).

John's been wasting his spare time alpha testing a variation on chess he thought up last week. It's called Zeitgeist. His friends, the two Jims, are probably playing Zeitgeist right now.

John also updated the IceTraders pages, both for the rules and strategies. He was hoping to get the updated Zarcana rules uploaded as well, but that'll have to wait till next week or so.

We have another tombstoner in our graveyard; number 105 is 42. Welcome to your new stone.

And we forgot (until now) to update the hero of the month this month! Time to start groveling...

Other discoveries: 1. Looky! Too Much Coffee Man is alive and well. 2. Brother Fwanky sent us a fascinating article on Guinness bubblies. 3. This guy has a neat site; check out the tarot reading. 4. Zarf's done it again; now we know where borogoves came from, and why -

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."

Last weekend John went on a climbing trip to Stone Mountain in North Carolina (known as North Kackalackee in these here parts) with friends Bruce and Chris. Interesting four:elevens ensued. They didn't get much climbing done, but managed to ascend the highest mountain in North Kackalackee (Mt. Mitchell, which is also the highest spot in the U.S. east of the Mississippi), and the highest peak in Virginia, Mt. Roger. Compared to peaks in places like the Sierras, these were kind of dinky, but the hikes were full of beautiful views and minimal people. This was especially true for Mt. Rogers, where for miles around there were many rocky peaks, no people, and shaggy highland ponies! John froze his buns off and came home feeling like maybe he should get more exercise or something.

Meantime, Gina, Kory, and Barchan went to see Circus Millennia on Friday night. Our friend Rich was in it and it was a pretty neat play/circus thingy.  It was fun to watch Rich perform, and they had a giant two-person-inside rhinocerous puppet that was pretty cool.  Gina and Kory went to a pirate feast on Saturday night, followed by a comedy club. Here's Gina's story:

I wore my new pirate outfit that I bought at the Renn Fest last year, and Kory fashioned a dark outfit out of John's pirate shirt and some scarves. We had some fun there but had planned on going to a comedy club, so we left early and drove to the Holiday Inn in Bethesda where they have a lounge called Headliners. We knew the comedians would mess with us and prepared for it, and in fact we were asked if we wanted to sit up front and we readily agreed.  All of the comedians had comments, but only the last of the four asked, "What is with the outfits?" To which I said, "We're pirates! (arrr)" and Kory added, "Make us laugh or walk the plank! (arrr)." He replied with an unoriginal insult, but we laughed just the same (the 2 drink minimum helped). Later, he tried again. "Really, what's with the outfits?" I insisted, "We're PIRATES!" and Kory added, "Arrrr!"  We had fun.

Other things to check out - Zarf's been painting plastic Icehouse pieces. And James Randi wrote a really fine article on the Fabulous Automaton Chess Player (you know, the one we've been hearing about for the last 180 years).

The woods have been causing us to gasp at their beauty. We went out during the windy blizzard and had lots of fun making our way through the snow drifts. Booda has been ecstatic, bounding around through the deep snow, following scent trails of other animals, losing us entirely and then suddenly appearing out of nowhere. The snow makes him very quiet. He stops every now and then to lap up some snow or bite the ice balls out from between his toes. Sometimes he lets us pull them out.

Last Saturday John participated in a giant (circa 15 players, 7 countries) Diplomacy game that Jake organized at the Looneys' place. John was teamed up with Barchan and together they played as France. Barchan made John feel pretty confident when he said "I haven't played for a while, but before that I played for 32 years." Later, when it became apparent that they might lose, Barchan admitted that in all those 32 years of playing, he never won a single game. :)  Their main strategy - retreat into Spain and attempt to keep a small section of French soil from being torn apart by England, Germany, and Italy - managed to keep them in the game until the rest of the players called it quits. Seeing as they were both pretty sure they would be eliminated quickly, they feel they did all right.

We saw Billy Joe, our latest nephew, on Sunday. He was pretty scrawny (not surprising since he came out slightly early). He slept a lot, but when he didn't he was quite alert.

Ginohn's wedding pages have finally had recipes for the food and yummy cake added. 

The Graveyard has a new entry: Notice!

Our Haiku Movie Review this week is for Lulu on the Bridge, which received a yellow (meaning we liked it) only by process of elimination.

Eric Zuckerman sent us a whole mess of news stories regarding Julia Butterfly. Thanks Eric!

• Our Graveyard has a new stone in it - waiting.
• Our HMR this week is for The Green Mile, which we really liked a lot (but we didn't love it).
• Kory and John have been spending more time talking philosophy and game design and and running playtests this week. John's pretty excited about Kory's latest invention, coming sooner or later to an icehouse near you.
• Gina took all the tiles she's ever made and put them together almost organized and glued them to the wall behind the bathroom sink with tile mastic last Saturday.  It's still waiting to be grouted because Sunday she got pretty sick. There is a chance it was the mastic fumes that did it (she ran the bathroom fan, but maybe it wasn't enough). She even had a fever and sweated it out all night and was almost back to normal the next day.  Anyway , it looks pretty cool.
• John added some halloween pictures to his costume article. Thanks, Looneys!

New hero this month! Stay cool.

Gina recently finished a commissioned ceramic sculpture / fountain, so her pottery page has been revamped. More to come...

Some of the viewers of four:eleven were wondering what the heck last Saturday's entry was all about. We were driving by some neighborhood church and saw a sign, which John read out loud, mentally leaving out certain syllables. John took a picture of the strange sign later. It's good to see that certain ('merkin) mainstream religions are joining the rest of the world. At least in John's weird brain...

Speaking of blasphemy, we saw Penn & Teller! It was a great show, full of comedy, magic, macabre songs, escapes, and all sorts of other entertainment. They finished their act with an uncanny double bullet catching trick.

Our HMR this week is for The Thirteenth Warrior, which, despite the hype, was better than John expected and worse than Gina expected. Whatever -- it's a guy flick.

This week's surfing has turned up some interesting links including The Screwdisk E-mails, The Bushwalker's Guide to the Galaxy, Roller Coaster Physics, and this beautiful Hubble picture of the Eskimo Nebula.

We're living for the weekends lately. Contemplating buying some tickets to London (British Air has some cheap seats), but we'll probably save the money for another day.

Our latest favorite comedian is Eddie Izzard; Rich and Izolda turned us on to him. Izzard's bright, extremely funny, and has a knack for appearing to be two people - or two people and a giraffe - while on stage. We've seen two Izzard videos and hope to see many many more. So that's what we (Rizolda, Kory, Ginohn) did on Friday night -- watched Eddie Izzard after seeing The Kid (with Charley Chaplin and Uncle Fester as the kid). Then when we came home John and Kory stayed up until 5:00 the next morning playing games. They're whacked.

On Saturday we went to a belated baby shower for Meg, Joe, and Billy (their kid) at Tom-n-Kathy's place. And a good time was had by all. John got to learn ancient baby shower secrets that mostly only women know. Later we went to our town's movie theater and watched Topsy Turvy with (once again) Rich, Izolda, and Kory. We have a Haiku Movie Review for that one, plus an extra review this week for The Velocity of Gary, such as it is.

When we returned from the movie John and Kory attempted to run a playtest for a new game that John is working on. It was quite painful for some of the participants, as playtests often are. Playing a game and testing a game are two very different activities; one is entertainment and the other can be akin to the Chinese water torture. Nonetheless, after everyone except John and Kory had gone home and to bed, John and Kory were able to use all they had learned from playtesting to make the game much more fun (at least for them). Then they tried it out till 5:00 in the morning and had a great time. They're whacked.

Sunday was all a blur. Can't remember a thing. Monday night was delicious. That's when we ended up at The Vegetable Garden (a wonderful vegan restaurant) with Kory and Rich. Izolda couldn't go -- she's away on business durn it.

We haven't continued much with our mapping of our woods this Winter, but hope to pick up where we left off in the Spring. In the meantime, check out Wendy Carlos' page about maps. That's right, the Wendy Carlos. In fact, take a look at her entire site -- she's got neat stuff on there. Music, eclipses, pictures, writings, etc. Wendy's a real renaissance lady.

The Haiku Movie Review this week is for an old silent movie - Seven Chances. This is the movie that was recently copied to some extent by The Bachelor (that movie with Chris O'Donnell).

Rich had a nice birthday party on Saturday night. Last year at Rich's B-party we had to recite poetry. This year we had to bring art on 3x5 cards. What will next year bring? Izolda made wunnerful foodstuff, Gina made some really tasty chocolate pie (the recipe went onto a 3x5 card), and Rich made his famous stuffed mushy-rooms. 

On Monday Ginohn and Booda went hiking in the Pennsylvania mountains with Stacy. We weren't prepared for the wet snow, which made uphills difficult, and soaked everyone's feet. But Booda LOVED it.

Ginohn decided not to go to England this weekend, fares are a bit more expensive once you start adding up the various surcharges.

Last Thursday we went to see The Kids in the Hall live show at the Warner Theater. We took Rich for his birthday and Kory came along too. Gina thought she was lucky to get seats, but they were awful, second to the back row in the upper balcony. Not good at all for seeing expressions on the faces of the Kids. And you'd think a show they would take on tour would be at least as funny as the TV show, but no. Gina and Kory were very much looking forward to this, and everyone was a bit disappointed. We could have done better by watching their TV show from very far away.

Our review this week is for The Whole Nine Yards. Eh. Can't wait for this month's (better? please?) movies.

Our hero this month is good for you. He's saved millions of lives.

Guess that's it, we're signing off now. Until next week, have a good night sleep...

John is still spending most of his free time working on game designs with Kory, and Gina keeps busy with sewing and clay projects, and trying in vain to keep the house clean. 

Ginohn voted on Tuesday for presidential candidates who seem to be out of the picture now, so we can get a bumper sticker that says "Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy."  Is it just us or are these candidates REALLY scary?

Our HMR this week is for My Dinner with Andre, now available in video. And now for our new featurette, where we compare the last two movies we saw, even if they're two totally different films: John thought My Dinner with Andre was better than The Whole Nine Yards, but after he held a gun to Gina's head, she said she liked 9 Yards better (she's partial to comedies).

Despite an invitation to go mountain biking, Ginohn slept as late as possible on Saturday, which wasn't late enough. That afternoon we went to John's Mom's house to have a feast in honor of her birthday. Afterward we hightailed it over to a restaurant called Tel Aviv to meet up with Eryq and Deb (and Rich and Izolda, and several other Deberyq friends), for another feast, this one in honor of Deberyq's being together for eleven years, one month, one week, and (almost) one day. Dinner² was wonderful -- Deberyq paid for everyone as an "anniversary gift" -- and there were belly dancers, too! At this point Ginohn was pretty stuffed and ready to keel over from exhaustion, but we persevered, and even went to Deberyq's house after dinner for tea and (*urp*) dessert.

By Sunday we may have caught up with our sleep-for-sanity quota. John took his dij and Booda on a hike to the fields nearby. Booda chased a flock of birds that really wanted to land, then he chased six deer through the fields. Luckily he's not quite fast enough. 

Sunday night we went with Kory to see What Planet are You From?, which may have been a good movie, but we aren't quite sure, because the theater started the damned movie too early! This is one of those Lowe's multiplex places. In the past they have always followed the typical protocol: at show time, start with 10 minutes (or so) of previews, then begin the main feature. But this time, when we walked into the theater (granted, a few minutes late), the movie was already playing (for who knew how long) and the theater lights were still on. We sat there watching it for half a minute, wondering if it was one of those commercials, until it slowly dawned on us that we were watching the movie. For the first half hour of the "movie" Gina was seething, and she had to go tell the "employees" to turn the lights off. Twice. So, we missed the whole setup, which made the rest of the "movie" seem like seeing one of those movies you get to see in dreams once and a while. Kind of surreal, really.

Monday we did something secret with a secret thing that we've been sworn to secrecy about, by force. But we'll keep it secret anyway. It was pretty cool though.

Tuesday we watched some more Buster Keaton films with Rich. We don't have a Haiku for the main feature - Navigator - yet, but we will, someday. Instead we just watched and quickly reviewed a really bad comedy (still, it did make us laugh some) by some other guy, called The Pest.

Saturday was an Icehouse labor day. That's where we assemble at the Looneys with other folk to experience inner child slave labor. We sorted and packed a million gazillion Icehouse sets and then ate pizza and played games.

Sunday - Not much happened until later when Kory and John picked up Stacy at the airport and eventually ended up at the Vegetable Garden (whatta restaurant!) with the rest of Ginohn and Rizolda. There was some sort of food fight involving delicious Key-lime pie, but it's all a blur now.

Thursday night we invaded Digital Addiction to play games with Lee Moyer and his crowd. Gina played a couple word games (Scrabble and Probe), and John got sucked into a series of semi-secret Icehouse playtests. Cool stuff.

Tonight Ginohn went to Lee & Annaliese's for dinner. Once again we were zombies, fatigued from a week of staying up too late almost every night. The Moyers showed us a short Tim Burton movie we've never seen - Frankenweenie. The title is stumping us still. Anyhow, here we are back at home, like zombies, refusing to go to sleep though.

Our HMR this week is for Sliding Doors. It's much much better than The Pest - no contest.

There's a new Tombstone this week: oxymoron. We're not sure whether the player's name is legit, but what the hell, we're feeling generous. Welcome under, Squirt!

We got a letter mentioning ScarfBarf this week. JK Grence wrote:

I recently learned that the ScarfBarf pattern has a name.

Burberry.

I want to know where they got the berry part.  I also want to know if people think that this godawful pattern actually looks good, or if some trendy fashion designer just cooked it up to prove to all the other trendy fashion designers that people are dumb enough to buy anything if a trendy fashion designer makes it.

John's micro-journal is doing well; he recently made slight revisions to the about four:eleven page. Brother Frank is handling four:eleven's non-context feature well. He's been e-mailing us his ideas of what happens one minute after 4:11. It's pretty funny stuff. Here's a sample:

This is what John sent out on 3/20 for four:eleven - 

I hear the muffled laugh of someone in another room, just as I finish typing '51%' into a cell in a spreadsheet.

The laughing continues and is starting to scare me. The door creaks open and five kids with a dog walk in. The tallest says in a voice sounding strangly like a pubescent Casey Casem, "Hey, this isn't the snack bar!"
"Jinkies!" says a short bespectacled girl next to him...

After the party we ambled over to ToK and Todd's place for some late night game playing with the gang, which lasted till 3:00 AM or so. We're all crazy.

Sunday night Gina went dancing with Jenny at Dave and Diane's place, while John went to see a movie with Kory. So, Our HMR this week is for Rear Window, the Hitchcock classic, not the latest remake. It was ever so slightly better than last week's Sliding Doors. 

We have two new/old Hankisms this week, Egyptian and Greco-Roman, courtesy of Robin Thompson. Actually they're the first mostly defunct Hankisms (due to age and the fact that pantheons aren't as trendy as they used to be) to hit our list.

We bought a new computer! It's a little faster, a little smarter, and has some nice speakers and other accessories (like DVD and a noisier cooling fan). It's our first non-kludge brand computer, so it'll take a while before Gina gets used to it and John messes it up by playing with its insides.

We took a little tour to a nearby Island on Monday morning, looking for a hurricane-proof house we heard was in the area. We found two! They're on the same street; big domed concrete structures with curved portholes, very reminiscent of Roger Dean's work.

Oh yeah, but before all that there was a wedding to attend, which was OK as weddings go (the bride was lovely). The ceremony was typical christian in the Citadel chapel, which is a spiffy church in the middle of a military academy. It was quite a regal thing - crossed swords, somber homilies, the whole works. The reception was at a nearby Elks club place, you know, one of those big halls where car salesmen and proto-crane operators go to worship the Grand Poo-Bah or something. So that was interesting, having the ceremony under the watchful eye of Jebus and the reception under a disembodied head of an elk. The cake was amazing and tasty too! There were two very swift dancers (not us), and lots of other people somehow knew how to do line dances of various vintage. 

There were the usual fights that you get when you put a bunch of family members (the kind who are always right) into a house together with nothing much to do but eat, drink, and disagree. But mostly we all got along well, and everybody was happy for the vacation and reunion. Frequent out of context quotes from the weekend: 

• "Can't we all just get along?"
• "Bahks! Bahks! You have bahks!"
• "You gotta... driggity prah?"

We just saw Mimic (a scary-style sci-fi movie) which is all right, right up until it starts following Hollywood's formula for Stupidity. Which is about halfway through at least. Oops! You just read more syllables about Mimic than there were in its review.

Other than that there's been no real web work for a while; someone sent in some ideas for Hankisms that John has yet to respond to. Hang in there...

Late that night at the party, we noticed it started to snow outside. By the time we drove home around 3:30am or so, it was coming down fast, windy, and heavy in big fluffy flakes. It was beautiful but disconcerting to see it falling on the blossoming trees. 

Sunday it was decided a bit hastily that the woods was too cold and wet to hold our drum jam -- we found shortly after canceling that the woods was actually warmish, sunny, and dry, albeit a bit windy which might have made the music hard to hear. Hopefully next month it will proceed as normal. That evening we had a great time playing Ping-Pong with Rizolda, Kory, and Ken. We were joined by Stacy for a trip to the Vegetable Garden. Yummy as always. If you haven't tried it you should.

On Monday Kory used subtle child(ish) psychology to convince us to go see Mission to Mars, and Kristin and Andy came along too. We went to Lowe's in Wheaton, historically a bad theater but the only place it was playing. This is the theater that couldn't or wouldn't fix the movie we (Andy, Kristin, Stacy, Gina, and maybe someone else) were watching, Andy's favorite movie and mine, That Thing You Do, when it broke about 10 minutes from the end (years ago). This time the theater we were in had a screen not much bigger than a big screen TV, and the sound was pretty bad. But not as bad as the movie itself. Another bad thing happened - there we were with the theater to ourselves until the last minute when a family came in with noisy kids, and a man sporting an excessive amount of cologne.  And in this case, any cologne is really bad, since Kristin is allergic and gets migraine headaches from even one whiff. When we were leaving she had to keep running around trying to stay away from him and couldn't seem to shake him. Ginohn would just like to put in our two cents about perfume and cologne: If you really want to wear it, a tiny drop should do. Why choke everyone around you? It's nauseating to many people, and causes real (and very painful!) health problems in others.

4/19/0 - Reign Reign Go Away
Friday we went to see The Rude Mechanicals' production of Macbeth, because we had numerous friends acting in it.  It was definitely fun watching them act, even though the play was long, and the set sparse, and those metal chairs, ouch. Friends in the audience included Yvonne Bruno, Jeff Poretsky, #12, and Lisa Joy. Annaliese Moyer was scary-crazy as Lady Macbeth, Kevin Hollenbeck believably angry as McDuff, Sean Eustis was the fine swordsmen Donaldbain and Young Siward, plus there were a couple of actors Gina acted with in A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court, Andy Greenleaf as Malcolm, and Chenoa Jones as Fleance. Another surprise was Dan Delany as the Doctor. Afterwards we went out to dinner at Bennigan's with most of the cast, and Yvonne and Jeff. Since the last time we'd been to a Bennigan's they've added a tasty vegan dish, a vegetable stir fry. And they have Guinness on tap, which makes John happy. We had a good time.

On Saturday, John tried out Booda's detective abilities. Rizolda was missing one of their cats, Loki, and were getting pretty worried when they found bloody paw prints on their deck. So Booda went over to see if he could sniff him out. He didn't find anything, but Loki returned on his own, unharmed, after being gone for five nights! Later, we went to the grand opening of The New Deal Cafe, a cooperative restaurant in Roosevelt Center, right in the middle of Old Greenbelt. We got there just as they opened, and the place filled up fast. They serve coffee in mugs made by Gina's cohorts at Greenbelt Pottery (Gina has only two mugs in the collection), which everyone seemed to love. They have display space for artists, rotating every two months. If you want a cool place to hang your paintings, check it out. The fare is a little sparse except for sweets and coffee, we made do with humus and pita, and John got some espresso, which he says is good (the cashier corrected John's pronunciation by saying, "you mean 'expresso'?"). And the service is mostly volunteer, which made it a bit slow, being the first day and the big crowd and all. They're supposed to be open every day, most of the day, so come try it out sometime. We hung out for nearly two hours, and saw a lot of Greenbelters we know. We had to leave just as the musical sets were starting, and unfortunately missed Izolda perform, for we had to visit John's mom who helped us do our taxes (thanks again!). We were pleased to find we are getting a refund. 

Sunday was a lovely day and after a nice walk in the woods with Booda, we got giant salads at Giant, did a little garden work, built a trellis out of  bamboo for the clematis in the corner, and did a lot of bamboo maintenance -- that means chopping down a lot of bamboo. That evening when John was getting ready to send in the taxes we discovered a mistake, so we held off to get the correct papers from Mom the next day. Then we went to the Old Greenbelt Theater to see Boys Don't Cry.  Whilst we give this movie a green, we don't recommend it unless you like to be tense for two hours. You can find out about the real story behind the movie at this Brandon Teena page. We're pretty interested in seeing the documentary. And speaking of our whacked out culture, here's a good article called Columbine - All the Wrong Lessons.

Monday John had to work but Gina has the week off, and is keeping busy with various projects around the house and studio (when she can drag herself away from the 'puter). She's making flower pots and fountains for a sale on May 6th at the Greenbelt Community Center's Open House. There will be lots of stuff going on, so come on down. Monday night we visited Mom again, deposited our tax forms to the Bethesda Post Office, and celebrated with dinner at the Austin Grill. The chips and salsa aren't as good as Chevy's (whose is), but the portabella fajitas beats all others. We also had a grilled vegetable burrito, but you couldn't tell what veggies were in there for all the black beans. But it was tasty.

Tuesday night was Gina's last class (teaching) for a couple of weeks, and was pleased when a departing student stopped to tell her that she was a great instructor : ) ! 

So now it's Wednesday and it has finally stopped raining, after two gray days of seemingly perpetual mist and cold rain. Whew! Don't think we could handle England... Gina has this report from the morning: I was busy watching a videotape I made when I was in college that I had never watched before and had completely forgotten about (neat to see all my old friends again!), when I heard a commotion in the other room. At first it appeared that Booda was just bothering Mango, but there was a squeaking noise not unlike the sound one of Booda's toys make when he bites it. Finally I got close enough to see a juvenile squirrel trapped between them that Mango had caught and brought in. I put Booda in a stay (which he had trouble remembering), and threw Mango out the front door. That, of course, didn't work as she ran around back and came back in. So, I closed her in the bathroom and put Booda outside and closed off the dog door. I was very nervous and unsure how I would get a hold of the squirrel as he was out of reach, but I kept trying and after much difficulty managed to pull him off the curtain where he had climbed (I used a towel of course. I felt him try to bite me through it). Whew! I let him go in the woods behind the house. A little while later I went out into the back yard and saw his mommy trying to lead him home. He wasn't following very well so finally she picked him up in her mouth and carried him, leaping between branches and trees! It was an amazing sight. I hope the little guy is okay.

Check this out: GinohnNews, Jesufied

Addendum - While we were in South Carolina for Kit & Laura's wedding, we had a good time walking around Battery Park (so named for its cannons pointed in the general direction of Fort Sumpter (sp)) with our friend Leo. Leo saw an ornament on a housetop and wondered what its function was. We thought it was just ornamental but he disagreed. Then John told Leo that he'd mention this on our news page, but promptly forgot.

You may have noticed we bumped the News page's font up a couple points; some monitors were making it teensy. Yep, it's pretty exciting here at the Ginohn residence. Ahem.

Zelli just joined the ranks of last words. What will your last word be?

We ate a cherimoya the other day. Highly recommended; it's juicy and tastes like candy... an alien fruity flavor. Looks alien, too.

Saturday night we attended the Looneys' Pop-Tart Cafe at Balticon. You can read more about it at Wunderland. IceTowers was a big hit there, and with good reason. It's quickly learned, with multiple levels of strategy. Try it!

We showed up too late to sister Cecily's birthday party at CooperDad's place on Ishtar Sunday -- Cecily and family were just leaving. They said they'd come back but we never saw 'em. Dad had excellent couscous and snowpeas (with roasted almonds, yum), and he gave everybody baskets of Ishtar goodies. Happy Birthday Cecily!

We just got back from Jake & Lisa's place where we were learning to play Bridge and Bohnanza (that German bean game). The chili that Jake served was splendiferous, and the games were good too. Now we're dog tired.

Our latest movie review is for Keeping the Faith. it came close to a green. Jenna Elfman is HOT.
 

On Friday, Jake wanted to be entertained, so we told him to come on over. Kory and he and we tried going down to the New Deal Cafe to play games, but there weren't any tables free and there was live music, so we chatted with some friends there until we decided to go see a movie. We ended up seeing Frequency, which Gina was a bit dubious about, but we all liked it (check out our 17 syllable review). Afterwards we went to a 24 hour diner in College Park, Plato's, which has so-so food, but some vegan choices, which makes it the best choice for middle of the night dining. Sucks, but still ten times better than Denny's.

Saturday was a beautiful day, so Gina worked in yard. It's actually looking pretty good. It gets rather bare and muddy in the winter, but all the rain is helping the grass grow in. We had dinner with Rizolda, Kory, and not Stacy. She came with us in her car to Bethesda to go to Tel-Aviv Cafe, but was unable to find a parking space within a reasonable amount of time and took off. Kory spent so long looking for parking that the appetizers had arrived by the time he sat down with us. The food is pretty darn good and they have a mother and daughter belly dancing team that puts on a show around 9pm saturday nights. We were there for around 2 1/2 hours, the service is slow but we were having a good time. Gina again forgot her "restaurant kit." It's a tote bag to take to a restaurant with two tupperware containers (for leftovers, so you don't have to get disposable plastic or evil styrofoam), a bottle of water (she is always in need of water, more often than most waiters will come around with some), and chopsticks and flatware (for those occasions where only plastic is available). After that we all went to toK and Todd's for some games. We came in too late for a round of Psychiatrist, but then Rizolda and Gina participated in a fun game called Loaded Questions. There are cards with questions on them and on your turn you ask the question and everyone else writes down their answers. They pass them in to your neighbor who reads them off and you have to match the answer with the person who wrote it. It was pretty entertaining, though hard to get a lot right since we didn't know everyone there. John and Kory playtested some newfangled Zarcana rules upstairs while this was going on. 

Sunday was the Millennium March on Washington for Human Rights: Gay, Lesbian,  Bisexual, and Transgendered Rights. We showed up after the March was over with Stacy and some friends of hers, Denine and Niecey. We walked around, caught Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche speaking (they were on a stage a mile away, we watched on the big screen near us), looked at the booths, and John got a new celtic pattern marriage ring. The one he'd been wearing ever since we became Ginohn was suffocating the skin under it. The new one is narrower, looser, and has holes so his skin can breathe. Anyway, there's not much to report, except we lost Denine and Niecey and had to leave without them. We went to Home Depot on the way home to get the stuff to put a ceiling light in our living room, while Stacy went to pick up the movie Fight Club from the rental place. She'd heard it was good, Gina had been avoiding it because of violence, but we were all interested. It was very violent and gory, and Gina couldn't look sometimes, and Stacy left the room about halfway through. But we stuck it out and found it so fascinating that we watched it again Monday night with Kory. We fastforwarded through a lot of the fight scenes the second time.

And so now we've just returned from another splendid night of gaming at Jake's place, in which Gina kicked the poopy out of Kory and John (who almost ended the game with negative points) in a game of Wordthief. Look for that for sale soon at Contagious Dreams. 

Earlier Mango had to go to the vet because she had a lump on her back. As Ginohn suspected, it was an abscess, formed from a puncture wound. She must've gotten into a nasty fight, hopefully not with one of the rabid animals running around Greenbelt.

It's so late now that we're just entering into Thursday, but not just any Thursday -- It's Star Wars Day! Happy Star Wars Day, everybody! May the fourth be with you.

This Saturday is going to be the Greenbelt Community Center's Open House. Sounds boring? Well, there will also be Taste of Greenbelt, Greenbelt Nursery School and Kindergarten's (where Gina works) Spring Fair (with fun stuff for kids and auctions of neat stuff for adults) and Greenbelt Pottery Guild's pottery sale (Gina works there too). The pottery will all be 15% off, and there is also a plant sale or something. Not quite as boring now, huh... It goes from 10 am to 3pm. Email Gina@wunderland.com if you need directions.
 

We forgot the month changed last week, so our hero of the month is a bit late again. She's sweet though.

Also John added a couple Hankisms to the ever-growing list: Quaker and Baha'i. Welcome to our religion roast, believers!

The Spring Fair thing we kept yammering about was last Saturday, and Gina took a turn selling pottery at the Guild.  Margit came by and bought one of Gina's fountains (thanks again!); #12, Skip, Kory, and John also came for a look see. While there a fellow came by promoting a swing dance that will be held at the Community Center in June. More details when the date is closer.

After the fair Kory and Ginohn saw a foreign movie at our town theater, titled All About My Mother. We put an HMR in the buffer, but you'll have to wait to read it next week or so. Incidentally, we have Three to Tango and Run Lola Run in the buffer too. Good to be ahead of the curve. Anyway, after seeing Mother, we walked across the square to the New Deal Cafe and played a game of Bohnanza - or Beano, as John so fondly calls it. It's a German card game. We taught it to two kids at the cafe and played again; the kids loved it, and so do we.

On Sunday we had our scheduled monthly drum-dij-dog jam out on Blueberry Hill in our woods.  It was hot out there! Not so many people showed up, but we sounded great some of the time, and at least the heat kept the bugs away. After the drumming, John, Ken, Kory, and Jessica (who's visiting from Boston) played a rousing game of, yup, Beano. Those Germans sure can cook up good games.

Gina had to leave the jam a bit early to attend a pottery class -- Gina is taking a pottery class with all the other instructors and advanced students at Greenbelt Pottery. She is trying to learn new ways of doing things. She's pretty excited about improving her throwing skills and instructing skills too. One of the first lessons involved throwing a pot blindfolded.

On Monday Gina made a banana birthday cake (some might call it banana bread in the shape of a cake) for Kory, and afterwards we all went to an Indian restaurant called Udupi Palace. We made it there just before closing time, ate quickly, and ran home for more cake. Yum.

Gina's beginning pottery classes that she teaches started this week, and is pleased to have a couple of friends in there, plus a lot of friendly new people.

5/17/0 - Happy Birthday Leo!
OK, we'll admit it, we didn't do a thing for Leo's Birthday, and we would have missed it if Barchan (Keeper of the Birthdays) hadn't reminded us. But it's not because we like Kory more, mind you. Anyway, happy birthday, Leo.

New stuff on our site:

• Note the new surf's up column to the right. It's a history of some sites we visited during the past month or so. The links aren't organized well or discussed much, we just thought it might be fun for the surfers in the audience to see where we've been.
• We have one new tombstoner this week - Ouch. 
• We have two new Haiku Movie Reviews: All About My Mother, and Three to Tango.
• A new Hankism for Asatru. (That's Norse Paganism.)

On Saturday we had a dinner date with our friend Jenny. Initially she was going to come to our house and we were going to go out somewhere, but since she had to get up at 4:00 AM and work all day in her garden we met her at her parents' house, which is closer to her field than we are. Their house has a great view of the Chesapeake Bay. Right after we arrived a huge lightening storm started moving in, and we watched boats speed back to port to escape the wind and waves. John almost got fatally stung by a gigantic bee that turned out to really be a non-stinging "wood borer" that decided for some reason to land on John and scare the bejeebus out of him. Even so, it was great entertainment for everybody else watching John jump up and down, flailing and carrying on. We ate corn on the cob and watched the lightening out on the bay some more. Then we watched a video of an old fifties swordfight movie called Scaramouche.

On Sunday (known in Hallmark stores as "Mothers' Day") John went to a brunch for his grandmother. He got lost and barely made it there in time for some food and banter with family.  After brunch John went to work (blech!) to get some last minute stuff done. Meanwhile Gina had her second advanced pottery class, but left early to drive up to Wilmington, DE, with Stacy, Kevin, and Jeff for a Weird Al concert.  A blast was had by all, well, except maybe Stacy, who was tired already, and had to be at work at 7:30am the next day. And Al's voice was in pretty bad shape, you could hear him straining when he sang, and wasn't allowed to speak at all at the meet and greet afterwards. Poor Al! Get better soon! John spent the evening surviving Gladiator, Eating veggie meatballs (the size of tennis balls) and spaghetti, and brain storming game designs with Kory.

Gina's ol' college pal Laurie Switzer was in Baltimore this weekend for a museum conference, and spent an eve hanging out a chez Ginohn, walking in the woods and watching that old videotape Gina made in college (with Laurie featuring prominently). Meanwhile John went out to a Hard Times Cafe to watch Kory and Stacy eat chili (while he drank ale), and ended up playing movie-roulette with Stacy. That's where you go to a multiplex and watch whatever's starting. John and Stacy watched Battlefield Earth, thereby contributing fourteen dollars to be split evenly between Hollywood and Scientologists. Ouch.

On Tuesday building 33 (where John works, at NASA) had a huge picnic, but John didn't stay long because they hardly had any vegan items on the menu, and he didn't want to spend ten bucks on beer. His priorities are a bit mixed up lately; he'll spend seven dollars on a psuedoscience cult, but skip the ten dollar beer. Sheeze. John's been planning to go to California for the last month to help calibrate the Triana satellite's EPIC instrument, but the people on the other side keep slipping the trip a week ahead every week. They've got ten cents holding up a dollar.

Here's a very funny (but R rated, so stay away, kids!) little piece about Winnie the Pooh. It shows us the dangers of worshipping Satan without adequate amounts of yak's blood. It might take a while to download, but we think it's worth it.

Friday was Barchan's 2nd annual 50th birthday party, and Ginohn had a good time there, hanging out with lots of friends, some old ones John hadn't seen in years. Lots of people were having fun calling Barchan from cell phones from within his own house.  Radagast had both John and Gina (and lots of others) call up and and ask for directions in a foreign accent. Barchan fell for it every time! Gina (as "Inga") finished up her conversation by walking into the room Barchan was in and saying, "Okay, see you soon!" into the phone right behind Barchan's back. Fun-ny!

Saturday night was another birthday party at toK and Todd's for Jen Kaplan. John spent most of it playing Zarcana while Gina relaxed in the decadent vibrating massage overstuffed lazyboy chair. Jen got a monkey to shake.

Sunday Gina took John to the airport real early, slept a while, then went to her pottery class. Still learning great new things, and threw some rather large pieces. She's been pretty messed up sleep-wise ever since though. Can't wait for the Nursery school to be over. Just less than three more weeks!
 

We have a new hero of the month for June, and a new Haiku Movie Review for a movie we saw a few weeks ago -- the 1952 version of Scaramouche.

Jon Kruger was in town for Michael (Gina's ex) and Cynthia's wedding (which he says was wonderful) and spent the day with Gina on Thursday.  Jon took her to lunch and went to the Nursery School with Gina from 4 - 6, and the little girls there loved him, and all the kids went nuts when he climbed up into the giant oak in the playground.  They all wanted to climb up there too.  Later that evening after a pleasant walk in the woods with Booda, Jon insisted on gettting some massage practice in since he's studying massage therapy.  He brought his massage table with him from Seattle.  Gina reports he's pretty darn good at it.

John (not Jon) spent the week working his butt off at Lockheed in Palo Alto, helping the folks there get ready for a massive calibration of the satellite Triana's EPIC device.  Things went OK there, but mucho numero crunching is still required before we know whether that part of his trip was worth it.

In his copious spare time during the week, John visited his friend Khaled (who left our burg years ago for sunny CA).  Khaled took John out to some delicious restaurants, showed where the good windsurfing is in the area, and demonstrated the latest Civilization-like computer game he's addicted to -- Age of Empires.  Khaled took off for Texas for the weekend, so John didn't really have time to do anything special with him, but it was good to see an old friend.

Saturday Gina went to Deborah's birthday party, she and Eryq served great food as usual, and there were lots of fun people to meet, like Steve and Debra.  Gina ended up having a small adventure with Eryq, Deborah, Steve, and Debra, which will be reported in full once all the info is gathered.

Gina mentioned to Eryq and Deb that there was a Weird Al concert in Baltimore Sunday night; they are fans and didn't know about it, and fortunately they were still able to get tickets.  There was a big group there, Rich and Izolda, #12 and Lisa, Deb and Eryq, Kevin (who unfortunately missed most of the show), Barchan, and Gina.  Everyone had a great time.  Gina is happy to report that Al had his voice back and really looked like he was enjoying himself on stage, and even though she had good seats, the concert didn''t seem as painfully loud as usual.  Maybe she's just losing her hearing.

Meantime, John attended - in its entirety - Baycon, a si-fi convention in San Jose, and helped referee the second West Coast Icehouse Tournament on Sunday, which was expertly run by Eric (not Eryq) Zuckerman.

John spent much of the weekend at the con, making the party rounds with Eric, Beth, and Michelle. Good parties!  Many spilled out the backs of rooms onto the huge patio, mingling together as one big party.  There were lots of great food and drinks. One party had an entire layout of yummy Indian food.  The Klingon party was most impressive; all of the costumes and sets were amazing, and the Klingons played their parts well. 

Other Baycon highlights include: 

• Bed diving - hotel beds are extremely resilient to flying leaps and face-plants.
• Bird attacks - there was an aggressive black bird that wanted John's scalp.
• Belly dancing jam - Beth Zuckerman is one helluva belluva undulava.
• Zendo training - Kory Heath's mysterious game caught on quickly and was played over and over into the early morning on two occasions.
• Meeting the guy who blew the whistle on the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide.
• Playing an art terrorist (who was playing the ghost of Jon Benet Ramsey) in a LARP.

Monday, Gina vegged all day until it was time to pick up Stacy at the airport, deliver her home, then go back to the airport to pick up John.  Thus, Ginohn was happily reunited after 9 days apart. 

Gina finally wrote up the promised report from a little adventure she had with Eryq and Deborah and Debra and Steve.  Hopefully pictures and maybe a bit more info will be added soon.

Last week Frank (John's littlest bro, who is graduating from helicopter training soon) sent in an HMR of his own for MI-2, and we forgot to show it:

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2  :(
Another movie
ruined by the excess use
of cartoon physics

Not much time for web-blather this week, but we'll pad it out with pasted email from Koralleen. (see below)

Friday night we had a party (as we often do from month to month). A lot of people managed to squeeze into our cave. It felt like three parties toward the end of the evening -- a video party in the bedroom, a food and drink party in the kitchen, and a bunch of people playing games in the living room. Then at circa 2:30 in the morning the party faded away and the stragglers got to go for the traditional walk in the pitch dark woods (sans flashlight - it's more fun that way) with Booda and John.

On Saturday Gina went to a baby shower type party for John's sister Cecily, who is with fetus. While she was doing that, John hung out at an airport for some reason, which might be somewhat clarified by this summary from Koralleen to the Boogie Charaders -- some secret email list; we're not supposed to talk about it. Incredibly secret, though.

How I Found Jim

First I had to figure out how to get Jennifer to a party in Calverton at 7 and also meet Jim at 16:40.  I couldn't do it.  So I said to her, "Come with us to see Jim and we'll drop you off right after" and she said, "Like I have a choice" and we left to get John.

Although we arrived at the time specified in John's plan, we did not find John waiting for us in the parking lot.  I said to Jennifer, "Perhaps he's having zipper trouble.  I'll see if he's in his house."  She pretended to be asleep. To my relief, John's zippers were all in order, but he had just finished making a lovely cup of coffee.  It took a while and a surprising amount of paraphernalia to secure the coffee for his later consumption, but eventually we ended up back at the car.  I had left the windows down, so Jennifer was still alive.

On the way to the airport, John mangled two of the best poems ever and then we made him stop reading the books we'd brought for Zoe.  At the airport, John wheeled Jennifer in on a luggage cart, which she appeared to enjoy briefly before slipping back into sullen teen mode.  We found the right place to be, drank some Euro Cafe stuff, and didn't play the Spot Jim game very long because the actual Jim was about the fifth person to round the corner.  Then we found the next right place to be and looked at Zoe for a while.  She is right adorable.  First she ate a bunch of stuff, then she ran around chasing a wad of paper, and then she took a big, smelly dump.  That's when we shooed the Jim family off onto their plane.

On the way home, I missed the exit to get back on the beltway and dropped John off first.  Jennifer missed half of her party, but I was trying to kill some time before I had to retrieve her and I found a grocery store where you can scan your own groceries.  That was pretty cool.  Then I went to a Target in the same shopping center and bought a gel seat for Jennifer's bike.  I thought that might cheer her up a bit, but if it did, then it was an imperceptibly small bit.

Sunday evening we had another drum jam in the woods, with the biggest turnout yet -- 20 or so people. The weather was perfect and the drumming wasn't half bad. Maugy and Sonya showed up and gave John a long PVC pipe, which serves quite well as a dijeridu. Rich taught Alex (Margit's daughter, for those of you who know Margit) how to juggle. After the jam a lot of us went out to eat at Seven Seas, a nearby Chinese place.

Gina has had a fever for a day, and she's not used to such things, so that sucks. But John's confident that she'll get better soon. She's not one to stay sick for long. 

We said earlier that we'd tell you more details about a swing dance at the Greenbelt Community Center, so here is what you need to know: On Saturday, June 10th, "Rockin Bones" will be playing 9-12pm after an hour of swing lessons. Price is $10.  15 Crecent Road, Greenbelt. Gina will be there providing her health is back.

Gina was sick with a fever on Wednesday and Thursday, got better Friday, and felt well enough to fall backwards over the garden fence when that old, tall chard plant finally gave to her tuggings.  It hurt and she almost cried until Booda came over and sat on her to make her feel better. When a sixty pound doggy sits on you, it's funny no matter how much pain you're in. On Friday night Ginohn had a great time playing Elfenland with Kory at his place. 

John didn't get sick - at least noticeably so - but felt well enough to electrocute himself on Saturday. Luckily it just gave him the heebies for a while (as can be seen in that day's four:eleven, fifteen seconds after the deed when he was explaining to Gina why he made such a weird yell). He worked all day to install conduits, a switch, and a ceiling lamp, and believe it or not, the thing worked when he was finished! Only three extra holes in the ceiling, too. We'll patch them up later. 

Saturday Gina spent all day in the yard, making it a bit more than presentable. "Pristine" even.  That evening she was able to make it to the swing dance at the Greenbelt Community center.  The band, "Rockin Bones," was excellent, and Gina was swept off her feet for half a song by one of the many young men (and women) there who could really swing.

Sunday was oppressively hot. Gina had another pottery class, and threw a really big bowl that wasn't even crooked!  She also made it to dance night at the Big House, and wrecked her right calf for a few days. While Gina was throwing a giant bowl, Jenny and John went to the movies to relax in theater strength air-conditioning. They saw Mission: Impossible 2 there (reviewed this week). Jenny's comments about the movie, aside from those mentioned in the HMR, included "The air-conditioning was very good," and "I wish I could ride a motorcycle like that." Later Jenny went dancing with Gina, while John spent the evening at Doriamethyst's place (they had a delicious veggie barbecue). By then it was cooler out, but just barely.

Monday and Tuesday Gina had her last two days of work at the Nursery School (for the year or for ever?), and is happily goofing off for a day or two before hopefully getting down to the business of cleaning up the house and getting ready for Ginohn's vacation (Columbus area amusement parks and Origins, with a week in Alaska thrown in, provided Alaska Airlines is in working order!).

So now it's Thursday morning, 4:18 AM to be exact, and why are we up? We're waiting for the squirrel-thing to come out of its hiding place. Our cat Mango brought in what initially appeared to be a baby squirrel, and it's hiding somewhere in our living room. We have the front door partially open and Gina's staring intently at it, waiting for the squirrel-thing to leave. Gina got a good look at it and says its eyes are huge; that it doesn't quite look like a typical baby squirrel. It's more like a nocturnal squirrel. John wonders if flying squirrels come this far North. They're smaller, nocturnal squirrel-things. So we're sitting here trying to be quiet. Mango's stuck in the bathroom. The squirrel-thing is quite elusive. It's amazing that a belled cat could catch it in the first place.

5:28 AM - Yep, it was a flying squirrel! We gave up on the waiting game and tore the place apart trying to catch it or herd it outside, but it kept running and jumping from one hiding place to another. 

They seek it here,
They seek it there,
Those Ginohn seek it everywhere!
Is it from Heaven, or is it from... well --
That damned elusive flying squirrel.

Anyhow, we finally lucked out, and the squirrel decided to run out the back door! He appeared unhurt (and very very quick). All the furniture is scattered around the rooms. We should be tired by now, shouldn't we?  It's nice to know that flying squirrels live in our woods!

On a sad note, Bill Mayhew's brother Joe passed away this week, from a sudden onslaught of Creutzfeldt-Jakob's disease. Details of Joe's battle can be found on a friend's site, and the Washington Science Fiction Association has a write-up about Joe. Joe, like his brother Bill, is a very intelligent, forthright guy with a calm demeanor and a clever sense of humor. The world could do with a few more Joes.
 

• John's bro Frank graduated from Helicopter school this week. Congrats Frank!
• Gina had another round of productive teaching and learning sessions in her ceramics classes.
• John woke up late and missed Joe's funeral by this much; he opened the church but didn't see all the people. 
• Movies we saw this week: Snow Falling on Cedars, Bottle Rocket, and Me, Myself, and Irene (this week's HMR). Also John made Kory watch The 13th Floor.
• We finally downloaded the entire Troops video, watched it with glee, and put it onto a Zip disk. Good, funny stuff. See it if you can!

A trojan worm-type virus (Life-Stages) invaded our computer and replicated itself in several places on the hard drive. It also changed our system registry so that if we ever decided to use MS Outlook it would mail itself to everybody in the address book. John spent a couple hours carefully examining the virus' effects and performing open-registry surgery to restore our system back to normal.

Hey, We've got our own domain! That's right, now you don't have to remember long paths like www.wunderland.com/WTS/Ginohn, or weird stuff like netword/ginohn (even though those links both still work). Just pop into www.ginohn.org, and your browser will take you places you've never -- well, really it'll eventually take you right back here. But it's a start. And it's a free domain, so please forgive the initial frame stuff.

And NOW,  the week in review:

Thursday - John went to an opthamologist for the second time in his life, only to learn four things: 

1. His vision is no longer better than perfect. Oh well. Aging does that. 
2. The little spot he's seeing wherever he goes is called a focused cataract, or something like that. It's something like a "floater" that's stuck to your lens, on the inside of your eye. The doctor was interested in that, and had a line of eye geeks looking at it. John has to go back next month to get more gooey stuff stuck to his eye, and other mild eye tortures.
3. John's Inter Ocular Pressure is enough to make his risk of contracting Glaucoma "borderline", according to the doctor. "But don't worry," said Doc. Don't worry? If it wasn't borderline, there'd be no reason to worry. 
4. The next time John has his eyes dilated three times in an hour, he's getting someone else to drive home.

Saturday - John went to work (briefly, ick) and while there he ordered a PalmOS machine, called a TRGpro. Two day delivery, according to the site. Later Ginohn went to the Wunderland sweatshop (and we do mean sweat) to help assemble Icehouse games in preparation for Origins. Dale and Zarf showed up too. Afterwards Ginohn went to ex-coworker Jon Harzer's place for Jon's birthday party and bonfire. The bonfire was really just a token bonfire; it was a nice, big fire, but everybody stayed well away from it because it was hot out. Jon showed us his tractor projects (a museum, of sorts, of barns inhabited by tractors in various states of repair).

Sunday - We went to Beautiful Day's cafe to eat brunch with Zarf, Dale, Kory, and Stacy. Later Gina went to her advanced pottery class while John went to a birthday party for his dad. Happy birthday, Dad!

Monday - Gina cleaned the mold off the vinyl siding of our house, and then took Mango to the veterinarian for steroid shots (she needs those every now and then). The fireflies put on a terrific show that night in the woods. John's Palm thing never showed up; they musta meant two working days.

Tuesday - While Gina taught pottery, John spent more time in the Icehouse Assembly Sweatshop (and we do mean sweat), with the Wunderland crew and a few roustabouts. Alison provided delicious sammitch fixins. John's Palm thing still failed to arrive.

Wednesday - Booda and John went for a walk in the woods with our neighbor Linda and her doggies - Jamie Coonhound, Shady Sadie, and Shuman. The dogs played in the creek for a long time, and Booda showed John his bubble trick: Lie down in the water, immerse nose, blow bubbles. John's beginning to wonder if the UPS guy stole his Palm thing.

Hero of the month! She loves Rock and Roll.

Our Haiku Movie Review this week is for The Wizard of Oz. When we saw it as children we really loved it. Those flying monkeys still give John the creeps, though.

We wish our newest niece Kimberly Shea Palace a belated happy birthday. She is almost .04 years old today. We have a present for her sister.

Whew! What a couple of weeks!  While listening to Emo Phillips albums with friends back on Friday June 30, Todd mentioned that Emo was in town, doing a gig at the D.C. Improv.  Even though it was the night before we were leaving for our trip, and we still had to pack, we got Stacy and Dan and went to the Saturday night dinner show (where the vegan burritos were surprisingly large and tasty). Before Emo, a comedian named Buddy something cracked us up with his facial expression based humor.  Unfortunately, even though Emo had quite a few really good  zingers, he disappointed us with his lack of new material, using many bits from the late '80s albums that we had just listened to the night before. And his old weird persona did not fit well with the normal clean cut look he was sporting. It was still good to see him again after all these years.

The next morning, we started our drive to Ohio.  We were happily zipping along in the rental car when we reached the Ohio border and realized we had gone too far north, out of our way for almost an hour. That was a huge bummer but we still made it to Gina's Uncle Alan and Aunt Dody's place by dinner time. They had a lovely meal prepared for us, and generously let us stay at their place for a few days even though they were going out of town! Thanks again, Dody & Al! 

From their place it was only a half hour or so to King's Island, a sister amusement park to our local King's Dominion. Monday morning, we woke to a huge downpour of rain, quenching the drought the area had been having and squelching our plans to have a good time. We got in the car and drove to King's Island anyway, and the weather wasn't too bad by the time we got there. We went straight to The Beast, known to us as Andy and Kristin's favorite wooden coaster.  It rained on us while we were in line for no short time, and it turned out to be one of those situations where expectations were not lived up to. Having this ride built up in our minds as the best wooden coaster ever, it fell way short when it was so violently rickety as to be quite painful at times, even wrenching John's neck part way through, leaving us unable to enjoy the rest of the ride. There was worry that John wouldn't be able to ride anymore that day (he was fine after a little while), so needless to say, The Beast did not impress us positively. Still, we started looking for the next coaster we wanted to ride, but soon found that many of them were identical to ones we had ridden many times before at King's Dominion or Six Flags America. And since it was the 3rd of July (though a monday), the park was pretty crowded and the lines fairly long, adding to our general dismay. Son of Beast, an awe inspiring looping wooden coaster, would perhaps have made the trip worthwhile if it hadn't been closed. We found The Racer, a clone of Rebel Yell, quite enjoyable, and we also thoroughly enjoyed a short helicopter ride that we paid big bucks for. Gina also recommends paying the few extra bucks for the jump-on-a-trampoline-with-bungee-cords-attached-to-you thingy, when you bounce into the air it feels like you are taking off flying.

On the 4th it was sunny again and hot. We took a walk around the neighborhood (in Kettering, OH), ate at Panera (lunch was so-so but the bread looked good), and that evening went to see the local fireworks.  They were okay, and afterwards we took part in the traditional traffic parade. 

On Wednesday, July 5th, we woke to more thunderstorms, but made our way 3+ hours north to Sandusky, OH, where lies the great Cedar Point. The weather there was fine and Gina couldn't contain her excitement at the sight of their roller-coaster-laden skyline. We did have to wait quite a while for our first ride, the awesome stand-up coaster Mantis, but after that had the unbelievable good luck of getting to ride the biggest, baddest roller coaster in the world, The Millennium Force, with only a half hour wait. We had arrived at the park too late to collect the tickets they hand out to give you an hour slot of time to come ride without having to wait for long (open riding after 4pm), but we discovered a couple who were considering not using theirs because of queasiness.  They kindly let us have theirs, and we immediately got in line, forgetting that we had enough time to get a drink and take a bathroom break. But our wait was so short it hardly mattered.  You couldn't pick which seat you wanted, and we were somewhere in the middle. The lift is very fast, and the view spectacular. The first drop caused Gina to sit silently in shock, mouth and eyes wide open, vision graying out a bit, while John whooped it up for the whole ride. The rest of the ride was just fast. As we left, we saw a huge-mongous line forming for the 4pm all ride, and felt even more pleased and lucky and grateful to the queasy couple. We didn't ride all the coasters in the park that day, but felt we got to the best of them and a few several times. Gina's favorites were the Raptor and Magnum, John's were Mantis and Magnum.  We also loved Gemini, a really fun dual racing coaster during which you can reach out and touch the hands of the people in the other train!  We even did some roller coaster art, which we'll update to the Roller coaster Art page sometime soon. The only letdown from Cedar Point was coming back to our rental car and discovering someone had sideswiped it. It took quite a few phone calls and lots of worry before we finally found out that somebody would cover it.

The next day we left for Juneau.  It takes a while to get there from Columbus, especially if you have to fly to Philadelphia first. We met up with Gina's sister Lori in Seattle, and when we got to Juneau discovered the luggage we had checked didn't make it there with us. We slept on the airport floor waiting until it was time to catch the ferry to Haines in the morning. The ferry was a lot bigger than Gina expected, with a nice forward lounge from which one could relax and admire the view. We passed several glaciers nestled in among the spectacular mountains. After four hours we finally got to Haines, and our friend Michelle Biggerstaff was waiting for us on the dock. We spent the first day at her and Wild Bill's place, a ramshackle house with outhouses, no electricity, and the source of  water being a mountain stream and a spring for drinking, on a river with the most spectacular view of mountains and glaciers, just hanging out and taking it all in. They make their mountains pointy in Alaska. We hung out with whole Biggerstaff clan, Sherry (mom), Mike (dad), Kevin (brother), Candice (sister), Dave (her husband), Izzy and Sophy (their kids), and of course Wild Bill Schneider (the groom to be). Oh, did we mention the whole reason for this trip was to miss Michelle and Bill's wedding? (Lori stayed for it, but we had to leave for Origins.)

After what seemed like days (and nearly was) we went to bed at 9pm Alaska time, but it looked like 4pm with all the light still in the sky.  We had planned on sleeping in tents, but Michelle and Bill's neighbors lent us the use of a modern yurt, which is like a big fancy round tent with a door, wooden floor, and a skylight.  It was so cool to wake up to an incredibly beautiful view. One morning as we were lying there looking up through it, we saw a bald eagle glide overhead. That was neat, but not very unusual, we saw them everywhere, quite frequently. We kept looking for bears and moose but did not see any our whole trip. :(

The next day we hiked to the top of a (relatively short) mountain behind the house, Mt. Riley, to catch a better view of the surroundings. That evening we went to a beach party, Alaskan style. At a rocky waterfront roadside, there was a band playing, two camp fires, and lots of drinking. It wasn't terribly exciting for us, but interesting to realize that you'd be hard pressed to find a public beach where you could get away with something like that in the lower 48.

One of the bags that was lost by the airline turned up the next day, but it was the one we didn't need with the sleeping bags and tent.  So we bought a few clothes and did some laundry. The town of Haines is far from being the backwoods and backwards wilderness Gina expected. They have two grocery stores that stock nearly everything you would find at home, including plenty of fresh produce. There was even a health food store where Gina picked up many familiar products. The library had free internet access, though limited folks to 15 minutes at a time. We ate at two different restaurants in town. One, the Pioneer Bar and Bamboo Room where Michelle worked for many years, had a delicious portabella mushroom wrap.  Another, the Fireweed Cafe, had giant roasted vegetable wraps.

Since there wasn't much else to do (unless you wanted to spend big bucks to risk your life taking a flying tour of the glaciers), the following day we rented a car and drove 120 miles to Haines Junction in the Yukon, Canada, with Lori and Kevin (Michelle's brother).  Lori's mantra for the trip was, "Looking for bears. Looking for bears."  We saw lots of beautiful scenery but no bears. We ate at the best (and worst) chinese restaurant in Haines Junction and got some funny candy bars and lots of Canadian money in change at a gas station, then drove back. Lori is crazy about the movie Fight Club, and we also like it quite a bit. Kevin hadn't seen it so we rented it in town at what was to become known as our "home away from home away from home," the Outpost. (See, we ended up going there for one thing or another about 4 times a day each.) So we saw Fight Club for the third time. 

The last day there we did laundry again, then Michelle took us down the road a bit to a state park that had nice views of the glaciers across the river.  She also showed us the 5 acres of wooded land she and Bill had bought and plan on building a house on.  It was hilly and very mossy and beautiful. We caught the 6:30pm ferry back to Juneau, and this time we did see the back of a humpback whale very close but very briefly, the spouts of more whales in the distance, and one slapping his flipper on the surface, also at quite a distance. Well, better than seeing none at all.

We got to Seattle at around 5:30am and were delighted when Gina's old college roomy Dani Baker and her fiancé Rich Bullock showed up to take us out to breakfast. Gina hadn't seen them since college, and is looking forward to seeing them again in September when they get married in Long Island.  We all took lots of pictures on our mini-vacation to Seattle, and got back to the airport in plenty of time to make our 8:45am flight. As soon as we walked back into the airport, we were approached by Jon Kruger, who also came to visit us on our layover. Fortunately he hadn't been waiting for long and kept us company until boarding time.  Gina slept nearly all the way to Philly. Then another plane and we were at Columbus airport again.

 Origins this year was fast and furiously fun. Ginohn didn't see much of each other, because Gina was working as a "booth babe" in the Looneys' booth, demonstrating and selling games, while John worked in the "Rabbit's Den", also demonstrating games and running tournaments. There was so much work this year (if "work" can be described as non-stop gaming, and it can) that we didn't see too much of the rest of the convention. Even so, both of us competed in a couple tournaments. Gina hung on for her life in the Set tournament, and John actually won the Ice Towers tournament, because he psyched people out by whispering I have a strategy. Last year John won the Falling tournament. We'll see if he can keep up his winning streak next year. On the last full night at Origins Ginohn treated themselves to some time at the bar. John met some old friends from college and ended up playing Zarcana with some random fans (thanks guys, that was great!). There is so much that happened in those few days at Origins, and we saw so many friends -- writing about it is too daunting a task. Besides, we're running out of time: this addendum is written a week late, we must move on. Please check the Wunderland Weekly News for July 20, 2000, for more Origins stuff-n-junk. 

We caught a ride back from Ohio in toK's car,  with toK, Kory, and Tucker. John drove the whole way all night, kept alive by copious amounts of coffee, a Tom Lehrer CD, and passengers' stories.

Stacy treated Gina to a visit to Six Flags America (just down the road) on her birthday, and they had a fantastic time. Here's Gina's report:

Things could have hardly gone better. While waiting in line to buy tickets, a man gave us his extra coupon for eighteen dollars off admission! Each! Once we got through the gates, we headed straight for the new coaster, Superman, which we were quite excited to find without a line. Well, except for about 8 people waiting for the front.  We didn't know if there would be a wait that short for it again, so we went for the front. (As it turned out, the park was fairly empty and we never had to wait for more than a few minutes for anything, usually no wait at all. There isn't much I like better than NOT having to wait in lines for roller coasters, so I was totally psyched all day!) Superman was super! Totally fun and fast and great and thrilling! We loved it, and it ranks up high with both of our all time favorites! We rode it ten times that day, four times in the front, two in the rain, and twice in the back which seemed quite a bit faster going over the first hill. We rode almost all the rides; Mind Eraser three times, and Roar at least eight times, but all the rides on Roar were in the rain, which kinda hurts, but also we didn't have to get off the train and go around except for once!  I also ended up riding the Tower of Doom and getting through it without the horrible feeling I had the last two times, so I think I can handle this kind of ride now. If you go to this park, don't skip the Krypton Comet near Superman, it may look silly but it is very fun. We laughed and laughed on that one. Thanks again Stacy!

Our Haiku Movie Review this week is for X-men, the first movie we've seen in a real movie theater in a while. We also saw Chicken Run, but you'll have to wait until next week for its review.

We also have a new Tombstoner this week! He's Elsewhere. Welcome to your new digs, Seth!

This weekend we treated ourselves to a lazy swim and picnic at Angie's pond (thanks Angie!) with Meg & Joe, our nephew Billy Joe Blob, Stacy, and Booda. We froze our tushies off in the pond and Booda (who doesn't like to swim, but likes to splash) tried to catch frogs. Later we went to Joe & Meg's place and took pot shots at cans with their BB gun. Rednecks for a day!

On Tuesday, Gina's parents stopped through on their way towards Jamestown, NY, where they'll be attending one of the Denn family reunions (which we're missing this year, but we hope to make the next one). Gina thought they were coming in the evening, and skipped off to Beautiful Day for lunch with Stacy and another old ex-coworker, Rachel.  They were eating outside, but when Gina went in to get a drink, who should she see but her parents at the counter, ordering food! Turns out they told her they'd get here in the afternoon but she forgot. They had a tough time finding a hotel so they stayed in our hobbit hole for a night. Dad Denn left a copy of his family genealogy report. We'll be adding some Cooper and Kendall data to the mix -- his deadline is August 2001, so we have plenty of time to procrastinate, right?

Speaking of Beautiful Day, its days might be numbered. This Friday is the last day the cafe will be open, and the store may be closing as soon as they sell out of inventory, unless the employees and die hard customers there succeed in gathering enough money and investors to form a collective. It kinda hurts to think of Old B-Day not being around anymore. Consider helping out if it means anything to you...

In a similar vein, the second My Organic Market (MOM) has finally opened, and Gina can hardly wait to go shopping there. It's located in the same plaza as REI, on Rhode Island Avenue near Edgewood Road.

Saturday Booda said his first real word! He said "Mama." Twice. He was looking right at his Mama, too. We're right proud of our baby Booboo.

We finally had a visit from Dave Brown (John's been missing him) and his wife and littlest son. We caught up on things, and played a couple card games. 

On Sunday John went to an Orioles' baseball game to see his friend Brick. Baseball games make great backdrops for chatting about practically anything, which they did.

Gina's been working at the ceramics studio a lot this week, making tons-o-stuff.

Happy birthday to you, Dad Denn!

8/10/0 Raves and Pennyfarthing Thoughts
Our Haiku Movie Review this week is for the 1998 version of Lolita. 

Friday we had our monthly party, which ended with the traditional 3:00am Group Stumble (with Booda through the dark woods). These kind of parties usually knock us out for the rest of the weekend, and so we didn't accomplish much this weekend. Even Booda seemed to be out of sorts lately; we wondered if he had a virus or something.

On Saturday Gina went to Angie's Pond (the weather was fabulous) while John helped Rich prepare for an escape attempt which he successfully performed later that day at a dress rehearsal for his upcoming big show.

That night we walked up the street to Shaun & Mi Ae's Potluck dinner. It was supposed to start around 6:30pm, and thought we would be very late when we showed up at 7:30pm. There weren't many people there, but there was plenty of food and we thought they had been waiting for us!  Turned out that right after we started eating, lots and lots of people showed up and it was a pretty big party. We enjoyed it.

Our Sunday Drum Jam was canceled due to rain. Summer this year has felt more like another Spring.

We received an email from a reader who was thrilled to find our report on Booda's TPO surgery, as he was in the middle of going through the same thing with his family's pup. He even called to ask some questions and Gina had a nice conversation with him. 

Here's another Haiku Movie Review sent in by an avid HMR fan, Jaffer Batica. Apparently it's a good thing we missed that particular movie. Thanks, Jaffer!

You've Got Mail (based on The Shop Around the Corner) : - (

Don't waste your time here,
go for the original.
'Sides - A.O.L. sucks.

On May 3, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke to State Department employees about security problems (such as disappearing laptop computers) in a giant "town hall" meeting.

Check out the photo of this speech at <http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/05/03/state.depart.laptop/>.  It's not absolutely clear in the photo, but I saw the video and it's true:

The pin she's wearing is a Pennyfarthing bicycle!

Ominous, that the head of the State Department should wear such a thing.  Is it a coincidence? A subtle emphasis of her message in that speech?  (She said, "Security is an inherent, inextricable and indispensable component of all our jobs," among other things.)  A secret message to someone in the audience?  An accidental slip, revealing her true affiliation?

We also have a new soup recipe that we've enjoyed a couple times. All hail the pressure cooker!

We've been a bit busy this week, again. Gina worked on pottery pottery, just did pottery, all week. John's putting out fires at work or ignoring them, as warranted.

Greykell's birthday party was a big lot of fun; John played games all night there and Gina played a few too.

We've been enjoying the fruits of our rainy summer - the yard, our woods and garden (some sunflowers bloomed!).

Last night we celebrated our 3rd anniversary with a quiet bon fire at our wedding spot. The Looneys/Frane showed up, along with Barchan and Trog (who made the fire). We had champagne and fruit. Booda likes grapes!
 

John's put up a new page in the cetera files, all about a new concept-cult, The Church of Apatheism. Please join unless you don't want to. Many thanks to toK for this heinous idea. John also added a little to his musings re:ligion page.

Thursday we skipped going to the Looney's, Gina to catch a Weird Al show in Ocean City, and John to get gear ready for a climbing trip while Jenny visited him. The show was great and Al found Gina in the audience during "One More Minute." He usually picks someone out to sing to, then jumps on their lap for a while. This time, he nearly tipped her over, then (as is traditional) stood up and pulled some underwear out of his pants and put them on her head.

John went on a sudden climbing trip to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, with his friends Bruce, Rick, and Chris. It was a lovely trip, cut short by sketchy weather, which was just fine with John. He's a bit out of shape lately, so he's still quite sore from climbing and hiking over big rocks. His right nostril is a little bigger, too, due to an over-zealous hornet. The first day in NH included a three pitch climb up a granite face (John even led one pitch) followed by a series of long rappels back to the bottom. On the second day, after "dirtbagging" (that means finding some out of the way place to throw down a sleeping bag) in the rainy woods, they went on a very strenuous, steep hike beside a waterfall, up a forested mountain, to a final altitude of 4300 feet. The top of the mountain was a completely different climate: high, cold winds amid tundra grass and fog, and huge rock cairns left by years of hikers. The summit was covered with these rock formations, and looked like ancient ruins of a small castle.

Since we are always thinking about how nice it would be to get a bigger place, Gina looked at some GHI townhouses this week, one of which she'd been admiring for a while from the outside. It's too early to know anything, but there is a chance we just might be moving sometime. Or maybe not.

Wednesday we went to Busch Gardens with Stacy and Kory, ostensibly to meet up with another party, but we were late and then failed to see them the rest of the day. Lotsa great coastering though. Nice weather and not crowded.
 

Our HMR this week is for eXistenZ. The "gross" parts were relatively tame after seeing The Cell.

Last weekend we were visited by Zarf, and he took us on an adventure to a cornfield maze in Pennsyltucky, which was great fun; it's a gigantic toy! Our trip to the maze at Cherry-Crest Farms was only a small part of Zarf's maize maze marathon, and he's written a fine review of the mazes he explored, posted on his site. After we traversed most of the maze (hours later, that is), we stopped at a delicious Thai restaurant for dinner on the way home. They have a desert - mango on sticky rice - that competes well against the key lime pie miracle at the Vegetable Garden. We'll have to learn how to cook that; it made us make many chewingmmmgruntingmmmsounds of pleasure. 

This week we've been watching our neighbor Atticus's boxer puppy Buster, a full time job. Booda loves the extra dogginess in the house. They spend hours play fighting (John wishes they'd take it outside), and Booda's teaching Buster all he knows about the woods.

Speaking of pets, both Mango and Booda are featured pets of this week - a special double billing - in the crazy for kitties and crazy for dogs sites. Take a look at their pictures. Many thanks to Terri for contacting us!

While you're looking at critters, wanna see pictures of a new niece? OK, here's Katarina, all hooked up on post-natal-cybernetic gear; here are her toes, and here's her happy 'rents.

We have three new coaster art pictures (the last pictures on the roller coaster art page). One of these days we'll get good at this. But it's the thought that counts, right?

Looky! Joe Kisenwether sent us a funny transcript of a CheezWiz game he played. Thanks Joe! Glad to see someone's spreading the cheez.

Loved the concept, had to try it. Here’s an excerpt from a real game I played with a co-worker:

VICTIM: So did you see Survivor last night?

ME:  Well, they had it at the store I was shopping at, but I just walked right by it.

VICTIM: You didn’t stop and watch it?

ME: Why? All it does is sit there.

VICTIM : It’s not that dull.

ME: Don’t get me wrong, Survivor is OK, but to tell the truth it usually sits in the house until there’s nothing else left.

VICTIM: (Pause) You tape it and watch it later?

ME: No, but I microwave it sometimes.

VICTIM: What?!

Our hero of the month of September is a mathemagician.

Last Thursday we finally had a new addition to the geek factor in our house: Gina's Palm IIIxe showed up on our doorstep, alive and kickin'. Gina loves it, and we've been beaming notes and schedules between our little robot buddies like there's no tomorrow. Wait, that last phrase didn't make much sense. Oh well.

On Friday we had another little party at our little place. John ended up playing card games and missed some of our guests - sorry 'bout that, folks. Hope you had fun anyhow.

Saturday evening, after a mad dash around the Earth to find a theater that hadn't started its previews yet, we managed to see Space Cowboys with Andy, Kristin, Alison, and Dale. John's decided that Hollywood just can't make realistic space fiction. Furthermore, contrary to urban legend, Hollywood couldn't have faked the landings on the Moon because they would have made so many mistakes that even the astronaut chimps wouldn't have believed it.

Anyways, as if that last rant wasn't enough, we have a haiku movie review for the movie. And to its credit, Space Cowboys was better than, oh, say, Mission to Mars. Heh.

On Sunday we went to brunch at John's Grandma's place, which featured little Billy Joe getting tossed from one person to another, and May on piano. We made it home just in time to attend our monthly drum-dij-dog jam in the woods behind our house. Not a lot of people showed - just us, Rizolda, Dorian, and Dale. It was hot and steamy, and we didn't stay long because the predictable rain came in, right on schedule.

That evening we watched, with Rizolda, an interesting artsy documentary entitled Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control. We're saving the review in the buffer for later. We liked it though.

Monday was Slaver Day, so we woke up late and missed our town's Slaver Day Parade. John had off from work, and he carefully and conscientiously wasted the whole day by slacking, thereby counteracting the very idea of a day commemorating honest hard work (by honestly not doing anything at all). There are other ways, of course. Gina spent a good part of the day in the ceramics studio, while outside the Slaver Day Fair raged on. Later John walked downtown to meet Gina, and together we walked home and were drenched by the predictable rains.

The last two days have been unpredictably unrainy, and quite cool! Nice. Ginohn's been riding bikes to work.

Our HMR this week is for Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, which we saw last week. We're a week behind, see. This week we saw Saving Grace with Rizolda, which we really liked a lot, so if you get a chance and you like the typical English comedy about a small quirky town, take a gander.

On Friday night Ginohn attended Number12's bachelor party at Dave & Buster's, which is a very big, very noisy arcade and bar. And restaurant, as it turns out. Ginohn weren't quite aware that it was a bachelor dinner party, so we unwittlingly prepared by stuffing ourselves right beforehand at the nearby Cheesecake Factory (purveyors of the awesome deep-fried avocado rolls) with Rizolda and Stacy. At Dave & Buster's we watched other people eat. But later when the presents came out we got to play with Number 12's and Lisa's toys and look at their magazines. Also, we got our side of the table worked into a geek frenzy, by bringing out the palmtops and trading cyber-stuff. By the time everyone at the table was finished with dessert and ready to play with D&B's video games, Ginohn were quite logy, and stepped out early.

On Saturday we had a date with Jenny and went first to a ceramic art show, where Jenny bought one of Gina's vases (thanks Jenny), and then to the Takoma Park Folk Festival, which is an annual precursor of sorts to their more popular Street Fair. We had a good time booth-shopping, listening to a bit of folk, and trying to find the shortest food lines. We finished up with supper at Mike's Kitchen, a superb place in downtown Takoma Park that has a lot of vegan stuff on the menu. Later that night Gina and Jenny went dancing at Dave & Diane's (no relation to Dave & Buster).

On Monday Gina and the Wunderland gang took a trip to Six Flags to ride coasters, but found out that the park is only open on weekends after Slaver Day. Luckily it was close by, so they met up with John at Wunderland and took a trip to Angie's Pond to relax in the sun and take a swim or two. Only, by the time we got to the pond the sky was overcast, the pond was too cold, and it started to rain. We decided to write off Monday. Monday was not good.

John's been a little sick this week - a head cold - but to counteract that smelly karma, Gina gotta raise! Gina gotta raise! Woo hoo! It's for her ceramics classes; she began teaching again last night.

A belated Happy Birthday to Gina's sister Lori; we missed putting it in our news last week, sorry. Happy Birthday Lori!

Fourth consecutive week with 2 new Tombstones! Thanks and welcome to Jon Spath , who writes, "This game helped me grow as a person," and John Toomey (who has an interesting, almost eponymous name, for a tombstoner).

Our HMR this week is for Saving Grace, which we saw last week. It's coded yellow, but came very close to getting a green for enlightenment. 

This week Kory came back from his trip out to the west coast, so he and John returned to normal mode - playing games till all hours, which is a good thing. Keeps them out of trouble. John's Dad also returned from a long vacation in England and other parts of Europe. We heard he had fun, but we haven't seen him yet. Welcome back, boys!

John went to two seminars given by his credit union, one on home buying and the other on home selling. They were pretty informative for one-hour ditties. John found out his credit union still won't finance Greenbelt Co-ops, though. Strange, given that many Greenbelters work for NASA and use its credit union. Oh well. No interest for them.

Gina's had a busy week.  She was asked to "curate" the Fiber Arts And Sculpture part of a show going up in the Greenbelt Courthouse of Greenbelt artists. So Saturday she chose what pieces would go in from those submitted, which was difficult, and Tuesday went to the courthouse to help install them. If you find yourself near the courthouse on Cherrywood road this month, stop in and take a look. Gina has two groupings of pieces on display. The opening reception is on October 5th from 5:30 to 7:30pm if you're interested.

Charles (#12) and  Lisa's wedding was Saturday, and Ginohn had a great time. One of the best things, in Gina's opinion, was that only Beatles music was played at the reception whenever it wasn't time to dance. John liked playing his dijeridu with all the musicians in the parade, and getting ever so slightly sloshed with Dave Choat at the reception. Thanks for the tango, Dave! Read more about the wedding on the Wunderland Weekly News.

On Sunday Gina drove to Philadelphia to visit her old college friend Laurie. They had a great time, eating in an Afghani restaurant (sitting on pillows in the front window, talking about the old days at Alfred), discovering coconut water ice, spending most of Monday at Longwood Gardens (highly recommended), and walking around and shopping on South Street.  The highlight for Laurie was getting an impromptu tour of the South Street Firehouse, where the fireman let her squirt their smallest hose out into the street!

Hey, Gina just saw Annaliese on TV, in a commercial for an oldies radio station! She was jogging, and missinging some Beatles lyrics: "She's got a tick in her eye, and she don't care." Five seconds of fame!
 

The latest HMR is for A Most Excellent Film called Almost Famous. Hope you get to see it someday. It's the sixth film we've reviewed this year that gets a green crazy face (meaning we loved it), and only the third of those movies that actually came out this year.

Friday night Kory and Ginohn went to see Almost Famous, and afterwards Gina dragged Kory and John to a party at a small group house; Gary and Luisa hosted. Our friends Shaun and Mi Ae were there - Mi and Gina enjoyed themselves way too much. The party was a lot of fun, and had the added feeling of extending the movie we had just seen into the rest of the night. Kory drove us home. Sometimes we need a chaperone.

Saturday night we went to another party, a birthday type party for Tom Sweeting, at Trog's and Maren's place. Bonfire, booze, and bad jokes - you can't go wrong with a party like that. Jenny and Kory went with us, and Gina drove us home that time. John and Kory stayed up a good part of the night playing card games.

Which brings us to Sunday morning, where, against all odds, John managed to wake up and a large group of Ginohn and friends spent all day at the Renaissance Festival in Crownsville. There were some good new shows, some good old shows (Johnny Fox, a sword swallower magician guy, has been performing the same act for at least fifteen years, and he's still worth watching). Gina was chosen to be the Wolf in the Bloody Drama's (comedy show) version of The Three Little Pigs. Since it was Pirate Week at the fair, Gina had come in costume, so she was quite amusing as a wolf in pirate's clothing (arrrr). The rest of the fair was OK, and resembled the Renaissance as much as a bunch of rednecks at a glorified craft fair in the woods can pretend to. 

As if that wasn't enough, we went duckpin bowling on Monday night with Shaun, Mi, Lilly, and Kory. Gina kicked John's butt. Next week Shaun's planning shuffleboard.

Bad news this week: Joe's (Joe is our brother-in-law) father died this week, unexpectedly. We send our sympathies to Joe and his family. We only met his father once - a very nice, pleasant man. He was a farmer, cheerful and easy to talk with.

Birthdays: happy b-days to Skip, Grandma Kendall, and anybody else we missed. There! That oughta do it.

High Fidelity finally came out in video, so we watched it and reviewed it for you the concerned movie goers, who need up-to-date trusted critical analyses of movies, preferably after you've already seen the movies. You're welcome.

So here we begin another month, John's favorite month because even while it contains his birthday (a minor annoyance), and celebrates the dread pirate Columbus (a major annoyance), it also is the true beginning of Fall, his favorite season, and celebrates our favorite holiday, Halloween. 

Our new hero of the month for October 2000 is Tom Lehrer, famed satirist songster. Not too many undead people make it to our hero list, but Tom deserves it. Why? because he's funny, that's why! If you have a nomination for a future hero of the month, send it to us and we'll chew on it awhile, then we'll either spit it out or plunk it on our page. 

Here's our news for the week:

Friday we rented a car and drove up to Long Island just in time to miss Gina's friends' (from college) wedding rehearsal dinner. We blame the rush-hour -- a classic oxymoron; much like the moral majority, it is neither -- traffic that lasted all the way up the East Coast. Sheeze, we're glad we rented. Gimmick (our little Toyota) would've slipped its clutch for sure.

After catching everybody leaving the restaurant, we chatted a bit with the lovely bride and groom (that would be Dani Baker and Rich Bullock, and they really are lovely), and then drove to Dani's mom's place, where they prepared a gigantic meal-to-go for us.

From there we drove south on the Island to Carol's place. Carol Nagy is another of Gina's friends from college. We had a great time with her, she's one of those people who remembers practically everything from the past, so she and Gina spent long hours telling fascinating stories and reminiscing. John got to see tons of pictures and artwork from their school. Carol is wonderful, and so are her parents, who we saw briefly before they took off for a trip "upstate" (that means into the country part of New York).

The next morning we made it to the wedding (on time), which was very traditional and Catholic. The Bride was beautiful! The reception was held at a place called East Wind Something, which we drove by three times before making it in, and was landscaped spectacularly, pond, fountain, garden, the woiks. We joined two other Alfred graduates, Marissa and Nikki, and their significant others in scarfing down the great buffet that awaited us. After we stuffed ourselves, we discovered that the official meal was still to come! But the appetizers were very tasty, so we weren't sorry. We danced a little and yelled a lot over the band's music. Marissa sang a sweet voice-only version of Joni Mitchell's "My Old Man."

From the reception we made our harrowing drive into Manhattan to visit yet another old friend of Gina's - this one from high school! Gregg Luckner lives in a nice one bedroom apartment pretty close to everything, and he totally wowed us with his computer/TV/stereo geek technology. He has a giant screen TV completely interconnected with computers, surround sound speakers, DVD jukebox, etc. We saw our home page on a four foot monitor! Have you ever heard of Tivo? We think it's the wave of the future in TV. It's on-the-fly digital recording of TV shows. You can pause during commercials, rewind a show while it's broadcasting, create your own "channels", program it to record shows that are similar to stuff you watch (so it's intelligent digital recording). It's just the thing that a professional TV watcher like Gregg might like. Gets an A+ on the cool-o-meter. We ate out at a Thai restaurant (great Pad Thai) after watching most of Xanadu on DVD. Gina, even though a huge Grease fan when that came out, had never seen Xanadu but had enjoyed the soundtrack for years. Watching it, though, was torture. 

The next day Gregg lollygagged with us around Manhattan, just taking in the sights. We stopped by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a few minutes, where Gina took notes from an unknown ceramics artist who has been dead for 7000 years. Then we strolled around Central Park. The Park was very nice, filled with people. We saw some kids playing with a remote controlled motorcycle, and the famous radio controlled sailboats. And we saw lots of those in-line scooter things, kids rode them and adults just towed them around like wheeled luggage status symbols. 

Then we drove home. The rest of our week has been mostly harmless, with periods of icky work and not enough sleep.

If ya got nothing better to do Thursday (10/5) afternoon, there is a reception at the Greenbelt Courthouse (on Cherrywood road, just down and over the beltway from the Greenbelt Metro) for an art show Gina is in, from 5:30 to 7:30pm. We'll be there. (Never mind, it's over now, but you can still stop by and see the show for at least a month and probably a lot longer.)
 

The HMR this week is for Office Space, a video we rented last week with High Fidelity.

John started sorting and archiving the Heap (that's the list to your right) and added it (with a small cover page) to our show.

Running out of time tonight, so we're gonna shoot everything with bullets:

• Thursday we attended a reception for the art show at the Greenbelt Courthouse, where Gina has a few pieces.
• Friday we had a party that lasted till early the next morning.
• Saturday we worked in an Icehouse assembly party at Wunderland-earth (Erskin and Marcella were visiting from NC), went to a family reunion at CooperDad's place (where we saw a new niece-baby), and ended up back at Wunderland and played Werewolf and other games till sometime early the next morning.
• On Saturday we went to another family reunion, the Kendall family luncheon (on John's Mom's side of the family). By this time we were getting kinda logy, but we still managed to make it to Izolda's Annual Birthday Bash that evening, where Izolda had us bring lists of our favorite movies, CDs, and restaurants.
• The next day was the Dread Pirate Columbus' Day, as well as John's brother Karl's birthday (happy birthday Karl!). Ginohn didn't have to work, yay! We gave Booda an extra long hike through woods & fields with Kory, and later Ken came over for games and chat, and later still we all went out to Plato's for Dinner.
• Tuesday was Chris Welsh's birthday (likewise, Chris!). John and Kory celebrated by going out to see The Exorcist on the big screen. Gina taught ceramics.
• Wednesday, aka today, is John's birthday. He will be 39 for the rest of his life. Wee!

We have two new HMRs this week - The Exorcist and October Sky, both fine movies. Gina refused to see the scary one (that would be the one with priests!!), which is understandable, so John had to see it alone. He's not scared.

OK, Kory went with him. 

Afterwards both Kory and John agreed that a) if it were freshly released today, the movie would not get an R rating, it might not even get an NC-17 - our puritanical censors today might treat it slightly worse than the way they trampled Coming Soon - and b) beside the obvious plots there is a darker, more secret one, that few people have found. This makes The Exorcist a) Classic and b) Enigmatic. View for yourself, if you dare. John gave it a green. 

October Sky (trivia tangent: the title's an anagram of the book, Rocket Boys) got a yellow - the 8mm shots of the real rocket boys during the end credits are worth watching, too.

Zuck sent in an HMR for us, for a movie we haven't seen yet. Thanks, Eric!

THE WATCHER  :|
Reeves plays the *bad* guy;
This is your rare chance to see
Keanu get killed!

On Saturday Gina refused to stop celebrating John's first annual 39th birthday by taking him to the Vegetable Garden restaurant and having dinner with Rizolda, Kory, Stacy, Kristin, and Alison. We sat at a big round table, ate well and attempted to make the lazy susan useful. Finicky things. They're sort of like umbrellas in that they look like cool inventions until you actually try them. The Looneys gave us a Hoberman Mini-Sphere as a present!

After our most excellent key lime pie dessert, Ginohn, Kory, and Stacy came home and watched the celebrated Dark Side of Oz. (Recipe: play The Wizard of Oz with no sound, and right after the MGM lion roars for the third time, start Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.) The coincidences are sometimes pretty stunning, but they are set between other bothersome talky parts that don't synchronize so well with the music. Still, it's neat to watch if you're in a calm, strange mood.

On Monday night we and Kory and Ken drove across the street. (We had to drive because Booda didn't want us to leave on foot. When we get in the car he knows we're not going for a walk without him, and he calms down.) Anyhow, our journey which lasted about ten seconds took us to Shaun and Mi Ae's place to play games, specifically Frank's Zoo and Bohnanza. There we found the joys of a circular gaming table. If we ever manage to move to a bigger house, we're getting a round table. Games are just better with a big round table.

We also have two more Haiku Movie Reviews, for Bedazzled (the new one) and Bedazzled (the old one). The new one would normally deserve a yellow, but this is what happens when your remake fails to live up to a timeless masterpiece: it gets to spend an eternity in orange. Gina saw the old one, but hasn't seen the new one yet. 

Friday  and Saturday were party days. We went to a spontaneous party at Barchan's place (thanks Baarchan!), and then the next day attended an outdoor chili party (with excellent veggie chili too!) at Joe & Meg's. There were lots of little "uncklings" (nieces and nephews) and a couple dogs, including Booda, running around. John's youngest bro Fwanky made a surprise appearance; it was great to see him and we hope his mini-vacation was refreshing. Ginohn, Dave Palace, Kory and assorted others played didges and drums at the bonfire, then Ginohn, Kory, Fwanky, and Chris Welsh played several games of Bohnanza into the night. We were ready to leave around two in the morning but John convinced the rest of the party stragglers to lie down on the deck (with blankets) and look for Orionid meteors for an hour or so. We saw several! Fast and pretty. 

On Sunday Gina set off on another Weird Trip. Meantime, John stayed closer to home and watched both Bedazzled movies with Kory and Ken, and played some fine games - Thunder Road and Torres - and missed Gina. Here is Gina's report:
 

I went with Jeff to PA for a Weird Al show, leaving Sunday afternoon and returning Monday night after the show (to break up the driving time, 4 hours there but only 3 and 1/2 on the way back in the middle of the night in a Kermit green 1973 911 Porsche that Jeff borrowed from his friend Mike (thanks, Mike!) that was called Kermit and was filled with Kermits.). Why go so far? Well, it was Al's birthday show, he just turned 41 (Happy 41st Al!), and it was taking place in a skating rink in beautiful Leisenring, you know, near Connellsville and Uniontown? And it had been a while since we last saw him. Long enough for him to get engaged! Congratulations Al and Suzanne! I delivered unto him a videotape of folks dancing at the Big House to his songs, and we all hope he enjoys it. Jeff is going to put his story up on his own webpage someday (soon, hopefully), but to summarize, he got to run Spotlight Number One for Al's show after the local help proved helpless. During the day before the show we had other adventures, starting out when we met a woman at the venue knocking on the crew's bus door trying to get an autograph from Al for her son (his bus wasn't to arrive until just before the show).  We got to talking and she (Nancy) was just incredibly friendly and offered to help us figure out what to do with our day.  We were a little hesitant at first, but ended up going to her house (she had two sweet dogs and their single 5 week old offspring, Henry - I loves puppies!). Then she took us to a glass shop housed in an old fashioned railroad house with gorgeous stained and blown glass. After that she led us to Linden Hall, an amazing Mansion that Jeff especially enjoyed, "This is my era," he would gush. Not much else to report from the rest of the day until the show, except maybe the 4 year old daughter of the proprietors of the Chinese restaurant we patronized who sang along and danced to a weird Chinese song that was playing in the restaurant. She was cute.

Thursday Gina took Ken and Jenny to ANOTHER Weird Al show, in York, PA. Umm, they had fun. She is going to just one more show, the last show of the Running With Scissors tour, in Bethlehem, PA on Saturday.

A picture (no story) of Gina was on page A3 of the 10/26 Gazette (Greenbelt addition at least), with her name spelled Jina. Look for a correction in this Thursday's edition. 

John's been working, and discussing and trying out (with Kory) some of the myriad new Icehouse games that are popping up all over.

Our Hallows' Evening was nice and quiet this time around, aside from Booda barking at the funny looking creatures who were taking his candy. We dressed up as stylish vampires and had a lot of fun scaring the trick-or-treaters. Then we enjoyed a little ouija dancing, and taught some ethereal entities to use a ouija keyboard. One of our ghostly guests asked for a pen and drew some nice scribbly sigils on some paper, and then on Gina's hand (more reasons to buy a scanner, darn it). After that we watched a tape of the latest Buffy Halloween special, which was vaguely humorous.
 

But enough with the optimism. How was your week?

We have two new tombstoners this week: Carolyn Dunn and Leanne (who apparently doesn't have a last name). Welcome to your new homes, ladies!

We saw Charlie's Angels this week, and believe it or not we gave it a solid yellow! It kicked Mission Impossible's butt, for sure. Check out our Haiku Movie Reviews, if you have the time.

Leftover Halloween mystery: who left the Discordian symbol on our doorstep? Someone arranged five of our miniature pumpkins in a pentagram, and put a piece of paper in the middle with a drawing of an apple and the word KALLISTI written on it. We narrowed the field quickly to a few suspects, but haven't captured the perp yet. Thanks for the nice gesture, whoever you are!

On Saturday, Gina went to Weird Al's last concert in his Running with Scissors Tour, in Bethlehem, PA, this time with Kevin and a few thousand other fans. They had a great time, of course.

Meanwhile John endured a Pampered Chef party at Koralleen's place, which turned out to be a lot better than he thought it would be. First of all, Koralleen had beer, natch. And lots of great food. But to top it off, her son Chris made an excellent pot of strong (strong!) coffee. The party started off like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, with the introductions: "Hello, my name is Yvonne, and this is my third Pampered Chef party," and segued quickly into a kitchen magic show that left John feeling like he was an integral piece of some info-mercial. He almost bought some things, but managed to get out of the house with just one paring knife, which he won in the raffle. Now John is even with Koralleen for the time he got her to go to a "TV Preview," which turned out to really be a "TV Commercial Preview" and a quite torturous one too.

On Sunday, Gina attended a gigantic Nader rally in downtown DC, with Andy and Kristin and about 12,000 other fans. You may have seen her on C-Span, just to the right of all that confetti.

Meanwhile John played at one of the bestest drum-dij jams yet (on Blueberry Hill, that is), with Rich, Izolda, Jeff, Kory, Paul, and others, including Booda and Athena. The weather was just about perfect, and so were the sounds.

Monday night Leo and Kory came over and we played a game of Settlers of Catan. Gina won. Leo said he understands the game now and he's ready to win the next one. He also said we're all cheaters.

On Tuesday we voted, and Gina stood for hours outside the voting place with a big Nader sign. We knew our votes would be swamped by the Republicrat party's, but we still feel good about voting for a decent politician (they're hard to come by) instead of a (ptooy!) typical corpitician. Viva la verdi revolution!

Oh, John added some more tripe to his musings re:ligion page. Of course, it's stuff that'll no doubt earn him a serious talking to by some net nanny. You probably shouldn't read it. Nothing to see here, move along, move along...

We had a long weekend this week, thanks to you veterans. On Friday night we had dinner with Stacy and her lovely friend Ash at the Vegetable Garden. Kory came too, of course - after all it's the Veggie Garden, isn't it? We saw Thom and Kathy (and our little unckling Liam) there, too! Stacy and Ash were in extremely good spirits; their laughs sound the same, and they laugh at the same time. Kory convinced us all to try the pumpkin pie instead of the delicious key lime pie. Turns out the pumpkin pie is just as delicious. One more reason to go to the Veggie Garden, and soon!

On Saturday Chris (Welsh) and Jenny paid a surprise visit, so we made a full day of noshing, gabbing, drinking, watching Billy Elliot, wandering around through woods and fields (we played a chasing-fallingdown game with Booda in the leftovers of a cornfield), drinking, and surfing TV shows.

Sunday was Bruce Beard's Birthday. Happy Birthday, Bruce! We didn't see Bruce, but we did make some excellent burritos after grocery shopping with Kory. Veggie Garden's pies are sold at M.O.M's, so after pigging out on our portabella burritos we pigged out on more pie. And yet, we still want more. What do they put in that stuff?

On Monday Kory came with us to his favorite restaurant, Hard Times Cafe. Greenbelt Nursery School was having a "family night out" fundraiser; the Cafe was donating a portion of the money made to the school. The kids, most under five years, were loud and boisterous. They kind of turned the relatively subdued place into a Chuck E Cheese for the night. They were also extremely cute and adorable. Several times a group of three or five kids broke out in loud chants of "GeeNA! GeeNA! GeeNA!" They like her.

Marc Moskowitz writes:

Hi! I was reading your page and thought you (y'all?) might appreciate this:
DAMN CLOSE IN FLORIDA
is an anagram of 
DISCORDIAN FALL OMEN.
Have a good day!
-(boing!) Cnoocy Mosque O'Witz

And speaking of groundbreaking, we have a new tombstoner! Welcome to Dustin Lynch.

Last Friday we and Kory went to see Floating Stone (Jeff Aug and his friend Niko) play at the New Deal Café, down in our town's square. Jeff's an excellent acoustic guitarist and Niko plays a helluva drum-like ceramic thing called an udu. The two instruments compliment each other nicely. We bought their album.

Our friends Suzy Aug (sister to Jeff, and also related to a poem titled The Ring), and Liz Brinson were at the Café, too. At one point, while Jeff was into a really jamming riff, John made the mistake of leaning back in his chair to ask Suzy a question. His chair broke away in slow motion, depositing him on his back with his feet up in the air. Everyone in the place, including Jeff and Niko, stared at John as he struggled to his feet and fumbled for another chair. To their credit, Floating Stone didn't skip a beat. Suzy, however, was a wreck. She couldn't stop laughing for the rest of the set, and constantly reminded John and everybody within hearing range that "John's big butt busted that chair!" John's only comeback was to remind her that she sat through the fiasco without taking a picture, despite the camera sitting in her lap. 

After the concert John let Suzy take a picture of him posing on the flattened pieces of chair. Then we all sat around chatting and helping the musicians pack their truck, until the Café closed and they kicked us out. On a whim, Ginohn followed Floating Stone to Suzy's house, where we were welcomed inside for cheap beer and pleasant conversation. Both Niko and Jeff have lots of stories of entertaining travels and encounters. Suzy recounted the time John broke a chair with his big butt. All in all, a good night.

On Saturday we (and Kory, natch) drove to Philadelphia to help out the Wunderland crew at Philcon, where they were running another Pop Tart Café. The Café was a raging success. John brought his didjeridu in case a drum circle started up somewhere. He didn't find a drum circle, but he did find some new didge sounds in a nearby stairway. Gina played 'tart waitress for awhile, and we all played games and taught the newbies.

Monday Night Kory and Ken came over and we all went to the Hard Times Café (again). We go there so often, especially John and Kory, that the wait staff pretty much knows what we want. Gina decided to test it out, so when the waiter came she said, "Let's see if you can guess what we want." "Okay," he said, took Ken's order, and walked away while Gina tried to get some words to come out of her mouth. "I thought he would tell us what he thought we wanted!" she worried. We had a long scary time speculating as to whether he would get our special orders right (vegetarian, no cheese, grilled not raw onions). Ken was very amused. When our order finally came, Ginohn was delighted to get their food exactly right. Kory's veggie chili mac (chili on spaghetti) had onions on it instead of tomatoes, but the waiter quickly fixed that. We were duly impressed and now believe we'll never have to order again!

John saw another flying squirrel today! He helped catch it in his building where he works (third floor, how it got there is anybody's guess), and let it go outside at a nearby woods. It rewarded him by climbing way up into a tree and gracefully gliding to another one, a hundred feet or so away.

This Thanksindians (thanks, Indians!) we're having a vegan feast at our house, featuring Tofurky, stuffing, roast veggies, cider, and tons of pumpkin pie to make John's butt even bigger still. Hope your holidays are happy!

We saw two movies this week, and reviewed both. We saw Unbreakable in the theater with Ken, Jessica, and Kory, and American Movie at home with Kory.

We had a lovely vegan Thanksindians at our place, with Kory, Margit, Alex, Stacy, her mom Sophie, Ash, and her daughter Chrissy. Gina made two tofurkeys, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, veggie roast, and had cider and Silk Nog on hand. Margit brought delicious stuffed sweet dumpling squash and homemade bread. Stacy brought luscious potato leek soup. Ash even brought a beautiful pumpernickel loaf. There was way too much food and then there was the vegan pumpkin pie that Gina made and Tofutti that Kory brought!

Friday we went into DC with Izolda to see Rich perform with the Circus Millennia at Discovery Theater. Rich stole the best part of the show as the lead dancer of the stilt ballet. Yes, ballet on stilts. Good stuff!

After the show we came back home to rendezvous with John's brother Kit, Kit's wife Laura, and our little unckling Katarina. We all met John's Dad and his S.O. Catherine at Beijing (a Chinese restaurant in our town square) for shiny foo.

Saturday we went to the grand re-opening of The Berwyn Café! There was good food, live music (a bit too loud), and familiar faces from back when the café was part of Beautiful Day Trading Company (now extinct).

On Sunday Gina worked in her ceramics studio while John went to a viewing and wake for Kathy Fargo's dear departed Mom. If you get a chance and you know Kathy, please send her your sympathy, better yet give her a hug.

We have a new Tombstoner this week. Welcome to Frederick Strathmeyer, who brought a chuckle to the graveyard.

We also have a new Hankism, thanks to Erik Heuer. This one is for Unificationism.

And of course we have a new HMR for the week. We reviewed The Sixth Day and gave it a fair to hohum orange. Maybe we just weren't quite in the right hokey-adventure-sci-fi mood...

Not much to report for this week:

• We had a little party, which included a few big tense games of Werewolf.
• Gina taught an extra pottery class, and then sold lots of her pottery at the Greenbelt Festival of Lights Craft Fair.
• We finally tried the new Italian restaurant right next to our old standby, The Hard Times Café. We couldn't go into the Hard Times (private party) so we tried Mamma Lucia's and the food was deelish, though spicy. There was a really gorgeous guy behind the counter, too.
• John taught Gina and several friends how to talk like Forrest Gump: 1) Pretend you have a slight cold compounded with a slight southern accent. 2) Say "Jenny" after every single sentence, no matter whom you are talking to. We had hours of fun talking like Forrest, Jenny.

We have another Tombstoner in our graveyard. Christopher Flynn presented a most cromulent epitaph. (Simpsons rule, man.)

John learned a little about putting up drywall, by helping finish a basement at his coworker Yani Marketon's place. Yani's mom made a delicious dinner, and sent some home for Gina too.

Ginohn attended Zohar's bat mitzvah. Zohar (such a cool name) is our friend Jessica's daughter. We happened to time it just right; missed the ceremony with all the religious mumbo jumbo and arrived just in time for the excellent food and wine. Congrats, Zohar!

Greenbelt Theater showed some old free movies by the Langley Punks, a local Firesign Theater style comedy group that festered in the early 80's sortasubculture. At least on radio (John remembers that their phoney commercial spots were good), they were quite popular. We found out why they weren't as popular on film. The first movie was very funny, but the rest exemplified a quote by one of the veteran Punks who was on hand at the theater: "We were a bunch of friends who would get together every week or so, drink a lot of beer and make films." The films were done in a silent movie style, with sounds and music dubbed in.
 

We have four new Tombstoners this week! Thanks for your last words, Matt, David, Adam, and Jett.

This week we were visited by two old friends. On Saturday, the indescribable Zarf showed up on our doorstep, with a mission in mind. Kory, Zarf, and John hightailed it over to Dream Wizards and bought the Wizard's very last copy of Lord of the Rings, a new board game that's making for some good reviews lately. They brought it home and played it, badly - the Fellowship came away with a score of 50, but that hardly matters when Sauron gets the Ring.

Later that night we ate a good meal at a nearby Indian restaurant, Maharaja. Later still, Jake and his friend Elliot came over to play more games, including Perudo and Quo Vadis.

On Sunday Jane came over; she usually lives in Prague these days but came into town to visit family and friends. John wrote about her visit to the Boogie Charade email list (a group of friends who discuss books in between insulting each other). Here is an abridged version of his report:

I picked up Jane at the Greenbelt Metro. She's still boisterous and pretty, with longer hair that is making vain attempts toward dreadlocks. She commented on how I'm looking cuter than before - I'd prefer "handsome" or "pretty", but I'll take what I can get. When we arrived at the house I promptly started an assembly line operation, making sure Jane would have enough coffee to survive the visit. Booda helped keep her alert between coffees by sticking his nose in her crotch. Surprisingly enough, Jane did not like that.

Jenny showed up, and then Chris, Leo, and finally Kory (or was it Kory, then Leo?). Everyone started blabbing at once, except of course Kory and Jenny. Jane took a break to sneak into our kitchen and wash dishes; Chris caught her and was annoyed by her servitude. I can't remember the inane conversations - the topics mostly involved death, taxes, politics, genitals, and poop. Leo, as talk show host, interrogated Jane and Kory, mostly. Jane had fine anecdotes re: Czech stuff and high school. I can't remember any. Ask Leo - his brain isn't ruined by the devil weed. My brother Fwanky couldn't make it to our house, but he called and spoke with Jane for a while.

[...]

Eventually we all hopped into some cars and went to Hard Times Cafe, where we stuffed ourselves silly with burgers and chili. Then we took Jane back to the Metro and she waved ever so sadly as we drove away. It was touching, truly. The rest of us went back to Ginohn's home, where Leo continued his attempts to get everyone to "talk bad about somebody".  Leo and Chris got into a huge argument that revolved around Leo's hobby of not loaning books to people who might take them into bathrooms.

Chris, Kory, and Leo stuck around to play a new game Kory brought over, called Lord of the Rings. Kory and I are interested in the game because it was invented by Reiner Knitzia (you know, THE Reiner Knitzia), and it is a fully cooperative game - players work together against the game's mechanism, aka Sauron. We had fun attempting cooperative behaviors. Gina didn't play, she had no interest in cooperating, beyond making coffee for Leo. Leo (who played Samwise) kept up with his interrogations and other psychological experiments until I "yelled" at him. Then I apologized but he has yet to forgive me. I also "yelled" at Kory, but not at Chris, because he gave me beer.

the end

(or is it?)

ps - Sadly, Jane never kicked anyone, but I did receive a nice present - her wet chewed gum, rammed into my ear canal while I was driving. It was much more pleasing than a kick to the groin, and for that I thank Jane immensely. I miss her already, again.

Today it snowed! Nice sticky snow that stuck to even the smallest twigs. The woods were fabulous. Booda loves it of course.

Rich and Izolda surprised us tonight showing up at our door with an entourage of carolers. They sang all sorts of X-mashy ditties; we sang along to a few and took pictures. Booda played chase in the snow with some kids (and Rich).

Now we're getting ready to fly down to Florida to visit Gina's family. While we're down there we plan to do some indoor skydiving  - that's what Gina wants for X-mash. John wants world peace and happiness, and also a 5 gigawatt "Laser", mounted on the Moon.

In the meantime, check out our latest reviews, for Dude Where's My Car? and What Women Want, two somewhat disappointing movies.