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.