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latest hmrs
heap 2003
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Visitors & Missions
J: Busy week for us. Busy playing around,
that is. We had our two perennial visitors this week. Chris Welsh came
in last Wednesday
and
left Thursday at noon, planning to walk 60+ miles day and night up the
C&O Canal. He has completed five other such "gruelathons", all in
the New Jersey Pine Barrens in cold weather, but he had to quit this
one early. Thursday night I got a call from him, he had walked past
Great Falls and back again, about 25 miles. He had decided to bail due
to a large blood blister on his foot. I drove to Great Falls and picked
him up. He stayed at our house until Monday morning. Stacy came in on
Saturday; we didn't see her much because she was out hiking or working
each day. She left last night.
On Thursday after work Gina and I waited for some of the Greenbelt
Geezers to show up for a Franklin's bike ride, but only Rich showed up.
Both he and Gina aren't even forty yet (we call Rich and Gina geezer
fetuses), so I was technically the only Geezer on the ride. We also
didn't go to Franklin's, because both of the fetuses didn't want beer.
Instead we rode to the Noodle Company in College Park and ate big bowls
of noodle foods. Renee, Alex, and Marlene showed up, too. After the
noodles, we rode back to Greenbelt, to Luisa's house, chatted with her
a while and then came home to walk Booda.
It was fairly late by the time we got to the Looneys' for their game
night. I playtested one of Kory's new designs, then got the call from
Chris. After bringing Chris home I put in an Eddie Izzard video --
Dress to Kill -- and we laughed at Eddie's antics till after four in
the morning. Then I went to work the next day. And people wonder why
I'm always tired.
G: Friday I got together with Izolda, Renee,
and Janet, to be very girly and go to the mall. We met up at Montgomery
Mall and had lunch at the food court and talked about BOYS. Then we
went to Sephora to get our faces made up by make-up artists. I took
before and after photos with my new camcorder/digital camera (Yay! It
came last week!) except I missed Renee before because she was already
in the chair when the staff told me I wasn't allowed to take pictures
in the store. Hopefully this page will be updated soon with those
pictures. I think we all bought a thing or two of make-up and such,
then perused the rest of the mall. After a while we headed over to
David's Bridal, because we, along with Petra, are going to be
bridesmaids in Renee and Alex's wedding next May. I tried on lots of
bridesmaid's gowns, and hopefully I'll have those pictures for you
sometime as well. It was fun!
I've been playing with my new camera a lot, and I love it!
J: On Friday after work and chores, we
(Kory, Chris, Ginohn) went to our local New Deal Cafe to see Izolda
sing, and of course to drink with the natives. After closing down the
cafe, several of the Geezers et al descended on Luisa's place for an
impromptu party. Luisa has a really comfy comfy chair. I sat in it and
fell asleep for a few minutes, then woke up and joined the party, which
lasted until two-ish. Luisa provided authentically good tequila and
lots of water.
Saturday found us sitting around without much to do, until Gina decided
Chris should climb onto our roof, ostensibly to get a badminton
shuttlecock that we had whacked up there a few months ago, but really
just to have a little adventure. We didn't have a ladder but I have a
lot of climbing gear, so after choosing a route we readied ropes and a
harness and Chris climbed out of our second story bedroom window to a
tree while I belayed (a climbing term meaning "anchored") him. Gina
filmed much of the very slow, methodical, action. Kory got bored and
went inside to find something else to do.
Before Chris stepped onto the roof, Gina remembered aloud that the
gutter cleaning guys probably found the birdy weeks ago. Sure enough,
it wasn't there, but Chris enjoyed walking around on the roof for a few
minutes. Then he stepped off and I lowered him slowly, using an old
fashioned butt-belay.
Later in the day a bunch of the Gang (Stacy, Chris, Kory, Luisa,
Amethyst, Drew, Ginohn and Booda) left our house for a very long hike
through the woods. Joey and his dogs Trixie and Sandy came with us for
a while but went home early. We found a few mushrumps (oysters,
chanterelles, beefsteak, and a cool looking Old Man of the Woods),
almost all of which were too old to eat. By the time we got home it was
dark out. I cooked up some oyster shrooms and then added way too much
tamari sauce by accident, glug glug. The result reminded most tasters
of anchovies, which made me think they might go well on a vegan pizza.
Then some of us went to the local theater to see a film called Le
Divorce. After the movie we met up with a small crowd who were going to
a dark field in town to look at Mars, which is making its closest
approach to Earth in 60,000 years. We came home briefly, Gina grabbed
her new video camera and a tripod. We also grabbed extra sweat shirts
for people, and then drove over to Northfield to check out Mars.
It took a while to get Mars onto the screen and zoom in (her digital
zoom maxes at 700x), and the planet would quickly slide out of view
again. A few people remarked how similar the video looked to videos of
"UFOs" on various websites. When it wasn't looming and sliding, it
looked like a slightly crescent disk, very bright.
On Sunday, after an hour and a half hike through our woods with Chris,
Booda, and Ginohn, we went to the New Deal for lunch. Booda stayed
home. Kory, Leo, and Lucy were all there, so we joined them at an
outside table for good food and conversation.
We had two invites to movies that night, one from Marlene to see Winged
Migration -- a movie about birds -- and one from Luisa and her Gang to
see Step Into Liquid, a surfing documentary. Since we expect Winged
Migration to come to our local theater we decided to see the surfing
movie.
One
of the things we've been practicing a lot lately, per Chris's
suggestion, is the "Mission Launch" concept. The idea is that when you
have a lot of people milling about before going off to some activity,
some of the people (sometimes all of the people) will unconsciously
stall or alternate stalling tactics, causing the whole group to
stagnate. With the Mission Launch, the group agrees on an official
Mission Launch Time and then everyone works together to achieve the
objective. E.g. the Launch Coordinator says, "we have all agreed on a
Mission Launch at 5:15, which is in 20 minutes. At 5:15 we will leave
for the movie. Anyone who is not out the door at 5:15 has decided not
to go." The Mission Launch model is extremely effective when brandished
unmercifully. All "mission specialists" know that the launch time is
serious, and therefore they all work together to achieve a perfect
launch. Group stagnation disappears.
We practiced Mission Launches all day on Sunday, then introduced Kory
to it, with almost disastrous results (figuratively speaking, of
course). We had short notice for the movie, so we called Kory and left
a message, then settled on a launch time. When Kory called back I said
that we were really leaving at ten of seven and that we could pick him
up. Kory agreed, I reiterated the time and said that we were seriously
leaving at that time, but I made the mistake of not explaining our new
ML paradigm. Later, Kory called back and said he had changed his mind,
he was coming to our house and would leave with us. I checked the clock
and said, "OK, T minus 6 minutes," in a very serious tone. Kory said,
"Right," and hung up.
At 6:50 Chris, Gina, and I left the house -- a perfect launch, except
we were missing our lead programmer. We hopped into the car and started
off, hoping to intercept Kory along the way. About a block down the
road we waved down his car. He parked, jumped into our car, and as I
drove off, he said, "I was coming over to your house to pick up a shirt
I left there, because the theater might be chilly." At this point we
started explaining the Mission Launch concept, and offered him a spare
sweatshirt that had been sitting in the car for an eon. Kory waited a
minute or so, and, perhaps seeing that we weren't going to turn around
(we were on a Mission), said, "Fifty percent chance I left my lights
on."
"Not part of this mission," Chris replied.
"We'll handle that later," I said, "in a separate mission."
Eventually Kory realized we weren't going to sympathize, so he settled
in with our mission lingo. I was the pilot, and Gina became the
navigator, later called the Navigatrix. Reality was true to form and
wrapped itself nicely around our jokes: at one point in our ride, I
mentioned that we were on schedule; Chris pointed out that our launch
was flawless and we even made a daring in-flight intercept. I said,
"Yes, but a space suit was left behind, so one of our team may suffer
after the landing. Gina, see if there is an extra space blanket." Gina
reached into the glove compartment and pulled out an unopened space
blanket package, and threw it back to Kory. That got him laughing.
As
it turned out, the theater wasn't cold, so no one had to deploy a space
blanket. Both movies, birds and surf, were in Bethesda, so we ran into
Marlene and Company after the show. They had already eaten, so our
group (Luisa, Ginohn, Chris, Kory, Mi Ae, and Jaegor) raced around
looking for an open restaurant before settling on the Austin Grill, an
expensive (like everything in Bethesda) Tex-Mex place. Good food
though. Gina loved her custom made burrito. And when we returned from
our journey, Kory's car lights were happily off.
On Tuesday the storm knocked out our house's power for a few hours so
we decided to delay updating the site until tonight. We ended up going
once more to the New Deal (they had power) for drinks and some
foodstuffs. We met up with other Greenbelters there, also waiting for
power. We had a good time and once again closed down the cafe. We give
that cafe a lot of money, don't we?
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