The N. family talent show videos... long overdue!

Way back when I finally shared this post about our August visit with Bryce's family in Kansas, I promised that I would post my favorite videos from the N. family talent show, after getting permission from the performers... because some of our performances were pretty humiliating!

These videos might not interest people who don't know the N. family. But mom, dad/Sue, Aunt Debbie and Uncle John, Kristen (let me know if you want me to translate the gist of what is said/sung), Ryan and others who have met and admire those wild and wacky N's whose last name I earned when Bryce and I got hitched... you will probably get a kick out of this.

I ended up just selecting sis-in-law Kysha and dad-in-law Jerry's entries for online posting. Here they are:

Kysha's "chubby" routine:


FYI, the apparent redness on one of Kysha's cheeks, in case you noticed it, isn't real. At least as it compares to the overall redness of her face in this red-faced moment. I had brought my bruise make-up kit and was offering free fake bruises to any interested parties. It's good for me to practice. Kysha's was sort of fresh-looking, not my best work. Jael's black eye was way better.

Jerry's comic "who am I/where am I" falsetto routine:


Other entries I can recall included:
-Sarena doing the splits
-Rhonda doing a headstand
-Bryce trying to juggle
-Jerray juggling
-Jael doing one of her school's cheerleading routines
-Nathaniel doing the "wild Mike" dance or something like that
-Kasiah, Shea, and baby Kallan doing their "I'm a banana" skit
-Dathan playing something on the piano
-Josie and the whole family singing "Twinkle, twinkle, little star"
-Me rapping

If anyone has a video of my rapping, please do send it along and I'll post it here, because it's only fair that I should have to share my own humiliation, too!

After the show was over, Kysha whipped out a guitar and concluded the evening's entertainment with a talent I didn't even know she had... with occasional tone-deaf accompaniment from the rest of us. Sorry about the annoying background music in the first video. It's coming from some kind of toy. If you don't want to watch all these, I suggest skipping to the last 45 seconds of the third Kysha video, in which our family philosopher Nathaniel makes a hilariously earth-shattering statement.







Not to be one-upped, Jerry picked up the guitar when Kysha was done, and I was able to capture just this little ditty:


Then my camera battery died. Maybe not such an unfortunate occurrence, all things considered!

crazy hats

I have been meaning to post this picture for a while.

These are some of the hats that I (with help from my students) built for our early-December production at Rowan, "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers."  It was an endearing, heart-melting evening-length dance production, inspired by the children's book with the same name. Our production, like the book, was geared toward children and families, but still a wonderful experience for people of all ages.

The costumes were nifty, and some of them were downright wacky. Every performer at one time or another represented part of the New York skyline, especially those who wore these hats, which are basically shaped like cartoonish buildings.  The hats are hanging like this because one of my students had just painted the chin straps.  Oh, and that's part of my costume shop, by the way.  I thought it was such a neat image, all of the hats hanging in a row like that. The crazy, insane, off-her-rocker costume designer (who also happens to be my good friend) Heidi Barr sketched her vision for the costumes, and my job is to figure out how to build them - the hats being one of the more unique challenges I have come across in my nearly five years at Rowan.

PS: Heidi might kill me for doing this (or she'll just think it's really funny), but what the heck, I'm feeling gutsy...

To the Gentlemen (all, like, two of you who read this blog?): Heidi is intelligent, witty, creative (like, duh), and talented (probably in more ways than I know about).  And the woman cooks like Betty Crocker.  Hit me up if you want her digits, yo.  That is how people use that phrase nowadays, right?

Kitty Christmas Cards

We received six feline-themed holiday cards this year.  Granted, one was from the boys' vet and another was from their health insurance company, but still, that leaves four.  So, what I'm wondering is this: do we attract more kitty Christmas cards because we have cats, or am I just noticing it more now?

For further amusement, please also draw your attention to the sizable chunks missing from a couple of the cards. That's my sweet little Etienne for you. He likes to help redecorate.

PS: Upon closer inspection, I just remembered that one of these is a birthday card from Kasiah and Shea.  But still.

Majel Barrett Roddenberry

I just saw the news that Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, died this morning.  Leukemia.  Sucks.

I guess I'm a big softie, or maybe too much of a Star Trek nerd, or maybe I'm just really emotional because I've been so tired lately, or maybe a combination of all of the above - because I got all choked-up as soon as I saw it.  She was in a lot of the movies, most of the original series, and frequently appeared in guest roles on the later series.  And when the ship's computer talked, it was usually her voice you were hearing.  She was even cast as the ship's second-in-command on the pilot episode that NBC executives rejected back in the day - presumably before replacing the role with a certain much-loved pointy-eared Vulcan male.  Captain Janeway would have been proud.

She helped keep the Star Trek franchise going.  I wish I could thank her for that.

Okay, geek moment over.  I'll be back to talking about my cats before you know it.

Borrowing a post from Apartment Therapy: The Gift of the Unexpected

I've been a bit grumpy lately (Bryce might say that's putting it lightly) because the list of tasks we have to accomplish both for our jobs and for our personal lives before heading to California for Christmas are feeling insurmountable, and I'm feeling like I'm doing it all by myself. Again.

I have a couple of fun posts in the works, but I'm not sure I'll be able to finish and post them before we leave. In the meantime, I want to share something I just saw on the Apartment Therapy website that gave me some great ideas and also brightened my day:
The Gift of the Unexpected: Paying it Forward

Borrowing another post always feels like cheating, but oh, well.
This is me trying to lighten up.

another reason why we don't need to decorate for the holidays

Because we live in a building where they do it for us.

Two days after Thanksgiving,

the Ben lobby was fully bedecked in holiday finery.

The pictures don't do it justice. It's very purdy.

But the Christmas carols are already starting to get on my nerves.

the standoff

"Hey bully, you're not so tough when you're not plugged in."

thirty: self-observations

I, Stephanie N, am 30 years old today. I like it.

I have been looking forward to turning 30 since I was 22 or so.

I knew I wanted to do some kind of post about it when this day came, but I haven't been able to think up something funny or poignant to say as I had hoped. So I thought I'd share some observations about myself, some things that are interesting or odd about me that a lot of people might not know, or maybe some things that I have learned about myself.

1. I sometimes catch myself making running translations in my head of what people are saying to me or to each other. The translations are always in either French or Spanish, the two languages that I (barely) speak aside from my native tongue. The translations never happen in ASL, probably both because that would require a level of mental multi-tasking that I have not yet mastered, and because my ASL skills make my Spanish skills look like fluency. This habit isn't terribly annoying, and sometimes I rather enjoy it when I catch myself, and then I'll make a game of doing it consciously and seeing how long I can do it without looking distracted. I do it a lot in department meetings, when my colleagues spend inordinate amounts of time hashing out subjects that oughtn't require such protracted discussion. One would think that this habit would be very good for helping me to retain my language skills, since I do so much practicing in my mind. But the problem is, there are always lots of words I don't know, so I'll make one up to fit within the stream of translation, without really thinking about it. And if I make the same word up too many times, my brain starts to think it's really a part of the language. And then I'll use it in an actual conversation in said language, and... well, you get the picture. It's funny, but also mildly annoying.

2. My favorite thing to do with my boys (our cats) is to smell them. I love to pick them up and bury my face deep in the fur on the tops of their heads or the backs of their necks, and breathe deeply. I'm guessing this makes all the kitty-allergics out there shudder. My lungs are probably coated with dander. But they just smell so good and feel so soft, I can't help myself.

3. I am a person who spends more time preparing for vacations than the amount of time I spend on the vacation. The same goes for similar matters wherein a plan must be made and then carried-out. I spend excessive amounts of time planning, trying to get all the details just right. Often, when the actual event/vacation/party/dinner/roadtrip/birthday/whatever actually comes along, I have put so much physical and emotional energy into it that the event itself is a letdown, leaving me mildly depressed. I have been excited about turning thirty for so many reasons, for such a long time, that I have made it clear to Bryce and a couple of friends that we have to do some kind of celebration, because if it's a day like any other, I know I'll wake up sad tomorrow morning, feeling that the whole thing was so anticlimactic.

4. I grind my teeth. Not in my sleep, as is most teeth-grinders' complaint, but when I'm entirely conscious, mainly in high-stress situations and/or when I'm concentrating intensely. I caught myself doing it just a bit ago. But it's never a regular, even grinding. Usually, it happens to the melody of a song. Whatever song I heard last, whatever part of it I can remember, I grind my teeth to that melody, usually one switch per syllable. For example: "I've got one hand in my pocket, and the other one's playing a piano" goes something like: "I've-left got-right one-left hand-right in-left my-right po-left cket-right and-left", etcetera. Kudos to anyone who can name the song and the artist. If you can, you're most likely a woman, and probably close to my age.

5. If I could change one thing about how Bryce and I did our wedding, it would be the dress that I built. I wanted to wear a long, columnar empire-waisted dress, circa 1810, like in Emma or Sense and Sensibility, and like the Empress Josephine wore when she married Napoleon Bonaparte. It's one of my two favorite periods in costume history - the other one being the early 1950s. But there was such a pervading assumption among family that we must be pregnant if we wanted to marry so young and so quickly. And if you were looking for a gown silhouette that could appear to mask a pregnancy, circa 1810 is pretty much your best option. So I compromised, building a detachable empire-waist train over a simple bodice and a skirt that would be good for ballroom dancing. It was pretty, but not what I had dreamed of since I was 15 years old. And the stupid train looked horrible flapping around in the Kansas wind. Other than the dress, I wouldn't change a thing. It was cheap and fun and silly. And we're still married, nearly nine years later. And obviously we weren't pregnant. So there.

The dress has since been taken apart and repurposed. When I designed costumes for a production of a Midsummer Night's Dream two years ago, we chose to set in Italy in the 1950s. For the final scene, when the court watches the hilarious play-within-a-play, we wanted the court characters in creams and golds, very Palm Beach linen-y, because we were staging it as though they were on a Mediterranean vacation, after all the weddings. The bodice was built onto a different skirt for a dress for Hermia, and the skirt was modified and worn beneath another bodice and bolero jacket for Helena. They looked lovely, and I found joy in my simple dress finding such a perfect second life. The train was cut up and repurposed, as well. I removed all the lace and have saved it. The bodice remains as the top half of that dress in Rowan's costume stock, where it will stay even after I leave. But I took the skirt back and further modified it for myself, and it has become one of my wardrobe staples. It looks fabulous with my brown suede boots.

I think I'll stick with just five observations. I thought of a few others, but not enough interesting ones to make ten. And five is such a nice number. It fits nicely within so many other numbers, like 30, for instance.

I look forward to my thirties as years of exciting change and growth. If I have children, it will most likely happen in my thirties. When I buy a home, if everything goes as planned, I'll be in my thirties - maybe only 30 or 31, in fact. If we undertake a major move to live closer to family, I am sure it will happen in our thirties. This will mean starting over in new jobs in a new city where we don't know anyone, under an economy that is looking questionable at best, but I'm okay with that. Because we'll do it together.

Bryce turns 30 next Thursday, so I get to be the older woman for seven days. Wish him well and send him love for me please, dearest internets.

a weekend to be thankful for

Bryce and I spent another Thanksgiving Day at home this year, just the two of us. Over the previous two nights, I had gotten a combined 5 1/2 hours of sleep due to a project deadline, so my body happily complied with sleeping until noon. We had a lazy afternoon, watched some Netflix, went for a walk, and finally started cooking dinner around 6:30. Despite the fact that it was just the two of us, we prepared a feast that could have easily fed ten. We're a fan of leftovers. Dinner was finally ready around 10:00. We'll have to work on our timing if we ever want to invite guests over for the meal. What we cooked: turkey meatloaf; sausage stuffing (which turned out to really be sausage meatloaf); roasted cauliflower with parsley and golden raisins in anchovy vinaigrette; braised escarole with apple and bacon; garlic mashed potatoes; white wine gravy; sweet potato pie, slightly burned. It all tasted better than it looks in the picture. The veggie side dishes were my favorites. The meatloafs were, well... meatloaf.


Typically, after taking Thanksgiving Day off, I have to work through the rest of the weekend due to a show going into dress rehearsals the following Monday. We do have a show going into dress rehearsal tomorrow, so I was prepared to work through the weekend. But instead of bussing over to Rowan, I was able to haul the costumes home to work on them at the house of this show's costume designer, my friend Heidi. Most of the costumes had to be painted, so that's what we did all day. We were going to call it a day around 7pm and start again Saturday morning, but I decided to stay a bit later, which turned into staying until almost 2am, making it a nearly 16-hour workday. But it was a nice day, not without good food and fun. For lunch, Heidi made us each one of her baked apple pastries from stratch.


Heidi makes the best pie crust I have ever tasted. No exaggeration. I'm going to have her teach me her method one day. This is what one of them looked like before going into the oven.


I didn't get a post-oven shot because I was too intent on shoving it in my mouth.

By that point we had gotten enough done that I could afford to not do any more Rowan work for the rest of the weekend. I didn't have a very clear idea of exactly how much painting we had to do, and it turned out to be less that I thought. Now, that's something that has never happened before. So I have felt like I am playing hookie this weekend. And yet, despite suddenly having a whole two-day weekend with which to do whatever personal projects I desired, like people with normal forty-hour-per-week jobs, I am staring into the abyss of late Sunday evening and asking myself what happened to the two days. Tomorrow will be a 15.5-hour day, and Tuesday through Thursday will vary between 10 and 13 hours each, depending on how each preceding day goes. So much for all that stuff I wanted to get done.

Still, it has been a lovely weekend. I am thankful that I have been able to spend so much time at home with my husband and my boys, as I haven't had a weekend like this in a long while.

Chicken-Flavored Olives

I wanted to share this funny story, but didn't think it would come across the way I wanted it to in writing. Plus, that takes a long time. So I asked Bryce to video-record me telling it. You will probably laugh. You may be slightly grossed-out. Especially if you're a vegetarian.

For your entertainment, Friends and Family, I present... a video blog. Enjoy.

Man Food

It was Bryce's turn to make dinner tonight, and he went to far more effort than usual. I felt like a princess. We had steak topped with sauteed mushrooms, creamy garlic mashed potatoes, and leeks (the least manly part of the meal). I am one who is more likely to crave a big veggie-filled salad than a big steak, but that steak was SO-O-O good. Go, Bryce!

Dizzy

More kitty fun:





For some reason, this makes me think of playground jump-rope games. I was never very good at watching the rope go around and around, and finding that perfect moment to jump in. I was usually the kid who managed to get caught in the rope.

Borrowing a post from "The Kitchn"

I know it's totally cheating to make a post on my own blog about a post on another blog, but I'm going to do it anyway.  I saw this post on The Kitchn, and felt like sharing it with someone, so I might as well share it here.  The post: "Weekend Meditation: The Shared World."  It gave me warm fuzzies, and another good excuse to love food.

Not to worry, I'll be back to babbling about my cats soon enough.

Election day

Our polling place is in the lobby of our apartment building.

Since we don't even have to go outside,

I think that one of these years,

I should go down there and vote in my bathrobe and slippers.

The khaki legs are Bryce's.

We got stickers!

Still here. Still.

Today, I rebelled.

I put off doing some major work that is due tomorrow, in favor of doing something that would make me happy: updating my blog with all of the stories, photos, and videos that I had been wanting to share over the last three months.  Ten posts in all, plus the introductory post, and now the conclusion.

Tonight, I will pay for my rebellion.

I will pay by staying up late, possibly even pulling an old-fashioned college all-nighter, in order to prepare the recontracting document and colloquium presentation that I must present tomorrow. This will not be a good way to start a week that I knew would be rough even before I made this decision to claim a weekend afternoon and evening as MINE, not my job's.

You can make it seem worth the trouble.

I have a favor to ask of you, my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, and friends: Leave a comment. Let me know that you were here, that you stop by occasionally and learn about what's happenning in our life over here. Let me know what you enjoyed, what you didn't. Let me know what stories were boring, so that I can skip ones like them in the future. Let me know when you think my jokes are so lame that I should apologize for them. Let me know when I have made you smile. Share your witty banter, your humor, and your sage wisdom. Connect with me, and with each other, across this great distance.

I started this blog as a way to connect with family and friends, because we live so far away from most of you. Over these eight (yes, 8) years, the disconnect has grown, and sometimes it feels insurmountable. I thought that this blog would help. But when we visited California in December and Kansas in August, when I made references to it, I was most often told that this blog hadn't been looked at since I sent the announcement when I started it in August of 2007.

I felt, well... embarrassed.  Kinda pathetic.  Like that time when we spent hundreds of dollars and many hours in the kitchen to throw an awesome New Year's Eve bash, and only four people showed up.  It often seems as though my college friends Devon and Holly, who inspired me to create this blog in the first place, are the only people who look at it more than once every few months. Maybe I'm wrong, but I have no way of knowing if you don't let me know you were here. In this matter, I want to be wrong.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Maintaining this blog is a lot of work. And I'm trying to figure out if it's worth continuing.  I have a decision to make.  Please let me know what you think.

With Love and Devotion,

Stephanie N.

10) Twins. Or, another post that requires the word "cute."

I can't help but think that their twin-ness helps to exponentially increase the boys' cute factor.

The following photograph and video offer some very convincing evidence of said argument.

9) Like "Animal Planet," only cuter

My favorite part is the head "doink", a la Napoleon Dynamite. You'll see what I mean.

The boys' wrestling is usually much wilder than this, but once I have the camera focused on them, they stop wrestling and watch me instead. So this is the best footage we have been able to get of their wilder antics so far.

8) From late October: "whimsical hanging sculptures"

At a Philly bar/restaurant called Tattooed Mom's, there are two windows that look out onto the narrow space between Mom's building and the next. It is odd, and not really outdoors, as far as I can tell.

These two videos don't do justice to the remarkable, whimsical hanging sculptures that exist in that narrow space. My friend Heidi, the companion you see in the second video, says that they are ever-changing. Heidi is well-known at Mom's, and she tolerated my tourist-like behavior well by telling onlookers that I was Canadian. I took it as a great compliment.

7) From mid-October: "Dad and Sue's Philly Visit"

My dad and step-mom Sue (who I rarely call "step-mom" because it seems so impersonal a title, so she's usually just "Sue") visited Philly for a 3 1/2-day weekend, before heading northeast on a 5-day roadtrip that took them over to Cape Cod and up to Maine, and to many places in-between.

Sue took a lot of pictures while they were in Philly, so I was lazy about getting out my camera. Highlights included:

A. Dining and dancing (and goofing) the night away on the "Spirit of Philadelphia" dinner cruise on the Delaware River.

We did this on the night of Friday, October 10th, the exact date of Dad and Sue's 10-year wedding anniversary. Aww...








B. Walking around dowtown and the historic district.

I always enjoy getting to show off how cool Philadelphia is, especially our neighborhood.


C. Lots of yummy restaurant food and drinks every day.

I think I gained 5 pounds, which always happens when we have visitors.


D. Saturday's road-trip out to historic Valley Forge.



E. Sunday morning's duckboat tour.




I eez a toureest, yah?


F. Dad and Sue's pitstop at Rowan University.

At the conclusion of their roadtrip, just before returning to the airport for their Saturday afternoon departure, Dad and Sue took a detour down to Glassboro. They got to see my costume shop and the theatre. I think they were impressed by my shop, especially after seeing the tiny shop at the Walnut Street Theatre when I dropped off some borrowed costumes there the week before, during our on-foot tour of our neighborhood.

It is a rare, joyful treat when Etienne decides to sit on my lap.

It always melts my heart.

Life gets put on hold.

Have to run some errands? They can wait.

Need to use the restroom? Just hold it.

This was the first (and still the only) time he curled around me like this.

My heart became a gloppy puddle of goo that Sunday afternoon, and it has still not quite solidified.

5) From late September: "Sarah Palin made Etienne late for a veterinary appointment."

Okay, it wasn't really her fault. I was running late, and then I had to stop and gawk at the huge number of news vans that were raising their towering masts outside THE IRISH PUB, of all places. I haven't gone to this particular joint in a while, partially because it's not quite divey enough for when B and I or friends and I feel like heading to a dive bar, and also because when we feel like going someplace that's not quite a dive but also not too classy or expensive, there are so many better, closer options that aren't filled with annoying frat boys.

But I spent quite a bit of time there during grad school. It was, and probably still is, a favorite spot for Temple Theatre's opening night parties. Kalina and I spent a number of evenings there, kvetching about grad school, people at our grad school, and life in general. The one and only Claremont Colleges alumnae happy hour in Philly took place there a year or two ago. I haven't been there in a while, but still, I felt like Ms. Palin was infringing on my turf when she decided to hang out there before the first presidential debate WITHOUT INVITING ME! That's okay, I'll take Devon there for drinks the next time she visits. And then let's see how many news vans show up.

After the vet appointment (Etienne's big asthma follow-up appointment, which he passed with flying colors, meaning that the current steroid inhaler regime is working), the vans were still there and crowds of jubilant demonstrators had shown up.

I would have stuck around to take in the scene, but Etienne had already been traumatized enough by the walk over there, and by the appointment itself. But I was tickled to find out from one of the demonstrators I passed that Cat Lovers for Obama buttons were available online.

P.S.: Obviously, postponing this post by over a month turned out to be advantageous because I got to sneak-in Devon's October 31st post. Sometimes, such delays can be propitious, yes?

4) From late September: "Humans make great pillows."

Most fans, friends, and parents of cats are well-aware that cats can sleep just about anywhere.

We also know that we ourselves make excellent cat-pillows.

It's one of Bryce's special talents.

Bryce is lying on his side, fast asleep, and Etienne has settled rather comfortably upon his rump. Marcello has curled up into the crook behind his knees.

The boys did not appreciate being woken up by the sound of the camera.
Bryce was un-phased.

Bryce, again, is fast asleep.

3) From mid-September: "I might be a theatre addict."

As briefly alluded to in my geek/trekkie/defcon post, I attended about thirty events of the Philadelphia Fringe/Live Arts Festival, blowing my previous record of 16 shows clear out of the water. Looking back on that 15-day blur of theatre, dance, and other performances, hurried meals between performances, and post-show critiques over beers and late-night pub grub with friends, I can't believe that only two months ago, my life was such that I could leave my job at a decent hour after a normal workday, five days a week (like most "normal people with normal lives"), and I didn't have to take work home with me or stay up until the wee hours of the morning finishing a recontracting document, or a budget file, or a script analysis, or a colloquium presentation. But I just have to remind myself that it's not always like this. And also that I shouldn't complain because, working for an educational institution, I have health insurance, a retirement plan, and a decent salary, unlike many people who work in the arts.

As I was saying, "I might be a theatre addict." This is only interesting because there was a time, not too long ago (like in my early twenties, seriously not that long ago) when I only did theatre because I liked doing costumes. Now, it's almost the other way around. I love doing theatre, but sometimes I wish I wasn't doing the costumes because it can feel like such a thankless, underappreciated drudgery. Not that I would rather be a performer. Ick, ick, ick. But if I hear one more person say "Oh, that must be so much fun!" when I try to explain what I do for a living, I'm afraid I might smack them. Or just kick them in the shins and run away. Because seriously, the back pain and the swollen knees and the cramped hands and the sheer physical and mental exhaustion from too many hours worked (hours that people often don't believe when I try to explain how many) just doesn't seem worth it a lot of the time.

No, what I really want to do now is get paid to attend theatre and write about it.

This year, for my very first time, I'm a Barrymore voter. I applied, and I was selected out of the pool of applicants. The Barrymores are like the Tony awards, except that they're for Philadelphia theatres rather than for Manhattan/Broadway theatres. Even when I am sent to shows that are terrible, I love it. I get to go home and fill out an online ballot, awarding points for each awardable category according to the criteria rubric for each category. It's awesome.

This post was going to be about the Philly Fringe/Live Arts Festival shows, and other shows I have managed to attend recently, both by choice and as Barrymore assignments. But I guess what I really want to say is that I, Stephanie N____, have come to love theatre, to daydream about it, to hunger for it. My 21-year-old self would not have believed this possible.

But I also have to admit that I'm already getting burned-out by this particular career path in theatre. I have been for some time. Back-up plan: theatre critic?

2) From late August: "Xtracycle Envy"

I so want one of these.


It's the Xtracycle SUB (sport utility bicycle, get it?).

And hey, I could ride on the back while Bryce pedals. It would sure beat the heck out of riding on his handlebars and getting thrown across the street when we crash. Yes, actually happened. Last weekend. Stupid, I know. No need for a bike safety lecture. It won't happen again.

Not that we have the space to store it our apartment, of course. But, you know, if anyone feels like dropping $800 to $2000 to buy me one some day: http://www.xtracycle.com/
Just kidding. Okay, only slightly kidding.

P.S. "Sun Retro 7 model," you are my favorite. You will be mine. Mwah-hah-hah...

1) From mid-August: "The Kansas Report," or "Another Week With that Wild and Wacky N. Family"

Straight from Defcon, we flew to Denver for a 5-night visit with the N. family in Kansas.

Highlights included:

A) Celebrating the 35-year wedding anniversary of Rhonda and Jerry (my in-laws).

My sibling-in-laws planned a surprise party at the local firehouse (I think that most of the credit goes to the women). The anniversary couple thought that they were going to the surprise wedding anniversary of another couple, their friends Rich and Diane. We got 'em good. Video and photos:






Jerry wore these shoes to their wedding. Look closely at the old wedding photo, and you can see them there on his feet.




B) Seeing Kallan now about a year old, and quite mobile.




C) The second N. family talent show.

We weren't there for the first one, and apparently we really missed out, because this was a hoot. The videos would be too much to post here, so I chose a couple of my favorites.

[To be posted after I get permission from said performers.]

I'm still here.

It has been a rough couple of months, and the prognosis is not great for the next couple of months, either. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. "Prognosis" is perhaps a poor word choice. It's nothing medical. Mainly just a job that requires super-human stamina over absurdly long hours sometimes, combined with some household issues that aren't interesting enough to talk about here.

This hectic life has not kept me from having many happy, blog-worthy moments, but it has kept me from actually blogging about them. So, in a last-ditch effort at playing catch-up rather than just giving up on all the posts that I started or meant to start over the past few months, what will follow this post will be abbreviated versions of the posts that I have not managed to post over the past few months.

So, you think you're a geek?

Well, my geek-factor could totally kick your geek-factor's butt.

Stay tuned for more on this story...

Okay, so it's September 28th, and I'm finally back. I had to take an unplanned blogging hiaitus, as some design work, other projects, the start of the new schoolyear, the Philly Fringe/Live Arts Festival (30 shows this year, up from a mere 16 last year), and life in general sort-of got in the way.

I'm sure my hordes of adoring blog fans (all, like, three of you?) must have been going through withdrawal. Sorry about that.

So I have at least a half-dozen incomplete or yet-to-be-started posts waiting in the wings. It's probably going to seem anti-climactic after the long wait, but in case you're still wondering why my geek factor must be so much higher than yours...

Near the beginning of August, for the 7th year in a row, B and I attended Defcon, a convention in Las Vegas, dubbed as "the biggest underground hacker convention in the world" or something like that - although it's hardly underground, given that your typical attendee is either a nerdy high school kid, a professional programmer/problem-solver like B, a security specialist sent by the big company they work for, or a Fed. Now, while the fact that I still go to this convention with B every year (and the fact that I almost always thoroughly enjoy it) does increase my geek factor to a degree, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

[Please note: hacker ≠ criminal. That symbol between them means "does not equal." The equation of hacker to criminal was something that began when the media and the government co-opted the term in order to identify individuals who used their skills and know-how to commit internet/computer-based crimes such as compromising others' personal e-mail or bank accounts. Most hackers are guilty of nothing other than being highly intelligent and creative problem-solvers. And while it is true that most people who identify themselves as "hackers" identify specifically as software hackers or computer hackers, the term hacker is not exclusive to the field of computing. One way of defining "to hack" (aside from the obvious definitions relating to slicing or chopping) is "to re-engineer something in order to use it in a way that is different from its intended purpose." Therefore, I could identify myself as a "costume hacker" if I wanted to. Believe me, some of the stuff that ends up being used in costumes is used in a way that is strikingly different from its intended purpose. Take, for another example, the Ikea Hacker. I don't mean to be getting preachy - I just had to clear that up in case the words "hacker convention" had raised anyone's hackles. The definitions (and arguments) over the term hacker could make for a very long post, and that's not what this blog is about. If you would like to read more about it though, consider this article.]

So...while we're in Vegas each year, we usually try to go to Quark's Bar for dinner one night, as we did this year.
The friends we look forward to spending most of our time with at Defcon each year: Brett and Shanna, Dustin and Melanie, me and B. And those are mini Warp Core Breaches we're drinkin' (the green ones... I don't remember the name of the brownish ones).

For those of you who aren't in the know: Quark's Bar was a restaurant located on the Promenade deck of Deep Space Nine, the space station aboard which much of the action in the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine took place. The real Quark's Bar in Las Vegas, which was modeled after the fictional Quark's Bar of the television series, is (or was, until very recently) part of the Star Trek Experience, an attraction consisting of two multi-media themepark-style rides, a museum/timeline display, a couple of stores, and the restaurant, all housed in an area of the Hilton Hotel that was designed to look like it came out of a Star Trek film or television eposide. As an admitted Trekkie, this place was known as Mecca for me and my people.

This particular trip to Quark's Bar was to be a bittersweet one, because the Star Trek Experience closed on Labor Day. Go ahead and laugh, but I'm getting choked-up just writing about this. The big Star Trek convention that takes place at the Hilton every year fell on the same weekend as Defcon this year, so we had the pleasure of being surrounded by fans even more geeky and devoted than myself during our visit. We had the luck of getting to sit next to some amazingly-costumed fans, who let me have my photograph taken with them after I went over and gushed at length about how awesome I thought they were.

Women from three different planets - how cool is that?

Sorry about the shiny forehead. It gets hot in Vegas.

Many more photographic highlights from the evening:

Dustin and Melanie had their picture taken... how romantic!

My posse says to live long and prosper... Gangsta.

And so do I.

So long, Star Trek Experience.

But I haven't gotten to the geekiest part of the story yet. In what I can only describe as a fit of extreme sentimentality, perhaps heightened by the consumption of a mini Warp Core Breach and the rest of someone else's mini Warp Core Breach (Whose? No idea.), I spent an absurd amount of money, a figure which will remain undisclosed, on Star Trek-related memorabilia before I was able to tear myself away from Trekkie Mecca for what I knew would be the last time ever.

I advise clicking on this photo to get the full effect.

Some close-up shots of the toys..

a communicator:

It makes Star Trek sounds!

a phaser:

It's a "water-emitter." Get it?

a com badge:

It makes that characteristic blippy noise when I tap it.

If I ever get up the nerve to wear my 2001 Halloween costume again, those are going to be such an improvement over my T.V. remote control and late-90s cell phone!

The weekend was a blast, but I neglected to take pictures of much else. I had dinner with dear, wonderful, you-make-me-want-to-move-to-Vegas-to-live-near-you, college friend Sage on Thursday night, and I managed not to require an ambulance ride to the emergency room like I did last year. I watched the beer-cooling contraption contest on Friday, as I have for the past few years. I really wanted to enter it this year, but I couldn't think of a design that would be easily transportable on the plane, and wouldn't require purchasing dry ice or liquid nitrogen in Vegas. A contraption idea, so simple a kid could have thought of it, came to me while I was watching the contest.  If all goes as planned, I intend to be a significant contender in this contest next year. A few of this year's entries:

Team "HeBrew." They're Jewish twin brothers.

These first two entries incorporated dry ice.

This one incorporated liquid nitrogen.

Their lines are frozen and they're trying to defrost them on the Vegas asphalt.

Deviant Ollam takes the temperature of a (revolting domestic) beer that had been sitting in the Vegas sun for a while, before it gets poured through a cooling contraption:

There was also plenty of the usual - fascinating presentations, loads of other contests, parties, and my favorite part - hanging out with Brett, Shanna, Dustin, and Melanie. I can't wait until next year.