Our lakes ARE so great!

A very short post and out of schedule as this is too awesome. Warning, some harsh language. Image taken completely without checking with Penny-Arcade who wrote it and are awesome.

Curiouser and Curiouser...

 

So I got an interesting package in the mail on Thursday from my folks... it looked kind of like this:

???

For those of you playing at home, my Birthday is on March 8th. I received this on February 11th. Hrrmm... well, let's see what's inside.

Different colors of calligraphy markers? Cool!

...and more calligraphy pens- but real ones with ink this time! Maybe someone is trying to tell me something.

 

Yes! Darkly Dreaming Dexter! Awesome! Very uncharacteristic for my folks, but awesome!

And a suit cover from Panosian's, as I left my bigger, bulkier one back in Elmira over Christmas.

So, thank you Mom, Dad and Oma (or whoever is responsible for these). I gave them a call after getting them and their excuse for sending me my presents so early was that "February seems like a down kind of month, and this might cheer you up." Well, I guess it did. Well done.

Until next time...

"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up."

- Mark Twain's Notebook

Super Bowl Par-tay!

So the Superbowl happened on Friday. Being me I didn't really care who won, but it was definitely a reason to have an impromptu party!

 

Quite a few members of the gang (and extended gang) made it to my house to hang out, kind of watch the game and enjoy tasty things.. like my very own scratch-made pizzas!

 

The Broccoli Ricotta on white crust

 

The Cheese on Firecracker Cornmeal crust

The Artichoke and Tomato on white crust

...and the Tofu Satay on Firecracker Cornmeal crust.

Of course, being my group, there had to be games involved. Games played included Pandemic (can your team of players stop 4 superbugs from spreading across the globe? It's you against the game... and our players lost both times. Ouch.) and Citadels (change roles every turn while you build up your city- can you guess who each player is and plan accordingly? Or accidentally show your hand and have your gold stolen, or cities destroyed and your life taken by an assassin's blade?)

 

All in all, lots of fun. Oh, and somebody won the game thingy.

P.S. for a good time call 1-877-987-6401

Until next time...

"Well, say, this beats croquet. There's more go about it!"
- quoted in "Mark Twain at Football Game," New York World, Sunday November 18, 1900

Max, Destroyer of House!

 On Friday, I used a claw hammer and a crowbar to destroy a house.

OK, well, maybe I only used a claw hammer and a crowbar to destroy a part of a house.

OK, well, maybe I also got to use power tools in addition to a claw hammer and a crowbar to destroy a part of a house.

Or maybe I should start from the beginning...

On Friday I had a corps day in which we partnered with Habitat for Humanity to help remake a house that had fallen into condemned status. Most of the work that we were doing that day was demolition- knocking out walls, tearing out ceilings and other diverse delightfully destructive deeds. I chose to split off from the main group and partner with a regular volunteer named Dave to set about dismantling the bathroom on the second floor.

Dave (pictured above) is a Vietnam vet who also worked for the government for a time and likes to explain that he has secret clearance thanks to his time in both areas, and I am inclined to believe him. He definitely had some... interesting opinions on certain things, but he also definitely knew his stuff and the importance of his job at Habitat. Construction/demolition is simply what he likes to do in his retirement when he is not trying to find solutions to the problems of the world with his war buddies. We had a good time taking out sinks, showers and cabinets in the morning and smashing walls with claw hammers, crowbars and power saws in the afternoon.

Speaking of that, before:

After:

There was a lot of clean up.

Taking apart the house was a lot of fun. I got to get a lot of good exercise and use a lot of tools. It really makes me miss doing theater tech back in college and having the opportunity to both build and dismantle things on a macro scale (as opposed to the micro that I talk about on my other blog). Getting to repair and build things is definitely something that I want to get back into in the future- I might even start volunteering regularly with Habitat next year to start building up my repertoire of handyman skills.

Other things that were entertaining about the day:

-all of the little mementos that were left from past occupants. A lot of the, umm, "insulation" in the upper floors of the house was made out of old newspapers, some from as far back as the 1920s and 40s.

 

There was also some masking tape still left up on a wall of one of the rooms talking about all of the security protections that were in place to protect weapons. More masking tape was underneath this one displaying the types of weapons stored here, including swords, knives, guns, and FINAL DEATH (unintelligible) MOVE, all in a childish scrawl. I'll try to put my video of it up later, but blogger is being stupid right now.

-the most awesome tool in the world:

It's basically a large magnet on a stick, but who cares! It's awesome!

-Mystery Gum! With Mystery Packaging!

So yeah, I had fun. Manual labor is always a nice change of pace.

Until next time...

"...it is less trouble and more satisfaction to bury two families than to select and equip a home for one."
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

Going to the Fitz

So tonight Rachel and I had a special treat. We drove out to downtown St Paul in the middle of freezing rain and sleet to go to the Fitzgerald Theater.

Now why would we do a silly thing like that?

Oh wait, this guy!

 

So yes, Rachel and I got to go to the first ever live cinecast of A Prairie Home Companion! And see it live in the theater! The Fitz is a pretty nice theater (though it scarily resembles the Clemens Center in its architecture), and we got what I like to call quasi-boxed seats.

As you can see in that last picture, at the beginning there was a bit of a video where Garrison Keillor walked around St Paul and explained a bit about its landmarks and his favorite places in town. Particular favorite line from this part: "It's cold here. It's... Nature's way of killing us."

Then the show began, and an interesting figure took the stage; you can see him on the right there:

Elvis Costello!?!?!

The rest of the show had all of the great hallmarks of PHC: good music, Lake Wobegon, random advertisements, etc. It was really interesting to see them perform the show as, well, a radio show, rather than a live show. Sure there were plenty of gestures towards the audience, but for the most part it was as they always do, geared towards radio. Stage hands walking unapoligetically around the stage, big obtrusive mikes, no props besides the two awesome sound effects guys... just a lot of people talking and making us see the scenery through the way that they talked about everything.

Some more pics from the show:

 

Until next time...

When you want genuine music--music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose,--when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!
- Mark Twain's "Enthusiastic Eloquence," San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, 6/23/1865

Work at Skyline

Hey all, sorry for the slight delay- didn't quite have enough hours in the day yesterday to get all of the things that I wanted done, so the blog had to take one for the team. Still in on a Wednesday, though!

 

The view from the Break Room

So I promised that I would do a little bit of talking about my work at Skyline and how it's going. Right now I'm in between classes, and have been for a while as I tried to figure out a way to improve attendance. Through my insistence and length of service here at the Towers I have been allowed to have evening classes starting the week of the 15th of February. So I've been a busy little beaver, getting all of my class materials prepared, putting up posters and whatnot. I'm trying for shorter classes now, say 2 or 3 sessions each, in an effort to not make it such a huge commitment for my students, and I am advertising them well in advance of my actual dates. Some hope for my efforts is that whenever I hear adults talking about my posters they mention that the time is a good one, so here's hoping!

I had a bit of a snafu this past week in that I forgot that the day after Valentine's day is the 15th. I knew that the former was a day that we didn't have work, but for some reason my brain didn't get the message and drew up a load of posters all with the 15th as the starting date for my programs. Fortunately I managed to figure that basic bit of calendar reading today and got everything switched around, so I should be good to go.

The only problem that I have with work right now is that I need to have residents accomplish 10 "life goals" before my year is up. This would be ok if they had anything to do with my programming, but unfortunately for the most part they do not. Life goals include things like getting a job, getting a GED or becoming a community leader. None of my programming does any of these things (well, except for the GED, but that isn't going to happen this year I don't think), so I'm left scrambling to find something that does. I'm currently banking on academic achievement and getting into college to garner me at least 5 goals. We'll see where the other ones come from...

Still, I am enjoying my time here. I love my coworkers and have gotten to know them much better this second year. My kids are AWESOME and make me happy (well, at least when they aren't driving me up a wall). Just the other day I was handing out newsletters at the apartments and one of them belonged to several of my kids. They all screamed "MAX!" and offered to help me with my rounds and were all really excited to come to the computer lab again.

That made me smile nonstop for a good hour :)

Until next time...

"What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it"
- Mark Twain "A Humorist's Confession," The New York Times, 11/26/1905

Party for Haiti, and Tobies

On Saturday the girl and I headed to an Admission Possible party that was held to gather funds for Haiti. A band of AP folks called San Jovi and the Roving Tovies had a house party and plenty of people showed up.

 

On Sunday we met up with Rachel's parents in Hinckley, MN to eat at Tobie's restaurant. Basically we decided that neither of us was up to driving all the way to either Minneapolis or Duluth, so we decided to meet halfway. On the way home we stopped off at an outlet mall and managed to pick up quite a few bargains.

So, a pretty nice weekend, all things considered.

I'll have some more work related things on Wednesday, and a super special surprise for Friday. Until next time...

I thought I was lazy, but I am a steam engine compared to a Constantinople dog.
- The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain