Transporter 3 will probably take place in a secret moon base

The Transporter, which I was assured was much better than the Transporter 2, was not much better than the Transporter 2. It was better, but it still wasn't what I would call good. There were some very enjoyable fight scenes, especially at the beginning. It started to go downhill when he let kidnapped girl stay at his house, and he went to bed. Good idea, sir! Clearly you've kept your reputation as a guy who does the job without getting involved by making genius moves like this. What could possibly go wrong?! It got more improbable from there, but at nowhere near the level of the sequel. Probably because the piles of cash available on the sequel allowed them to make exponentially more unrealistic stunts. And somewhere between the two movies Mr. Badass took a class in Matrix-esque bullet dodging. I still like Jason Statham though. I enjoyed him in the Italian Job.

Donald and I decided that the producers of the Hitman movie (which is based on the Hitman vidya game) were insane to have someone OTHER than Statham play the main character. Timothy Olyphant is a lovely guy, I'm sure, but I just don't buy him as this character. Somebody else already went through the trouble of comparing:
Whatever. It'll probably end up as one of those movies I want to see but not badly enough to fork out $9. There have been an awful lot of those lately.

Not quite Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs

I sat down in my desk chair this morning and wrapped myself up in a blanket because it's kind of chilly. A couple minutes later Anna dashed in, hopped onto my lap and gave me a dirty look- as if to say, you got out the blanket and didn't tell me?? Then she turned in circles a few times and settled down, purring furiously. I love having a cat.

Monday I finished up Aida. It took about an hour, then I spent a couple more finishing up my gel file cabinet organization project. I'm pretty damn pleased with the outcome. There are a few more things to organize, and it's not perfect, but it's sooo much better than before. All it took was a bit of time. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's probably because I started the file cabinet project many moons ago, and just now got around to finishing it up. Monday evening we watched Heroes. It was a good start to the new season. Lots of questions to answer!

Tuesday I went in to work and started my dimmer check as usual, to find that the entire first rack of dimmers wasn't working. That meant zero lights were working front of house. I had no idea how to fix that, so I called SMJ, who came over to save the day. After poking at several things, they came back to life. We didn't really figure out what was wrong, and that's never good. If it happens again and we can't get them up at all, there are several backup plans. First plan was to turn on the Studio Spots and use them to frontlight wash the whole stage. (The set is small. This would have worked.) Plan 2 was to turn on the followspot and have SMJ followspot the whole show. (It's a one woman show. This also would have worked.) Comedy option three was to give the audience free booze so they'd be so drunk they wouldn't care what it looked like. This led people to suggest that we should have had free booze all through tech. Yeah, and if wishes were horses we'd all be eatin' steak.

Wednesday Donald stayed home sick, and spent most of the day sleeping on the couch and feeling crappy. We got Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from Netflix, and tried to watch it in the afternoon. I say tried because it was a really crappy movie. I dozed off once, and then gave up entirely and got ready for work. I sure hate it when a good book is turned into a bad movie. That night was opening night, and it went just fine. All dimmers kindly performed their dimming, the audience clapped, then we ate nibbles at the opening night party.

Thursday I went for a walk in the morning, washed some dishes in the afternoon, did the show in the evening, and watched the tape of the Grey's Anatomy season premiere that Donald kindly remembered to record. We're so hooked on that show.

I have the ForecastFox extension installed. It puts today's weather in the bottom of my browser. I just glanced over and saw a curly looking symbol I'd never seen before. I moused over it and saw that it was predicting wind, but not until after I thought to myself, "Ah, sunny with a chance of squigglies." Now I'm picturing squigglies falling from the sky.
It'd be different!

dollas

The show we're teching at the Rep has been ridiculously easy. It comes in at probably 65 light cues total. I will definitely be getting a lot of reading done on this one. They're cutting tech time left and right which is good because I get to go home early, but bad because I don't make any dollars when I'm at home. Sigh. I wonder if I'll get the pay increase I asked for? It surely isn't fair to make $2 an hour less than the guy doing the same thing at the other theater.

I added up my hours for the opera just because I was curious tonight. I get paid a set amount for the whole thing, so the fewer hours I work the more I make. If I work 5 more hours, I'll average out at $18 an hour. Pretty sweet!

Whew

Opening night of the opera we all got a surprise when a previously dark scene was suddenly bright. Very bright. I first noticed it when I could see the scene change happening. I thought perhaps I was just seeing more because I was at the top of the balcony. Then it stayed bright. Oh shit, I thought. I ran down to the booth to see what the crappity smack was going on. Between the two of us, the board op and I figured out that the lighting designer- who made changes after the last rehearsal- brought up a bunch of lights in one cue, and they tracked through the whole scene. The scene was supposed to be dark and moody, as the cast of about 75 sang and carried candles and sacrificed a topless virgin priestess. Not on opening night, oh no. On opening night it was as bright as about 6000* watts of accidental PAR cans can make a scene. Unfortunately, I couldn't fix it then, but I could see clearly how to fix it for the next show. Tonight before the show I fixed it, we ran through the cues with the stage manager to double check, and happily went into preshow; safe in the knowlege that it would be dark when it was supposed to be dark, and bright when it was supposed to be bright. Whew. I finally got do do something really productive as ALD.

In book news, Robert Jordan died yesterday. Thousands of readers' first thoughts: How are they going to finish the series??!? Fortunately, it seems that he's left instructions on how to finish up. Oh, and sympathies to his family and stuff. The series started in 1990, I started reading around '98. I've been on board for 9 years, as he added more and more plotlines. I waited through several books when very little seemed to happen, until stuff started happening again in the last few books. Now I want to see how it ends, goddammit! I really enjoyed the last book, where as least two plotlines got tied up and several others made significant progress. Sigh.

*for those of you who want to know, that's 21 1000w PAR cans at 28%.

Elliptical reflector

Ha ha! Click for big:

The Lyric makes my knees hurt

The house of the theater used to be a full semi circle shape. At some point, they walled off the sides nearest the stage, making a more wedge shaped house. The walled off portions are now hallways and storage areas with slanted floors. My path from the house to the office (where I print things) goes out a door, down a ramp, through a door, down more ramp, turn left then up a ramp, turn right then through 2 more doors, up a few stairs, turn right, then up stairs to the second floor. I do this often, and fast. The place is peppered with small flights of stairs, everywhere you go. It’s definitely not ADA accessible, and gets to be hard on the knees! It doesn’t help that the leg of the tech table intrudes in my space and I whack my knees on that sometimes. The whole thing is still much much better than last year when the tech table was in the balcony.

Meatloaf

Ever wonder how the cat's legs are arranged when in the meatloaf position? Wonder no more:

whiskey and brownies?

Donald and I finally went to visit his grandparents yesterday. We hadn't been to visit them in a long time. It was a nice visit- but she made us eat brownies. She made me have ice cream with mine. Crazy, right? Forcing people to eat nice fresh brownies? Okay, it was voluntary brownie consumption. Grandpa offered us whiskey, as usual. :) See, he offers us Sprite, and when we decline, he runs down the list of other beverages on hand usually finishing with whiskey. I wonder what he'd do if we said we DID want whiskey? Grandma said she had no computer questions for Donald. She did ask him to set the clock on the VCR, so he re-set up the whole thing. I guess he's got to fix something. He did download some updates for the computer, but that's it.

Yesterday I wanted to play Wii Sports again, which led to the inevitable sore right shoulder. Why do I insist on swinging the wiimote so hard? I'm not really throwing a bowling ball, dammit! Donald and I played a bit of tennis, baseball and bowling together before quitting because we were hot. I had the air off because it's starting to cool down to a decent temperature at times. Those cool times are not 4 in the afternoon. If I can remember to close the windows and turn the air back on before it gets up to 80º, wii will be able to maintain comfortable temperatures.

Donald and I hung out at Mike's 2 nights in a row. We joked that the people at Muddy's will think we're dead. Mike got a 360, so we've been enjoying the new thing. He downloaded/bought Carcassone, which was much more fun after we read the instructions. I can't imagine playing it with actual cards though, it would be worse than Settlers for scooting around and coming undone. Do you play it in the floor? (Robyn actually has this game.) Another reason to go to Mike's is the new ice cream place. Miami Ice is the name, and their unique treat is shaved ice with a blob of custard at the bottom, available in many sno-cone like flavors. They also have some very tasty ice creams, and we've barely begun sampling them. The best thing is how cheap they are, and how much they give you for it. The total bill for Donald and me has been under $4. If you get a waffle cone, they fill the bottom with chocolate chips, then stuff about 2 scoops of ice cream into it. I couldn't finish mine the other day. If you get a regular cone, they still stuff about 2 scoops worth of ice cream on top, so you have to eat fast before it melts and becomes a tipping hazard. Tasty goodness.

"Mensa Invitational"

Here is the Washington Post's Mensa Invitational which, once again, asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter - and then to supply a new definition.

The winners are:

1. Cashtration (n.):
The act of buying (or building) a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus:
A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxication:
Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize that it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation:
Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.):
The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy:
Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7. Giraffiti:
Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Sarchasm:
The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte:
To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Hipatitis:
Terminal coolness.

11. Osteopornosis:
A degenerate disease.

(This one got extra credit)
12. Karmageddon:
It's when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, and then the Earth explodes and it's a serious bummer.

13. Decafalon (n.):
The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

14. Glibido:
All talk and no action.

15. Dopeler effect:
The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

16. Arachnoleptic fit (n.):
The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

17. Beelzebug (n.):
Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

18. Caterpallor (n.):
The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. And the winners are:

1. Coffee, n.
The person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, adj.
Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. Abdicate, v.
To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade, v.
To attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-Nilly, adj.
Impotent.

6. Negligent, adj.
Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. Lymph, v.
To walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle, n.
Olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence, n.
Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash, n.
A rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle, n.
A humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude, n.
The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon, n.
A Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster, n.
A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, n.
The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent, n.
An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.