blog.circusgeek

a personal blog with nerdy bits thrown in

Category: Entertainment

  • The sudden ‘KABOOM’

    While at the office today, I think I found Marvin the Martian’s KABOOM.

    There I was, sitting at my desk working away in peace and quiet, when suddenly came a very loud and earth shaking explosion somewhere nearby. The east-facing windows were instantly lined with coworkers, watching a tall stream of black smoke that was steadily rising a couple blocks away. About a minute later, white vapor and then nothing.

    Then I recalled what some coworkers had said earlier in the day; there was some kind of filming going on at the corner of Burnside and Broadway. A-ha! (and whew)

    I later learned that the hubbub was apparently for the TNT show Leverage, which recently moved it’s production to Portland. It’s a pretty decent show actually, and now I’m kind of excited to watch some episodes filmed in and around my hometown. Including the one with the KABOOM.

  • The past few weeks

    Yeah, it’s been a few weeks since my last post, which means it’s recap time!

    Work has been keeping me plenty busy. Many long hours and late nights. It’s been good, but very exhausting.

    We had a petty nasty wind storm a couple weeks back. The large tree in front of the house lost about five 8-9 foot long branches. The front yard looked like a war zone. Branches, twigs, and needles blanketing everything. It took a good few hours of sawing and raking to get it mostly cleaned up.

    On the morning of Obama’s inauguration I had to rush into a dentists to get a filling replaced (one that’d started breaking loose from a molar a few months ago). It wasn’t what I would call fun, but it’s all good now.

    Portland got a bit more snow earlier this week. Just enough that my bus got stuck trying to go up an incline (the bus wasn’t chained up). After getting stuck, I got off and walked back home and worked from there for the rest of the day. The strangest part was by 5pm it was 40 degrees and all the snow was gone.

    My kid brother C turned 24 this week, and he and brother T came over to my pub (my garage) for a few beers, some pizza, and some dart throwing. Happy birthday C!

    Tonight Kelly and I met some friends at the Goose for some dinner and beers. Yum.

    I picked up a Roku (used for $80) earlier this week. So far I’m pretty impressed, the streaming quality is pretty good. Kelly’s watching An American in Paris as I write this. She’s quite excited.

    Oh, and I got another keg of Guinness today (after the last one ran dry about two weeks ago). I swore I was going to get something different, but I couldn’t help it, Guinness is just too delicious. Yum!

    Other than that, I’ve been watching Lost and Battlestar Galactica now that those are both back on, and as I said above, working.

    That pretty much covers it, I think.

  • Hey look, it’s 2009!

    Last night Kelly and I had a small group of frinds over for our annual New Years Eve party. It was smaller than expected, but that didn’t stop Kelly from making enough food for a small army (as usual). I was unable to get a keg of the beer I wanted (Guinness) in time, so the kegerator was sad, but it all worked out fine. We ended up spending a couple hours playing with our new Wii, and while we were playing Wii Bowling, I learned that my friend J is something of a Wii Bowling master, and that Ghost Dog has some nice spin technique. We had a great time, and thanks to those who were able to make it. For everybody else, Happy New Year.

  • Christmas at home

    Due to the unusual amount of snow that’s hit the greater Portland area this past week, Kelly and I were unable to make the usual trek out to my folks house today.

    My hometown, which is nestled in the foothills of the Oregon coast range, had more than two feet of snow. This is the most snow my folks have ever seen, and that’s saying something. When I was young we’d fairly regularly get about a foot of snow, though over the past 15 years getting more than six inches of snow, especially before Christmas, has been a rare thing.

    This meant that this was the first Christmas that my family hasn’t spent together opening gifts, eating breakfast, eating pies, and gorging ourselves on far too many cookies. It had my family pretty bummed out, especially my younger brothers.

    If it warms up and the snow continues to melt (which is the forecast) we’ll be out there in a few days (maybe Saturday) to celebrate Christmas. It’s only a few days delay, no big deal. Fortunately I have family who all live in the same area, and nobody has had to travel long distances. I can’t imagine the hell it must have been for people trying to get into (or out of) Portland the past few days. The inconvenience of postponing Christmas a few days isn’t that big a deal.

    Tonight Kelly and I met Snooks at Kennedy School for a couple beers, which was a nice break away from home. On the way back Kelly and I helped a cab get un-stuck. Poor fella tried to turn from a relatively cleared street onto a snow & slushy mess and got stuck. It’s still a mess out here.

    Anyway, Happy Holidays everyone. Hope you all had a great day. And only a week away from 2009. Maybe this year will be better than the last.

  • A day at home, a night at Goose & Moon

    Yesterday I got a few Blu-ray discs I picked at Amazon.com for fairly cheap (on black friday). Watched two last night, Batman Begins and Sunshine. Can’t wait until Dark Knight is delivered in a week or two, I’ve been waiting to see that again since I saw it in the theater.

    I woke up early today and got quite a bit done around the house. It was a nice sunny, and cold winter day, and was good for puttering about the house while Kelly was out shopping with friends. Among all the housework and bill-paying and other nonsense, I discovered how easy Handbrake makes it to convert DVD’s to iPod-friendly files, and added a movie to my iPod Touch. Hooray!

    Tonight Kelly and I went back to the famous Goose Hollow Inn for dinner and drinks with friends. Had a great time out, eating reuben sandwiches, drinking beers, and chatting the night away out on the heated patio. After we left for home, Kelly and I stopped at our local pub (Moon & Sixpence) for a couple more pints before heading home.

    Had a great day, and a great night out.

  • A second turkey day, and some bowling

    Last night Kelly prepared our own Thanksgiving dinner, cooking a 11 lb turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing. While the turkey prep and cooking was a bit involved it turned out delicious. After an early dinner we plugged ourselves into the living room furniture for an evening of movie and television watching. Nice relaxing night. I ate too much.

    Tonight we went out to Beaverton for my friend Eric’s birthday, meeting at a McMenamins for dinner, and then heading over to Sunset Lanes for some Cosmic Bowling (you know, music played loud with videos projected above the lanes, black lights, etc). It’d been quite a while since I’d bowled, and I never have been very good, but it was fun anyway. Top score: a pathetic 128. That was almost double the first game (70), so I figure that if we’d played a third game, I’d have gotten 240. Or, more likely, I would have gotten another 70. But again, whatever, it was fun.

  • Goose Hollow, and a long ride home

    This evening Kelly and some friends of ours had tickets to see 80’s goth-rock gods Sisters of Mercy play downtown on a reunion tour. I opted not to go. I like them fine, and wore my Floodland cassette out decades ago, but just not enough to pay for the rather spendy ticket.

    I did go along to dinner with everybody at the Goose Hollow Inn (mmm, reuben sandwich). Afterwards I drove Kelly to the venue, parked, made sure she was safe in the company of our friends, and then took the bus home so Kelly could drive home afterwards.

    On the way down to the bus stop I realized that I had to pee. Nothing urgent, just a bit of forewarning from the ol’ bladder. I pressed on thinking that maybe fortune would smile on me and a bus would arrive as I got to the bus stop. As I got there and checked the schedule I learned I had a good 30 minutes until the bus was scheduled to arrive. “Okay,” I thought, “I can do this” and then loaded up some music on my iPod and began my wait.

    Within about five minutes some tweaker girl (who introduced herself as Tony) started talking rapidly to me about how she was just up at another bar with friends and just had to leave because she wasn’t in a good place and had to catch a bus to Southeast to go to some party and how she was feeling punchy and blah blah blah blah blah… I just stood there listening to her (because she looked like she needed it) and smiling and responding with “uh huh” and “oh yeah?” and “ahh” a lot. It was a very long 30 minutes. Oh, and by this time, the bladder wasn’t hinting anymore, but starting to complain, loudly.

    Once I finally got on a bus I had another 25 minutes to wait, and because I got impatient (and wasn’t thinking clearly) I hopped on a bus that drops me off about 7 blocks further away from home than the one I’d wanted. Once off the bus I began the 14 block walk home, very quickly. It was a long walk, and every dark corner and row of shrubbery mocked me as I passed, daring me to do the wrong thing.

    I however succeeded in not urinating in a public (or in my pants). I am now comfortably sitting here sipping on a Guinness. Hooray!

  • Weekend recap

    Saturday after Kelly got home we had a night in (as poor Kelly was exhausted from partying ’til the break of dawn). So I went to the local Thai place and picked up some dinner, and then we watched some television before Kelly went to bed.

    Yesterday we went over to our neighbors to get the details on what we need to do to watch their dog next weekend while they’re out of town. We even went to the local park and played a bit with all the other neighborhood dogs before going to Concordia Ale House for dinner. Oh, I also played quite a bit of Team Fortress 2 yesterday. Hooray!

    Last night we watched a couple movies. First was the rom-com Blind Dating, which was my first exposure to the upcoming Captain Kirk actor Christopher Pine, who was actually pretty good despite the relatively cheesy flick. It also got me even more excited for the upcoming Star Trek film. After that we watched the British gangster flick Layer Cake, which I’d seen on a plane w/o Kelly and had forgotten how good it was.

    Back to work today. I think I’m coming down with something, or fighting something off at least. I felt exhausted all day, with a tiny bit of a stuffy head and sore throat. I think I’m just going to continue to ignore it, and hope it goes away without direct intervention on my part. Stupid fall.

  • Kelly’s in Vegas, and I have more Guinness

    Tonight Kelly left for Las Vegas, for one whole night. She had to fly out early this morning for an event this evening, and then comes home tomorrow afternoon. What a crazy thing to have to do. Wishing her luck!

    Today I went to pick up a fresh keg of Guinness. Yeah, the previous keg is empty already. Actually it’s been empty for a week, making it a record-breaking 1.5 weeks. To be honest, between Kelly, Snooks, my brother, and the party on the 24th, I had a lot of help but I was still pretty surprised. I drove to work today, packing the empty Guinness keg with me so after I could go get a fresh one. It’s home and tapped and happy in it’s little fridge. And the pints are happy in my belly.

    Tonight I’ve been trying out the new, Mac-friendly plugin from Netflix to watch sreaming movies. Works really well, and I’m pretty jazzed. I just watched Superman: Doomsday and am now watching Big Trouble in Little China which I haven’t seen in well over a decade, but it’s still a great cheesy 80’s John Carpenter flick.

  • The past week or so…

    I keep meaning to post, I really do! I just keep getting distracted and putting it off. Here’s yet another recap of the past week or so…

    Tues – Fri
    Worked. Lots of meetings, lots of planning, little actual work got done.

    Friday night (Halloween)
    Kelly and I went to Concordia Ale House for a beer, and then headed over to Kennedy School to witness the Halloween festivities. We arrived just in time to see some little kids all decked out (saw a tiny dinosaur, the kid couldn’t have been more than a year old — looked like a stuffed animal with a small child stuffed inside, very cute). We got pints and went to the front fire pit and watched the adults arrive for the evening party. There were a number of good costumes, including some zombies, 80’s style rockers, a thin and buxom Wonder Woman, a Sarah Palin (the scariest costume all night), and my personal favorite… Cousin Eddie, Christmas Vacation style.

    Rest of weekend
    Chilled out, watched some TV and movies. Had plans and they fell through so it was a generally lazy weekend. Perfect! One cool thing, my friend Eric sent me the invite code for the Call of Duty: World at War demo, which I downloaded and played for a bit. Awesome and loads of fun, though it did tax my two year old video card. Time to buy another I guess.

    Last night
    Met Snooks at Horse Brass for a couple beers last night, before returning home to have a salad and doze off on the couch. I think I’m fighting off a flu or something. Urgh.

    Today
    Worked from home and managed to get a lot of real work done. Hooray!

    Tonight (election night)
    Trying to ignore the results as they come in. Nothing can be gained by fretting over the numbers as they come in, moving upward and (sadly) closer together. I can only hope. And pray. And wait. In the meantime I’m gonna continue to play with my new shiny iPod Touch. Maybe play some Call of Duty, or Team Fortress 2 (oh yeah, thanks again for gifting that to me, Ghost Dog!).