Fun Stuff Archives

It's a happy new day! I'm already looking forward to the weekend. Unfortunately, it'll be another busy one. We've been out of town, having relatives and friends visit, or doing various other things for the past several weeks. This weekend brings a pre-wedding Pampered Chef party for Ryan and Huyen on Saturday and the company picnic on Sunday. Should be fun. Probably entirely unrelaxing, but fun.

Posted on August 2, 2001 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Indigo Girls tonight. They always put on a good show. I love performers who really seem to be having a good time performing and aren't just doing a job. What's even cooler is it'll just be Emily and Amy up there. The very first time I saw the Indigo Girls live was just after Swamp Ophelia was released and it was just the two of them then, too. I tend to enjoy live shows more when they're not just regurgitations of what's already on an album somewhere.

Posted on August 7, 2001 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm kinda glad my girlfriend encouraged me to get back into reading comics after the long, self-imposed hiatus caused by lack of funds back around the time I went off to college. I really do enjoy them. Sure, they're a massive drain on my cash flow, but it's really not THAT bad. Not as bad as my DVD habit, surely. It's gotten me thinking about the comics I'd thought of writing so long ago. I still can't flesh out the stories well enough to make them work, but it's nice to be thinking along those lines again. As such, The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Denny O'Neil was a great buy. Best book I've seen about how to write a comic book script.

Posted on August 9, 2001 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eeep! I've been invited to a bachelor party! I've never been to one of those before. Not sure if I'll be able to make it. One thing I wonder, though... should I bring a gift? Perhaps a cheese log...

Posted on August 16, 2001 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Watched The Goonies this weekend on DVD. Though I didn't love it quite as much as I did when I was younger, it still was a great flick. I still have to watch it with the commentary, which should be a real treat. Though I've read that a lot of the actors involved didn't remember a lot of things, so it might not be that great after all. It was cool seeing the old Cyndi Lauper music videos, though. I hadn't seen those in FOREVER. It was so weird seeing all the old wrestlers in her videos. Back then, it seemed like wrestlers showed up in everything, from music videos to cartoons to sitcoms. Maybe I just don't notice these kinds of things as an adult, but it just doesn't seem to happen as much any more. Though I just can't see The Rock joining up with G.I. Joe.

Posted on August 27, 2001 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So... after their appearances in and leading up to the horrible Our Worlds at War crossover, the Suicide Squad is getting its own series. I loved the old Suicide Squad series. I recently finally finished reading the entire 5+ year run. I'm a little concerned that the new series won't even come close to being as good as the original. From what little I've seen of the first 3 issues, it sounds like it's going to be a series that only exists to kill off unnecessary characters. Sure, the first series did that a LOT, too. But that was against a backdrop of some excellent storytelling and great, fully realized characters. I'm probably jumping the gun here. Giffen's a good writer. I'll definitely give it a few issues, but I'm not hoping for much at this point. I see slightly more promise in the new Doom Patrol series.

Posted on August 29, 2001 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Woo hoo. Tonight's Ryan's bachelor party. Should be interesting. I've never seen Brian Regan before, so this should be cool. :) It'll be interesting to see what Ryan's other friends are like and to see what some of the other Pingers look like in person. I'm frightened.

Posted on August 30, 2001 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm taking tomorrow off to spend the day with Sarah. We usually only have the weekends together when everyone else has work off, so it'll be nice to have it not be so crowded everywhere we go. We plan to spend the day at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. We're gonna try to take a tall ship cruise around the harbor and hit the aquarium. I haven't been to an aquarium in AGES. The only time I remember going to a real aquarium was taking a field trip to the New England Aquarium when I was in school. It'll be cool and it'll be nice to have a day off for something other than holiday travel or sickness.

Posted on September 27, 2001 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Saturday, Sarah and I are going to see Tori Amos at the DAR Constitution Hall. We've never been to this particular venue before, but it looks pretty nice. Should be a good show, too. I didn't like a lot of the stuff off of her latest album. It was a cover album and I thought a lot of the covers were either uninspired or just took the song in an entirely yucky direction. So hopefully she'll play some older stuff, too. And hopefully she'll play some REALLY older stuff.

This tour's supposed to be just Tori and her piano. I'm happy to hear that. Tori with a band is good. Tori without a band is amazing. It's just an entirely different experience. I'm looking forward to it.

Posted on October 5, 2001 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Though it's over a week before the wedding, tonight is Michael's bachelor party. For some inexplicable reason, I feel frightened at what sort of bachelor party Michael will have. It SOUNDS normal enough from what little I know of what we're doing. But this is Michael. I fear.

Posted on October 5, 2001 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, today's a banner day for me. Not only did I have my happy li'l shopping experience earlier in the day, but I received 5 DVDs (actually, one was a 3-disc set) in the mail and all of them were sitting securely on their hubs.

I should just call it a day and go to bed now.

Posted on October 16, 2001 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While chatting with Ryan, he brought up the idea of going duckpin bowling. Sounded cool to me, so I hope it ends up happening. I'll probably suck a great deal, but it'll be fun. I've always enjoyed bowling, even when I'm sucking big time. We'd played a bizarre version of duckpin bowling at ESPN Zone during Michael's bachelor party and Ryan kicked my ass. Yay.

Though I thought I'd played duckpin before, I realized that I'd really played candlepin. The rules are fairly similar, though there are some variances and the pin shape is entirely different. But I remember it being fun, so I imagine duckpin will be fun, too. Fun is good.

Posted on October 25, 2001 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, this was a pretty slow weekend. Didn't really do much. Sarah was still feeling pretty out of it and slept a lot, so I had to come up with things to do that were quiet. Which meant no dusting and vacuuming (which the apartment desperately needs) and games and DVDs only when she was awake. I'd thought of going to the Baltimore Comic-Con on Sunday, but I decided against it. Sure, the admission's only $5, but I just KNOW I'd go nuts buying stuff or wanting to buy stuff. I don't go to cons to meet the pros as much. I haven't been to a comic book convention in many years, so it might've been fun. But with Christmas coming fairly soon and Sarah sick and out of work, I couldn't really justify the expense. It's all good, though. The only comic I'm desperately looking for at the moment is Young Justice #21, as that's the only YJ issue I don't have.

Watched all of the extra stuff on the Star Wars DVD, as well as the movie itself. All of the extra stuff was really interesting. I'll have to watch it again with commentary soon. I also watched my Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko DVD and the first episode of the Hakkenden. The Hakkenden's just as bloody as I remember. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest, though I just couldn't see myself sitting down for 6 or 7 hours to watch the whole thing.

All in all, a decent weekend but a slow one.

Posted on October 29, 2001 1:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Kinda interesting story. We hit the 29 Diner tonight as sort of a pre-birthday dinner. The last thing I ordered was a strawberry milkshake and the waitress just stared at me for a while. I thought she just hadn't heard me right or that she thought I was odd for ordering a milkshake in 45 degree weather. But no. She just didn't like making them and I was the first person who'd ordered one from her today. :)

It turned out to be an excellent milkshake, though. Had some really really good fried chicken, too. Yummers.

Posted on November 11, 2001 8:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Blah. I was hoping to get our car back from Carmax in time for Sarah to drop me off there on her way to work, so I could have the car for the day. Not that I desperately needed it, but I had potential lunch plans. So Sarah leaves around 11 and about 5 minutes later, Carmax calls and says the car's ready. Argh. Oh well.

Speaking of Carmax... when we went to drop the car off last night, we stopped in at Burger King to snag one of those Lord of the Rings goblets. They're actually quite cool. We got two of them, though I don't think you're supposed to be able to do that with purchasing only one Whopper value meal. But who knows? The person at the counter could barely speak English, so it was amazing that we got it at all. :)

Posted on December 5, 2001 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We got new cabinets installed today! :) The ones we had when we moved into this apartment were horrid, falling apart, and coming off the wall. At one point, they came in and made them not come off the wall so much, but it's so much nicer to have new ones instead. We've suffered long enough with the old ones. They're very nice. Now we get to enjoy the wonderful process of putting everything back in them. :P Whee. But it's a small price to pay for new cabinets.

Posted on January 14, 2002 9:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, I was definitely happy to read this. Though I was loving Smallville, the show was definitely falling into a monster-of-the-week kind of formula. Though there were some underlying plotlines that were being moved forward throughout each episode, the basic structure of each episode was almost exactly the same for a while there. It's good that the guys in charge realized it and will do something about it. It'd be nice if a live-action superhero show did well.

Posted on January 25, 2002 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Happiness is being told that the Indigo Girls have a new album coming out in a few days when you'd completely forgotten they were even working on one.

Posted on March 6, 2002 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Coolest and funniest thing on this week's Smallville... John Schneider, toolin' around in the Kent pickup truck, listening to the Dukes of Hazzard theme song on the radio. Awww yeah...

Posted on March 22, 2002 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well, this was actually a pretty nice weekend, despite the sometimes rainy weather. On Friday night, we went to the Barns at Wolf Trap for the first time. We've been to the Filene Center there several times but never to the Barns. The acoustics were actually incredibly good and it was a nice, intimate setting. The show was great and definitely better than I expected it to be, as it wasn't an artist I was especially interested in. The opening act was rather good, too.

On Saturday, we went to the new CD Cellar in Leesburg. Though it was smaller than the Falls Church location, we actually found quite a bit of stuff to buy. Sarah bought more than I did, but I made some great buys, including finally getting The Who's Tommy on CD, the single for Trey Anastasio's first solo album, a freaky CD in the slightly scratched section by The Sisterhood of Convoluted Thinkers, and a pretty good cover album of Bob Marley by Ijahman Levi. We'll be going back for sure.

Posted on April 28, 2002 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Paul should get a kick out of this one. John Kovalic is very apparently a Mac fan. :)

Posted on May 2, 2002 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Woo! I won the ADDreviews 1000th Review Contest! This is an exciting day for me and I can't wait to listen to my prize. Woo!

Posted on May 8, 2002 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Being the geek that I am, I went to see Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones today. Perhaps I was going into it with fairly low expectations after the huge disappointment of Episode I, but I actually enjoyed it. I'd read several reviews before going and I think they were all a wee bit too harsh. Yes, I'm a pretty big Star Wars fan and I do feel George has lost something since the original trilogy. The past he's creating for the characters we know and love isn't what I expected and maybe isn't even what I wanted. And it drives me nuts sometimes that there seem to be some established things that he keeps ignoring. But it's his story and he's got the oodles and oodles of money, so... that's the way it goes.

There were certainly things about the new movie that got to me. The almost laughable love scenes, the complete lack of chemistry between Anakin and Senator Amidala, the whole notion that she'd even fall in love with this guy, some of the contrived plot bits, and these incredibly wise Jedi acting like complete morons sometimes. But it still managed to be a lot of fun. And, even though I'd completely failed to avoid knowing a lot of what was going to happen, I still was riveted and wanted to keep watching. And not just to see if it'd get any better, as was often the case with Episode I. It was a fun sci-fi flick. Hopefully George can tap into some of that old magic to make the last one be not just a good movie but a great one.

One thing that really nagged me a bit was that I remember reading a quote from Lucas saying that the reason Qui Gon didn't fade away like Obi Wan and Yoda did in the original trilogy would be explained in this movie. And it wasn't. Maybe he said in the next two movies. I hope it's explained at some point. Drives me nuts.

Yoda kicks ass, though. :)

Posted on May 16, 2002 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Though we hadn't planned on it, we're actually going to go to the Indigo Girls concert tonight. The latest album was subpar, but they always put on a good show. Sarah hadn't wanted to go when tickets first went on sale, so I didn't get them, but then she couldn't decide whether she wanted them or not. Yesterday, her boss called and said she now had an extra pair of tickets, so we decided to help her out by buying them from her. Aren't we nice? ;) I'm sure it'll be nice 'n' hot out there. Though not nearly as hot as I'm sure I'll feel when we go see Mandy Patinkin in late June at the Kennedy Center, when I should dress much nicer.

Posted on May 30, 2002 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So I bought a Rammstein album this weekend. I never thought I would. But I was standing in CD Cellar in Leesburg and there it was, tempting me to get it. So I did. And I took it home, then listened to it on the way to the grocery store. And... I liked it. It's fun and loud. And there's something about German that goes well with metal. Maybe that's why all those 80's metal bands used random umlauts in their names.

Of course, I balanced things out a bit with a Duran Duran greatest hits disc, The Cure's Three Imaginary Boys, U2's October, and Metallica's Master of Puppets. O.K., maybe that last one didn't do a blessed thing to bring balance to the CD Collection. But that's O.K.

CD Cellar makes me feel squishy.

Posted on July 22, 2002 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This weekend I went to see Throne of Blood at the AFI Theatre in the Kennedy Center. When I got there about an hour before the movie was to start, the line for tickets contained only about 10 people and I noticed about a dozen or so people milling about who'd already bought tickets. About a half hour later, the ticket line held about 40 people and the line for ticketed people stretched the entire Hall of Nations. Needless to say, the small theatre was packed.

The movie itself was very entertaining. The quality of the print was excellent. I'm definitely glad I went. It's too bad I probably won't get the chance to see any of the other movies. Things at work are heating up, as classes start on the 27th. I can see late nights and weekends in my future. Yeehaw.

In other news, I've applied to take a Japanese language class. The class size is pretty small with only 8 people per class, so I hope I can get in. We'll see...

Posted on August 19, 2002 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Something good came in the mail yesterday. I found out that I got into that Japanese class I applied for a while back. I was starting to get a bit worried since the class starts on the 30th, but everything's happy.

I'm horrid at languages, really. I was able to learn read, write, and understand French fairly well back in high school. True, I had my occasional troubles with verb conjugations. But my real problem was with speaking it. My accent and pronunciation was atrocious. It worries me a bit that this elementary class focuses on conversation because of that. Hopefully everything will go well, though. It seems to be easy for me to get discouraged when learning something these days, but maybe my desire to learn it will overcome that.

Posted on September 25, 2002 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Heya.

Well, I started listening to the CD I won in the ADDreviews contest. Seriously, this is a fine disc. I was rather impressed with the professional appearance of it when I first got it into my not-so-grubby little hands. This was obviously a labor of love. Or at least lust.

When I first stuck it in my computer, I noted that it had already been entered into CDDB. Now that's quality AND service.

Most of the stuff on there I've never heard before. I'm about halfway through listening to it and I've found quite a lot of stuff that I like a lot. There's so much music out there that I've never heard. This is just a taste.

With the quality of this CD, maybe I'll have to start actually paying attention to what the boys over at ADDreviews have to say. Maybe I'll become someone's yes-man.

Posted on October 28, 2002 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Spotted (by Sarah) on route 40 in Maryland during our 11-1/2 hour trip home: "lazed ham $1.59/lb". Mmmmmmm... lazed ham...

Posted on December 1, 2002 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Man... I'd forgotten just how much I really love the original cast recording of Jesus Christ Superstar. Thanks, CD Cellar!

Posted on January 29, 2003 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I knew it!

Which Rainbow Brite kid are you? By Growing.

Posted on January 29, 2003 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is great. I know a lot of people are going to fall for this one, but I found it amusing. I hadn't gotten this one before.

I got an e-mail claiming to be from "Ebay Customer Support" today. The subject was "Ebay Techical Alert"(sic). It read:

"Dear custmer (rcraven@speakeasy.org),
We regret to inform you that because of some technical problems and a great data loss our team scheduled a maintenance session and managed to keep your account and auctions in good state."

It then told you to click on this link, which led to a site called "www.ebay-invoice.com" and the bottom of the e-mail had all the eBay trimmings of a usual eBay e-mail on it. This eBay Invoice site had the exact look of eBay. When you put in a user name and password, it then brought you to a page that told you to click on a button to go to sign in (which was weird, since wasn't that where I just was?). When you clicked the button, you were forwarded to the real eBay page and it tried to login with the user name and password given.

Hopefully people will be bright enough to notice what's going on here and not fall prey to these near-illiterate password thieves. It's amazing what people try to get away with these days.

Posted on February 24, 2003 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the nice perks of working at a school, besides the snow days, is spring break. After today, I've got two weeks off. Woo! Knowing me, I'll probably waste most of it, but hopefully I'll manage to accomplish SOMEthing. We'll see. It'll be nice having the time off. I feel like I've been getting very little sleep lately, so I can't wait to catch up.

Posted on March 14, 2003 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I thought I'd put this up before, but my mom reminded me that I hadn't. This is the bed and breakfast in Lynchburg that Sarah and I are going to during the weekend of the 28th. It's a pretty long drive, but it'll be nice to get away. And I haven't been swimming in far far too long.

Sorry I've been lax about the MP3 of the week. Had a visitor for a few days at the beginning of this week, so I didn't have the time. But I'll get better, I promise.

Posted on March 19, 2003 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Though I already really enjoy PBS, their reality shows have been vastly superior to any of the garbage I've seen on most other channels. From Frontier House to Surviving the Iron Age, they've been both thoroughly entertaining and informative.

The latest is Manor House. The premise is a great one and, to me, thoroughly British. Take a middle class family and move them into an old manor house, where they act as one of the nouveau riche in 1906. Then add a group of volunteers to be their servants. You just KNOW something's going to happen.

It's really been great so far. Watching it, it's hard to believe that this was going on less than 100 years ago. If you missed the first episode, I believe they're rerunning the entire 3 part series next week, so don't miss it.

Posted on April 29, 2003 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I went to the local Giant this weekend to pick up a couple things. I was ill, but I had nothing to eat, so I had to get some food. Since I only had a few things, I decided to try the self-checkout thing. I have to admit... it was pretty cool and it worked well. It scanned my happy bonus card, then scanned all my items and coupons. The only thing it didn't do was bag everything for me.

The only weird thing was... when someone got in line behind me, I started feeling really self-conscious, especially since I'd never used it before. I was worried that I was being too slow or something. At least I only had 3 items.

All in all, a pretty spiffy experience. Didn't really expect it to work so well.

Posted on May 19, 2003 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well. I was sitting in the living room last night. I can't remember what time it was. Probably somewhere around 11 or so, though it may have been a BIT earlier. I was playing a bit of Wolfenstein online. I was on the Allies side and we'd just won. Suddenly, something rather larger than a fly was flitting about in our apartment. At first, I thought it was a bird, so I said to Sarah rather calmly, "Hrmmm... there's a bird in here." She proceeded to freak out. :)

After looking at it further, Sarah said she thought it was a bat. I didn't think it was, since I thought I'd seen a beak and I thought it had feathers. But upon closer inspection (which was hard to do, since this guy was really moving), I noticed that the wings didn't really look like bird wings. And I don't think it had a proper tail. ANYhow... I opened the screen door and got it to fly outside after about 30 seconds. It was very surreal.

We're still not sure how it got in. I checked the screens on the windows and there wasn't a hole in any of them. Sarah thinks it might've gotten in through the hole above our shower. For some reason, there's a hole in the far corner of our bathroom. It looks like it's supposed to be a vent, but there's no vent cover or anything. It never really bothered us TOO much (except for when water drips from there for no reason... it's always ice cold and it can be quite a surprise when you're in a nice hot shower), so we didn't really stop to ponder what to do about it. Besides... getting the people who run our apartment complex over to fix something like this is a trial.

Hopefully we'll have no more nocturnal visitors of a fuzzy nature.

Posted on May 29, 2003 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Early on Wednesday, Sarah and I will be leaving for the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in the middle of nowhere in New York state. Not quite sure where it is, but we'll find it. It's quite a long drive. I'm a bit leery about the whole camping thing. But it's not going to be as hot as I'd expected, supposedly, so I won't get sick. Which will be good.

So I'll be even more quiet than usual between now and Monday or so.

Posted on July 22, 2003 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some people who know me know that I'm a huge PBS geek. One new show that I'm really enjoying is History Detectives (featuring the Elvis Costello tune mentioned in the title as the opening). The show features a motley group: two antique appraisers, one professor of sociology, and one professor of architectural history. Each episode features 3 stories taking place in one region of the country. One or two of the detectives go to some place and given a mystery to solve. For instance, one episode featured a drawing of George Washington and the owner wanted to find out if it was real or a forgery. Another episode had these two old ladies who owned a dirk that was supposedly given to their ancestor by Napoleon and they wanted to know if it was true.

It's really a fascinating show and it tugs at my both my enjoyment of antiques and history. What's really interesting is that they don't just say they do all this research, they actually show you the methods they use to do it. The only odd thing about the show is that it seems a bit schizophrenic at times. The material (and time slot) is obviously aimed at adults. Yet sometimes it comes across like the Reading Rainbow. Still... I'm loving the show.

Posted on August 5, 2003 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I was growing up, I read all sorts of science magazines. Discover, Sky and Telescope, Omni, and a few others I can't even remember. I really enjoyed them and I think recently I'd been missing having a good magazine to read.

Until Sarah got an offer in the mail to subscribe to the Smithsonian Magazine for only $12 a year. Seemed like a bargain, so we tried out the first issue. And I must say... I'm enjoying it quite a lot. Not as heavy as National Geographic, it suits my limited attention span and slow reading speed very well. And with a broad range of subjects such as art, history, politics, and science, it's always got a good mix of interesting articles. And the price can't be beat. Hell... I signed up for 2 years.

Posted on August 5, 2003 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yay!

I've been a fan of The Innocence Mission for about 12-13 years now. I haven't listened to their CDs as much lately, but I still consider myself a fan. I've never ever seen them perform live before. But soon that will change.

Not only are they coming to one of my favorite places to see a show, but they're doing it on my birthday. Happy happy!

Posted on September 12, 2003 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yay! Thanks, Isabel! Because of you, I'm off tomorrow!

Posted on September 17, 2003 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yay! I finally got my The Cure: Join the Dots: B-Sides and Rarities CD set. Now I don't have to be quite so jealous of Robert! Well... though I still am because he's a much sweller guy than I. And he knows someone named Scarlet. And he's done more ADDmovies reviews than I have.

Some day... SOME day...

Posted on February 18, 2004 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Here's my FFXI character, a cute little Tarutaru named Buubuu. She's currently a level 8 white mage/level 4 black mage. In this picture, she's sitting and healing. Isn't she just adorable?

Posted on April 8, 2004 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)