Yesterday was a long and tiring rehearsal. New scene changes, missing actor, multiple acts run again. It was not the best rehearsal.

I was due to be with friends watching the Academy Awards last night. I wasn’t in the mood for any sort of gathering. All I wanted was food, relaxation and then sleep. I was grumpy, crabby, tired and hungry by the end of rehearsal. I was sure I wouldn’t have been the best company while watching an award show. It was actually hard skipping the party, but my body almost demanded it.

After a quick bite to eat with my daughter, we went home and I started a fire in the fireplace. For just I bit I sat down near the fire, and stared at the flames. It had a very calming influence. I went to bed early and actually missed the award show.

Today, I felt a bit bad about not showing up. My grumpy, crabby self was well relaxed and ready to go. I’m sure I would have had fun at the gathering, but I’m also sure I would have paid for it today. Sometimes, I guess, I just need to listen to what my body is telling me. Food, rest and then sleep was definitely called for.

I hope everyone had fun at the party. I had a relaxing evening after a trying afternoon.

Apparently there is no clause protecting Santa Claus from being ticketed just like every other joe in the world. Back in November, 60 year-old Chip Cafiero was given a citation for being double-parked on a Brooklyn street. His horse-drawn carriage full of treats for good little boys and girls was parked near his SUV. Mr. Cafiero recently had his day in court to contest the ticket by claiming he was illegally parked to protect the children and carriage from traffic. However, the Jolly Elf paid the $155 fine but  said that the grinches would not take away his Christmas spirit.

By Caitlin Millat

NBCNewYork.com

The NYPD just landed on the naughty list.

Kris Kringle will have to pay a $115 double-parking ticket he received last Christmas while handing out toys to kids in Brooklyn, the Daily News reported.

Chip Cafiero, 60, parked his horse-drawn carriage — ahem, sleigh — in Bay Ridge last year as he delivered goodies to bright-eyed area kids.

Grinchy cops promptly slapped Cafiero’s carriage and the Chevy Suburban next to it with fines for occupying more than one space.

“The agent saw me handing out toys to kids and walked over and slapped me with a fine anyways,” St. Nick told the Daily News. “Has this city lost its heart?”

St. Nick tried to appeal to the Department of Finance but lost his battle with the city today despite public outcry that the ticket be overturned.

“Obviously not even Santa is exempt from traffic enforcement here in New York City,” state Sen. Marty Golden (R-Bay Ridge) said.

The Fifth Avenue Merchants Association told the Daily News it would pick up Cafiero’s tab.

Cafiero said the ticket wouldn’t zap him of holiday cheer.

“The city can take my money,” Santa said, “but they can’t take my Christmas spirit.”

In an apparent move to tighten the length of the ceremony, certain things were absent from this season’s Academy Award ceremony.  The thing I noticed most was the absence of the clips shown periodically throughout the night showcasing the nominees for the big award: Best Picture.  Also gone was the full performance of Best Original Song nominees by the artists who either  originally performed or wrote the song.

One new addition to the show was the way in which the acting awards were presented.  Normally, the winner of the previous year’s award presents.  This year,  groups of past winners stood on stage and announced each nominee in turn.  I thought this was a nice touch to pass the torch.

As always, we had the somewhat needless montages centering on various film genres of the past year: Love, Comedy, and Action to name a few.  They seriously do get old.

I really enjoyed the showmanship of Hugh Jackman as host.  Anyone who knows him only as Wolverine or from his other cinematic roles got a treat as he performed in two very cool musical numbers.  He even poked fun at his own flop at the box office, Australia.

I received an interesting email forward the other day; it’s a Japanese video that shows a woman folding a shirt perfectly in a matter of seconds using an origami technique.  I haven’t tried it out yet; I’ve been too busy blogging instead of folding my laundry 🙂

One of my best friends posted on his blog that readers would get “bored” with his posts about his family and his love of it.  However, I think it would be highly entertaining.  I hope I don’t bore anyone with my occasional posts about my awesome friends.  Tonight, a bunch of us met at their house for an Oscar party.  I must say that I was shocked after the final tally in which I was the winner.  I usually don’t do too badly at these things… I am pleased if I get a quarter of the catergories correct.  I do have a system that mainly involves paying attention to the news a week or two before the awards and I go from there.  Luckily, Slumdog Millionaire did not let me down for the most part.  In fact, I think I went against the movie a few times and lost.

There were a few sure things.  I honestly thought that Heath Ledger MADE the Joker his own.  An interesting point was made tonight.  Does anyone recall the villain falling to his death in the theatrical release?  If so, it was apparently edited out of the DVD release.  Definitely a bittersweet victory.  The Clown Prince of Crime was the best part of The Dark Knight.

Also, who would not vote for Wall-E? While I am a fan of two-d animation of old, I think studios like Pixar create very fun, noteworthy work.

I have often thought that costume pieces are the way to go when choosing whic Costume Design movie to pick.  Thank goodness The Duchess kept that belief alive.

As for the rest, many of them were pure pull them out of the hat guesses… some good… others not so good.  Guess I was just lucky.

The last day or so has been a bit busy.  Part of it was me wasting time on Hamsterball, a clone of the 80’s hit arcade game Marble Madness, and part was preparations for church this weekend.  I have been wasting a lot of time on Hamsterball.  Those who remember Marble Madness will remember that the game uses a trackball.  The player would madly roll that trackball to guide his or her marble downhill (in one case uphill!) to the exit, encountering many an obstacle on the way down.  Two players could even play at the same time, adding to the madness.  Hamsterball plays a great tribute to this game, but it looks like the two player game is limited to either a one-on-one battle to knock the other off a platform, or playing just one board at a time instead of an entire tournament.  Actually, the battle part can be up to four players- one-on-one-on-one-on-one, as it were.  Instead of a marble, the wonder of current technology allowed the programmers to turn it into a hamster ball, with the hamster dutifully running in the ball as it moves.  You can play in resolutions of 640×480 up to 1280×1024, in a window or fullscreen.  Unfortunately, fullscreen for me means the game is stretched to fill my widescreen display making the ball look flat.  When windowed, the game displays a correct aspect ratio fortunately.  In lieu of a trackball, I have tried to play this game using a mouse, the track-pad on this oversized laptop, and an analog Saitek game controller.  The game controller works the best for my purposes, but I still would like to get an arcade-style trackball at some point.  I missed out on buying one for $50 back when I could afford one.  The game itself starts with ideas from Marble Madness and takes off from there.  Besides the classic enemies like an enemy ball and disappearing floors, you will encounter fans, saws, giant hammers and mousetraps, and much more.  Remember the world on Marble Madness where your marble goes up ramps instead of down?  Well, add sideways to this game in a world where the gravity changes depending on where your ball is on the screen.  Here are some pictures from the game (click for larger size).  You can also find a bunch of videos on Youtube:

The business with church involved the 4th/5th grade ministry and children’s drama.  I had a script to finish memorizing for the rehearsal which started at 3:30.  In addition, for the review game, Jeopardy, for 4th/5th grade I made some cards to draw for the categories and point values.  Sure, we could have let the students pick for themselves, but when there are 30-50 kids in the room, with half of them (two teams) having to agree that would have caused the game to drag.  One of the pastors used a die to decide in the past, but where’s the fun in that when we could have the kids draw from a box cool-looking cards instead?  On top of that it was rewards weekend.  As such I had to call about ten kids in my small groups to remind them to bring their reward sheets with them.  Most of them did, but a couple still forgot or couldn’t find them.

An odd thing happened this weekend.  There was a guest pastor from California, and for some reason on Saturday night he thought the service was two hours (it’s really 1½ hours) and so we were wondering in kids ministry what was going on when 6:45 rolled around, then 6:50 and the parents still weren’t there to pick up the kids.  I learned the next day of what happened.  The pastor was corrected and had to shorten his message by a half-hour otherwise chaos would have ensued between the two morning services as people for the second service arrived to a full parking lot because the first service hadn’t left yet 😯 . In the end, everything worked out well.  The review game was only its usual chaos, the drama went well- if not always perfect- for the three services, and the kids were too fully engaged in the room games Saturday night to care that their parents hadn’t arrived yet (I do feel for the other classrooms though that didn’t have carpetball, four-square, and air hockey).

I once again served as song leader at mass today.  Between the first and second readings is the responsorial psalm.  The leader leads the congregation in the main verse and then chants the rest of the psalm… hopefully, correctly.  This morning was not the case and one word mispoken made me wince.

The 3rd verse is supposed to be read as follows:

The LORD will sustain him on his sickbed
and restore him from his bed of illness.

Honestly, it would have been perfect except for one word.  Instead of “sustain,” I said “The Lord will KEEP him on his sickbed.”  One would hope that God would not intentionally keep someone on his sickbed.  When I made my face after the psalm was complete, the organist asked what was wrong and I told him what had happened.  Apparently, he did not notice.

I also sang “Amazing Grace.”  This is one of my favorite pieces.  However, I did not realize how many verses there are: 6.  I did a bit of sight reading since we rarely get past verse 4.  I have always been fascinated by the first verse.  Alot of hymnals include the words :”saved a wretch like me.”  I always learned that the sound “saved and set me free.”  There seems to be a lot of that word changing going on in our hymnals that change seasonally… generally, in songs that seem un-politically correct.  Our chief organist has a fit every time the choir practices a song and the words are not the same as in the past.  But we have to sing the most up-to date words or the congregation will be lost.

Ok… off to rehearsal.

This April 10 (2009) will mark the 10-year anniversary of my marriage to my wonderful wife, Lisa.  And, last night we got to celebrate a little bit early by joining our local theatre for a night of “That’s Amore” – a cute little game where couples answer questions about each other “Newlywed Game” style.

And my wife, who HATES getting up in front of people actually got on stage and joined me in the competition — and we won!

But, this isn’t really about the game…

The fact that my wife would get up on stage (looking smokin’ hot I might add) and participate in this event meant so much to me.  I know how much she hates/fears being on stage and the fact that she was willing to do this…  I know it was because she, like me, will jump at any chance to show our love to each other.

For these past 10 years I have just been so blessed.  Not only has Lisa given me complete marital bliss for the past 10 years, she (and God) have given me a wonderful family that has far exceeded my childhood dreams.

As I child I had a dream of getting married and having a family with many children; but the reality has been much sweeter than the dream ever was!  Each day I wake up (even when it is to crying little ones) and think to myself how blessed my life is and how lucky I am to have my wife and kids.

A few people have chided me about not blogging enough.  But the truth is, my blog would get boring to readers quickly.  Really, aside from the ocasional gripe about the theatre, all I ever feel like writing about is Lisa — my love for her and my love for the kids…  And maybe now and then about my love for my friends.

***BORING STUFF***

Plus, I work on the computer — so when I get some “free” time the last thing I want to do is MORE on the computer.  I want to spend wime with LISA, CHRISTOPHER, DISNEY, SAMANTHA, and TAYLOR!

I did have a post about Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio a while ago, but tonight I spent my time in Bryan Ohio. First at our theater’s new Weekenders productions. I would recommend these to anyone. It was a fun night. This was my first visit to something that has been going on for a little over a month. It could be comedy, singing or a little acting, but if they are all like tonight, it is a whole lot of fun.

Then a little impromptu visit to a local establishment across from the little theater. Had fun visiting with friends. I’m not one for the bar scene, but we almost had the place to ourselves. Quiet night in Bryan. If it hadn’t been for all the snow, I think the sidewalks would have been rolled up. 😉

For those readers who aren’t regulars of the WCCT, check out the link on this page. A lot of fun things are happening in either Bryan or Montpelier.

Two week count down to opening night for “The Lion in Winter”. I would love to see you there (really).

More Weekenders will be scheduled. More great shows coming up.

BAM!!!  Winter returned earlier today with another blast.  Not that we were expecting anything less since it is only approaching the end of February.  I had rehearsal from 1-4 (4 being rather optimistic since I had to leave at 4.45 to be at work by 5).  The drive over was rather problematic: snow covered road the entire 10 mile journey, but I did make it (did you expect anything less?).  I arrived around noon to complete my costuming… THANK HEAVEN THAT IS DONE!  Now, we just have to wait for my final outfit to arrive from the costume shop in Toledo opening week (hopefully it fits).  But Grandpa is now fully clothed.  The costume mistress made a wonderful, very astute comment.  She told me that she knew that I had been a theatre veteran for two reasons: (1) my talent and (2) my security in dropping my pants without hesitation to try on costumes.  Well… my security in the latter is limited to the costume room.  I have yet to be cast in a role in which I have been required to drop my drawers (quite frankly, at present, that would cause a moments pause).

One of the highlights of today’s rehearsal was the trolley.  It is really going to be something.  Not quite complete, but enough that it could be moved on and off stage.  I must say that I was quite impressed with the organization and pace at which it was pushed on and off for one of the signature numbers of the show.

Grandpa’s songs must have impressed… well, I was told that I could be heard.  Unfortunately, the part that could be heard was harmony that was supposed to be mixed with Tootie and Agnes’ melody line.  I have often been told that one should never work with children or animals on stage.  Funny thing is, I have never had reason to believe it.  Wonder why?

Happily, the road back was snow clear for the most part although the wind was horrendous.  But, who knows what tomorrow will bring.