Where am I not? Work.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Washington, on a train ride as easy as Sunday
morning, on Sunday morning. The only sad thing about the trip was
having to temporarily say farewell to friends Bob and Stacey after
they kindly drove us to the train station. But we'll be back, taking
the same train south in two days. Good times ahead.

The Shirt I Did Not Purchase

In Toronto's Kensington Market

Toronto Dispatch: Rainbow Photomontage

You could not beat the weather on the drive up with a stick. The sun came out, dramatic clouds filled the horizon, and we were in Indiana for a blessedly short period of time. It was so nice, I said to Kathy, one of my car mates, "Man, I hope we get some rain on the way back. It would be a shame to have to drive through the SAME weather all the time."

Later, when it rained cats and dogs and we were stuck in a construction-related traffic snarl for forty-five excruciating minutes while we watched lightning play havoc in the sky, arcing horizontally from cloud to cloud over the horizon, Kathy said, "Wish granted."

So, like any city next to a Great Lake, the weather changes on a dime here. Before the start of my my long run yesterday, I made sure to give my teammates a dry t-shirt so I would have something to change into when we got to the theatre. Unfortunately, they forgot it. Later, they realized I could have worn one of Ben's shirts. O fickle fate! At any rate, I was never too uncomfortable, having grown if not accustomed at least resigned to the elements during my marathon training.

On the way to the theatre last night, the skies opened up again with big, fat drops that felt much colder than should be legal during the summer. At the same time, we were treated with golden hour sunset. I told my mates to look around for a rainbow, since low solar angle + heavy rain = rainbow. It turns out that warning was unnecessary. Plastered over the sky, in the direction of the theatre after we parked, was a complete rainbow. It was beautiful, and a good sign for the show to come (zombie infestation at a wedding in the middle of a dramatic love triangle; I was an inadvertantly stoned fifteen year old who knew jujitsu but could only pick up a piece of drywall and say "BAM!" because I'd accidentally eaten a joint). Pity my iPhone has no zoom. Enjoy the crudely-assembled photo montage!

By the way, it's sunny and completely cloud-free right now. Later, though, weather calls for a 20% chance of precipitation. Judging by yesterday's drenching over a 30% chance, I would say there is a 100% chance that is bullshit. Time will of course tell.

Toronto Dispatch: Boozing

Edison, part one of two of my roommates, likes to wake up at six o'clock Chicago time (seven Toronto) and was up for two hours at least before I got up yesterday. We still beat Chris, the final chapter in my roommate saga, by another two hours, so we got up and wandered around the block, settling on a little bar/coffee shop next door called Croissant Tree. This place was super cute, very like a shop back home except for fact that they also served beer. We took note of this, but did not drink, observing the "before noon, and you're an alcoholic" vacation rule that I just made up in my head.

Still, this did not stop us from returning later in the day, when the rest of the group needed a place to go to and I noted that Croissant Tree also had free wifi (with purchase). The gang headed over, laptops in tow, to get lunch, compute, hang out, and, for me, do some random work stuff that always seems to hit me on vacation. At some point, Chris, who had eaten already, wandered in and, pressured by the French Canadian (Quebecois?) coffee house owner, ordered a soda for himself and a beer for me. Oh! How kind! Well, we can hardly allow this beer to go to waste, right? So I drank it while the heavens first threatened us and ultimately poured down their mighty wet wrath upon us. I had omitted bringing a bag for my laptop, so I dallied a little longer, enjoying my teammates' company, eating my soup and a work webpage with the latest applicant PDFs, just like I would have at home, except that I was drinking beer.

Of course, this would bite me in the butt later.

After the coffee place, we planned on visiting the Bad Dog Theatre, one of the two places we at which are performing for the Toronto Improv Fest, to pick up whatever they use for passes, check in, and hand out fliers for our second show, Open Court, which relies on audience participation to build instant long form teams, and would kind of miss the point if it was just us, again. Not that I would be sad to perform two festival shows with this group, but we sold ourselves on the fact that we integrate seasoned improvisers with those more new to the fold, and we surely hate to renege on that promise. My Google Maps showed the theatre was only 3.3 km away, which is meaningless to me, since the English system has poisoned my brain, but others assured me was about two miles, an easy run for me. I programmed the route into my phone, handed a clean t-shirt over to the driving crew, and headed out.

A vital note: when getting directions for a trip, make sure the first few streets on the actual route agree with the virtual map. Otherwise, there is a very real chance you're headed in the wrong, and perhaps opposite, direction.

As I was running from urban to suburban Toronto, this exact thought failed to occur to me.

It was not until I saw that I had been running for twenty minutes--plenty of time to reach the place, even at a my slow pace--that I thought to re-map my route. Instantly, or perhaps not, my route changed from two miles-and-change to four miles. I phoned the group, who had also gotten lost en route, and turned around, this time checking and actually finding Bloor Street, which was vital since both theatres were on it, separated by a distance of four miles. After dodging downtown foot traffic for four miles, I made it, noting with dismay that the theatre was dark. Nobody would stir until shortly before the improv fest began and, what was worse, my team had gone AWOL. Ben, ever the gentleman, called me to let me know that they had been waiting patiently but, like Bishop waiting for Ripley at the end of James Cameron's Aliens, had been forced to move the ship/car because emissions from the nuclear meltdown made it too unstable to hover nearby/signs said they couldn't park on the street during rush hour.

Chris and Ben offered me the chance to ride in the car to the other theatre, but, having just run six miles, I only wanted to go back to the hotel and get cleaned up. Also, with five improvisers in their car already, I would not fit and while their plan to displace two teammates to ride the subway to the other destination was clever and very kind, I knew I still had another two miles in me. So I ran back, on the way pausing to snap a couple of shots on the bridge leading out of the city.

All this is to say: at first on the run, the alcohol held me back, made me sluggish and kind of bummed me out. Later, I was grateful for the carbs keeping me going for eight Canadian miles, which is equivalent to a bazillion kilometers, according to my fake English-Metric conversion system.

Toronto Dispatch: Lifesavers

International Stinger is taking the Toronto Improv Fest by storm... or
at least performing there. This is the first of hopefully many posts
describing the experience. And since it's Saturday morning and I'm
grumpy after a restless sleep last night, I've decided my first post
will be a picture of my ears and blue earplugs.

Like safety glass and airbags, these things save lives. I took mine
along to wear in the car, during naptime on the ten hour drive, but
then I drove all the way here. When we got in late, late, late
Thursday, I was not long for consciousness, and, bidding goodnight to
my roommates, stuck them, turned over and slept like the dead. Good
thing, too, since one of my roommates shores like a chainsaw breaking
up with a woodchipper. Without these, I suspect the relative fun of
our trip would have been marred in short order by a murder-suicide.

Time Warp

Addiction is a terrible thing, really. My productivity has suffered massively lately due to Hedgehog Launch, an hilarious game in which you are given a little bit of in-game money, a store, and an infinite supply of hedgehogs, with the goal of launching them heavenward to either earn more money to fund the next launch, or for the ultimate and noble goal of helping them transcend the boundaries of the Earth's atmosphere, and escape this fragile blue ball to the endless frontier that is space. It's addicting as hell. First, it's a very simple action game. You can buy fuel for thrusters that can maneuver you right/left in the air, or upgrade those thrusters to give you more "oomph." You can buy longer poles for your launcher or a stretchier rubber band. With lots of money, you can buy booster rockets, or parachutes, although the latter are a waste of time for the spacebound hedgehog, since the goal is only to reach space, not to fall back to the ground unharmed. The cartoonish graphics do not allow anything grotesque to happen to your furry friend, but you can fill in the gaps with your imagination. In the air, you'll find little dots that represent money, along with platforms which do the same as well as launch your hedgehog avatar upwards. With enough maneuvering fuel, radar and luck, you can exploit these platforms to increase your height. The amount of money you make for any one stage is your found money times your highest altitude, multiplied by the time you managed to stay airborn. For some, I'm sure it's as exciting as tax time, but for me, as with any game with economic differentials, it's a candidate for a new twelve step program.

Thanks to the iPhone, I've also been watching a lot of Heroes. I'm incredibly behind the curve on this one, so if you see me, please don't even tell me how it begins, much less ends. I'm still on season one, probably episode thirteen or fourteen by now, and finding the connections and play with powers to be a lot of fun. I'd also recognized the actor who plays Sylar--Zachary Quinto--from the show So NoTORIous, where I found him to be hilarious and not creepy in the slightest. I guess it's how they light you. I am excited to see how he portrays Mr. Spock in the upcoming Star Trek movie, but J.J. Abrams has let me down often enough that I don't exactly have high hopes for it.

As an aside about So NoTORIous, I caught an ad for it last year while I was running on the treadmill and immediately thought, "Wow, that is a great Tori Spelling impersonator. She can sing really well. I'll bet the REAL Tori is pretty pissed that someone is cashing in on her reputation." And it was only later that, also while running, I found out it was her, and that she's funny. Dammit, Hollywood, just when I was ready to cynically dismiss all of your second-generation wannabes as talentless hacks raised up by their producer fathers, they actually show talent, and more-than-average at that. Is nothing sacred?

So, anyway, the above are my excuses for not posting so often, although I reserve my apologies for times when dramatic things are ACTUALLY happening.

Honey Baby

My cousins came up from Cincinnati for the weekend to take a nice post-wedding-anniversary vacation in Chicago and, as a happy byproduct, see Brandi and me. Oh, and they also brought their youngest, Lilly, who as you can see here, is rapidly growing into a beautiful fair-haired chunky monkey. Sigh. I hope when the time comes, Brandi and I make kids as pretty and well-behaved as she is.

Not that life is all roses with her. Around feeding time, she would get very cranky, but in that respect she's exactly like Brandi and me. Also, when we went to Turquoise, our favorite restaurant in the neighborhood we had to give up when we started looking around for a place to buy because it was too expensive, her diaper started leaking onto her outfit, so her mom had to excuse them both to the bathroom to clean what amounted to baby sewage off her daughter while we pretended to be okay with that. But, again, who hasn't been in that position?

We settled on some fun, quick sightseeing, unfortunately skipping the architectural boat tour because Saturday's weather didn't know what the hell it wanted to do, and by the time the rain tucked away, the 60-minute cruise was sold out. We did make it to Navy Pier, though, touring the stained glass museum there while Kristie walked and fed Lilly. That's talent. Brett, who is older than me by two-point-five weeks, but who outranks me in the dad department by one daughter, two boys and a dog, agreed with the rest of us to go up on the Ferris wheel despite a mild fear of heights. His wife made fun of his clammy palms, but I applaud his pluck. Meanwhile, we got some nice shots of the Chicago skyline, and Brandi got to spend a little time with her littlest cousin, a match made in that part of heaven that Ferris wheels touch. (The bottom part.)