Went over to the Theater Building at about 4 PM to see what was up with Implosion orientation. Madeline, whom I adore, was there. Then, after orientation, ran into John and Mikala from Witt’s End, who I didn’t know would be here, but I was super-happy to see. Mikala was part of the flip cup moster squad from DSIF in February, so I’m a huge fan. Ate dinner with Zach, Meredith, Katie, John and Mikala, and then watched the fist Implosion show– a thumbs up.

Hit the mainstage, which was the Defiant Thomas Brothers (who are the best sketch show I’ve ever seen, hands down… they did the most amazing update of the “Who’s on First” sketch), Bassprov with Horatio Sanz, and the Horatio Sanz All-Stars. Brett Gelman flew in for that and was fantastic… and flew out today, which makes me sad, because I would very much have liked to get up with him. JD was there– YAY.

Then, I came to casa Telfer, where Dan and I talked Doc South for quite a while.

I slept with these guys:

We woke up today, puttered about, then headed over to Shiel Park where I taught the afternoon Second Beats class. Good fun.

Now we’re computing, though technically, we should be watching Telfer’s Willow DVD. (And I have already forgotten why that Willow bit was funny.)

By the way, my plans to see Cubs games were spoiled… by the fact that it was SNOWING in Chicago this morning. It was rainy and shitty all day yesterday.

I can safely say that Jon Karpinos is a fine human being. After flying into Chicago on Thursday, I met up with Dave Reis at the Playground, where his team International Stinger rocked the house. (I’m putting that fact in print for all to see because I think Dave thought that my praise for his team might be insincere. Dude, it was not.)

Dave and I went up to the Ginger Man bar for Zach’s birthday party, where I also discovered it was Meredith Ibey’s birthday. Jon and Bill rolled in there after Show Pony rehearsal, and I was finally able to sneak out and ditch my bag. It’s hard to be super-social when you are carrying your luggage. Seriously.

Back to bar, hanging out, some bits, etc.

Jon was good enough to house me for the evening, and we spent a little time Friday morning working. Then we met up with Zach, Katie, Rene, and Jessica at Fogo de Chao, where meat is served on sticks. Seriously, they walk around with meat on skewers, and no matter what you ask for, they cut you off a piece that is medium-rare.

Rene eats meat.

Jon has signs up all through his apartment naming the rooms, in convention center style. The living room is the “Grand Atrium,” Jon’s bedroom was something like the “McKendrick Plaza.” The true gem: the bathroom is ridiculously named– if I remember correctly, it was the “Rockefeller Institute for Gastro-Intestinal Studies, Housed in the Combs-Cloninger Bathroom Center, Funded in Part by a Grant from the Smallwood Foundation.” Nice.

I slept like a king on his double/queen air mattress, though I occupied on tiny third of the bed. I am so used to having a body on one side of me and a cat on a pillow on the other side, I don’t know what to do.

Happy 60th birthday, ma!

I am about 90% back to normal on my laptop. I had to do some tweaking to get Firefox and Thunderbird doing what I wanted them too, I am still missing some Trillian info that I can just nab off of my home computer (though some of you have IM names that I will now never be able to identify… so when you talk to me next and I have no idea who you are, sorry). Trillian took $25 because I had to buy another year of Pro, but I was almost a year overdue in doing that, so I don’t feel so bad.

The good news is that Feedreader 2.80 is out, and so far, the interface is much, much cleaner. Add to that the fact that I found out how to get the atom
feeds from Blogger, and I’m a happy aggregator. (Tip for the uninitiated: http://BLOGNAME.blogspot.com/atom.xml )

There’s a Flickr group for DSI. Many thanks to Katy for starting it. I will have to get in there sometime and really get some photos assigned to it.

Welllll, if I learned one thing today, it’s that I should not listen to what’s being said. I should listen to how it is being said.

In other news, yesterday, at the height of my frustration, while waiting for the cable repairman to fix my Interweb, I went outside and moved some trees from right around the deck, where roots should not grow, to the back yard where TREEMAN has been lurking. I also moved one tree from next to the outside fan for the AC. I don’t think that will take well, since the majority of the root structure seemed to reach down under the concrete slab that the unit sits on. And I don’t have a small shovel. So, I may have killed a tree. But the illusion that I was helping it move to a place where it could grown big and strong was nice and soothing until I snapped the main root.

For each tree I kill, I am saving two. I tell myself that.

I suppose I should tell the story of TREEMAN, so remind me one day and I will write it down. He’s an interesting character.

So, despite the best intentions after Friday’s show, Chicken Ranch bagged on me at lunch, I bagged on them at dinner, they bagged on me after the Lewis Black show. Me and those five ladies will have to have a love-fest at a later date. (Ladybug will likely supervise said love-fest, so don’t get your panties in a wad, moral majority.)

Chicken Ranch’s explanation of the debacle, and my response, which should say all I want to say about the gd movie “Closer.”

Why did no one warn me about the gd movie “Closer”?

Ladybug did sumer stock with one of the Chicken Ranch ladies way back when. Small damn world.

I’m working on a loaner laptop while my laptop is recovered. A process that may still take a few days. I’m going to throw this gd loaner out the window, I am so irritated with it. Seriously, it’s a piece of doggie doo doo. You know what I am talking about:

Morning: Hobnobbing with bigwigs in the NC educational system.

Afternoon: Drive back from Wilmington, hop in bed for a half an hour.

Early Evening: Dinner with Smalls and Ayse at Talullah’s, a way trendy Turkish restaurant that was quite nice. Smalls is excited about his blog. He almost crashed Bhobgood’s blind date, which, while it would have been exceedingly blog-worthy, might not have been such a hot thing for Bhobgood.

Middle Evening: Saw Chicken Ranch (directed by the delightful Jen Nails), who I think are silly good fun. I was real ill that they didn’t have the turnout they deserved because most of the stuff that was sent out, including the website for the CUAB festival that brought them down, listed the wrong time– big boo on that– but they played like they were having craploads of fun together, and I love to watch improv where the team is geniunely in love with playing together like that.

Late evening: Finally crawl in bed with my wonderful wife, after what felt like weeks apart.

Will take a break from telling you about my last few days to note that my kickass new design from Moxie Studios is up, which is supra-dope, but I did want to see how it will interact with Flickr-blogged photos. Plus, this photo was the least-viewed photo in my current photostream, which is lame, since it’s AWESOME, people.

Answer– yes, Flickr don’t do too well with the new design. Workable, though.

Spent the day Thursday at the 21st Century Schools retreat, which was a gathering of a bunch of movers and shakers in education. UNC-system president was there, acting State Superintendent of Public Education was there (in her eighth month as acting superintendent, so tell me that something isn’t seriously wrong with this cat Fletcher), president of the community college system was there, and heads of all the different education initiatives. And me. I was clearly the youngest person in the room by at least five years, probably ten, and it took me a little while to settle in and find my groove.

I seriously hope that a 21st-century schools graduate invents a cheap, stackable chair for hotels to purchase that won’t make your back ache and your butt scream with pain. I hate these things:

We listened to a lot of speakers, and time for the broadly-experienced group that had congregated to actually work on things was limited. In some ways, those limits may have been effective– we were only able to hit on the major points. But I don’t think that the New Schools Project got the feedback that they might have gotten if the group had spent more time working and providing feedback than they did.

Still, I would be willing to be that for some of those folks, the problems had never been articulated quite so starkly. And there is a serious problem with education in this state.

We took a cruise on the Cape Fear River for a working/social dinner. Why do people think these cruises are so keen? I got engaged in a good conversation with a woman from the state budget office and a woman from the Early College school in Asheville, and pretty much forgot that I was on a boat. Which is, I suppose, good, since I might have been disappointed with a cruise that was basically half a mile up the river, turn around, come back. Zzzzz. Waste of money. Put that money into a school.

Met up with Jeremy and headed to Level Five for a sketch show that made me bristle, because it was so obvious that the show needed a director. Note to comedians: No matter how hilarious you are, if you’re working in an ensemble, get a gd director. You are making your audience’s skin crawl with the bad/unpolished choices.

Wandered into the bar, where we were joined by Corey Howard. Brian Prince was running the karaoke for the first time, so that was ON. I did a couple of classics, including showing off my Nickelback chops for the hip kids. They had Digital Underground. I almost peed myself. I have been waiting to drop “The Humpty Dance” since Heidi first got me doing karaoke. OMG, I am awesome. It’s sick how awesome I am.

Had a couple beers, Jeremy and Corey were tied up in conversations, so I started chatting it up with a friend of Jeremy’s, and discovered within about two minutes that she went to high school with Ladybug. And the girl with her did, too. And they used to have sleepovers and did theater together for a lot of years. How cool was that? So they sent their phone numbers and e-mails home with me to give to Ladybug and told me we have to come down to Wilmington sometime so I can hang with the Other Side guys and they can have Ladybug all to themselves.

At the end of the day, the world seemed so much smaller.

So, Wednesday, I spent the day in Stanly Co. with a disappointing administrative duty that I really won’t say anything else about. I think people would do well to admit when they’re wrong and move on and learn from it. But what I think is so rarely of any consequence.

Came home, crashed for an hour, headed to Kings for the last Powerhouse 8-Week Assault Squad show. I have had a devil of a good time working with that bunch and I really, really hope that all four of them will be part of the DSI future.

Left Kings as Four-String Samurai was playing, which is a major no-no in my book, but I had to hit the road and drive to Wilmington for a conference Thursday morning. So, Austin, Paul, Chris, and Erik, I owe each of you a steak dinner or something. Leaving mid-show is so uncool. I want to gouge out my eyeballs for doing it. And had I been less than 2 hours away from my final destination or had it been earlier than 10, I would have seen your whole show.

I’m fussy when I’m not able to blog. So I have been fussy for a couple days now. I have a lot to tell you…

I am now at home, working on LEARN stuff while my laundry is running. I don’t feel like I have had any significant leisure time in about 11 days, and won’t have any significant leisure time until this weekend. But that’s OK, I suppose, as long as I can get the laundry done this afternoon.

I am in love with Van Heusen’s super-silk wrinkle-free shirts, since they come out of the dryer and don’t need to be ironed. The Poplin shirts, which are 65/35 poly-cotton, well, those need to be ironed. That’s less appetizing to a lazy person like me.

Gleargh. My laptop is b0rked badly. Spyware that came back, and came back, and came back. Probably some trojans. All kinds of registry entries that I could not identify. I had to give up. Suzanne has it now, is wiping down WinXP and making things all clean again. All because I am a big stupid-head about installing apps that look good. To borrow some Battlestar Galactica vernacular, FRAK YOU, PC WORLD.

On my list of things to download later:

A Radiohead Live Show from 2001

Long weekend of improv awesome at the Implosion Improv Festival, held at Clemson University this weekend. It was absolutely freaking wonderful.

Props to MTS for being wonderful hosts, CHiPs for having a party in their abandoned house, Theater Strike Force for rocking out in their hotel room the first night. It was awesome hanging.

I *heart* Bill Cochran! It’s a secret love.