Random Thoughts from a Large Head

Note to Self: Don’t go to the Rice Boxx 2 miles away when there is a Lover’s Eggroll across the street. Blech!

Tina’s posted a picture of last Saturday’s DorkoVision.

At my new job, one of my current duties is to write headlines for the markets we cover. Every Word That I Put In A Headline Has To Be Capitalized, A Practice Which I’m Afraid Might Spill Into My Everyday Typing. Either that, or I will start summarizing my life in eight words or less: “Woman Works Late Shift, Drinks Occasional Beer”.

After work tonight, (LL)Amanda and I are hitting the road for Florida. One of my best friends in high school is getting married Saturday night. Amanda, being a teacher and graced with multitudes of time as it is summer, is coming along for the ride (and hopefully some driving, too!). We’ll start the 13-hour drive at about midnight and hopefully arrive in Panama City early Friday afternoon. It’s a whirlwind trip: we’ll be heading back Sunday.

I’m hoping that I get a good story out of the trip. I promised Geoff that I would write some words for his next issue.

Ciao for now.

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The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players show was awesome. More incredible than I even imagined it could be. I think everyone in the audience had a silly grin on their face from the entertaining and quirky lyrics.

Opening act, Langhorne Slim, has a very unusual voice, but it all fit with the act, and in a not unpleasant way. His lyrics were funny and offbeat, and he put on a good show.

If you ever have the opportunity to see the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players live, you get your butt there. They have several West Coast dates coming up, including a couple of stops each in LA and San Francisco.

Check out Denise’s posts about the show and of getting to play tour guide to the Trachtenburgs and Langhorne Slim.

And I’ll shut up about them now (until they’re next in Dallas (December!)).

According to D Magazine’s blog, Dallas’ Theatre Three’s production of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change! will be closing July 13 after a three-year run. If you haven’t seen this show, you really need to. It is a very funny look at relationships. Good for maybe a third date, or just a night out with friends.

Saturday night, Tina and Ruaraidh brought over a projector and we watched DVDs projected onto the wall (deemed “dorkovision”). It was like our own little movie theatre. No more TVs for me. Next time I have a spare grand laying around, I’m getting myself a projector to watch things in supersize.

I start the new job today! WOOHOO!

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For some reason, the radio station I’ve been listening to all week at work isn’t coming in today. So I’m stuck a few notches up the dial at the lite rock station. I don’t mind most of the songs, though some send me into dentist office flashbacks.

The worst, however, just aired. One of my favorite songs ever is “At Last”, particularly Etta James’ version. And Celine Dion RUINED it. I seriously need to go scour my brain now.

It was really great seeing everyone at the DFWblogs Cocktail Event last night. Sadly, that will probably be my last one for a few months. The new job (still waiting on those background check/drug test results) will have 3pm-midnight shifts for the first two months while they are rolling out a new product. Hopefully you kids can have fun without me.

The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players show is tomorrow night. How about we get some good family cooking at the Black Eyed Pea on Greenville, just north of Lover’s Lane, at 6:30pm, then head to the show? Family cooking, family singing. Family night! Who’s in?

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I’m back.

This is what I drove all week when I wasn’t driving a 15 passenger van. We had some good times. Especially when buying caulk.

Too little sleep and very hard work in the heat has made Leia a sick girl. I’m still trying to catch up.

It was a very hard week. The kids were great, but the leadership was not. Things were disorganized, poorly planned, and unmoving. I only felt at all into worship one night. It was frustrating and stressful.

I had a good birthday. I was sung “Happy Birthday” to by fifty kids with a beuatiful piano accompaniment. I went out to lunch with my work crew. I received a formal job offer. I got completely soaked by a sudden thunderstorm that happened upon San Marcos just when we had to unload everything from the truck and trailer. I got a cake. I got an armadillo bobbing head thingie (dubbed the Armadillo of Wisdom). I got to be silly. All in all, exhaustion excepted, it was a great day.

Did you read what I typed earlier? I got a job offer. Drug test and background check pending, I start Monday. My title will be “ITV Local Content Producer”. I’ll be working for a company that provides content to cable operators mostly in the midwest, producing content for their interactive local guides. The company is small, but owned by two large companies. They are casual, young, and a bit nutty (I think that fits me). Woo!

So, what did I miss while I was gone?

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Happy Birthday to Leia! She’s a whole 25 years old today.

She’s the one in the middle with the sassy hair.

(Now go buy her something.)

(oh, and she’ll be back tomorrow.)

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I’m not exactly sure what is going on here, but Leia seems to have been assimilated. Note the glassy eyes and silly headwear.

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I leave after a few brief hours of sleep for a mission trip to San Marcos, Texas. I’ll be chaperoning about 50 high school kids as we work on repairing houses (roofing, painting, etc.). For fun, we’ll be tubing the Guadalupe and spending a day at Schlitterbahn.

I have mixed emotions about this trip, but I’m reserving judgement until the week progresses.

In my absence, I’ve asked Karen to stop in here and link to the photos that it is my duty to post on the youth group’s website every day.

Thanks to everyone who came out for my birthday Friday night. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than good food, good friends, and some fun games and silly prizes. And monkey chompers. I took some pictures, but I’m too exhausted and still have too much to do before I leave town to get them online.

I’ll be back June 14 (Julie’s birthday). Until then, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. That doesn’t give you much room for doing.

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I was almost knocked out by a Russian last night.

Microsoft Tech Ed 2003 is going on this week in Dallas, and last night was their Attendee Party. Microsoft developers from all over the world were lavished with food, drinks, music (Smash Mouth and the Wallflowers), casino and interactive games. My temp agency helped staff the event.

Since I volunteered myself as “good with high-tech things”, I was placed in charge of Virtual Reality Boxing. Two players virtually boxed each other for three rounds. Things weren’t exactly fair. One of the punching apparatuses was only half working, so one side almost always won.

Imagine, if you will, an event with 9,000 geeks in attendance. Now imagine two of your most stereotypical geeks with gigantic headgear on punching into thin air for three minutes straight and talking smack. Now multiply that by three and a half hours. That was my night. Let’s just say that hilarity ensued. (Sidenote to geeks: please don’t think that I am making fun of you. I love you. I am you.)

The Russian didn’t realize the game was over, and when I moved in to let the two players out of the playing pod, almost cold-cocked me. I saw a flash of fist go by the corner of my eye.

It occured to me, upon seeing all the digital cameras around and having SXSW flashbacks, that this place was probably full of bloggers. Sure enough, they even have their own blog about Tech Ed blogs: TechEd Bloggers. I went through the list tonight, just hoping someone wrote something like, “I played this great VR boxing game. The chick running it was [insert adjective here (example: cool, funny, sassy, cute)]“. No such posts yet.

I did get myself a free lime green Microsoft Office t-shirt.

Tonight, my dear friends Tina and Amanda are planning some sort of celebration for my forthcoming birthday. I normally don’t like celebrating my birthday before the actual day, but as I will be out of town on June 13th, I’m going to suck it up and let them celebrate me. You should come. I’m not allowed to know the details, but Tina knows them and you should ask her.

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The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players are coming to Dallas Friday, June 20. They’ll be playing the Sons of Hermann Hall at 8pm.

I almost deleted my weekly GuideLive Concert Update before reading it, but I am so glad I didn’t. I’ve been wanting to see the wackiness that is the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players since first reading about them.

If you are saying, “Leia, just who are the Tractenburg Family Slideshow Players?” I say to you: “Go read this interview.”

If you are now saying, “Leia, they sound like they are interesting folks, but what does their stuff look/sound like?” I say to you: Right click and “Save as…” this Quicktime .mov file that at one point I downloaded off their site and can find no longer.

So, who is with me June 20?

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Another day, another source of income dries up.

For the last month and a half or so I’ve been fortunate to have a full-time temp gig designing graphics. It was especially fortunate because my employer (referred to as Monkey Man) didn’t have the equipment for me to work there, so I got to work at home in my pajamas. Unfortunately, he seems to have run out of work for me.

Why Monkey Man? Well, he has a pet monkey. The monkey is the mascot of his company. And, before I started working there, in a conversation on the phone, he had to stop talking to me to tell the monkey to quit eating a jello shot. From Day 1, he was Monkey Man. In fact, today when I was talking to my Temp Agent, I couldn’t remember his real name and actually called him Monkey Man. Good thing I told my agent that story and he knew what I was talking about.

Bad news from the agent, though: things are very slow there.

I do have a glimmer of hope on the horizon, though, in the form of a friend of a friend lead. When discussing what the potential salary would be, I think I got dollar signs in my eyeballs. It’s more than I’ve seen in a long while, leading to the following discussion (instant messaged from opposite ends of the house) with my roommate:
Leia: I’d have so much money if i were to work there that i could just roll around naked in it.
Matt: Then you could sell the video of that and make even more money… roll around - film - sell - repeat.
Matt: I think you’ve just discovered the money river.
Leia: hahaha!
Matt: The first one would be “Leia Makes $30k” the sequel would be “Leia Makes $60k” and really I see this going for a long time…

It could work.

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