Tree Day!

Liz and I have been trying to get our tree for a few weeks now, but something has always happened to stop us from getting it. Today, on the day where "blizzard conditions" were forecast as a possibility, we managed to get it.

We went to a place in Redding called Warrup's Farm. We go to Warrup's twice a year: to get pumpkins for Halloween and a tree for Christmas. The family who run the farm are really nice people.

When we got there the guy gave us a saw and pointed us in the direction of the field with trees, telling us to take our pick.

We walked through the field for a few minutes, getting colder every second. We each only slipped on snow once... the temperature while were were out there was 23 degrees (-5 degrees). After a couple of minutes we found this one:

Liz cut down the tree (it was her turn this year) and I carried it back to the car (I think it's my turn every year to carry it to the car). By the time we got the tree in the car and were ready to go both of our hands were so cold that they hurt. Not just burning on the skin, but inside our hands.

We made our way home, and about 5 minutes before we got home snow started falling. It was weird though - it was coming down in little balls not unlike Dippin' Dots. After about 25 minutes though it stopped.

Tonight we set up the tree and decorated it with lights and ornaments. I took a few quick photos.

What about the snow and "blizzard conditions"? It started snowing again here at about 7. The forecast says that it is going to snow through the night, heavy at times. Total accumulation by tomorrow could be 12 - 18 inches. I love how it looks outside at night when it is snowing. I went out the back for about 30 seconds earlier, long enough to take this to show how it looked at about 9:30. At 10:30 it was sitting at about 3.5 inches. Hopefully it snows as forecast and we wake up to a lot of build up!

The Droid I was looking for

For 4 weeks I got to trial the Verizon/Motorola Droid™ phone. It runs the Google Android 2.0 operating system and is marketed as a competitor to the iPhone, which I have limited experience with. The Droid™ was awesome - I loved the device and it was with a hint of sadness that I had to send it back this week. It isn't just a phone, it is:

- e-mail (including ActiveSync, allowing for Exchange/Outlook integration)

- a 5MP auto-focus camera

- a GPS/Navigation system

- an MP3 player

- just about anything and everything, like a barcode scanner, thanks to downloadable apps

- other things that the link will probably tell you about, if you want to know more of the features.

Here is a photo of the Droid™ to give you an idea of its size:

I know what you all must be thinking: that phone is huge. But keep in mind it is next to an R2-D2 action figure, not a real R2 unit. It has a slide out keyboard in case you don't want to use the touch screen keyboard. I liked both keyboards, but other people at work have said they don't like the real keyboard on it as the keys are all flat. That didn't bother me though. Here's R2 with the keyboard on display.

Here are 2 clones fighting the Droid™. Screen image not simulated.

The display on the Droid™ was great - really clear. It comes with a decent web browser, which renders baconisgreat well.

I downloaded a few apps to see what they were like, but with the phone being a demo unit I didn't get any apps that I had to pay for. One of them that I got was Google Translate. It provided this, very literal, I imagine, translation:

When I saw this app I just had to download it and try it out. Unfortunately, I Zoolander-ed it and could only work out how to turn one way.

Perhaps my second favorite app downloaded was FartDroid. 27 different fart noises, which could be played instantly or set to go off using a timer. When it farted the little animated Droid blew lines out of, well, whatever Droids have.

"Poot" was probably my go-to fart.

This was my favorite app though by a long way: Google SkyMap. When you launch the app it determines your location and then loads the map. When you move the phone around and point it towards different parts of the sky it shows you what the stars or planets that you are looking at are.

Ah, so that bright thing in the sky is the "Sun"? I didn't look at the sun, I actually looked down towards the ground and it showed me the sky on the other side of the planet.

It made seeing the constellations a whole lot easier. For instance, I can pick Orion's belt, but I can't pick the other stars which make up Orion. But SkyMap showed me all of the stars, which was cool. If I were taking shots at night of stars it would be cool to have, then I wouldn't have to actually learn the constellations... I might just learn them in case I don't ever have an Android-based phone on me again...

Liz even enjoyed using it. It saved us from turning the laptop or desktop on a couple of times - it could hook up to the wireless here if we needed to look something up online. All-in-all the Droid™ was fun, easy to use and had heaps of useful features and apps.

Why all the trademark (™) symbols? To quote the Verizon Droid™ website,

"DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license."

That disclaimer appears on the website, TV commercials, print ads... I realize I didn't have to use it, but I did it as an homage to that fact. Or did I have to use it...

It's cold...

This morning was a little chilly when I arrived at work. Here are the temps from weather.com, shown in both Fahrenheit (terrible scale) and the more sensible, awesome Celsius.

Now, thanks to this website, Star Wars Weather, I can accurately quote Clerks Animated and say it's "Hoth cold".

Homemaking Tip...

Not the start of a new regular series, that's for sure, but I wanted to share a tip that I uncovered this evening. Say you come home and your dwelling smells foul. Ours did tonight, because tomorrow is garbage day and something in the bin reeks.

Some people may spray air freshener, others may light a candle. Some people don't like the propellants in air fresheners or the scents available, and some candles are too strong, a fire hazard and may irritate some people. My approach was completely effective and required none of those things.

For better smelling air you will need:

1 x frying pan

4 x strips bacon

Cook the bacon in the pan and enjoy the smell. Note that the offensive odor earlier present is now overtaken by delightful bacon aroma. It is important not to overcook (burn) the bacon, as that will detract from the aroma. Once the bacon is adequately cooked remove it from the pan and eat it.

Voila! Pleasant smells and bacon in the belly.

Now, time to take the garbage out.

Pathetic...

This one is more for the Australian readers...

How pathetic is this Australian flag that was on a site Liz was looking at?

American readers: this would be like looking at the US flag, and having the stripes being varying widths. The idea is right, and you can tell what it is, but you want to laugh at it because it looks stupid. Well, I think it does anyway.

Snow washed away

I woke up at 2am last night and couldn't immediately go back to sleep. I looked outside to see snow falling pretty steadily from the sky. Our back deck had a reasonable amount of buildup, and the neighbor's houses had a pretty solid covering.

I went back to bed, only to be woken up at 3:30 by heavy rain and wind. It was the same at 5:30 and 6:30, so now most of that snow has been melted and washed away.

It was a little disappointing to see it wash away. Even though snow can mean more work and a little discomfort, it is still snow, and I still get a kick out of seeing it.

Let's see if I'm still saying that in 3 months or so...

Remembering dreams

I had a dream on Sunday night, and I wish I could have remembered the details from it. In the dream I had come up with something that made Liz and I financially secure for a long time. Bucketloads of cash were coming in from it.

I had written a song. It was getting heaps of exposure and air time. Downloads of it were through the roof. I wasn't singing it, which probably helped the success of it.

When I woke up I remembered what the song was about, but couldn't remember the words. I'm pretty sure it was an original song and not something obscure I have heard somewhere.

After all, who would write a song about sharting?

Who II

This guy, our second who, walks the streets of Stamford. So many people that live or work in the city know who he is, but very few people, I would think, would know his real name.

Some people call him "Batman", but I can't see him taking on Catwoman, let alone The Joker. Plus, does he look like a scientist? Batman's a scientist. He probably gets the "Batman" moniker from the hat at left.

He wears the hats all the time. Well, they're not really hats so much as headbands with weird attachments to them. Sometimes they are bat wings, sometimes they are stars. Another time, they looked so much like reindeer antlers. Regardless of the attachments, they never cover the bald head.

He always seems to be carrying a bag with him, perhaps his equivalent of a utility belt. Maybe he carries his spare hat attachments in the bag, so he can change whenever the mood strikes him.

He often walks with his tongue hanging out.

I have also seen him wearing a skirt.

His name is Crazy Hat Man.

CNN & Awesomeness

Those 2 terms don't go together: CNN annoys me so much. In the mornings Liz and I tend to turn on the TV to find out what the weather is going to be like for the day (it helps to then work out whether to take a heavy jacket etc). Once the weather is over (it is on it's own channel) we turn on CNN to see if anything big is happening in the world.

I can't take CNN in the mornings anymore.

CNN break their morning show into half hour segments. A typical half hour segment will cover 3 topics. They start off with the war in Afghanistan. They talk about that for 10 minutes. After commercial they come back to tell everyone about how we're all going to die from H1N1 for 10 minutes. More commercials are followed by 10 minutes about health care reform. At the end of the third segment, they announce "Next half hour we will be bringing the latest on the war in Afghanistan, what you need to know about H1N1 and developments on health care reform". Last week was slightly more bearable because Tiger Woods slept around so some of the stories on health care reform were about him instead.

But enough about something annoying - time to move on to something awesome. I'll pose a rhetorical question: how awesome is Lego??? Lego, sometimes referred to in the USA as "Legos" (I shudder just typing it) is incredibly awesome. Barbara, Liz's aunt, got be some Lego for my birthday, and I got some spare time to put it together. They are small battle sets, some droids versus some clones. The clones are my favorites, I have posted some photos of them with their walker. There is also a picture of the Assassin droids that they would take out.

The plan is to name the clones; like they do in Star Wars The Clone Wars. I'm leaning towards naming one of them "Stench". I like taking photos of the Lego and clones, so I might take some more photos of them in the near future.

Monopoly Lesson Complete...

Andrew, Liz and I were just taught a Monopoly lesson in Star Wars The Clone Wars monopoly... Richard comprehensively thrashed us - laughing maniacally in front of his piles of credits (around 9000+ by the end of the game) and properties, while the rest of us were a couple of mortgaged properties and handful of small bills away from bankruptcy.

There were no losers in the end though, as none of us played as Ahsoka. Andrew played as Grievous, Liz as Captain Rex, Richard was Obi-Wan and I was Anakin. The game has an additional interesting Star Wars game mode, where the differences in game play vary depending upon your allegiance (light or dark side) that we'll have to play some time.

Stamford Downtown Parade

Yesterday was the parade in Stamford. We went along - I don't recall ever having gone to a large scale balloon parade before, and Liz hadn't been either. Here are some of the things we saw:

Some of the members of the 104th Shiny Hat Brigade (actually, they're from a local school):

These guys were perhaps my favorite people in the parade. Some mounted police from NYC were in the parade, and these guys followed them - with a shovel and wheelie bin.

Chuckles the clown patrolled the crowd, getting looks from all the kids, and some of the adults. Unfortunately I don't think his shirt is stuffed to achieve that look.

Balloon time! Notice that they make no attempt to hide the strings. Super Grover flies down Summer Street:

Underdog tries to punch a girl in the face:

Oscar didn't look that grouchy...

Odie finally stepped out of Garfield's shadow:

Kermit the Frog:

Cookie Monster munches his way past the buildings:

While Big Bird unicycles his way around. People in the crowd would tell the balloon handlers to "spin", by way of signs and yelling. Big Bird was one of the biggest balloons they had, and tipped a fair bit during spinning.

Elmo and a fish:

Mr Potato Head sneaks down the street:

The fireman was huge - so huge that they had to drag his knuckles along the ground to get under power lines and street lights.

The Jerry Springer balloon was huge, but it didn't have strings!

And on that note...

First What and Who: Chili and John

Normally these wouldn't be combined like this, but these go together...

The 3rd Annual Queens County Chili Cook-Off Challenge and Pig Fest (which I will call ‘the cook-off’ for short to make typing this post easier) was/is, in my eyes, a glorious celebration of chili.

It is a cool concept and was really fun. Basically, people went to the cook-off, bringing chili with them, if they so desired. Liz and I so desired, so we practiced over the course of the last few weeks, never quite happy with what we produced. We modified our recipe and cooked our chili the night before the cook-off and took it along. Happily, we liked how our chili turned out.

Once a competitor arrived at the cook-off their chili was taken to the kitchen and randomly assigned a number. The random assignment was done through drawing from a hat – our number was 3. Once all the chilis had arrived, the tasting began. Someone manned the kitchen, dishing out chili into tasting cups that were delivered to the waiting “judges”, around 20 – 25 people. Once the chili was delivered, we all scored the chili from 1 - 10 on 5 categories: aroma, color, consistency, taste & aftertaste.

14 chilis were served over the course of around 3 – 4 hours, with the only break coming for a “Chili Dog Intermission” (that’s where the “Pig Fest” comes in to the name, even though they were beef dogs). Yep – we took a break from eating chili to eat chili on hot dogs. Ingenious thinking that worked awesomely. Right now, I really want a chili dog.

After the 14 chilis were all sampled (I only sampled 12 of them), the score sheets were taken away and analyzed, computated, added, averaged, and perhaps manipulated in a multitude more ways mathematically and a winner announced. The winner this year was a deserved one: a chili made using ground (minced) meat, roast and also chorizo sausage. The chili that Liz and I made finished somewhere around the middle of the pack. I, personally, was just glad that we beat out the last placed finisher, who just bought canned chili and heated it. It says something very accurate about chili when the canned product is viewed least favorably.

In the end chili was the big winner (but not if you are Hormel, who apparently don’t make good canned chili), and everyone who competed got a t-shirt. The winner got a special t-shirt that had “Champion” on the back. One day, I hope to wear that shirt… perhaps a more Australian chili would stand out from the crowd and give me that edge… but what to add? Vegemite? Tim Tams? Wallaby? I think Emu could be a winner.

After the cook-off we played charades. I successfully guessed that a member of my team was acting out “Gross Domestic Product”. Hells yeah!

But who would come up with such an incredible idea for a way to spend a Saturday afternoon and evening? Who would devise the idea to have a chili dog intermission? Who indeed…

That would be John – brain child and host of the cook-off, beer and chili aficionado, charades prodigy. Don’t play Cranium with he and Erin – they have read all the cards, sculpted all the sculptorades, and can roll purple at will, none of which makes sense if you haven’t played Cranium. Perhaps that’s just me being bitter because Liz and I have never beaten them. I don’t think John reads the cards, but Erin (his girlfriend) may. He comes from a strong charades playing family, and can very quickly let you know that it is a movie with 3 words and that the first word has 2 syllables.

When John isn’t working or planning chili cook-offs he bowls, watches InsightExpress (the company Erin and I work for) play softball, plays games, including washers, watches football and a whole host of other stuff.

Importantly, John drives a Subaru. Below are Liz, myself, John and Erin modelling the cook-off t-shirts.

Not my ordinary Tuesday

Yesterday was certainly not my ordinary Tuesday.

To start off with, Liz turned up at the office at 3:30, and said "You're coming with me.", she then told me Jim already knew I was leaving early, so I left (after making sure Jim really knew).

When we got to the car there was a brown paper bag with some clues in it for what we were doing. The clues seemed completely random to me, so when we got home Liz told me there was a shirt upstairs that I might want to wear that would give it away. When I got upstairs it was my "Chewie is my co-pilot" t-shirt. No way - we're going to Star Wars in Concert!!!!!!

Now I'm really psyched, because anyone who knows me knows I have listened to those soundtracks more than any other music I own. So we went out for an early dinner, and jumped on the interstate to spend some anxious time in traffic on the way to the concert.

Inside the foyer area there was a display of props (mainly weapons and helmets) and also some costumes, including Darth Vader, Plo Koon & Kit Fisto, Chewie, C-3PO and a couple of others. Even Boba Fett was just walking around the crowd!

Then it was time to take our seats and get ready for the show. The score is performed by the Royal Philharmonic I think, and behind them is a 3 storey high screen that they show footage on, and also a choir for the vocal performances. Here is what the stage looked like before the performance started. Also, the host for the performance was none other than Anthony Daniels (C-3PO)!!!

They played a lot of music, the performance was around 2 hours. I'll try to remember as many tracks as I can. They opened with the THX sound effect. Then, the orchestra performed (trying to get order right):

- The 20th Century Fox Fanfare

- Star Wars Opening Titles, then some of the closing from Return of the Jedi

- Duel of the Fates (Ep I)

- Anakin's Theme (Ep I)

- Droids theme (Ep IV, I believe, could have played something better than this I thought)

- Podrace intro (Ep I, also could have played something better I thought)

- Across the Stars (Ep II)

- Battle of the Heroes (Ep III), which also included flame pyrotechnics coming out of the stage!!!

- Imperial March (Ep V)

Then there was:

When the orchestra came back from intermission they played (can't remember exact order, but this is close):

- Parts of the Battle of Yavin (Ep IV)

- Binary Sunset leading in to Cantina Band (Ep IV)

- Princess Leia's Theme (Ep IV)

- Asteroid Chase (Ep V)

- Luke and Leia (Ep VI)
- The Forest Battle (Ep VI)
- Clash of the Lightsabers (Ep V)

- Light of the Force (Vader armor burning track) (Ep VI)

- Medal Ceremony (Ep IV)

- Closing Theme, with some of the Return of the Jedi closing credits (Ep VI)

That was the end of the show. I loved it - the show was great, and it was cool to hear the music live. They had some laser stuff happening at times, too!

One of the orchestra members looked like the British version of Quagmire from Family Guy, expect with long, curly ginger hair. His jaw was huge!!!

So, to finish off, here is a short video of Anthony Daniels hosting. I'll try to post a short clip of music performance soon, if people seem interested...