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...

Slight Delay on "Who"

There is going to be a slight delay with the first "who" post. It follows a discussion I had with Liz last night and continued in the car this morning. In a nutshell, I'm checking into the legality of posting photos on the 'net without people's consent.

Very Australian night last night... had a dream about playing cricket, outside, but with indoor rules, using rock faces instead of nets. I also woke up with the "Lube Mobile" song in my head.

For everything mechanical we've got it - they'll fix the car! Lube Mobile will come to you, 13 30 32. That's 13 30 32.

8 Days Later - Pumpkins

It is now 8 days since the pumpkins were carved, and they're looking a bit droopy. About 3 days ago they were evicted from the living room - the smell of them, bat in particular, was starting to become too strong, with liquid gathering in the bottom of it. Bat's face is caving in on itself, and "Bugaboo" is bending backwards like Neo in "The Matrix". The inside of the pumpkins is now mottled - it appears as though mold is setting in. They live outside now - letting go is hard, though I think we'll have to soon.

This weekend was pretty good - today was the warmest it has been for quite a while, around 20 degrees celsius, so we spent some time outside. Yesterday we got a couch from Liz's grandmother, which is really good, because it means no more using the futon as our living room couch anymore. After 18 months of solid use as a day-to-day couch the mattress on the futon was starting to get annoying and uncomfortable.

Halloween Recap

Halloween was pretty cool. Tiff came over and in the afternoon the 3 of us carved pumpkins. Tiff did a raccoon in a pumpkin, Liz carved a creature/stencil called "Bugaboo" and I did a bat.

Paul and Sandra, who live in the other part of the house, got in to the spirit with costumes and a small cemetery in the front yard. We got zero (0) trick-or-treaters, Paul and Sandra got a few. It did start raining a little later in the evening, which may have lowered numbers, but the main drawback for our numbers was the rear entrance. Paul was actually dressed as a scarecrow in the front yard and would run after the kids after they had gotten their treats which was pretty funny. Here is a photo of the small graveyard, and then of the pumpkins we carved.