Kirsten, I, and Santa Lobby wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

Kirsten and I continued the annual tradition of hosting a pumpkin carving party.  Turn out was good this year, and the finished gourds are always fun.

The event has two start times: an early time for those interested in a group trip to the local pumpkin patch, and a later time for those who prefer to BYOP.  Only three of us raided the pumpkin patch, an unusually low turnout that was primarily due to others having to work late.

Folks brought various snackies, and two of the food highlights were pumpkin spice chocolate-chip cupcakes and a decadent chocolate cake.  Best of all, though, were the guests - they provided lots of laughter and creativity.  I think its fun that one little carver has not missed a pumpkin carving since she was born.

Pictures available over in the Gallery section.

(Hay bales are a little hard to come by out here…) 

I’ve been fighting some problems with my webserver over the past couple of weeks - sorry about the downtime.  But during that time, Kirsten and I have started assembling items for our Wedding Registries.  You may have noticed that there are three new images off to the right; they are links to the various places that we have registered.

For you RSS fans out there, here are the links:

After a long day at work yesterday, Kirsten and I zipped down to the Orange County Performing Arts Center to see the open-air art exhibit Slow Dancing.  It is a collection of short films that feature world-class dancers performing a short routine.  The films were projected on to the side of one of the performing arts building, each of the three “screens” stood about 30′ tall.

The “slow” part enters the picture once you learn that the routines were filmed at 1000 frames per second, and then the films are played back at the typical speed of 30 frames per second.  The resulting movie initially appears to be a still frame, but you can see the movements of the dancer after watching a second or two.  The initial routine is stretched up to 10 minutes.  (Sample film)

The exhibit was acoustically accompanied by a DJ from show-sponsor KCRW, a local public radio station.  Despite the chill in the air, the green was filled with people of all ages, some sitting in lawn chairs while others danced to the DJ’s music.  Kirsten and I danced a little, and we enjoyed how the time-lapse film allowed us to appreciate little movements that are otherwise lost; things like flow of fabric, ankle bells shaking when the foot hits the floor, and ripples across muscle and skin.

It was fun, different, entertaining, and interesting.  Probably too boring for anyone not in high school, but recommended. Especially if there is music accompanying the otherwise-silent films.

Kirsten and I raided the LA Fair on Wednesday.  Had a good time, took lots of pictures, and bought some stuff we didn’t really need.  No tractor pulls, however.

Photologue available here.

As a quick follow-up to the previous “housework” post, More Labor Than Expected, I recently replaced the water pipe plug with a new spigot.  The operation was accomplished quickly and without any difficulties whatsoever!

I pulled out the trusty hose that has been living in the patio area for quite some time, hooked it up, and proceeded to rinse off the fence and concrete. That’s when the hose popped! I got completely soaked before I could turn off the spigot. Perhaps it’s time to look into a handyman discount at the local Lowe’s or Home Depot?

In a previous post, I mentioned that Kirsten and I were going to check out other DJ’s.  After some discussion, we opted to skip the others and go with DJ Chuck of Music on the Move.  There were a variety of reasons, but one of DJ Chuck’s winning features was (of all things) his age!  Quite frankly, neither Kirsten nor I are hip on today’s top-40 music.  A younger DJ would probably prefer to play whatever is popular on the mass-market pop stations.  DJ Chuck, on the other hand, made it explicitly clear that he would much rather play older tunes.  This is very much in line with Kirsten and I, as well as the feel we want for the reception.  While there will be some modern music, we’ve also ruled out such “classics” as YMCA, Macarena, and the Chicken Dance.  (Personally, I’d also like to ban Glenn Miller’s In the Mood - there are so many other fantastic swing tunes that deserve to be played and danced to!)

And, for the curious, I’ve already requested Alley Cat in spite of Kirsten’s (half-hearted) protestations.

Kirsten and I both grew up listening to music that was “older” than we were.  When I was much younger, my older brother listened to albums from groups like Rush, Foghat, Boston, Jethro Tull, and Yes.  I was too young to appreciate their music, but I wanted to like what he liked.  (Plus Boston had cool album art!)  And, as anyone in my family can attest, our roadtrip vacations were often musically enhanced by assorted Broadway soundtracks.  Not sure how many fifth graders at my school could sing along with My Fair Lady, The King and I, Hello, Dolly!, Meet Me in St. Louis, Oklahoma!, South Pacific, Guys and Dolls, and many more I can’t quickly recall.  And on her end, Kirsten was involved in enough musical theater to also become quite familiar with similar music.  I spent a few years listening to top-40 radio, mainly 6th grade through part of my freshman year of high school.  Once I realized that Rick Dees, the local station’s top-name DJ, was repeating jokes I first heard from him a few years earlier, I decided it was time to move on to other music.  The next batch of years saw heavy rotation between classic rock (aka “the music of my older brother”), 80’s alternative (Bauhaus, Skinny Puppy, Depeche Mode, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Cure), adult alternative (modern Paul Simon, U2, Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell, David Byrne), and New Age via 94.7, The Wave.  About a decade I ago, after most of my preferred stations either went out of business (I still miss fm 101.9 from the mid-90’s) or tweaked their format to appeal to a larger audience (ie KROQ), I spent some serious time listening to KJazz before settling down with the untamed wilds of Southern California’s public radio stations.  (Listening to KCRW as I write this.)  And, regardless of what else I was listening to, Christmas time was always dominated by Bing Crosby!

Can’t detail Kirsten’s music history that well, but I know it involved at least a few years of swing dancing.

In other words, expect to hear some diverse music at our reception!

It’s almost 10:00p as I sit down to write this.  Busy day today doing various house tasks, one of which was unplanned…

My house was ransacked by ants last week, never a happy affair.  They were after some goodies in the kitchen trash can, which I quickly emptied and cleaned.  I normally follow the trail back to where it enters the house and caulk their crawlway but I couldn’t quite do that this time because they were using the big hole in the ceiling.  :/

Also discovered that fleas are starting to appear in the house.  I suspect they are being brought in by a certain someone who’s been going in and out of the house a lot…  Not sure which patch of neighborhood grass has the little buggers, but Kirsten and I spotted a couple inside even after dusting with flea powder.

Due to the ants and fleas, I decided that today is the day to bug-bomb the house.  The anti-insect assault includes the backyard patio area (which is used so infrequently that it may as well not exist).  I picked up a slew of insecticides from Lowe’s: bug-bomb foggers, inside spray, and outdoor spray.  I’m serious about killing them buggies!

The outdoor spray attaches to a hose.  There hasn’t been a handle on the rear hose faucet ever since I moved in, and I’ve just used a wrench the three or four times I’ve ever turned it on.  The Homeowner’s Association painted the building since the last time I used the spigot, and the painters sealed the valve crank.  Naturally I pulled out a heavier wrench and proceeded to snap the entire attachment off!  Water shot from the broken pipe, reminding me of a city fire hydrant on a hot summer’s day.  It was easy to turn off the water to the house, but it didn’t take long before the neighbors reminded me that the main valve also turned off their water.  Time for another trip to Lowe’s!

I had to chip away a good sized hole around the broken pipe before I could fit a pipe-cutter around the broken copper tubing.  Wanted to use one of those cool hole-borer attachments for my drill, but they all included a drill bit in the center, something I couldn’t use because of the quick bend in the broken pipe.  Interestingly, the outside walls use chicken wire for structural support!  (probably an earthquake precaution)

The epoxy took a solid 30 minutes to dry, and I gave it an extra 15 for good measure.  Proud to say that the pipe is fixed and sealed with a removable cap.  While the seal appears to be holding, I wouldn’t put any important/tender body parts in the way of the cap’s potential flight path!  I’ll be returning to Lowe’s later this week for a new faucet attachment, at which time the epoxy should be fully set.

I also picked up some other things from Lowe’s, but that’s a topic for another time.  (Aside: I don’t begrudge against my mom for planting a thorn-encrusted bougainvillea in the corner of my tiny yard - it’s a hardy plant that keeps its green and looks good as long as you don’t try to touch it.  It is also now gone.  Thank goodness for heavy work gloves!  )

Still to do tonight: pack up the cats for a trip to Kirsten’s, set off said bug-bombs, and give flea baths to both cats.  As if the bougainvillea didn’t give me enough scratches!

Kirsten and I met with DJ Chuck from Music on the Move.  Nice fellow, and he seems hip to the atmosphere that we’re after.  Plenty organized and willing to provide a video projector and screen free of charge (hopefully more on those items later).

For piece of mind, we’re going to check out another DJ or two.  We’ve both experienced some smarmy DJ’s, as well as some that have chosen to play music not appropriate for the general audience.  Based on the median age of our expected guests, we’re not expecting to hear too many songs that made top-40 since the end of the Reagan administration.  And that’s PLENTY fine with the two of us.  In fact, we’d like the playlist to extend further into America’s musical past!

As many of you have recently discovered, the Save the Date cards have been sent out.  If this is your first time visiting our little corner of the Internet, welcome!

Kirsten and I will be regularly updating this site over the next few months  We’ll be sharing our experiences and thoughts about our upcoming wedding, and we hope you’ll find some good info and a fair amount of humor as we catalog this endeavor.

(For the technologically-inclined, this page has an RSS feed.  Since I already use Firefox as my primary web browser, the handy InfoRSS extension is my preferred tool for keeping track of new updates for many other websites (including CNN, BBC, and 1dermama).)