Tell you all my secrets

Friday night's Viva BBQ was all kinds of awesome.  Great friends and even better food.  Our new neighbors had an epic housewarming party at the same time.  They had a huge turnout and even had a bartender with a frozen margarita machine.  At one point we left our guests instructions not to burn the place down and we dashed over to meet them.  They're house has a crazy layout, even for Spenard, and they just bought a puppy.  Really nice folks.

 

Saturday morning LonelyDumptruck went into work early, and I slept in, then raced downtown to help lay out the track for the Solstice Scrimmage in Town Square!  I got to skate in three of the four "halfs" and was the penalty timer for the jammers the other one.  I had a blast, but it really showed that I still don't know anything!

 

The track was set up so there wasn't room for outside pack refs, and we had five people on the inside: two jam refs, a front pack ref, a back pack ref and the head ref who just floated and helped keep an eye out.  Wookie was head ref when I was front pack ref and she kept calling out of play when a blocker got way far ahead of the pack.  After a few, Bro just yelled to me "If she's calling out of play, it means you're missing something!! "  Wookie pointed out it meant I'm still learning and he immediately apologized by telling me "Okay, that was douche-y."  I made a point of asking what I was missing afterwards and he said "Not much, really."  I also checked with Wookie, because I was being sure to watch that blocker to make sure they were not blocking out of play, and she just reminded me I was supposed to warn them they were out of play too.  Now I know.

 

While we were laying out the track, I heard the velcro on my brace shift around, didn't really think anything of it...until 0014 pointed out I'd ripped my shorts from waist to cuff straight down my left butt cheek.  Thank Zod I WAS wearing my brace so I you could see were the white comfort shorts!  0014 teased me relentlessly about how "You burlesque girls, always have to put on a show!"  and that I should write on my shorts "To see more go to http://www.vivavoomburlesque.com

 

LonelyDumptruck and Dave rode their bikes down to watch the scrimmage and I beat feet with them after to get a drink at Darwin's.  They closed off most of downtown for the Solstice Celebration, it seemed like.  The street in front of Darwin's was closed for a stage with live jazz and outdoor seating, so we got to enjoy our beers outside.  After we said good night to Dave, we headed home for a quick dinner and then went to see Primus at Mooses Tooth.

 

It was a great show but way too crowded. It really felt like they had oversold the venue, especially compared to seeing Cake there.  We passed on the after party at Maus's place in favor of Taco Bell and television, I was just wiped out.

 

This morning we got up early and went to the first showing of World War Z.  I really enjoyed it, but I only read the book once and I didn't remember any of the specifics. LonelyDumptruck re-read it recently but he liked it.  We made breakfast and lounged around watching cooking shows on PBS until it was time for me to go to work.  Good days.

And lo, it was good.

 

Thanksgiving was pretty laid back.  Mommie sent over a massive bowl of stuffing (Grandma's recipe) Wednesday night so we cooked that along with the turkey.  Because we do everything Alton Brown says, we skipped brineing the turkey this year and, instead,

 

LonelyDumptruck butterflied the bird and used a dry rub.  I think it was our best turkey ever.

 

He also made cranberry sauce, as is tradition, and I roasted sweet potatoes with orange and made carrots roasted with Chinese 5 spice. The carrots had good flavor, but a really gritty texture.  I think I am going to cook the spices in the butter and then toss the carrots in that instead of melting the butter, pouring that over the carrots and adding the spices.

 

Sometime between starting the turkey browning in an insanely hot oven and learning how to turn off the fire alarm, the oven got turned off instead of down.  That wasn't discovered for a hour, but it ended up working out fine.  That gave me enough time to prep the veggies and the last person was just walking in as things came out of the oven.

 

It was a small group, for us: Mommie and Eddie (who brought rolls, appetizers a pumpkin pie and bread pudding)  Jay (King of Mashed Potatoes), Stephanie (apple pie) 

 

LonelyDumptruck's step-brother (another apple pie) and Geolinguist (pi...no, wait, orange satued kale.)  Jenny came over after her family dinner and grazed a bit.

 

Everything was great and it was just about a perfect amount of food.  We did have to take a walk around the neighborhood between dinner and dessert.  There was a great deal of wine and beer too.  Mommie and Eddie brought over a new board game, What's Yours Like, and we played a few rounds of that. 

 

Geolinguist and I planned to go to the last show of The Muppets, but it was across town and we were having do much fun we just decided to stay in instead.

 

Friday I was supposed to work all day, but the phone only rang once in five hours so Little Boss sent me home.  I finished the dishes and braved Wal-mart to buy a birthday present for Boo. 

 

After that I met

 

CrownWench at Roadhouse and LonelyDumptruck met us there when he got off work.  We were planning on going to see the Lead Toy's band at Koots, but we ended up having so much fun just hanging out that we never made it there.

 

Saturday was kind of a mixed bag, emotionally.  Late morning was Boo's fifth birthday party at an inflatable playground.  We weren't able to stay long because Saturday afternoon was the funeral for one of

 

LonelyDumptruck's cousin's sons.  There was a memorial after the service, but we opted out of that.  Instead we bunkered in for a while and  LonelyDumptruck started the turkey stock.  We went to pick up some supplies to dress up leftovers and LonelyDumptruck picked up Skyrim, so that was his day.

 

After dinner

 

Geolinguist stopped by to pre-function before we made another attempt at seeing The Muppets.  We made it this time and I am so glad we did!  It wasn't perfect, but it was a great Muppet Show.   I can't believe there was only one original Muppeteer on the movie, but there were only a couple instances of wrong sounding Muppets and they cracked a joke about that.  The plot was paper thin, but we laughed through the whole thing.  Camilla and the Chickens singing Fuck You....I seriously could not breathe.

 

We stayed up until 3 or so watching Mythbusters, so I slept in a bit on Sunday. 

 

LonelyDumptruck played Skyrim and I played Sims until Brr-lesque rehearsal.  I made bacon and turkey hash for dinner and we watched most of our Sunday programs.  Speaking of...holy shit, Walking Dead anyone?!?

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From the  Zombie Booth app the Lead Toy has been  sharing with everyone....

Happy Halloween!

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Thursday night we went to dinner at Taproot. I knew I'd be getting a nice little paycheck from my double shift at the Center so I was feeling like a treat.

It was singer/songwriter night, but we told the doorman we had just come to eat and, since it wasn't starting for half-an-hour, he let us in with a promise that we would come back and pay the cover if we had a good time.

They had some amazing beers including a Strawberry Sour from an Alaska brewery. Our waiter kept telling us it was too sour and undrinkable without food so I just got a taster. We both liked it so much we each got a pint. I thought our poor waiter was going to die of shock.

The bands were really good. After a few drinks and a tastey dinner later (a halibut po' boy for LonelyDumptruck and quinoa for me) we determined that we were having too much free fun. When LonelyDumptruck started thumping the table in time with the music, I went back to pay the cover.

Survival of the Dead was the late-night movie at the Beartooth (late-night is 10 here) and, if you know me at all, you know I am a sucker for horror movies. A bunch of teens came in zombie costumes. Their makeup was incredible, except for a very pretty girl who came in a pretty white dress and nothing but a smear of blood that was more 'look a my boobies' than 'I just snacked on someone's intestines.'

I really liked the movie. There were some great throwbacks to his last two movies and the characters were very strong (aside from one reveal that made the entire audience groan). I like how Romero has been able to tell such different stories that all happen to be set in a zombie outbreak and tell them successfully. Or, as LonelyDumptruck put it, "I guess Romero wanted to make a Western."

Friday night my old Boss from ATY and his lady called to see if we wanted to meet them for dinner and drinks. At Taproot. We said "hell yes!" and spent a marvelous evening catching up wither them. It was poetry night at Taproot this time and, while she was very talented, her subject matter was so bleak we had to take off to avoid depression.

We met up with Rodney and Henry at Rodney's place to go to the PoGo Stick Go Go Dancer Company show at Out North. PoGoGoGoCo is a sketch comedy troupe started by Monkey and some of his friends. This was their 4th show but the first I had been too. It was a really tight show. I was very impressed. Next week is their last scheduled show, sadly.

Saturday we got to sleep in some and we watched a good chunk of A Very Long Engagement before getting started on our whirlwind of social engagements. Since we were going all the same places, we decided to team up with Rodney and we took George out for the roadtrip.

Our first stop was out in Eklutna and a wedding reception for crisavec and his new bride. They were set up in style at one of the campsites. They brought out their living room so people could sit comfortably and talk, they built a dance floor and even had a smorgusboard of candy set up.

Sadly it was pissing down rain and we couldn't stay that long anyway. We did get to say goodbye to Adiva_Calandia before she headed back to college, though, and hang out with the likes of MonkofSilence, Sionainn and PoisonDartFrog.

Our second stop was the Andy-Q at Erin and Andy's new place. It was mostly their families until PoisonDartFrog, MonkofSilence and Ben turned up. There was some amazing BBQ pork as well as good company. We brought our famous corn salad and hung around outside under the carport and around the fire even though it was still raining.

The last stop of the night was Frank and Kamala's for Frank's 40th birthday party (Frank 4.0). It was pretty mellow with a lot of good friends. There were only two musical acts and we ended up standing outside in the rain talking after they were done.

Today I went over to Mommie and Eddie's to watch Dad, Lori-O, Jay and LonelyDumptruck lay out stones to redesign the flower beds between the stairs and the house. I had to go to work after an hour or so, but LonelyDumptruck reported that it went really well and he was pleased with his work. He brought home chicken and noodles for me too.

We've been having a movie kind of week around the Burner Family Compound.

Monday we had dinner out in the party palace with Dad and Ila and then came upstairs to watch 9. I was surprised by how short it was. It wasn't bad, it was just that they picked a focus and stayed tight to that instead of adding other elements.

Tuesday we were going to have carnitas with the meat Kamala brought to my birthday but we both got home a little late. I finally found the poutine cart downtown, so I picked some up for a surprise. Dad and Ila had already eaten, it was pissing down rain, so we just ate the poutine and went to see The Eclipse at Beartooth. I was really impressed. It was a well-constructed ghost story. They leaned a little heavily on the "SCARE YA!!!" musical sting to make you jump, but the images continued to be frightening even after the cue faded.

Tonight we finally made the carnitas and had dinner with Dad, Ila and Jay. Dad and Ila are big Morgan Freeman fans and they had rented Invictus. We missed that one in theatres so they let us borrow it. Zod, I love South Africa. I really want to go back again.

Tomorrow night I'm hoping to get to Survival of the Dead at Beartooth. You can't go wrong with zombies and beer.

Friday night's opening show went really well. We sold out and a lot of board members were there, which rocked! Lori-O and Jay came (Jay just for act one) and then we went out for drinks with some of the cast after.

Saturday I celebrated the show being open by sending lonelydumptruck to the show while I went to a zombie event.

A guy in the UAA Dance Department set up a zombie outbreak for his birthday. They had a whole schedule for the day - a picnic in Town Square, playing disc on the Park Strip, going to the UAA library, a flash mob, dinner at Village Inn and going to the late show of Zombieland all in zombie garb. I made a whole batch of fake blood with a karo syrup base and then lonelydumptruckhelped gore me up with some brains and slime made from rice pudding and food coloring for my makeup. It was pretty damn cool. As soon as I walked into the class to learn the dance for the flash mob some guy who might as well be wearing a sign that read 'Hi, I LARP Brujah' started mocking my make-up job, but other than that it was a lot of fun.

We spent an hour learning Thriller at UAA, then the mob met for a performance in the Sears parking lot. During the class I was very successful at finding people to stand behind to disguise how miserable I am at dancing. At the event - not so much. I accidentally picked a spot behind a whole crowd of tiny Samoan girls. Luckily the cameras were nowhere near me so my suck didn't make it on the news.

I invited Geolinguist to come hang out after the flash mob with a promise that in a worst-case scenario he could spend Saturday night washing Karo syrup out of my hair. We got a rather damp pizza from Beartooth and watched The Muppets Take Manhattan before meeting lonelydumptruck at Zombieland.

The movie was good. Everything I heard said this was just the sort of movie to watch with a bunch of folks who'd been playing zombies all day. It was a little thin on plot, even for a zombie pic, but we had fun.

I slept in again today and did very little other than play games. lonelydumptruck said the shows last night and today were great. Saturday was probably the best one yet.

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