Blerghhhh

Man I had a long day. I feel freaking exhausted. We made chemicals today, and one of the drums sprang a leak.

But with my mad ninja skills, you'll be pleased to note that I was able to dodge all flying chemicals.

Not that they were particularly dangerous or anything.

They just turn your skin a bright purple.

And who wants to look like an angry smurf?

SYTYCD: Cool Dancers

So I finally got around to watching Thursday's Season Premiere. I love this show!!

This guy is crazy. It's like he's made from Silly Putty.

Phillip Chbeeb


Victor Kim:


Know why I like this show better than Idol?

The judges are brutal. Watch them during this audition. Soooo mean. "Cue the sad music as he walks off the stage please."



What can I say? I love the breakers.


Oh... MY... GOSH!!!



OH MY GOSH!! That guys is freaky awesome!

Tuesday!

Did everyone have a good Memorial Day? I had a very nice time with my family, and I made it home, despite the best efforts of I-95.

I have a sunburn, bug bites, and a small dent in my car. Summer has officially started.

I know I skipped the Monday AMV, but I have something even better.

24 the musical.

It's freaking awesome. Based on Season Two, which was pretty bad, and there's some language, although I thought "Dammit" was pretty funny.

I'm finally getting around to seeing the premiere for So You Think You Can Dance, and Mia Micheals kills me. I'll look for highlights to post.

Friday Funny

This weekend I'll be going down to my brother's in North Carolina. As I prepare for the Super Special Awesomeness that will be I-95S on Memorial Day weekend, I thought to long, hours and hours of car trips with my family, and remembered this awesome tape my sister had of Monty Python skits.

This one was my favorite on the tape, and I had it memorized. Enjoy!

Just FYI

You know what's not good to eat before an intense workout?

Quesadillas.

I kind of already knew this, but for some reason I thought that if I ate an hour before hand I would be okay.

Like swimming!

I was wrong.

Also, Angel totally saw me jump the curb when I backed out of my parking spot. He was laughing. And then I was laughing. At me.

On an upnote, I netflixed the Imax movie "Alaska" and it's freaking awesome. Even on my little screen.

Corbeau's Embassy Row Adventure

Saturday, I went into DC with two friends that I haven't blogged about yet, so I will call them Yoosh and B. We went into DC for the annual Embassy Row Open House.

It was a beautiful day, perfect for walking around the city. We started with Columbia, which had a tour of the ambassador's house, which was beautiful. In the garden they had some sort of jellied fruit on cheese. It was gross.

To be perfectly honest, I hate jellied fruit, so it didn't have much of a chance. The volunteers were passing out various tourist swag, with Colombia's new tourist theme.

Columbia: The only risk is not wanting to leave.

I found this to be freaking hilarious.

After that we went to India, which was my personal favorite. They had their best bollywood dj rocking the house, we were treated to a excellent choreographed dance show, and then given an entire plate of amazing, and free, Indian food.

We also went to Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Pakistan, but none of them were as cool as India. Ethiopia had a speaker, Nigeria was prepping for something, but we'll never know if the event ever occurred, since we gave up after checking back a couple of times. We were going to eat at Ghana, but they had this massive non-moving line. Bangladesh had kids performing folk dances, which was adorable. Pakistan had a small bazaar, and were blasting euro-pop at ear-peircing levels.

I'm not sure why. Perhaps to let everyone know that they were the cool embassy. Pakistan also had food. The only thing we recognized were samosas, which we had also eaten at the Indian embassy. So I decided to pick something at random from the menu. "Can I get the Julab Gotti?" I asked the man.
"What?"
"Uh, number 6?"
"What is the Number 6?"
"Er...Julab...Gotti?"
At that point, the guy started laughing, took my money, and plopped two enormous balls of fried bread that had spent the last five hours soaking in honey down on my plate.

After that, both of my friends ordered samosas.

After the embassies we headed down to the Asia festival in downtown DC. They had a martial arts arena, and we watched some Tai Kwan Do guys kick the crap out of some wooden planks. They were awesome. This one guy threw an apple in the air, kicked it, and it exploded all over the audience that wasn't me.

I cheered. As did everyone else who wasn't covered in apple sauce.

We also went down to the cultural stage, and watched some belly dancers.

Have you ever seen a cultural festival without belly dancers? I haven't. I'm convinced that I could throw a dance/culutral/garage sale festival in my back yard and belly dancers would show up.

There were also Mongolian dancers, and the Indonesian embassy sent a group of muscians. While we were watching the dancers, we noticed that all the people around us were eating bowls of what appeared to be jello floating in milk. We finally worked up our courage to ask what it was, and that's how we found ourselves in front of the Thai shaved ice stand.

Neither of my friends would get some, but they did advise me as to toppings, since both of them have actually lived in China, and knew that some of them were nasty.

So there was a whole line of nice, elderly Asian people, standing behind bowls of various weird things. The first lady scooped some shaved ice in a bowl, and poured coconut milk over it. She handed it to the topping line.

"What you want?" the first guy asked,
"uh, what's good?"
"It's all good!" They all started shouting and pointing their ladles at their topping and telling me how good it was.
"Get the red bean paste" Yoosh told me.

The guy poured an enormous scoop of red bean paste on top of my ice. Then I also got Ai Yu jelly (which looks like yellow jello)
Grass jelly (which looks like black jello) and then had them top it off with a good squeeze of Hershey's chocolate syrup.

It was...strangely delicious. The grass jelly in particular was very refreshing, and the red bean paste was really yummy. Sweet, with a nice texture and a really great flavor.

In fact, it was all really good, but I have no idea about how to describe the flavors I tasted other than... strangely delicious.

The Screwtape Letters

Friday, BSA, DFL and I went into DC to see the Screwtape Letters, a play based on C.S. Lewis' brilliant book. We arrived at the Shakespeare Theater, and realized that we were a tad under-dressed. We usually go to the Folger Shakespearean Theater, which is a little more casual. But there were some people there in jeans, so we weren't too bad in our business casual.

We went into the lobby, and they had all these Christian audio books for sale, including Jonathan Edwards' platinum Puritan hit, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." This has been one of my favorite Hellfire and Damnations sermons since my friend Nanette's brilliant rendition in our Sophomore Honors English class.

We went in and took our seats, which were awesome. Second row. Dead center. The only down side was that whenever Screwtape enunciated you could see the clouds of spit glistening in the stage lights.

Everything on stage was crooked. The floor was crooked, the tables were crooked, and they had this great crooked ladder that went up to the little Hell mailbox. The back wall looked like it came straight from the Paris catacombs. All skulls and rocks.

Screwtape was really good. He basically monologued for an hour and 45 minutes. There was no intermission, and he was awesome the whole way through. The only other person on stage was his little assistant demon.

She was awesome. She walked crooked, and her personality was something between one of those little rat lap dogs, and a really evil monkey. She would jitter and shoot looks, and whenever Screwtape was talking about how he tempted someone, she would mimic the person.

Her little model walk/dance when he was discussing the standards of modern beauty was hilarious.

Basically, I loved it. If this play should happen to come your way, you should definitely check it out.

Monday AMV

Did y'all have a good weekend?

Mine was awesome! And I have every intention of blogging about it. Unfortunately, I have to go beat people up/get beat up, so hopefully I'll have time later this evening.

Meanwhile, enjoy some Full Metal Panic.

A Story About Smells

Today, in Krav, we learned a new clinch where you keep your opponent's head pressed into your shoulder.

Students of anatomy will realize that, if you are playing the part of the attacker, this means that your face will be awfully close to what the French call "L'eau du Pitte"

So the astute Krav student *cough*ninja*cough* will position herself strategically among the more sweeter smelling.

Per Request--The Weirdest Mother's Day Ever

All right, here's the whole story. If I get slammed for murmuring I'm blaming all y'all. :)

When we got to church this morning the parking lot was almost empty. TSA (The Starving Artist) and I were trying to figure out where the other ward was when I remembered, “Oh, it’s Mothers Day. In my home ward we always got out after Sacrament on Mothers Day.” We got into the building, and were encompassed in a fascinating odor. The sewage pipes had backed up, and the only room not affected was the chapel. “Sweet!” I thought, “We’re definitely going home early.”

The first speaker got up, and told us how when the first counselor asked her to speak about Mothers and Mother’s Day, he also asked her not to forget about fathers.

Because focusing on Mothers on Mother’s Day is just crazy talk.

So her entire talk was about her father. The second speaker went gender neutral and talked about “goodly parents.”

When the service ended, they announced that the smell had been fixed so we would go ahead and have all our meetings.

You know, once I thought I was going home early, all I wanted to do was leave.

We went to Sunday school and it was freezing. Turns out the only way to get rid of the smell was to set the air to max. At one point it got so cold, they turned the air off and the smell came creeping back. The choice was between stink or cold, so they chose cold.

After all, many are cold but few are frozen.

HA HA HA HA!!!!!! Oh, I kill me.

The Relief Society lesson was all about the priesthood, with one of the Bishopric counselors there as a guest speaker. The lesson ended, late, with a call to honor the men and priesthood of our ward.

On Mother’s Day.

Since we were about 15 minutes over, we jumped straight to the closing prayer, and the RS Prez was like “Oh, and since’s it Mother’s Day, the elders are waiting outside to give you carnations. To honor you.”

Except that most of the Elders were tired of waiting for us, so they just came in passed out flowers at random and then left.

Good Food Monday--Page 6

Good Food Monday

I have the Monday Blahs. We’ve been having constant storming rain. Last night we had a horrible storm, and all the constant banging and what not kept me up all night, thinking about the news story I saw that was all about the storm ripping walls and roofs off houses.

I was especially concerned since I spent most of yesterday bad mouthing our church service. But honestly, who ever heard of a Mother’s Day service that was all about honoring men?

A couple of hours later I realized that I was just being silly, and that what I really should be worrying about was the tree trying to smash its way through my window.

When I finally fell asleep, I had a dream where I was fighting zombies. In my labcoat. With a scalpel of all things.

When I woke up, I was light headed and head-achey, and when I got to work, I had 8 hours of class where I had to calculate, calibrate, and convert. Oh goodness my brain is fried.

But enough WHINING!! On with the food…

We’ve missed a few weeks, but now we’re onto page 6, appetizers.

Cheddar Ranch Snack Mix

3 c Kellog’s Crispix cereal
3 c Cheez-its white cheddar crackers
1 c mini pretzels
1 pkt dry ranch dip mix
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp lemon & herb seasoning
1 tsp dill weed
¼ c vegetable oil

In a large bowl, combine Crispix cereal, Cheez-Itz crackers and pretzels. Set aside. IN a small mixing bowl, combine remaining ingredients, mixing well. Pour seasoning mixture over cracker mixture. Gently stir the mixture. Microwave on high 1 minute. Gently stire. Microwave on high for 1 more minute.

This one is easy and pretty tasty, although the seasoning is pretty strong. Tastes a lot like Chicken in a Biscuit.

Awesome Commercial!

I love this. This is also the basis for the best awesomely bad anime forever, Sukeban Deka, in which a girl fights crime with her battle yo yo.

NY Trip--Sunday

NY Trip –Sunday

A little late posting this, but BSA got free passes to see “Son of Rambow” which I thought was really cute. I liked it, but I’m also not a parent. I could see how people might not like it. But I thought it was fun to watch two boys make a crazy film. The end is a little abrupt, but everything was resolved so I didn’t mind.

Anyway, we were so tired that we didn’t wake up until the maid knocked to clean up. I got up to answer the door, and she apologized and left. I noticed there was a paper on the floor, and picked it up. It was our check out bill. Since we had prepaid for our hotel, it was blank.
“Hey BSA, we got our check out bill.”
“Anything on it?” she asked sleepily, still buried under a mound of covers.
“Uh, 1 bag of M&Ms”
“I KNEW IT!!!” She came flying out of bed and across the room. “I Knew IT!! I knew they’d put that sucker on our bill!”
By this time I was cracking up, so she figured out I was just kidding.

We checked our bags with the bell boys, checked out, and headed out to Central Park. Central Park is massive, so we only explored a small portion, but I did manage to find the view that shows up in every movie ever that features a scene in Central Park.



After we headed to Madame Taussaud’s, we expected to spend several hours there, but they didn’t have that many wax people. We made it through the whole building in 45.

And that included the break where BSA joined Simon Cowl in absolutely tearing apart some karaoke-singers.




Then we just wandered until it was time to catch the bus. We saw Carnegie Hall, The Soup Nazi store, Radio City Music Hall, the Hershey Store, and the M&M Store. It was a good day, but by the time we got back to the bus I thought my legs were gonna fall off.

NY Trip--Saturday

NY Trip—Saturday

On Saturday we went down to Times Square, walked around, went shopping, and saw Iron Man. (I liked it. It was fast paced, good dialogue, and the best robot comic relief since R2-D2.)




Then we went down to the WTC, but it was walled off for construction. So went to Battery Park. There were these guys dressed as the Statue of Liberty. One of them sassed me when I wouldn’t go pose for a picture, but by the time we got to the park I was out of small bills.



This was also a bummer when we found a posing Spiderman.



We came across this big crowd of people. We climbed onto a big bronze statue, and watched a guy flip over a man, his wife and their three children. Awesome.

As we wandered back we came up Wall St. and right into a Romanian street fair. Seriously! We got Strawberry and Chocolate crepes which were amazing.



That night we went to Wicked, which I loved.

Our seats were way up close. Close enough to see the individual wiry hairs on the monkeys heads. We were on the side, so I couldn’t see all of the backdrop, but I could see all the actors, so it was awesome.

Glinda (the Ga is silent) was my favorite. She had me laughing every time she came on stage, and during “Popular” I laughed so hard it hurt. I also got chills during some of the songs. I loved it. I loved the story, the dialogue, the songs. Loved it!

New York Trip Report--Friday

Friday—

We took a bus from Arlington and got into Manhattan around 1 in the afternoon. I suggest using the bathroom on the bus, because trying to find a toilet around Madison Square Gardens is a little scary.

We got to our hotel, and discovered a lovely gift basket, with candy, bottled water, nuts, all kinds of goodies. There was also a note, stating that there were sensors in the basket, and that if you picked up anything for longer than 20 seconds, it would be automatically added to your account. This caused some concern, since one of the packets of M&M’s was off its sensor.

“Just wait,” BSA warned, “That sucker’s going to show up on our bill.”

We made our way down to the Ninja restaurant. You get into this elevator, and when it opens, everything’s dark. A ninja with a sword jumps out and high-yas at you. Then he says “Welcome to Ninja. I will guide you to my village. Would you like to take the shortcut, or the secret ninja passageway?”

We voted for the passageway.

Our guide took off down the dark passageway. It was narrow and hard to see, and I was afraid that I would miss a turn or something and smash into a wall. I was also pretty sure that our guide would jump out at us. We got to one part of the tunnel that just looked creepy. I thought, “If I was our guide, this is where I would hide.” So I stopped. I was trying to psych myself up for walking into the trap, when our guide jumped out from behind us and grabbed BSA, who screamed like a little girl.

The restaurant is dark, but it's all set up like a ninja village.

The tables are all set up like little houses, with sliding doors. Cute eh?

All the servers are dressed up like ninjas, and the menus are on scrolls. We both ordered the five course tasting menu.

My first course was the clam bombshell. It came with Gruyere fondue, and the server pointed out that I had no clam on my plate. He showed me another, which had this enormous clam sitting on a pile of white crystals. There was a fuse trailing from the crystals. He lit on fire, did a whole ninja hand sign thingy, and then the crystals caught on fire with a bright flash, and as the flames burned the clam slowly opened, showing the tasty meats inside.

It was AWESOME.

I had a ninja crab ball that was disguised as a household plant, (very difficult to eat with chopsticks), we had sushi, and BSA got some pork dish with squid ink that made it look scary. All dark and slimy. Like something you would eat with fava beans and a nice Chianti. It tasted good though.

Our fourth course was steak, and then while we waited for dessert, Mike the magic guy came by and gave us a magic show. He was very entertaining. Then for dessert, I had a chocolate ball, and inside was strawberry mousse, cake and chocolate pudding. BSA got a chocolate mousse and strawberry dish that was served with a rose and dry ice.

It was very cool.

Fortunately, my ninja training allows me to remain calm under pressure, and also to agree to tip a generous 20%.

Actually, we asked our server if we could take her picture and she said "Wait a sec," and disappeared (how ninja-y!) We thought maybe she went to get one of the big ninja guys, but instead she came back with that short sword and stuck it right up to my neck.