Today we all met up around 10am local time to have breakfast in the hotel resturaunt. While there we met up with our friend Powel and then later we were joined by the legendary Tom Lewis. After breakfast the group reassembled to do some touring of the city center.
After touring and shopping we returned to the hotel so bounding Main could rehearse for tonights concert at 10 pm.
We landed without any trouble at Krakows wondfull airport. We were met by festival organizers we then rode straight to the concert hall for sound check. After sound check we checked into our hotel, a lovely hotel right off the city center of Krakow. We then rested for a bit before taking cabs to the show.
The evening concert was phenominal, I’ve never seen such an audience. It was so incredible to see such fandom, and to hear so many old favorite songs sung in Polish!!! Paddy lay back, marching inland, lukeys Boat… Wow wow wow!
Bounding main was LOVED the audience erupted and demanded an encore!
Well it’s 2:18 am Chicago time, we have had breakfast and there is about an hour left in the flight. Then a short layover, and another hour long flight. I managed to get a little sleep earlier although it was in short bursts due to the comfort level of the seats. Oh well, its still more sleep than I got on the Germany flight. Dare I say I’m becoming accostomed to all this?
Scary thought!
This post is from about half way into the flight. The baby has quieted thankfully. David and I are going stir crazy in our seats. One major thing we are missing is the little air jets to give you fresh air blowing on you. Very fustrating.
Also wish I could have brought a giant bottle of water as I’m parched…
I am writing this message from onboard our flight to Warsaw. The flight is supposed to be a nine hour flight, we will see. We waitied at o’haire for an hour to taxi…
They just served dinner and I found it to be very nice. In addition to a chicken or beef dish (I had beef) we were also provided with some bread, cheese, salami, and a type of chutney that was all very delicious.
So far entertainment has been a major difference from that we experienced on the Germany flight. That flight we had extra leg room, and personal entertainment systems in our seats. This flight has no more room than that of a domestic flight and entertainment consists of VCR based videos on a projector for the cabin. We did see a couple of my favorite old Disney cartoons. They just finished played the premeere episode of how I met your Mother.
Earlier in the day I pulled my camers out to begin documenting the trip oly to discover I managed to shatter my LCD screen on my camera. I quickly ran to the nearrst store and bought a replacement. Quite a start to the trip so far.
Oh I forgot to mention we are sgaring the flight with a screaming baby that screamed for an hour and ten minutes straight… Eight hours to go. Hopefully I will be able to sleep some.
Last night was our monthly patch night at work. This is basically the scheduled night were after most of the college is closed certain IT staff and myself stay and patch servers with the latest security patches. Typically the three of us involved go for dinner and a movie to pass the time between 4:30 and 9 p.m. Last night was no different.
For this months flick we ended up seeing Daybreakers. It was an interesting vampire flick that as long as you didn’t put to much thought into it it was watchable, at least no one sparkled. To be honest, we were all already pretty tired so its probably getting more credit than it deserves… I did discover something about myself though. I have either lost my startle reflex, or was just to tired to have one. There were a number of scenes where the typical OMG something jumped out directly into the camera. Just about evryone in the theatre flinched. I sat there compleetly unefected. The only scene that had any physical effect on me was the obligatory projectile vomit scene and that was only because I cannot stand the sight of vomit.
The movie did have one interesting twist to it that we all felt deserved far more exploration. One of the main problems with this movie was that it tried to be to much of everything… One minute it was a political / economic comentary, one minute it was horror flick, one minute it was an action flick complete with rediclious car chases and stunts to fill a mythbusters episode, the next minute it tried to be a deep symbolic piece… Hey movie pick something and stick with it!
Without spoilers there were quite a few “seriously? That doesn’t make sense! Why wouldn’t he do ___ that seems more logical for his character” moments. Plus a few symbology moments that just didn’t make sense. I also spotted scenes copied from a handfull of other movies… Oh well…
It was nice to see Sam Neil on a big screen flick again and I did manage to ocassionally feel some amount of distaste for his character.
Product placement was a bit blatent at least as far a Chrysler was conscerned. They might as well have inserted a commercial in the middle of the movie. “Chrysler, the car of Vampires everywhere”
I did get a little fustrated with the movies vampire lore… The movie was primarilly a science type vampire movie, where they focused on vampirisim as a virus… Except they left in all the mythical traits too… No reflection, stake through the heart kills them, err I mean turns them into an exploding fireball… They never mentioned how that was supposed to work…
Ok I’ll stop now… Go see it at the $1.50 theatre it’s worth a good ribbing, and does have an interesting twist to it. It also has some great makeup, courtsey of weta, although I’m pretty sure I saw gollum lurking about a dozen times 
complete with his precious!
Tuesday night was open mic night at the Stonefire pub in Yorkville, IL. I’ve been attending it for almost two years now. Last week we discovered that the man resposible for organizing it is no longer working at the pub. The pub has decided to continue open mic night though. I ended up filling in as MC.
When I arrived this week I was asked to host again. Things went pretty well I think. We had a halfway decent turnout and had a lot of fun. I even ended up singing 3 songs.
Holy cats, I haven’t updated this since October?!?! I guess that’s the danger of having quick easy access to facebook as I do on my cellphone. I guess I need a good wordpress app for my blackberry to make this more convenient. Actually what it boils down to is that I just need to make this more of a priority.
The past few weeks I’ve been really in a funk. It’s my typical winter one I suppose. I love snow, don’t get me wrong, but what bothers me is the general bleak skys you see most of the winter here in Illinois. It’s very hard not to let that seep in and begin to permeate your thoughts.
Another part of my overall blah has been a general frustration over things of a technical nature. I spend all day at my job writing code, solving technical problems, and dealing with general computer problems. I get home from work, and I’m wiped out, my brain needs a recharge and needs to decompress. I get so tired of people calling me wanting me to fix their computers. I get especially sick of it when that is the ONLY time I hear from them. Is it to much to ask for an occasional phone call with the sole purpose that the person on the other end just wants to say “hey, how are you?” and doesn’t ‘cleverly’ work the conversation into a “oh hey… i’ve been meaning to ask you…” or “..Oh I bet you’d know…” followed by a request to fix their email, or remove the latest virus or malware… I wonder if people, when finding out someone is a surgeon, ask the surgeon, “oh hey do you mind taking out my appendix here? No rush just when you have some time off or something?”
This past weekend, I escaped for the whole weekend. I posted on facebook that I would not be answering my phone, and was going to just get away. I recently re-connected with a couple of very dear friends who live south of me and accepted their gracious invitation to come visit for the weekend. It was truly the most relaxing, enjoyable weekend I’ve had in YEARS. Not once was I asked to look at a computer, or even answer a computing question. We hung out, ate well, watched British comedies, shared stories, entertained the cats (I mean really, isn’t that a “peoples” job, to entertain and serve cats?) and just generally had a good time. By Sunday morning I felt at peace, for the first time in a long time.
A compleetly unexpected side effect of that was that I slept well last night. For the first time in what seems like an eternity, I slept peacefully and did not wake up multiple times at night with various panicked thoughts running through my head. I didn’t lay there awake for 3 hours trying to force myself to unwind enough that I could sleep. I just rolled over pulled the blanket over me, and slept.
I need more weekends like this last one.
I bolted awake this morning in a panic. I just knew I had forgotten to renew my license plates. I freaked out, raced through my shower, and getting dressed. I tore my stack of what I was sure was unimportant mail apart. As I thought, it was unimportant… All the time thoughts of fear were racing through my head. “I know my plates expire at the end of September, I can’t believe I was driving around all weekend without valid license plates.”, “What am I going to do if I can’t find the renewal form!”, “Is the DMV even open on Tuesdays!” The panic continued, until I forced myself to take a deep breath, walk out to the car and look at my license plate. 05-10
Apparently my brain had decided to be dyslexic in my sleep and freak out thinking that the plates expired on October 5th, not May of 2010…
Fun way to start the morning…
Well here we are the Friday before closing Friday. It’s hard to believe that we are coming up on weekend 8 of the Bristol Renaissance faire. Its been a wild season for me. This year I finally went ahead and went through BAPA, and with a new friend also put together a seemingly successful daily comedy show for kids.
The year has had it’s ups and downs but I think the ups outweigh the downs. My biggest complaint has been the theft of props. To that end today I purchased a locking bin I can use to hold most items. I hope this will put an end to my dissapearing property and I can return to enjoying the remainder of the season.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m certain cats of previous years have all be amazing as well, but I’ve never been as involved with them as I am this year. Sunday, Andy, Sarah, and I began the daily stage show in Kids Kingdom by gathering a small audience from the overall light faire attendance. We had managed to draw in enough people that it would work. The show began, the audience was laughing and paying attention with the occasional glances up at the sky which was growing ever darker. About half way through the show the wind picked up, and a few rain drops began to fall. As they did audience members began to get up and leave, attempting to seek shelter. At this I noticed two of the FABULOUS Kids Kingdom cast who had been standing at the rear watching the show race back stage, I assumed they were battening down the hatches of things back stage. moments later they re-emerged carrying an enormous deck umbrella and proceeded to set it up of the remaining folks in our audience. Arabella Byrd (also a Sarah) then proceeded to stand there and hold the umbrella over our audience for the remainder of the show. I cannot begin to describe how awesome that was.
I will find some way to repay that kindness.
This cast rocks!
This, turned out to be an incredibly fun weekend at the Bristol Renaissance Faire. Despite my back still acting up, I had a great time!
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