Looping the Hen

A Call from the Blue

Received an email and phone call from an old, dear friend today needing some help. Could've knocked me over with a feather. Life is funny sometimes.

Boring!

Per a recommendation from an anonymous user, I did away with the previous picture. I hope this one is better!

Not much going on; met with some friends about a possible investment group.

Broke my first 7:00 minute mile in 15 years; was on my way to doing a 2nd when the treadmill gave out on me. I felt pretty good and could probably do 6:30 if rabid dogs were chasing me.

I plan on going to my first movie in ages this weekend; I haven't checked the reviews and it is probably awful, but I am looking to see Ultraviolet (holy moly, 10% at Rotten Tomatoes), V for Vendetta, or 8 Below, which my father said was great. Or I should go see Night Watch or G-Max is going to blink furiously at me!

I'm too sexy for my shirt...

AKBar and I went to Old Navy yesterday prior to the Mad Dance Excursion to Bar Nasvhille last night; I needed to find a green shirt to wear for St. Patrick's Day. I hesitantly bought a pair of 34x32's (jeans) also (she picked them out, of course!), as some folks have been mentioning that a fair bit of my clothes are looking a little loose. The changing rooms were closed for remodelling or some such, so I had to take them on faith. Happily, they fit perfectly and (I think) look good, and I will be downsizing the rest of my wardrobe for the 2nd time in the last 12 months. I might even need to get a couple of new pics done! I still would like to drop one more size, and that would (unbelievably) put me back into what I was wearing in high school. Go me!

It was one of the best nights out I have had in many years, thanks to my tres cool crew (and the cage/bar dancers didn't hurt). I am typically a wallflower, but there is something about having 3 hot girls pulling one out to dance that is infinitely more inviting than the worry of how foolish I probably look. The only bad part is I missed my race this morning due to a blindingly painful charlie horse that had me unable to think for several minutes; I'm guessing it was a combination of exertion and umm, err, dehydration. C'est la vie.

Are Flightless Fowl Inherently Good or Evil?

I tried to go to this site today at work but it came back as 'tasteless and offensive' or some such. I'm surprised, because the site is a little on the tame side (well, unless you count the pentagram).

(Hat tip to G-Max!)

(Update: Just as an experiment, I tried my site with this post, and it came back as 51% Good and 49% Evil; we're holding a Looping the Hen Revival!)

What I go to school for...

Well, I think it's about that time. I haven't truly attempted college since I left Marist in 1991, although I have taken some courses at various places. It just never seemed the right time to fit it into my life. I give myself about 50/50 odds of getting in, but I am going to apply to Belmont University in Nashville. It is as far as I can tell a very good school, small population, and may be 2nd only to Vanderbilt in TN.

As long as I take a Business focus (blech), my company will pay for up to $10,000 a year, although I would probably only take 2 courses per semester at $390/hour for a total of $7,000 or so.

The thought of going back to school is a little scary as it will intrude on my already-dwindling free time. It should take me until I am 40 or so to finish my undergraduate, grand! (I expect to have about 35 transferrable creds from UConn and Marist)

Still, it's not all grim. I have to admit that the 66/34 female to male ratio doesn't bother me one bit.

Foxy in Dogville

I went through several emotional stages as I watched this frustrating, if entrancing, film. Dogville stars Nicole Kidman as the beautiful Grace, a woman on the run from both the mob and police in depression era Colorado. She makes her way to the near-invisible town of Dogville, a picturesque community nestled in the Rocky Mountains. Immediately she meets Tom, played by the ever-delightful Paul Bettany. He is the resident philosopher and self-proclaimed moral guide of the community; he empathizes with her dilemma and offers her sanctuary pending a town meeting of the 16 resident adults. They give her two weeks to earn her keep and find a place.

The movie is basically a filmed play; sparse scenery consisting of several house frames, a window, a bell tower. In most scenes you can see through to other parts of the town, and what others are doing. At first it was distracting, but the quality of the acting and the focus on the characters quickly envelopes you.

The 2nd chapter lulls you into a sense of security as Grace befriends the town. She becomes well-liked and her job quickly becomes to visit each party in Dogville every day and attend to their various needs. She helps teach a family with 7 children, a handicapped woman with getting around the house while her mother was out, and in the orchard with a rough apple-picker. In the beginning It does not seem much of an imposition, as each family barely scrapes by themselves, and there is not much else Grace has to offer them.

Chapter 3 quickly disabuses the notion of an easy little family film. After the police and mob both show up in Dogville looking for Grace, the townsfolk determine she needs to do more to maintain their protection. Her work schedule is doubled, and contrasting nicely with the easy cinematic flow of her day in chapter 2, chapter 3 is a frenetic jumble of exhausting hours and the beginning of her exploitation by the now not-so-pleasant townsfolk.

Grace's situation rapidly degrades until she is first raped in chapter 6, is bound in chains in chapter 7, and becomes nothing more than an animal. As the story progresses toward its conclusion, she is regularly abused during her working hours and then raped by each of the men in town at night.

At various points in the film I didn't know how to feel; it invoked viciousness toward the townsfolk, and frustration at Grace's passivity. She refused to judge them, even after their vileness bubbled up from below their simple country mannerisms. Were I Grace, I hope I would have gone on a hunger strike, or killed myself, or jumped off the mountain. Every day, Grace simply endured; it was in some moments horrifying.

It didn't help that the movie was just under 3 hours long; still, I stayed up long past my bedtime, convinced that I was witnessing some director's disgusting vision of moral relativism gone wild and an incomprehensible defense of the indefensible. (Unlike many of the folks in Hollywood, some of us redneck folks still believe in right and wrong.)

I won't give away the ending except to say that it involves a sometimes incoherent conversation between Kidman and mobster James Caan. This was perhaps the lowpoint of the movie, if only in that it took a tortuous 3 hours to get there, and I had hoped for a little more.

Still, the finale works well and I went to bed surprised that I could still be surprised by Hollywood. Overall I would give it 4 out of 5 stars, but it is definitely a 'love it or hate it' film.

Happiness is...

Getting your convertible back. She is in better shape than before the GHCS! They had to repaint the hood, so many of the little rock dings that collect over time got cleaned up. I thought about trying to convince them the dings on the driver door were part of the incident also, but t'wouldn't be honest! I had to drop a $500 deductible on it, and another $150 for a rental, but all in all, the experience was not as traumatic as it could be. Dave Ramsey made sure I had an emergency fund to pay for it all in cash.

Score one for frugal!

The Great Hendersonville Crime Spree

Hendersonville is a town very much like Madison, CT or Old Saybrook near where I grew up (I went to HIgh School in Old Saybrook). Slightly upscale, residents very sure of their place in society, good schools; generally a strong middle/upper middle population.

I live in a town, coincidentally, called Madison, TN. It is more like Branford/East Haven. Some good areas, some rough areas, lots of businesses, shopping, and commerce. Generally also (so I've heard) a higher level of crime. In fact, several of my friends regularly refer to my area of town in less than flattering terms. (To be honest, though, Akbar and WCB have every right to, as he was carjacked there)

Thus, one could say I was mildly perturbed when I walked out of AKBar's house in Hendersonville Friday night after Battlestar Galactica to find my car gone from where I parked it. At first I thought it was a joke and someone had grabbed my keys and moved it. I had parked it on the median of their cul-de-sac, on a fairly good decline. In a last ditch attempt to locate my vehicle, I started pushing the unlock button on my alarm. (it has a range of several hundred yards) Much to my surprise, my vehicle was at the bottom of the hill, in front of someone's garage, surrounded by a crowd of people, including a police officer.

Ugg.

As I approached, the officer told me to turn around and he started with the questions. Your car? Yep. Drinking? A couple. You realize your car ran into this person's house? Errr, nope. I tried to remain friendly and keep my humor, which seemed to work, as he lightened up. All this time, all I can see is the back of my car, and horrid images of a crumpled plastic front end ran through my head. I finally got to take a look: *deep sigh of relief*. The damage was minor; my front end was nicked and scraped, a few hood scratches, damage to the rear quarter panel of the other car in the driveway, and several broken bricks on the garage. He shines the light in the car, and the parking brake is definitely engaged. We try to push it. Nada, not moving.

Best as my friends and I could come up with is someone tried to jack my car by popstarting the clutch, ended up failing, the wheel lock kicked in, car rolls at almost a 45 degree angle (that's the hardest part for me to visualize, because the driveway it was in was at a heckuva angle to where I started), bumps the garage, taps the rear quarter panel of the other car with a tire, and rolls back to a rest. Evildoer then has to climb over my seat to get out of the vehicle, because my car was literally no more than 6 inches away from the Camaro next to me. (The mirrors were within 2)

According to the timing that we put together, this happened within 15-20 minutes of me going into the house, and the cop said he had been there at least an hour and had just called the tow truck and was about to put out a hit-and-run notice for me. Double ugg. I am very lucky I was trying to get to bed for my race in the morning, because otherwise I would never have left the house to find out what had happened. I'm not really sure why no one knocked on any doors looking for the owner of the car, but hey, that's just me.

To be honest, the whole thing could have been much, much worse. It was a pretty fancy piece of driving (see below) that kept both vehicles and the house more or less intact. Still, I'll be happy to remind my friends to lock their cars and hide their cats lest they fall prey to the Great Hendersonville Crime Spree.

Looping the Hen Games now online

Cool: Looping the Hen Games is now online. This will be particularly for my D&D group, but on occasion I'll have DDM stuff up there as well, plus any other ultra geeky entries no one else will want to read.

Update: Hmm, not sure, but seems the subdomain is automatically redirecting back to my main site. Working to fix...I'm not sure, but I think typing the url manually (http://games.loopingthehen.com/) might get one there in the meantime. Ugg...or not. Not quite sure why this isn't working. Going back to the drawing board...

Update Update: I rock! Well, no, I'm pretty sure I don't rock (at HTML) and I think I have a horrible file hierarchy system, but it looks fixed. Like a dumbo, when I set up the Looping Games blog, I told it to put everything in the /.../.../.../games folder. But of course, that was really one of my category folders (duh), so I moved everything out of my games category and put it in the gaming category, leaving the games folder for my new blog. Makes perfect sense. Really.

That was harder than it looked!

Okay, that's enough fiddling for now. Mom and Dad get a pic, my links will continue to grow as I add on the sites I actually use or read regularly.

Those 3 very simple changes were the result of around 4 hours of trial and error; HTML has a simple grace when you figure out what it is trying to do, and why. I've just scratched the tip, but I'm much more comfortable poking around now, so maybe in a month or so I'll start looking at a full site redesign, including color scheme, and maybe moving down to only one sidebar to allow the columns to be a little bigger.

All suggestions welcome!

A (C)catholic appeal...

Dad and Tom, you should probably skip this one...;) Racy content ahead, y'all are warned!

God bless 'em. Err, I mean, I was out tonight, when I was accosted by horrid sexist bigotry of the worst kind, proof of the evil patriarchical misogynistic society all around me!

I play poker at Bailey's, a local sports bar, most Wednesday nights. It's free (for the poker), and I get to hang out with friends, enjoy some food and drink, and play some cards. It is usually a fairly quiet affair, with the loudest ruckus caused by the folks watching Tennessee play football or the Pred's playing hockey.

I was having a great day; it was perfect outside, with all remnants of winter barricaded in a back room somewhere, hidden at least until the party guests leave. I washed and vacuumed Luna out for the first time in ages, removing too many layers of grime. (Definitely time for a detailing) So I had the top down and Fall Out Boy blaring on the radio when I drove into the parking lot; it seemed very quiet and I zipped into a front-row parking spot, something akin to some factory workers in Nebraska winning $366 millions dollars. (oh, wait...)

I vaguely remembered earlier in the day that it was Ash Wednesday and the first day of Lent. As usual, I didn't plan on giving anything up; willpower is not one of my stronger suits.

I have to admit I thought I had mistimed Oktoberfest or something when I walked in, as all of the waitresses were dressed to the nines in mini-skirts, stockings and little hot-tops, and many had little pigtails. I'll bet the Hooters' girls down the street looked like amateur pole-dancers compared to the ladies at Bailey's tonight. The waitstaff on poker nights has always been unnaturally attractive, but tonight, well, I thought maybe some terrorist had killed some folks and he was going to cruise by to pick up his virgins.

To be honest, it was vaguely unsettling, as I have a little crush on the waitress that waits on us poker players. I'd never mention it, of course, as she has a nice guy waiting at home. She is sweet, funny, and normally she is lithely attractive; however, today she was 5 feet nothing of pheremone-inducing Lolita. I had to force myself to keep my gaze either over her head or on my food and drink. I heard at least one of the girls was uncomfortable in the outfit, but I'd bet dimes to dollars their tips tonight easily top $200 each.

It's a good thing I ended up going out early (on a horrible full house beat, with me holding 3 Aces), as I know my mind and eyes wander the later the evening gets.

Yes, it was a horrible insensitive sexist ploy to keep the guys drinking and buying. Of course it insults Catholic School Girls everywhere. Of course I am appalled, just appalled!

For some odd reason though...I find myself looking forward to next year. Maybe I'll have something to give up for 40 days by then.

(I just spent a fruitless 10 minutes trying to find a tasteful picture at Google Images to go with this post...but I'm not sure there is one, sorry!)