I'm not a player. I just act a lot.

We had a great turn out for the play this weekend. Thanks a bunch to everyone who came; I am pleased to tell those of you who saw Friday night's show that we had a larger turn-out on Saturday and a turn-out even larger still on Sunday. Most importantly, the seats near the waste pot were filled, which made the poop scene especially effective. (For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I'll fill you in sometime but I want to leave you guessing just long enough to encourage you to come to my next play!)

With rehearsals behind us, I even got to relax a bit this weekend: hanging out with my parents, a meeting of the Dover Single Malt Scotch Society on Sunday, etc. Melisa and I made breakfast and took a walk yesterday morning but by 1:00p, it was back to business. I worked until 9p, watched a few episodes of The Office via the hypernet then went to bed.

I'm at the MIRL now; I have spent most of my day writing a program that will allow me to analyze the poleward power loss of a different type of ultra-low frequency wave very similarly to how I analyzed power loss in the study that I presented at AGU.

I had planned to go for a run yesterday evening (when it cooled off a bit) but the torrential downpour kept me inside. I hope that the weather does not repeat itself this evening.

To bed, I said!

The play is in great shape because we all get along well and we are all having a lot of fun getting it ready. Lab work, thankfully, is also in pretty good shape because I have been going in at late at night for the past few days. It shouldn't surprise you that I actually prefer working at night: the place is quiet and that means I can think easily, talk to myself and pick my nose all I want. With the extra coffee that I have taken to drinking this week (I hope that next week will be quiet enough that I can bring the tolerance level back down), I tend to be in prime thinking mode late in the evening and so going into the lab at 11p to write the program I'm working on now is pretty convenient. The trade-off, of course, is that when I still try to get up at 8 or 9 in the morning, it's not so easy but if I know I'll be going to campus later on, I can spend most mornings reading papers or looking at data here at the Garrison-Hanson Institute while I have my coffee and wake up.

I think I'm babbling. The solution to that is bed. Here go.

What's my motivation?

My friend asked me to play a bit part in his one-act play that shows this weekend, so I learned my line and blocking last Friday and was ready to deliver when the weekend should come. But with one phone call, my one-line extra part turned into one of the principle roles and now I have 4 days to learn it all. Of course, I wouldn't have taken the job if I didn't feel up for it and if I am really excited by the chance to get back into acting. It is fortunate that I essentially play myself: the character (Galindo) is a thoughtful academic who loves telling stories and providing philosophical comfort when his companions are anxious. Also nice is the fact that Galindo has a bum leg, so most of the blocking consists of me sitting on a bunk in the jail cell that is the scene for five out of six acts.

The play is called The Last Week of the Torero, is based on a short story by the same name (written by the same friend) and takes place in 1930s Spain, just as Franco is coming to power. We five have all been thrown into a jail cell and as the play goes on, we learn about each other and the "crimes" of which we have been accused. Let me try to write a more in-depth synopsis some other time; I really need to make the most of my minutes this week and that means that I have to get back to MIRL work now.

Show times are 10:30p on Friday and Saturday, 9:30p on Sunday at the Players' Ring in Portsmouth.

Epic grill win.

Sunday:

I made the guac from scratch using produce from Fiddlehead Market. Erin made pasta salad, grilled the tips and grilled some asparagus. Melisa brought summer squash and eggplant that she had bought at a farmers' market on Saturday. Delish.  There is nothing more to say.

Easy like Sunday morning.

Again, I did laundry on a Sunday morning. I love normal person life! What I ought to have done was to invite my friends up to NL for a laundry party while the 'rents are gone but the thought didn't occur to me in time. Come to think of it, too many of them are working for that to have been feasible...That doesn't seem right. I thought that when I left Friday's, we would all spend every weekend relaxing. Maybe I didn't make the plan clear enough.

Last night, my friend Melisa and I went to Portland and ate dinner at Asmara (51 Oak Street, near Congress Street). Please go there some time. You will thank yourself for having decided to eat a boat-load of delicious food in a messy (hands only!), laid-back setting (it's set up like a cafe), the very sweet woman who waits tables, cooks, cleans and probably does the books will thank you for supporting her small business and I will thank you if you take me along for good luck.

And now, I have reached my computer time quota for such a gorgeous day.

Learning to let go.

It's 4:22p and I have to get ready to head to Portland to play at the North Star Cafe with Moses (we're opening for Dan Blakeslee). The trouble is that I'm just hitting my stride with MIRL work. I went over to Erin's at about 10 to have coffee and bagels on her porch and spent most of the day reading ULF papers over there while we enjoyed the weather. Now I'm all energized and I have to switch into music mode; it sort of reminds me of when I worked at Friday's since this is about the time when I would have to stop what I was doing at the lab to head in for the dinner shift. I suppose the major difference is that I know I'll have fun playing music.

Come to think of it, I really can't complain, can I? It's summer (despite all the recent rain), I do physics all day and play music at night. I have great friends who I see on a regular basis....Finally, after 27 years, I figured it out!

"Don't worry, I won't let it go to my head."

Big day.

I am never sure what the time stamp on these posts tells you but where I sit, the time is 1:50a; I have done lab work for nearly twelve hours today. Of course, they weren't twelve consecutive hours because I took a couple off to shop and make a big pot of (as it turns out, very yummy) gloop from the last of the ham that we had for Steph's birthday dinner. (For the record, the balance of the dish was roasted green chilis, diced tomatoes, sauteed eggplant, green peas, garlic, onion and ziti. I built the sauce from some pork chop bones, veggie broth, tomato paste, tarragon from my window garden and the glaze left after pan-frying the ham, chilis, onions and garlic).

Those bones that went into the sauce came from a dinner I made last night (I am the leftover king) for myself and my friend Melisa: We cooked pork chops and made orzo with cherry tomatoes, tarragon, eggplant and feta. After dinner, we watched Righteous Kill, with De Niro and Pacino (everyone else is an extra next to them). I thought it was great. Russ told me today that the critics panned it but that's fine because I am happy to cross 'movie critic' off of my list of Possible Next Careers.

So like I said, I have been doing MIRL work since 11 this morning because I just had one of those days in which motivation came as heavily as the rain. I also made up for yesterday since Michaela, Erin and I spent a few hours watching Beetle Juice and an episode of the comedy show Little Britain during my "work time."

The late cup of tea is starting to wear off. Onward to tomorrow.

Science Bless America.

Live free or go crazy.

No workation without awesometation.

These are the credos by which I have always lived some parts of my life; this past weekend was some more of those parts. I must apologize up front for having forgotten my camera but there are some pictures on facebook so I will try to put them (or a link to them) here. However, before I do that I have to determine which ones are to be seen so soon by my adoring readership because, as my father always says, "if you don't care who sees the pictures, it wasn't a good party." He does always say that, doesn't he?

Over Saturday and Sunday, my Larry friend hosted the latest in his 2009 line of great hangs: BBQ 4: The Reckoning 3 - Red Dawn, the highlight of which was a fake gay marriage between Nick and his long-time friend Mike. The joke has always been that if gay marriage were to become legal in NH, Nick and Mike would get married so when the marriage bill finally passed, we didn't let the fact that these two had already screwed up everything by marrying excellent young ladies ruin what was meant to be. Another friend, himself gay, took some online justice of the peace course and obtained a marriage license for Nick and Mike; Jill and Larry wrote vows; Michaela baked a multi-layered wedding cake. At 5 pm, after a good crowd had gathered as was preparing to be reckoned, Nick and Mike were led unaware to the center of the lawn and the ceremony was performed before they had a chance to figure out what the hell was going on. Well, in truth, they figured it out pretty quickly so I ought to say that the ceremony was performed before they could stop laughing for long enough to understand the implications. 

All parties happily partnered for eternally (in some complex way that would have Joseph Smith and his golden tablets rolling in his grave), the party began in earnest. We drank wine and beer we ate meat and chili, and we played wiffleball and yard games. Jim and Russ (on guitar), I (on mandolin) and hordes of hangers-out (on vocals) played a very satisfying set of mostly bluegrass numbers.

And on and on...

We woke up at our leisure on Sunday; conveniently, many of us were on a similar leisure schedule and so met at Week's for a huge-gantic breakfast. The day-after hang was equal to the party proper in its ability to provide us the opportunity to sit in the sun, run around just enough to keep the blood flowing and enjoy a wee spot of the dog's hair. In the afternoon, Russ, Nick, Jim and I met a few other friends at the cigar shop for our monthly scotch club meeting (Russ chooses two high-end single malts at the beginning of the month, we vote then contribute money by the end of the month) where we reviewed the Glenlivet 21-year archive, smoked cigars and played video games. This, I have decided, is a much better way to spend my money than watching baseball games at the Brickhouse. Back at Larry's we worked up one last good sweat by throwing around the football, frisbee and a wiffleball....at the same time, a feat that required six people to perfect. Larry made more food and I broke my sandal. Later that night, I went to see the new Star Trek, which was excellent.

I will attribute all productivity this week to the sweet weekend I just had.