Mood:
on fireTerribly sorry for the hiatus in posting! It's been a busy holiday season. I'm taking a break from sculpting individual busts of Gerold out of cloudberry gelato for tomorrow night's dinner guests, to hastily check into the Grove and see what's doing. (Actually, I've really been upstairs pulling gunk out of the bathroom sink drain, the pipe of which, judging from its propensity to dam up gross toothpaste water, has been reduced to the diameter of a ladybug urethra).
So, dearest Grovepudlians, how have you been? Well, I trust; and I hope you all had lovely holidays. 2011 arrives with the enticing prospects of Killing Time (assuming the real-life trial wraps up soon) and Oranges and Sunshine. It's been too long since most of us have seen David on screen, though we did get to hear him in Guardians of Ga'Hoole. Here's hoping that Glenn Owen Dodds will circulate more widely, too.
Life proceeds as usual here. This past weekend, I saw "The King's Speech", and I punched my company's founder and CEO. These two events weren't causally connected, and yet both were kind of strangely satisfying.
The CEO-punching is a long story, which is best summed up by "office Christmas charity raffle". You know, the kind where you buy a string of tickets, and co-workers donate prizes, and then there's a drawing. I was hoping for the wine basket or the sailboat cruise on Lake Winnepesaukee, but instead I won "two minutes in the boxing ring with the CEO". Our CEO is a passionate amateur boxer, all sinew and grit, and every year he donates ring time to a lucky sacrificial victim raffle winner. It's not a genuine bout, of course; he doesn't do any punching. He uses it as an opportunity to practice defending himself, while the raffle winner uses it as an opportunity to flop around like a fish, flail impotently against the CEO's washboard stomach, and network.
It wasn't as awful as you might think. The gym instructor was very conscientious about wrapping my hands, showing me some basic punches, jamming gloves onto my fists and shoving me into the ring. Thanks to him, I now know five ways to incapacitate someone. (I'd tell you, but then I'd have to incapacitate you.) It all felt very sweaty and Mark Twight-ish, though I enjoyed bopping the punching bag to warm up.
I'll have to recount the full, exciting tale later, because it's really late, but here's an excerpt from my forthcoming rags-to-riches Rocky underdog memoir:
"Innnnn the white corner, weighing in at 215 lbs...The Executive!"
"Innnn the blue corner, weighing in at One-Dainty-Three-and-a-Half....The Proletariat!"
*ding*
..."That's for not having an independent ISO-9000 certified quality assurance process!" the Proletariat snarled, driving her fist into the Executive's arrogant solar plexus. "And that's for not sufficiently focusing on customer delight!"
Oh my. That's enough excitement for one entry. I don't want to overtax your sensibilities.
On a parting note, you probably heard the kerfuffle in the news last week about how they're moving all the Zodiac signs due to shifting of the magnetic poles, or some such. The constellations no longer match the seasons. Most people have to move back one sun sign and they've inserted a 13th sign into December called Ophiuchus. People with Capricorn tattoos are understandably outraged at now having to be Sagittarii. I didn't quite get the full story: are we expected to change our personalities too, to match our new star signs? I don't know if I can handle being a Gemini, after all these years as a Cancer. It's like having a birthday-change operation. On the other hand, it would be nice to be a zodiac sign that isn't named after a deadly disease.
I seem to recall that under the new system, David would still be a Virgo. Thank heavens some things in this world are consistent.
