I mentioned a while back that Nick Park was producing ten new Wallace and Gromit shorts (each only a minute long), and that they’d be available on the web. Well, the first one’s here!

Now that the events of the last two weeks are over, I get my life back. Starting tomorrow, that is, because right now I’m dead to the world. I deluded myself into thinking that I could come into work today, energized by the conference. It turns out that creatively, I’m energized and ready to do good things but my body is exhausted and demanding some down time. So, that’s what it’ll get. As a reward for making it through and for having everything turn out to be a smashing success, I went out and bought Stronghold, the first computer game that I have bought in three years. My coworker Paul has been raving about this game for months (Speaking of Paul, today he got a big box of honestly named toilet paper.), and at first glance it appears he’s been right. Everything was a smashing success, by the way. The play was wildly well received (even to the point of having to pause for thunderous applause in the middle of a scene. I’d not ever had that happen before. The training conference was a lot of work, but our customers seem genuinely happy and excited about our products. As customer support manager, that makes my job a lot less stressful. So, maybe starting on Monday, this place will turn back into the regularly updated chatty kind of place it used to be. Maybe.

Thank you, Sam Shepard! Thank you! I think it’s time for me to watch this one again. It did wonders the first time around.

So, I guess I’ve neglected to mention that I’ve been working three jobs during the last six weeks. It’s kept me a bit busy lately, and this last week is pushing things to my max. Of course you know about my main job. It’s “Annual User’s Meeting” time again, so I’m busy preparing for that. Next week, I’ll be teaching four classes and giving two presentations. Also, demonstrating software which is only now being written. Consequently, little time at work to write here, much less find interesting sites to comment on later. And then there’s the farm. The summer crops are fading away (though the “Indian Summer” harvest is just a week or two away),and the fall crops are coming in. Chris planted three hundred brassica plants that I bought last week and never found time to plant. They’re mostly broccoli, with a few savoy cabbage, cauliflower, and collards thrown in. The greens are coming in well, and the root crops are starting to form their roots. Meanwhile, we finally (only seven or so months later than I’d hoped) got the chicken pasture fenced off and the barn livable. The pasture is a mix of rye grass, clover, turnips, and the native pasture grasses and weeds, and the chickens love it. So we’re combining the twenty older chickens with the fifty younger ones, ten each day. By the end of the week, all of them will be roaming the pasture by day and sleeping in the barn by night, just as we planned oh-so-long ago. We’ve got capacity for twenty five more or so, but we’ll probably wait until early spring to get them. And the third job? Directing Larry Shue’s The Foreigner for the Cold Sassy Players in Commerce, Georgia. I just realized that I never updated the spot in the side bar on this page specially designed for announcing what my current theater project is, and here it is opening night already. It’s been quite the process getting this show ready. For several reasons, we had less time to rehearse than customary, and many actors had difficulty with lines up until the very end. As often happens, though, it’s all worked out and last night’s dress rehearsal should be a sign of a great run ahead. Commerce is about a half-hour from Athens, where I work in the day, and then about a half-hour from home. So my days lately have consisted of waking up early (usually a half-hour later than I really wanted), going to work, going to rehearsal, and then getting home at eleven at night or so, where some amount of farm work needs attention. Throw in designing a set for Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues , including building a set of trick bunk-beds in our shop, and all my waking hours were accounted for, and then some. So I’ve not been able to write about such things as making spur-of-the-moment tamales from leftover roast lamb and freshly milled stone-ground corn meal in a cabin in the North Carolina Mountains (yes, lamb is great in tamales and yes, you can use good corn meal in place of limed masa meal). Or about seeing the river higher than it’s been all year after receiving over a foot of rain in one week. Or about one of our cats losing her fight against feline leukemia. All the things that this space is supposed to capture to help me remember them some time from now. I’ll try not to get so carried away with work in the future. I must remember I’m not in college anymore. On the plus side, the pay from directing will pay for two 12x48 foot greenhouses so we can start our own seeds and extend the growing season as well as covering most of the tuition for a months-long series of classes on herbalism Chris is taking from a world-renouned herbalist. So that’s something. To make this entry even longer, here’s my director’s notes from The Foreigner ’s program:

The Foreigner is one of two comedy gems written by Larry Shue before he was tragically lost in a commuter plane crash in 1985 at the age of 39. Both explore mistaken and assumed identities. The other, The Nerd , revolves around possibly the world’s worst house-guest with each scene more outrageously funny than the last. I think this script is even better, though it does land a little close to home. The setting is a fishing lodge in southwest Georgia, not too far from Roosevelt’s “Little White House.” The time is about 25 years ago, just before Atlanta became the fastest growing settlement in human history. Two British nationals arrive for a few days, one on a military training exercise and the other, painfully shy and more than a little dull, trying to get away from it all. While doing so, he somehow manages to become someone else entirely – delighting a few locals and angering a few others. That anger ignites a series of events leading to a serious (yet hysterical) test of character. It can be quite fun to become someone else for a while. Doing so The Foreigner ’s way could get a bit stressful. Luckily, there is community theater. These people performing for you tonight have chosen to become someone else for a few hours a night for the last seven weeks. Other people, too, have become temporary carpenters, painters, electricians, sound engineers, seamstresses, and salesmen to make this show happen. Their names are here in the program, and they are likely people you know. When you see them around in their normal guises of students, teachers, laborers, office workers, farmers, engineers, clerks – truly community members all – be sure to thank them for their part in turning this theater into a fishing lodge in Tilghem County, Georgia. They all have been wonderful to work and have fun with. Another show will be happening soon, so if the idea of becoming someone else for a while appeals to you, please come by!

This week is Banned Books Week, and to make the occasion I participated in an all-day reading from banned books at our public library. I read a selection from the classic How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell. Despite the fact that most of the top Google results are for teaching aids for the book, it has been challenged several places recently because it contains a single instance of the word “bastard” and encourages children to do such things as bet and eat worms. Later in the day, I helped perform a scene from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night , challenged because it supposedly promotes a homosexual lifestyle. Just last year, Shakespeare’s works were burned at Christ Community Church in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Don’t wait for next year’s Banned Book Week. Read a banned book today!

Thanks to a heads-up from dear Joleen, I went to see MC Chris perform improv theater with a few other talented fellows. Unfortunately Joel couldn’t be there, but I managed to have a great time anyway. We saw him with Steve and Amy, and Steve had the forsight to make some really slick copies of MC Chris’s on-line CD, so I’m not the proud owner of an autographed MC Chris CD. He didn’t have anything for us to sign, so he had us autograph his arm with out trusty Sharpies. Hopefully, opportunities will arise where I can see him perform from his albums. As it stands right now, he’s in Atlanta, and his band’s in New York. Oh… his next CD is finished and is being pressed right now. It will be available for purchase very soon.

It’s time for my annual “How much of the the first verse of Paul Simon’s Have a Good Time are you?” quiz. Yesterday it was my birthday True I hung one more year on the line True I should be depressed False My life’s a mess False But I’m having a good time True I am 60% of the first verse of Paul Simon’s Have a Good Time. According to my answer sheet, that’s a perfect score!

The B-52’s put on a fantastic show Friday night within the cozy confines of the fabulous 40 Watt. Unfortunately, I was not in attendance. The show was a benefit for Nuçi’s Space, a resource center run by the Nuçi Phillips Memorial Foundation. The foundation provides mental health counceling and other resources to Athens’ musician and arts community. Getting the B-52’s to come back into town was a great thing for them, and they kept it under wraps until a week or so ago. By the time I found out about it (having moved out to the countryside, my finger is no longer on the pulse of Athens’ cultural scene), the few hundred tickets were long gone. So instead of hanging out with the drag queens in blue beehive hair-dos (well, actually I did a little, while having dinner at Clocked a couple doors down from the club), I spent the weekend at home. I did have some farming to do, but weather tried to make up for being absent most of the summer by raining. A lot. We got somewhere over 6 inches of rain over the weekend. I tried to keep track, but the guage managed to overflow at one point. So, little farming got done, but the plants growing had a great time. Instead of working outdoors, I took the opportunity to make three gallons of Irish stout and five gallons of blackberry mead. The stout will be ready in a few weeks. The mead, in a few months (or years … mead is not for the impatient).

If you’re ever in central Missouri, even just driving through, take the time to visit the town of Hermann. It was settled by a group of Germans from Philadelphia in the early 1800’s, who fully expected the town to be even larger than Philly some day. They failed in that aim, but the town itself is quite the charmer. Early architecture abounds and the German heritage is evident everywhere. Before prohibition, the third largest winery in the world was located there. One of the things you’ll discover during your stay was how brutal the feds were in enforcing prohibition: hundred year old vinyards were uprooted and burned, immense imported oak barrels (often carved with scenes fitting for a European cathedral) where axed and destroyed, and wine cellars were blocked off. Nevermind that all of these things had legitimate non-alcohol uses. The wineries have slowly returned over the last thirty years, and all are open for tuors and samples. And, for accomodations, you can’t go wrong with Birk’s Gast Haus, a wonderful (and inexpensive!) bed and breakfast. The hosts there went well beyond the call of duty to insure a comfortable stay and even loaned us bikes to get around town with. There are 40+ B&B;’s in town, but none could be better than Birk’s.

The missus and I are taking to the road again tonight, with a whirlwind trip to Hermann, Missouri and back. One of my best buddies (going back 22 years) is getting married, so there I’ll be. I’m taking advantage of some of the neat toys we have lying around the office, too. For example: a Magellan GPS unit that plugs into my Handspring Visor (a palm pilot-like device) and tells us where we are, were we’re going, and exactly how to get there. With maps and the whole nine yards. I’ve got my laptop loaded with MP3s and audio books, enough to last us for weeks should that become necessary. We’ll be back late Monday. To the deer that have been hanging around the house: you’ve already eaten all of our beans. Please leave us at least some of the squash while we’re gone. Thanks!