Woody Harrelson gets attacked by zombies

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And apparently often, since he mistakes regular people for zombies. Although, something tells me it’s not the first time he has mistakenly think he was being attacked by zombies. Which leads to the obvious question, if a zombie ate Woody Harrelson, would he get high? And should Matthew Mcconaughey be on the lookout for the undead?

Last Thursday I was in D.C. for a software demo and two funny things happened. First off, right as we were about to begin loud sirens began blaring over the phone and a voice announced “Emergency, emergency! Please exit the building!” as if there were some kind of bomb scare or something. I think the guy was trying to tell us that he would call back when he could, but since we couldn’t hear him over the sirens, he just stayed on the phone forever with this message repeating endlessly. I guess it’s not like he went to the bathroom during the demo, but it certainly was interesting.

The second thing that was funny was this guy was giving his part of the presentation and it was B  o  r  i  n  g with a capital B. Everybody was doing the heavy eye, head-bob thing trying to stay awake. Suddenly he stopped talking and then said, “Hold on. My computer fell asleep.” My co-worker almost imploded trying not to laugh. Apparently even technology is not immune to his monotone voice.

I don’t know where she gets this stuff from, but how did I end up with a daughter who asks for her ear drops to be put in her ear and the thing she is most excited about from her Easter basket is her Elmo Toothbrush. She made out pretty good from the whole Easter thing, as Sara said, “She got as much as a normal person should get for Christmas.”

Ice Breaker, part II

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Thanks to a commenter on the first Ice Breaker post, we have a new Ice Breaker game to play!

To be honest with you, this one seemed a lot harder than the first one and I didn’t actually finish it. It picks up where the other one left off, so there aren’t really any easy levels at the beginning to get you in the swing of things. Also, there are new kinds of crazy ice in this one right off the bat.

But, if you enjoyed the first one, there’s no reason you won’t enjoy the second one!

Why they shouldn’t take away my garden

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Just when I start hearing all this talk about “recession gardens”, we have to deal with the bittersweet-ness of working on our garden for the last season. Over the course of a few weekends, we managed to get the old junk all cleaned out and get phase 1 planted, which consists of some lettuce, spinach and carrots.

A couple of details have come out about the reasons for removing the garden, and two points really bother me.

  1. The building which is being built is not actually being built on the site of the garden. Instead, the garden will be the “staging area” for the construction crews working on the new building. This is kind of annoying because you are removing this nice fixture of the neighborhood for something that is inherently temporary. At least if they were putting the building on the site of the garden I could come to terms with the fact that they really just needed that space.
  2. There is quite a bit of irony in the fact that the new building will be designed as a “green” building. So they are destroying a unique urban environment so they can build an “environmentally friendly” building.

I even heard somewhere that the occupants of the new building were told it was a nice location due to the close proximity to a community garden, though I can’t prove that. Oh, the irony.

Anyway, here is a nice article about the garden, including a lot of history.  Of particular note, check out the slideshow of garden pictures. These pictures remind me of how awesome the garden is in summertime and are what kept me going when I was standing in the cold, seeing my breath and breaking up dirt to get ready for planting.

Oh well, it is what it is. At least our garden will rock this year.

Getting Recognized by the United Nations

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Alright, talk about cool! A long time friend of mine received the Global Young Advocate Award from the United Nations! How awesome is that? Details below:

GLOBAL YOUNG ADVOCATE AWARD
Young people around the nation show their commitment to the goals and ideals of the United Nations on a daily basis. UNA-USA is proud to recognize young professionals whose accomplishments demonstrate personal initiative and commitment to the United Nations through the Global Young Advocate Award.

Past Global Young Advocate Awardees have been recognized because of their volunteer activities, workplace initiatives, and social endeavors. They have combined their passion for the United Nations with an ability to motivate others and create meaningful change.

On behalf of the 2009 UNA-USA Global Young Advocate Award Selection Committee, I am delighted to announce Anastasia Shown of the UNA Greater Philadelphia Chapter as the 2009 UNA Global Young Advocate.

Anastasia has lead efforts to reach out to marginalized immigrant communities in Philadelphia, partnered with Philadelphia public libraries and schools to spread awareness about the work of the United Nations, and facilitated exchange programs between educators in Philadelphia and Africa.

We are delighted to be able to honor Anastasia’s efforts, and indeed all of the efforts of the amazing nominees we received for this year’s award. This year’s field was the most competitive yet and we are sorry that we could not offer more than one award!

Elizabeth Latham, UNA National Capital Area
2009 GYAA Selection Committee Chair

Congratulations Anastasia, that is so, so awesome!

In other announcements, Sara has the “skin of a nun”. And this from a dermatologist even! You’ll have to ask her about it, but just to be clear, the quote was in reference to Sara’s skin, not some kind of Silence of the Lambs nun-suit.

Hmm, I can’t end this post on that sentence. Anastasia, I apologize for adding a nun-suit reference to your nice announcement! But, on the bright side, anybody googling “nun skin” will now find this announcement!

Er, the End of a Dynasty

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So, the long running series ER came to an end last week. I never considered myself a hardcore ER person (in fact, in truth, in the beginning I preferred Chicago Hope) but when I stopped to reflect I realized I hadn’t really missed an episode in about 8 years. That is a long time.  Sara, the one who really got me watching regularly, estimates that she has been watching ER for 15 years, which is over half of her life. So the series finale ended up being a bigger deal than I anticipated.

I personally thought they handled it really well. I really loved how they went back to the original intro, even (I’m assuming) shooting footage to insert the newer characters seamlessly. They also went for some odd, dated looking camera work towards the beginning of the episode as an homage to the origins of the series. I also appreciate how they worked in all the old characters over the season. I was really glad that George Clooney made a (brief) appearance in appreciation of the show that launched his mega career. And Julianna Margulies, of course, in appreciation of the show that ultimately launched Ghost Ship.

But by far the best part of the series finale was the re-inclusion of the Eriq La Salle random karate move into the opening credits. This is far and away my favorite part of ER. It was just so unnecessary and unrelated to the show and perfectly timed to the music. I remember when he left ER I said sadly to Sara, “Does this mean they will remove the karate chop from the intro?” Of course eventually they removed the intro all together. So when they showed it in the series finale, I almost jumped out of my chair in joy. No joke! I think I gave some sort of involuntary double fist air pump with a “YES!” when it came on. The rest of the episode went down hill after that.

For some reason it was hearing the music that really meant something to me. They just never play that ER music anymore and hearing it really brought me back. The only thing I didn’t like about the episode was the very, very end when they all like ran outside in this pose like “we’re ready to take on the world” and stood like they were going to take a group picture or something. That was a little cheesy. But overall I enjoyed it and I have found myself thinking about it many times since then, more than I ever guessed I would have.

So, ER, good on you, thanks for the memories.