Jacqui & Ryan's Midwestern Adventure

New Poem

2010-04-05T06:52:00.000-07:00

We had a really fun poetry event this past weekend at WGC, called Across State Lines. It was a night featuring a bunch of fantastic poets spanning the Ohio Indiana border including Hoosiers Tony Brewer and Joseph Kerschbaum, local poets Joanna Schroder and Rachel Wiley, and Andy Anderson and me.

It was a great time and a lot of fun to hear everyone's work. I hadn't really read in awhile so it was cool to get back up on stage. I ended up reading some old stuff and then some new pieces that I'd never done before.

I hadn't posted in awhile so I thought I'd put up one of the new ones that I did on Saturday:

Grocery Shopping

Strategically sorting we go cavorting
finger tips grazing
produce beaded with fresh spray
Turnips and romaine artificially moistened
gleaming like Big Mac Lettuce

We unconsciously grab staples with ease
bread, milk,eggs, cheese
cart wobbling hands bobbling wondering
if we can afford Gorgonzola

Seconds precious no economy to waste
with army precision we hurtle through linoleum miles
through deli and dairy, can gooded, freezer cased.

There are those items that we can never find.
We think the employees move them in the night like elves.
Deftly dislodging products and shifting shelves.
Laughing through blanks smiles as we beseech them to locate
barley, fried onions, lentils, or coconut milk.

Checkout cuing science applied
ballparking in split seconds the shortest distance to commerce
measuring minutes by inches, by items, by body language of fellow pilgrims.
Line chosen, like marriage for better or worse,
we stand waiting reading Us Weekly, and People
getting our gossip via glossy covers.

Hand in hand we leave, back to life
back to the rough feel of parking lot pavement
ready to chop, stew, slice and spice our way
to sustenance. Victoriously hefting our brown paper trophies
we lock step triumphantly through the woosh of glass doors
Horizontal panes parting submissively
in the wake of our comestible supremacy.
We exit, conquers into the sunlight.

Now, where the hell did we park?

Captain!

2009-12-14T07:16:00.000-08:00

So I know they're late in coming, but I thought I would finally post some pics of our little buddy. These are from this past fall when Jac and I took a trip to Michigan to visit my bro at college. My sister snapped these pics and kindly sent them to me labeled "Adorbes Photes" an abbreviation I thought quite nice. In any case here he is in all his tiny glory.

Things lately (ish)

2009-10-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

Someday, in the future, when our brains are half computers, we'll simply be able to think our blogposts and BLAM there they'll be uploaded and ready to go. There won't be any of the annoying lag time between posts, no, it'll be a constant stream of witty, insightful, poetic, and captivating notions all integrated seamlessesly as we munch our morning cereal. Sigh.

Until then I must do better about writing on here from time to time. I like it when I do it, so here goes: some new things going on in the lives of Ryan and Jacqui.

Captain
We've got a new little buddy to keep us company. He's a 3 month old dachsund named Captain and he's really, pretty fantastic (more and better pictures coming soon!). We got him from a rescue place up near Toledo in late September, and so the past few weeks have been at equal turns fun and challenging He's a total puppy and goes from completely unconcious with weariness to racing around like a torpedo and chewing everything he can get at. He's been great at making friends with people and we love him a lot!

Whistling in the Dark
Jacqui and I, along with our friends Karl and Jessie, are working behind the scenes on a play! It's a ghost play called Woman in Black and is being put on by some friends of ours who started this really great theatre company in town called Whistling int he Dark Theatre. It's felt really good to get back to working on theatre and Wild Goose Creative has more coming this winter with a partnership with the guys at Whistling for their Christmas show Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol, should be a good time.

Our House
I realized I never really blogged about it, but WE BOUGHT A HOUSE. Of course this was back in July so some of the newness has worn off, but surprisingly it still feels like we're settling in, in a good way, and making it home. It's in a great part of town on a quiet (except for the occasional train) little street called Como. Built in 1942 it's a three bedroom brown cape cod. Some of our favorite parts are the little sunroom off our bedroom, the screened in porch off the sunroom, the great backyard off of the porch (it's a little cozy labryinth), and the finished basement. We love having people over so feel free to invite yourself over anytime...

Free Beer, Free Food, Great Music

2009-08-13T04:33:00.000-07:00

Join us for a special concert, one night only!

August 15, 2009 • 8pm

Tickets at the Door • Pay What you Want • KIDS any age FREE

FREE FOOD and BYOB or enjoy FREE BEER on us! Sponsored by PBR!

Morgan Foster, and father, Joe Foster, join us to share a night of new songs, old standards, and great stories.

Lead singer of the popular Chicago based band Common Shiner, Morgan Foster is no stranger to the spot light having played in some of the Windy City’s most celebrated venues. Foster’s songwriting, which has been described as “heartfelt…epic but humble, and full of stories that draw you in and make you listen up.” with lyrics that have a “pop sensibility, that people can really latch on tom,” is beautiful and sure to be a highlight.

Dad, Joe, is no slouch either, originally hailing from the east coast and now a folk charmer throughout southwest Michigan, Joe plays some of the best old timey folk tunes you’ve ever heard. Joe is also a fantastic storyteller weaving in a fascinating and hilarious anecdotes between each song.

In this rare joint show both will bring their own unique style and presence to the stage as they offer up an evening unforgettable stories and tunes.

Bacon Poem

2009-08-03T11:35:00.000-07:00

This is a new poem that I wrote for Bacon Camp, an event that happened at Wild Goose Creative this past weekend. It was a celebration of all things bacon, including over 15 different food entries, craft and art pieces, and many, many pounds of bacon.

As part of the event I was asked if I would write some bacon slam poetry, which was ridiculous and fun. In a rarity of photographic fortuitousness you can actually see a picture of me performing this very poem live here. I love Emma, who wandered in during the middle. There is no doubt she upstaged me with her unbearable cuteness, a fact which I am perfectly okay with :)

Bacon Days

The pop of the grease nearly making me blind
worth the barrage of hot spit
just to sit and hear it sizzle
memories turning in the back of my mind.

Saturday morning cartoons
and dad’s famous eggs
which in life I was later to learn was
simply achieved by the addition of
Velveeta cheese and a dash of milk
yellow smooth like silk
as he whipped the yolks to a froth
and scrambled his way to family legend.
Easy trick, but he never let on,
content for our humble adoration
as we praised his culinary creation.

Truth be told though we were just being nice,
lauding the scrambled centerpiece
but all the while eggs, an after thought
our hickory smoked brains waiting for the slam and sizzle
on the griddle for the thick cut slices to reign down
and generously fill our bellies with
sweet and salty sustenance.

It was and is still true that there is
never
enough
bacon.
It’s a statistical, empirical fact.
It’s salt, it’s fat, it’s smoke, it’s crunch, it’s chew,
and you
you can always eat one more half morsel,
savor one more partial slice poached from a friend’s platter
or rejoice over one more unearthed crumble
hiding like pink gold glistening like
Yukon treasure from under the toast or hashbrowns
boring bedrock concealing a coveted gem
ready to be mined.

Just briefly, I’d like to pause this poem
for a quick public serve announcement
And it is this:
If you out for breakfast and it comes times for a sausage vs. bacon decision,
Always get the bacon. There are no exceptions to this rule.
To take it a step further if they should
give you the choice to mix and match
do not be fooled.
Always get ALL bacon.
In the moment there might be some deluded part of you that thinks
“Hey, what’s the harm in mixing it up a little?
A little bit of this, little bit of that, little sausage, little bacon.”
Wrong.
You will always be disappointed.
And you will treat the sausage differently,
covering it syrup, pushing it around your plate,
silently wishing that you’d just done
what you knew in your heart was right.
And that’s just not fair to sausage.
Sausage has it tough enough as it is
simply by virtue of it
not
being
bacon
without you and your false hope.
This announcement was brought it to you by
you guessed it
Bacon.
Back to the poem.

l feel it now like nostalgic smoky potpourri
(or maybe pork-pourri?)
hand turning over handle
cast iron sizzle pop blanketing my house
with the fine aroma of
summer vacation
of snow day,
of honeymoon
of those secret mornings where
there is enough time
to forgo granola
pass on the poptart
take a sabbatical from cereal
and snuggle deep under the covers
for 10 more minutes
before you can’t take it
and you need to go find
and embrace
whoever is making your brain
explode with goodwill, joy and
holy culinary reverence
towards breakfast,
towards your fellowman
and towards the world.

New Poem

2009-05-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

Untitled

My breath hits the glass and the molecules collide.
There is carbonated death in the air as
atoms twist and condense between streetlights.
and through windows warfare sparks in the millimeters between souls.

I’ve traded in circles of light for smoke,
walking down crooked sidewalks with
burlap sacks of ash and soot,
scattering filament and fog over the shoulders of strangers and lovers alike.
Once perfect photons tarnished, collapsing into neon knots
and phosphorescent ghosts.

In the middle of the day
we wake to dreamy silence deafened by the
heavy weight in our brains, wearing chemicals
like overcoats, enthralled with the backside of shadows,
trying to look underneath and peel back electrons from thin air.

I have given too much and asked for too little.
Accustom to the haze I shield my eyes from the blinding blaze
and wait for morning to come.

On your mark, get set....

2009-04-06T05:55:00.001-07:00

Each year down in Buda, TX there is a fun little event know as the Buda Wienerdog races. This is their poster for this year. Enough said really.

The reasons I'm up on the latest news about an obscure animal sporting event down in Texas sadly, are multitudinous, however they are in no small part to due to my purchasing a little ground breaking film I purchased for Jacqui's birthday last year. Brilliant on so many levels it's been a real driving force in changing the face of modern cinema.

One of these days I'll get down to Buda and take in the festivities myself. Road trip anyone?

Post card

2009-03-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

This is a poem I wrote a few weeks ago. Still thinking about it and not quite sure what to make of it/if I like it/if it works. It was in response to a poem Andy had written about an existential walk across a parking lot with someone you love.

Postcard

The first postcard came last week.
Know this: I love you
Was all it said.
In oddly elegant script.
I reread the address sure of an error.
But no, there was my name.
Unable to simply recycle the sentiment
I tacked it to my bulletin board.

Two days later
lonely and three quarters drunk.
my legs twitched to the rhythms of
a crowded room.
The walls were buzzing and muffled
with evaporating expectations
as bodies shuffled, waiting,
glances glancing of armored imaginations
strangers hating to make indirect eye contact.
My vision glazed I swept carelessly
from corner to corner.
when I was suddenly frozen by her smile.

Confused I smiled back
and the intensity of her grin increased
wide, friendly and inviting
her face expanding like
a time lapsed flower inclining towards sunlight
a lopsided and stunning grin
that hit my heart just left of adolescence.

She smiled like she knew me. Like she loved me.

I looked away
Suddenly swept away with friends and motion
filling the inane quotient
of half finished conversations.
And when I looked back she was gone.
My chest heaving, slightly panicked
like a child who’s hand has slipped from a firm grasp
I scanned the faces for hers
and finally silent saw her disappear out the front door of the bar
a red winter hat lost in a sea of bobbing bodies.

That night I re-read the post card
thinking hard, reconstructing lost minutes
hopelessly grasping at the cold
thin straws of memory.
And behind rational thoughts in the secret room
where your heart makes admissions
without consultation
through the foggy breath of and what if calculations
I began to wish that
this stranger
with the brilliant, knowing smile
had carefully lettered each word.

A week later I found out through friends
that they had received similar cards.
A sadly conceived marketing scheme
from a national soft drink company.

Bastards.

I don’t know why but I kept the card,
carefully filing it away between
tax returns and tattered warranties,
both a trinket and a monument,
like a hopeful nesting bird
saving string, and flowers
storing up for spring.

Over the Counter

2009-02-12T07:39:00.000-08:00

Last Spring my friend Andy Anderson and I started a poetry conversation project. Basically we wanted a way to write more and wanted someone to collaborate with. The concept was simple: he would write a poem and I would have 48 hours to respond using his poem as a starting place for inspiration. We’d then go back and forth.

We did well for awhile. We were sticking to it and getting into a good rhythm. A bit about the project with a portion from the earlier section of our conversation was even selected for print by a monthly journal. Then the fall hit and things got a little crazy.

Now we're back writing with a new commitment to the 48 hour rule. It's been fun so far and given me a chance to write about things I would never have thought to write about. This is a new poem I wrote in response to a poem Andy wrote about people playing an aggressive game of marbles at work. Enjoy!

Over the Counter

I woke, surprised to find that my head weighed close to 200 pounds.
I craned my eyes toward the dial on the bathroom scale again.
Yes, it was as close to accurate as bathroom scales get.
203 pounds…and a little bit.
Maybe a 1/6 of an extra line.
You know how bathroom scales can be.

Thinking back I wish I’d read the caution label
before I’d purchased the nasal spray.

Stuffy and congested I had liberally squeezed
an inexact amount of the rose scented liquid up each nostril.
I had gone to sleep my sinuses feeling open and lofty
ready to intake and push out air in their usual manner.
Before drifting off I made a few mental notes,
about the sprays general attributes—rating it’s overall effectiveness,
ease of use, and pleasant scent—on a scale I’ve devised
for all over the counter nasal products.

The next morning , my alarm sounding fuzzy and odd,
I found I could not lift my head
more than a few centimeters above my pillow.
Slowly I rolled out of bed, sliding down head first
until my face rested on the floor.
With effort I propelled myself across the floor to the bathroom,
my forehead sliding smoothly across the floor
with a hollow slipping noise.

Luckily the bathroom scale was just inside the door.
After taking some estimated cranial measurements
(You know how bathroom scales can be)
I remembered the spray and thought to read the label.
Knocking it down from the counter
with a firm kick to the base of the sink I read the warning:

“CAUTION: May cause, headaches,
blurred vision, ‘Marble Head’, and fatigue.”

I sighed. This was just my luck.

I hate being fatigued.

Hoke Update

2009-02-06T11:09:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I last posted. A lot has happened in the past few months so I thought I would give a brief update on what's been going on lately.

December came and went with a flourish--travels to Vancouver, Christmas, and snow storms a plenty. Then the New Year's Festival happened. Woo boy. Howdy. It was awesome, crazy, fun, and exhausting all at the same time. I can't wait for next year.

January was tough. A week into January we had one of the saddest weeks of our lives when we said good by to Oscar, our amazing, beautiful, 12 year old wiener dog. Due to some aggressive back issues in the course of less than a week he went from happy and healthy to unable to walk. We tried surgery and for unknown reasons there were complications. He passed away in our arms on January 10th. The following weeks were hard as we grieved. He was my dog from childhood and Jacqui had loved him as if she'd known him all his life. He was the best one, part of our family, and we miss him a lot.

February has been good so far. Cold, icy, and good. Jacqui had her first snow day since starting her new job at Franklin University, and who doesn't love a good snow day? Since then Columbus has been a sheet of ice but today, TODAY, the sun has come out and I can see steady drips from my office window. It's warming my heart.

I'll making a February 6th Resolution to write on this blog more. It's fun for me and I don't do it enough. Stay tuned...

Laugh! Tonight!

2008-11-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

Exciting night tonight! Wild Goose is featuring Nathan Smart and Matt Eyer, some awesome stand up comedians. Jessie and I met with Nathan for coffee over a year ago to talk about featuring him for a Third Thursday and it's so cool to have he and Matt finally perform! The days have been feeling a little gray lately here in Columbus, so some comic gold made be just what I need. If there's anyone out there who still reads this here blog and you want something fun to do tonight you should come!

http://www.wildgoosecreative.com/Wild_Goose_Creative_|_Home.ht ml

Fall update/Art of the Harvest!

2008-10-15T13:46:00.000-07:00

Lot's of stuff going on lately! Busy past couple of weeks. We spent a lot of nights and days getting the Wild Goose Creative space all ready and it looks awesome, trucked up to Calvin College lead a writing workshop and attend a play festival, came back for our first big event, and saw our friends in Common Shiner finish their Midwestern tour.

And that was just one weekend!

This weekend we've got the Circleville Pumpkin Show and an apple picking adventure but before then we're gearing up for this month's Third Thursday: Art of the Harvest! It's an awesome mix of all things autumn: pumpkin carving, spice blending, story telling, music, and of course cider and pumpkin pie!

Date: Thursday, October 16
Time: 8:00pm
Location: 2491 Summit St (our new space!)

Come out and join us--it's going to be an awesome night!

For more details check out the Wild Goose Creative website.

Whew! Fall is shaping up to be a busy but amazingly cool season so far!

On looking forward

2008-08-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

I once heard that people who are emotionally healthy tend to build things into their lives that they can look forward to. The idea went that its good to have something both short term and something long term on the horizon that you're anticipating with excitement. I think I would tend to agree. I feel like having something fun to eagerly await makes the stressful parts of my life more bearable.

I have just such an event coming up in in about a week. I'm going on a 5 day trip to Stratford, Ontario with Jacqui and two of our best friends in the whole world. We're going rest, relax and enjoy the Stratford Theatre Festival, one of the biggest theatre festivals in all of North America. I've been craving some good theatre and we're seeing what promises to be a host of quality plays including Hamlet, Alls Well that Ends Well, The Taming of the Shrew and Moby Dick.

Jacqui and I went last year for our two year anniversary and it was an amazingly fun grab bag of adventure, excitement and rest. We had so much fun that we wanted to share it and thus the group road trip this year.

Stratford is a great city smack in the middle of nowhere, nestled in the rolling farmlands of Ontario. Oddly enough it has a interesting hodgepodge of British influenced architecture and culture and healthy dose of rural folksiness making for quite the mix of cultural offerings. Last year on the same day we went to the Ontario Pork Congress in the afternoon and saw Othello in the evening.

Good times.

We'll try to take some pictures and post on our Canadian adventures when we get back late next week!

Something Awesome

2008-07-31T08:49:00.000-07:00

This is one of my new favorite things. So fun, funny, touching and musically sound. And Neil Patrick Harris...amazing...and horrible...horrible and amazing.

Most of the world already knows about this I'm sure but in case not I thought I would post the link so you to can experience the greatness.

http://drhorrible.com/

Check it out. You won't be sorry.

3 Years Ago Today...

2008-06-11T10:42:00.000-07:00

72 POUNDS of Strawberries!

2008-06-09T11:18:00.001-07:00

Yesterday along with a dozen friends Jacqui and I helped pick 72 pounds of strawberries from a nearby farm. It was humid, hot and a lot of fun. With all the nimble hands helping out we picked our pecks in just over an hour!

When we went for our weigh in at the cash register it felt like some surreal reality TV show. Depending on the weight each box of strawberries weighed was greeted with wild cheers or mild disappointment when the measurements were announced. I don't think they get many people that excited about the strawberries they pick out at the Circle S Farms.

When she saw our enthusiasm the lady helping tally our bill got in on the fun and asked if she could take our picture for their website (stay tuned to http://www.circlesfarm.com/strawberries.html).

After our picking frenzy we headed to the Dekker's House to make about 10 gallons of delicious homemade jam. Is there anything better than that?

Mustard Poem

2008-05-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

I wrote this to help kick off our last Wild Goose Creative, Too Many Cooks! event which was completely mustard centric. It was quite the evening: fun, frivolity and copius amounts of mustard!

Mustard Poem
by Ryan Hoke

I still remember the sandwich.

Turkey on rye with lettuce, tomato, and sprouts.

Ladies and Gentlemen please hold on to your krauts,

because The Sandwich wasn’t the interesting part.

Meat and bread aside, I was intent on the thin 1/8 inch line

resting just below the tectonic surface of the marble rye.

I lifted the crust and examined the layers

like a sandwich archaeologist

looking for clues about a past civilization:

tiny, round, seed shaped men doused in vinegar and spice,

everything nice, set to anthropologically entice

my palette.

I bit down and felt the creak of the lettuce

and then heat and pain coursed through

my sinus cavities like river rain

over dry creek beds.

And then it was gone.

Evaporated.

Up and gone like a great glass elevator

breaking through the blinding atmosphere

into the round mellowness of space.

From there it was over. I was hooked.

I think I off handedly mentioned it to a friend.

Not a casual acquaintance. But a closer more intimate association.

You don’t just mention these things to your librarian

or your accountant.

You need a level of off handed understanding

where mundane revelations

are made casually

like the accumulation of pocket lint.

My bank teller would not due,

no I needed a condiment confidant

who would hear and affirm my new love

like an understanding priest.

“I think I like mustard” I said.

“Cool” He replied.

Innocent beginnings but more was to come.

Specialty food devotee, Mustard Aficionado,

brave with condiment bravado.

That’s what it was. I was that guy. I now had a thing.

Some people have wine.

and wax poetic about vintage and varietal.

Some have chocolate in mind, some sea salt brine

Rare cheese, Chinese teas

maple syrup fresh from the trees.

Some single malt. It’s not their fault.

They just have a thing.

That’s what it was. I was that guy. I now had a thing.

A casual enthusiast, a weekend mustard warrior,

seeing the world through yellow tinted lenses,

I tended towards the exotic. French’s yellow squeeze bottle,

drying, dying at the back of the fridge on the left

didn’t live up to expectations,

wouldn’t come close to fulfilling my desires,

couldn’t do the job,

just didn’t cut the…the…

you get the idea.

In the end my taste buds held caucuses

recommending their favorite candidates.

Taste bud rhetoric can be intense

and my proletariat palate rose up and over threw

my callous bourgeois inhibitions.

My menus read like a tour of nations

supporting my all consuming inhalation of

mustard lucky charms

each pretentiously delicious.

Lime infused, palm branch mustard

with tomatoes sun dried to perfection

during a solar eclipse.

Moroccan horseradish mustard

with tarragon and fresh zested mango.

Wild flower and honey mustard

made from pollen harvested from

rare bees from the wilds of Czechoslovakia

fed a steady diet of coca cola and brown sugar.

And the gifts. Oh the gifts.

Friends on vacation perusing the shelves

of local merchants

looking for non perishable,

souvenir comestibles to bestow on me.

Now I like mustard but…I only eat so many sandwiches,

dip so many pretzels,

eat so many spoonfuls out of the jar for breakfast.

I was only one man.

One man in the fight his life for refrigerator space.

“We can do without milk right” I asked my wife

as I wedged a bottle of chipotle endive mustard

in beside the butter.

I put down my crowbar

and met her stone ground silence.

That night in the trivial pursuit

of refrigerator real estate

I was forced to choose between a hand ground,

balsamic glazed, caper infused, wasabi encrusted,

Dijon, aged in ice wine barrels for 37 days

and a delicate, lilac and lavender laced

licorice infusion

shaken on a 80 degree angle,

in a wind tunnel by Bavarian monks for a fortnight.

No man should have to make that choice.

Later as I crafted a sandwich, a thin lettuce and turkey affair

nestled between two slices of pumpernickel,

I gently applied that 1/8 inch of whole grain glory

just below the surface of the bread.

I bit down and felt the familiar sweet heat

and then felt it evaporate

up and gone

like a great glass elevator

breaking through the blinding atmosphere

into the round mellowness of space.

Spring

2008-04-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

Man am I loving spring. Last night I was out on the side walk at 10:30 or so and it felt perfect to me. The trees smelled amazing, the temperature was lovely, the night was quite. I love the in between seasons so much.

It's amazing to me that each year that we (or at least those of us fortunate to get 4 distinct seasons...sorry San Diego) react to the change in season as if it's the first time it's ever happened. You'd think we'd get used to it; that it'd be come common place. But no, every year people get excited about the end of winter and the advent of Spring. It's not just Spring either, excitement over seasonal change seems to happens between every single season: People waiting for the heat of summer, the change in the air and the autumn leaves in fall and of course the first snow as we slide into winter.

I love that. For some reason I like that, in general, from children to grandparents, that we're still surprised, still expectant, still excited about change even if it is just the weather.

Some Unrelated thoughts

2008-02-13T08:47:00.000-08:00

1. The other day on my way to work Jacqui and I were pulling up to a Honda Accord. Not just any Honda Accord though. This car was special.

To start it was bubble gum pink. Not a sophisticated salmon, not a metallic coral, not funky fuchsia. Straight up Hubba Bubba pink with matte finish. To further things it boasted a MASSIVE but snazzy spoiler on the trunk. To top things off it also sported an ever so tasteful "PRINCESS" decal emblazoned on the rear window in frilly script.

"What spoiled teenager got her daddy to pay for this?" I wondered as we approached. However as we pulled up next to the the Lisa Frank-mobile I was shocked to find a young, steely eyed, scruffy looking dude at the wheel.

I love it when I'm surprised like that.

2. There was a time in my life when I was really excited for them to make a sequel to The Mask. It's funny how your entertainment priorities shift.

3. The other day at Staples I purchased a laminated wall calendar. The specs: 2ft x 2.5ft. Blue and white. Easy to write on with dry erase markers. Oh yeah...AND IT COST TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS!

I'm sorry Staples but...it's a piece of PAPER covered in PLASTIC!

Unfortunately there wasn't another product I could substitute for my wall calendar needs so I had to fork over the cash. If you ever wondered how Staples is staying in the black I'm betting it's the shrewed business model of: SCREW THE WORLD ON LAMINATED WALL CALENDARS.

I'm looking into pricing out my own personal laminator and a giant roll of butcher paper and going into business. RYAN'S LAMINATED WALL CALANDER BOUTIQUE: 23.99 each! Cheaper than Staples! RUSH IN TODAY!

First Genuine Pet Peeve of 2008

2008-01-11T11:49:00.000-08:00

When I've just called some sort of reception desk and the person working the desk transfers me without waiting for me to finish my sentence of explanation.

Example:

Them: Thanks for calling Rude Imporium how can I help you?

Me: Hi there. I don't know who the best person to speak with is but I think I need to get in touch with Dr. Johnathan Explodinghead. I'm calling from--

Them: JUST A MOMENT.

CLICK

and then I'm transferred.

Then after waiting for Dr. Jonathan Explodinghead's voice mail to pick up I realize that he may not have been the best person to speak with. So I now need to call that same receptionist back to try and explain my story to them yet again, praying that they won't machine gun transfer me again.

This happened 4 times yesterday when all would have been solved had the person on the other end of the line actually taken 10 more seconds to hear me out.

FRONT DESKS OF THE WORLD: MORE PATIENCE PLEASE in 2008!

Christmas Poem

2008-01-07T07:47:00.000-08:00

I wrote this a few weeks ago for a Christmas Presence, a Wild Goose event. It was really cool. It was a basically a night of stories, poetry, musicians, all in the hopes of ushering in the Christmas Spirit. I don't know about everyone else but it did the trick for me. Afterwards I was feeling nice and rosy and comfy cozy. God Bless us Everyone!

As a child

Christmas morning in my family

was like the second coming of Jesus.

Which is interesting theologically.

An Armageddon of gifts

would trumpet themselves

into our tiny worlds and

a day long bow and tinsel extravaganza

would rapture our toy addled brains

until we’d slowly emerge from under a mountain of

tape and tissue paper.

This is not to paint a rosy

picture of family Christmas

akin to greeting card fodder

with pristine Polaroids

of matching sweater vested,

family crested,

nuclear household bliss.

It was more like nuclear war,

with squabbles evaporating

and seasonal tension escalating

turning the hap-hapiest season of all

into an a walk through a more

atomic winter wonderland.

But Christmas morning was special.

It was a canvas to paint on.

It was blissful hours of build up

where as kids we could act like children

as we pulled and prodded candy from stocking toes

and ripped decorative bows

and watched the way laughter grows

when people are generous with their hearts.

Childhood raced past though.

Now I was 20, half child, mostly man,

and Christmas morning was upon us in full force.

We were breaking for a leisurely 2pm breakfast

stretching our couch weary legs.

A glacier of wrapping paper was

slowly inching it’s way across the living room

digging out great lakes and tundra of carpet

in it’s rustling wake.

When mid stretch

like a snowball tossed carelessly my dad

says “We’re out of pop. I think I’ll run out and grab some.”

Pop?

In the middle of Christmas?

Now understand that my dad’s pop

needs were not to be taken lightly.

The sweet nectar of Diet Pepsi drew him

like a mutant honey bee

to drain countless cups--

big gulps saved from previous fountain excursions

fizzing to the brim with ice and aspartame.

But now?

In the middle of present extravaganza 2001?

the biggest post Y2K gift exchange the world,

or at least the mid west,

or at least our living room,

had ever known?

He was not to be persuaded.

He trundled out into the icy world

intent on seeking out with vain hope

the one convenience store

open on December 25^th.

The door slammed and out he went

to roam the blustery

ice slick roads in search of festive two liters,

holiday holy grails,

leaving us feeling Pepsi Challenged.

Twenty minutes later he arrived home.

The door slammed as he

festooned the vestibule with a cloud of profanity

Inventive exclamations

colorful enough for the holiday season.

“Go look at the CAR!”

He implored through venom and vitriol.

We trekked to the drive way

hot feet crammed awkwardly

into laced shoes

walking like bow legged penguins

to survey the vehicle in question.

The sight we were met with

shocked and awed our addled minds

here was a sight that did not fit

the pleasant picture of

Christmas morning niceties.

There sat the Camry with a

massive crushed indentation,

a perfect frontal perforation,

that split station wagon

down the center like a Christmas ham.

We sat in the frigid wind gaping.

Apparently in his quest

to find the effervescent elixir

my father had skidded

and hit the thinnest obstacle available.

A cable stretched tight for telephone pole support

had cleaved the family car in twain

like industrial dental tape

flossing

our two ton, maroon molar

at 30 miles per hour.

By the time the police showed up

we knew this would be

a Christmas morning to remember.

The officer was cordial

grabbing details like a harried magpie

collecting tib-bits.

“What were you headed out for exactly sir?’ he probed.

“Oh you know…” said my dad casually.

“Supplies…”

The officer nodded knowingly.

Post police we tried to nestle back into our routine

but like naked children

into too tight wool sweaters

the morning didn’t fit right anymore.

Never fear though.

Thoughtful parents quick to recover

brought out the big guns.

The hidden presents,

the high octane,

come find me in a different room

sort of presents,

were skipped to

like the best song on your favorite holiday mix.

The plebeian socks and underwear

left under the tree for later scavenging,

we made our way to basements

closets and crawlspaces

to retrieve the gargantuan gifts.

Forever known etched in my memory as

“The Christmas dad went for Pop”

Semicolon subtitle: “Christmas with a Cop”

The Yule legend was further cemented

when a mere day later

dad innocently said

“We’re out of Pepsi. I think I’ll just go out real quick”

Minutes later we found ourselves digging

the cleaved nose of the previously damaged Camry from a

Everest sized drift.

Since then , come Christmas,

we always make sure to have

pop a plenty on hand.

Another Pie Poem

2007-11-19T08:50:00.000-08:00

Here's another pie related poem I wrote and got to perform for October's Third Thursday. I had a lot of fun writing this one.

Pie eating contest.

Mrs. Pollard, my fourth grade teacher,

in her infinite wisdom,

instituted bi-weekly pie eating competitions.

Where this unbridled and frenzied consumption of calories and sugar

fit into an age appropriate educational curriculum

is a mystery.

A sweet

and lovely mystery.

You are looking at the year long,

undefeated, 1990,

Pullman elementary,

4^th grade,

pie eating champion.

I have a t-shirt designed all planned out.

Later in life I imagined Mrs. Pollard placing

bets on us with the other teachers.

“Who won today?”

They’d ask.

Hearts pounding.

A March Madness style,

pie related, betting pool

in the lounge,

money exchanging hands.

Pie day

would arrive

feeling like half a birthday

or an 1/8 of a Christmas.

Brown school paper towel

carefully torn,

boasting enough space for pie shrapnel ,

delicately placed.

Around the table

steely eyed combatants:

friends, bullies, nerds

future nerds, wall flowers, class clowns,

bad kids, good kids.

All of them Suckers.

I’d eye them, sending out aggressive 4^th grade vibes.

Pre-testosterone warnings,

“You don’t know me!” my eyes would say.

“Don’t mess with me.

I will mess you up.

I am bad ass, pie eating robot!”

Hostess lunch box pies

primary color,

wax paper wrappers,

glistening with promise

like sugar glazed pocketbooks.

Pies

would cascade in cavalcade of dull thuds

onto the table.

I’d eye my pie. My tiny will straining

towards the predestined

deep fried confection.

Vanilla. I always chose vanilla.

Pudding charged pastry

don’t be hasty

set down with precision

unwrapped with affection

placed just so.

Waiting for go.

Hands were not allowed.

They were locked like

honor system pretzels behind backs

No hands,

this was the feral feel

of straight mouth to pie frenzy.

All eyes waiting

for the big hand to get to the 6.

Waiting.

Blood racing,

boasting adrenaline levels not attainable in adult life

5, 4, 3, 2, 1

GO!

A proud 48.25 seconds later

I emerge from a filling crust and haze

the reigning king

of consumption, the

the thoroughbred of the teacher’s lounge

betting pool.

I’d like to think that Mrs. Pollard,

or a least Mrs. Pollards’ bookie,

always doubled down on

my name when pie day arrived.

And later in life she retired early

because of her vast winnings.

That year I had to memorize multiplication tables

including 11’s and 12’s.

Joni Willingham, prettiest girl in the 4^th grade,

broke my heart.

Twice.

Once on the playground.

Once in a note.

And I was forced to oldest child adjust

to a 1990, new brother baby.

All I can say is,

the pie certainly helped

A poem!

2007-11-12T07:11:00.000-08:00

In effort to post more I thought I'd put up some of the other writing I've been doing lately. This is a poem I wrote for a Third Thursday, a monthly Wild Goose Creative Event . This was read as people ate freshly baked apple pie.

Grandma’s pies

My grandma
never baked pies.
Not that I can remember

She made egg strata
ocean sized dishes
with tiny sausages buoys.

She made almond kissed Christmas cookies.
Santa Claus cut outs laced with addictive sprinkles.

She made clam chowder
served in metal bowls
and potato casserole
one half thick with onions
the other with out
a thin tooth pick dividing
like the mason Dixon line’s
casserole cousin
joking uncles would shuffle the pick
and watch culinary Gettysburgs ensue

And jam
She made jam.
Oh she made jam!
Cold jam in foil covered freezer jars.
The size and shape of bazooka shells
pressed into our eager hands before we went home.
Ready to detonate.
Pectin sweet
fruity treat.
tasting like heat
like summer
like being “this” many.

My grandma was the president of jam.
Elected by the people for the people
to a lifetime of jammy terms.
Her inaugural addresses spread over toast
on biscuits
her state of the union spooned in directly
into waiting mouths.

But no pies. At least none that I can remember.

I got a brand new job!

2007-07-16T19:01:00.000-07:00

...three months ago.

Yes folks that's how slow my blogging reflexes are. But as it's a major life event I thought I'd post something about it despite it's belated status.

Through an exciting series of coincidences, secret meetings, and a few square bagels (so delicious...)I landed a job with Erkis and Associates Educational Consulting.

The name is sort of a mouthful to say.

It's a pretty cool thing. First off it's really small. Extremely small. I'm the first full time employee that my boss, Andy, has ever hired.

What's educational consulting you ask? Here's the basics: We work with families to find appropriate treatment and placement options for their struggling kids.

Now "struggling" can mean a lot of things ranging from really, really complex mental health issues, to drug and alcohol stuff, to plummeting grades.

After we're hired on we work to get to know a kid's specific issues, find a program that is a good match for dealing with those issues, work as a liaison between different schools and programs and parents and in general walk parents through the entire nerve wracking process.

Now, I should say that I personally am not a consultant. I'm the Office Administrator. My job is a lot of scheduling, filing, faxing, writing, talking on the phone, creating systems and working on special project. Basically I just communicate a lot, with a lot of different people, for a lot of different reasons.

It's fun, challenging, stressful at times, but so far pretty rewarding. I've always loved working with kids and while my job right now doesn't bring me into contact directly with them I feel good that the end result of all my daily tasks is that kids are getting help that they need.

It's cool. I'll keep you posted on any major events...granted you may hear about them three months after they actually occur, but still...

Weird Signage

2007-05-29T09:41:00.001-07:00

Weird signage #1

At Jeni's ice cream there is a small label affixed to the clear windows of the dipping cabinets. It reads:

"To maintain the clarity and beauty of your equipment please take care when cleaning. Use only clean water or a mild soap solution. Do not use harsh abrasives, chemicals, or gasoline as this may lead to CRAZING."

Gasoline?! CRAZING?!

Has anyone else ever heard of using gasoline to clean things with or more importantly has anyone ever heard of "Crazing."?

I think this company is just making stuff up.

Weird Sinage #2

On the way to Jacqui's work there is an billboard. On it is a menacing policeman pointing an accusatory finger out at passersby. The sign reads: "TURN THEM IN! Report littering and illegal dumping."

That's not necessarily the weird part, although it is a little off-putting to pointed at by a giant police officer every morning. The thing I find odd is the website dedicated to reporting offenders:

www.nailadumper.com

Was there no better name to be found than that? If I heard of that website I can't imagine what I would think it was for.

Seriously, nailadumper.com...who comes up with this stuff?

A public service announcement.

2007-05-06T12:08:00.000-07:00

Thousands of people every year enjoy ice cream cones. While working at Jeni's Ice Cream I got to witness people enjoying these ice cream cones and I'll just say it, shocking as it is: people REALLY like ice cream. However, after interacting with thousands of patrons it became clear that one thing people don't like: ORDERING ice cream. People can get seriously stressed out. While working at Jeni's I would frequently see people just lose it when they step up to verbally express their frozen dairy desires. Now to be fair Jeni's has some unusual flavors. It's not as simple as just saying "One chocolate please."

Typically it sounds more like this:

"Hmmm...I think I want a...trio? Is that right? Is that what you call it? Is that the one with the three flavors...yeah? Okay, yeah I want that. What flavors do I want...OH GOSH...um well I don't know. I mean there's so many...shoot...crap...okay...um I'm sorry. Can I have a sample of the Thai Chili again...I'm sorry! Mmmmm that IS good...I don't know if it's my favorite though, you know? What about the Violet? Is that good. It sounds weird. I don't know...um...yeah I guess I'll try that...NO WAIT. PUT IT BACK! PUT IT BACK! Sorry. Um...know instead I think I'll have one scoop of the raspberry coriander, um...one scoop of the strawberry rose petal and then...oooh the last one's always so hard!...Um...(turning to spouse) Honey...honey, HONEY! What are you getting? Ooooooh, that sounds good. I'm not getting that one but can I try some of yours? Cool. Oh, sorry, yeah that last scoop...um...AHHHHH...what do you recommend?! Pear Riesling? Mmmm that sounds good. Yeah why don't you give me that. Great. Thanks. Sorry it takes me so long!"

Pause

"STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sorry. Have you started scooping yet? I'm sorry. I don't know. Yeah. I think instead...I'm just gonna have Vanilla. Thanks."

Awesome.

And that's just to decide the flavor of ice cream. Don't even bring CONES into the equation. That decision is the dessert equivalent of advanced calculus.

That's actually what I'd like to address in this post: CONES and specifically CONE TERMINOLOGY. In general, the terms used to describe certain cones represents a body of information that is largely unregulated and severely unorganized from a lexicographical point of view. It stresses people OUT. I've had grown men and women resort to such rudimentary cone descriptors ranging from: "pointy bottom cone", "A regular big one.", and, on a fairly consistent basis, frantic pointing gestures.

Now, since I've lived on both sides of the ice cream counter I think I might have some valuable insights into standardizing our cone language and in general furthering public ability to communicate about these edible, ingenious and above all conical ice cream receptacles. And so, under girded by hours of meticulous field research I bring you:

CONES: A TUTORIAL

CONE #1

STANDARDIZED NAME: CAKE CONE. WAFER CONE IS ALSO ACCEPTABLE

Also known as: waffle cone, sugar cone, little cone, baby cone, little baby cone, tiny little baby cone, kiddy cone, a weensey one, normal cone, the small one, a crunchy one, old fashioned cone, Keebler cone, and flat bottom cone.

CONE #2

STANDARDIZED NAME: SUGAR CONE

Also known as: waffle cone, cake cone, baby waffle cone, mini waffle cone, tiny waffle cone, stripey cone, checkered cone, sharp cone, normal cone, regular cone, standard cone, old-timey cone, old school cone, little cone, and pointy bottom cone.

CONE # 3

STANDARDIZED NAME: WAFFLE CONE

Also known as: sugar cone, cake cone, wafer cone, big cone, fresh cone, home-made cone, large cone, monster cone, crispy cone, baked cone, regular cone, old fashioned one, good smelling one, batter cone, pocket cone, and ripple cone.

CLOSING CONE THOUGHTS:

The standardized names listed here are by no means an attempt to degrade any of the colloquial endearments that have been attached to these cones over the years. The quaint regional variations, generational differences and family monikers are part of what makes the English cone language so vibrant. By all mean use whatever terms you are comfortable with as a starting point. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you are having trouble expressing your cone needs, using these standard names as a guideline to support you in your ordering might prove helpful, not to mention delicious.

Reigniting the sparks

2007-04-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog,

It has been far too long since I've posted anything! Blog...I'm sorry. I'll try to be a better poster, a more consistent writer, a better man...for you. I know you've heard all my excuses before. You could probably quote them better than me by now. "I've been busy.", "Sorry, I've just been working other projects." I know, I know. You've heard them all.

All I can say is that I'm sorry. And just to be clear: there has not now or ever been another blog in my life. I know sometimes I come home late my eyes blurry from myspace friend checks or maybe you've heard gossip that I've been flirting with facebook. Who doesn't flirt though? I'm sure even you've had a moment of weakness sitting all alone in your server at night when the neighboring blog looks appealing. Don't tell me you've never adjusted your html to put out a more "I'm available" vibe, so don't judge me too harshly.

The point is: you're the only blog for me. When you start a blog, that's a commitment. It doesn't mean it's always easy or fun. I know when we first got together I posted all the time. It was new, exciting. And I won't lie, some of our youthful passion has dwindled...but that doesn't mean that we can't make this work!

So blog, I promise to be a better blogger...If you'll have me! I think...no wait... I KNOW that with little perseverance we can rekindle some of the magic.

With affection,

~Ryan

Geek Status

2007-03-15T07:25:00.000-07:00

Recently I've paused to examine my status as a geek. Until now I hadn't given it much thought. If I was pressed I would have placed myself in the "moderately cool", striving for "atomically cool" cross section of the population. However, a few recent posts by my friend Jessie have made me introspective about my possible geekiness and so I did a little self inventory. Here were a few revelations not quite in line with the level of coolness I was hoping for:

1) I am currently reading the Simarillion by J.R.R Tolkein. I love it. Here is an exerpt from the last page I read:

Then Turgon took the counsel of Hurin and Huor and summoning all that remained of the host of Gondolin and such Fingon's people as could be gathered he retreated towards the pass of Sirion; and his captains Ecthelion and Glorfindel guarded the flanks to the right and left, so that none of the enemy should pass them by. But the men of Dor-lomin held the reargauard, as Hurin and Huor desired...

Yeah...

I also may or may not have gone on a Simarillion message board the other day.

2) My favorite TV show right now is Firefly. Created by Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and canceled in 2002 , it's a sci-fi Western with Chinese influences. There are spaceships, lasers, horses, and inter-galactic romances. I can sing the theme song by heart. It gets me a little teary eyed.

Geek Status confirmed.

I think I now exist somewhere on the spectrum between "Slightly Geeky" and the more extreme "Nerdy McGurdy".

I wanna dance...

2007-02-28T07:34:00.000-08:00

So like millions of other's I watched the 79th annual Academy Awards this past Sunday. I had a pretty good time. We had a party which was fun. I ate a lot party type food (It's always weird to me to me, after finger food type parties to go back and review what type of meal I made from the often very disperate spread of edibles. I think more dinners should consist of a plate filled with tortilla chips, quiche, orange quarters, trail mix, aged cheese and 6 grapes.) and enjoyed the 4 hour long spectacle.

A few days later many of the details of the extravaganza are fading for me but not these guys. These guys blew my mind. Seriously. I was like a 7 year old at a magic show. So cool.

My time.

2007-02-17T15:03:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been thinking about time. My time. I'm the type of person who desperately longs for a free day. Finally one will come along and I fill it with stuff. Yay. However, at the end of the day I'll often look back and take stock of all the stuff and I'm rarely satisfied because the list of things I wanted to do was taken over by things I felt like I needed to do because I'm big on getting the monotonous, work related things out of the way before I relax. This is what happens:

Brain: I think I'll make some tea and read for a bit. Yeah that'd be nice.

Exit to kitchen.

Brain: Oh but there are all these dirty dishes just sitting here. Maybe I'll do those first.

Other part of Brain: Good idea

Brain: I thought so.

Other part of Brain: Hey while your at it...why not tidy up the dining room too. I mean it's right there next to the kitchen.

Brain: That's true.

Other part of Brain: It'll only take a sec. And then maybe you can pick up a just a few things in the living room.

Brain: Well I was going to make tea and read...but your right it'll only take a sec...

Brain and Other part of Brain exit still talking.

Two and a half hours later I've cleaned the whole house, organized the basement and filed bills. And I'm cranky and frustrated that my time was taken from me...by me. Now usually I just let this crankiness sit right below the surface and move on to the next thing, but lately I've been realizing that I need to make a shift in how I see my time.

This is definitely just not something I just realized out of the blue. This whole time thing was pointed out to me recently when I was reading a section in The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis diabolical dialogue between two lesser devils about a specific "patent's" temptation.

In it Screwtape, the elder tempter, is advising his nephew to encourage in his patient an attitude of possessiveness. Screwtape basically remarks that any time a person can be convinced that they have a rightful claim to something, or are owed something that they are one step closer to Hell. It really made me think. In the book the guy that they are trying to tempt, like most of us, has inclinations in this possessive direction that these devils are trying to exploit. Here's what Screwtape has to say:

"Now you will notice that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he was looking forward to a quiet evening)...that throw[s] him out of gear. [This] angers him because he regards his time as his own and feels it is being stolen.

Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of 24 hours. You have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if questioned even we can not find one shred of argument in it's defense. The man can neither make, nor retain on moment of his time; it all comes to him by pure gift. He is also, in theory, committed to a total service of the Enemy (God); and if the Enemy appeared to him and demanded that total service, even for one day, he would not refuse...and he would be relieved almost to the point of disappointment if for one half hour in that day the Enemy said 'Now you may go and amuse yourself.'"

This really struck me and I've been trying not to forget it. It's hard because I'm so ready to set up expectations about my time and what I'm going to do. It's hard to break the habit. When I do forget I'm usually just setting myself up for disappointment. Because things happen. People call, events change, circumstances beyond my control intervene.

I had an example of this a week or so ago. Jacqui and I went to Grand Rapids to see our friends Morgan Dave and Mike in a play. We were excited. We'd been looking forward to this trip and to seeing them on stage for months. When we arrive there was a huge blizzard and the show was canceled. So disappointing. We felt robbed and it seemed understandable to feel this way. It seemed perfectly natural that we should be angry. In those situations it seems justifiable to grumble, complain and feel stolen from. It's so sneaky because it ends up being when I'm cranky and upset that the true moments of joy really are stolen.

So yeah. Time. It's just something I've been thinking about lately. Any thoughts?

Winter Weather and the Hazardous, Harrowing and Heroic History of Ice Cream in the Midwest.

2007-02-13T09:09:00.000-08:00

So this is what happens when I start out to write a straight forward blog post about the weather.

I've denoted the place where my brain derailed.

In Columbus today there is a Winter Storm Watch going on. When we woke up this morning there was a thick layer of new fallen snow and if the weather reports prove to be true there are more layers to follow. Not surprisingly Jeni's Ice Cream is closed today. I just can't imagine anyone braving the elements and slippery roads just to purchase something cold.

************DERAILED**********

Ah, the perils of the frozen confection industry in the Midwest! I could tell you stories. Why when I was your age the blizzard of '38 nearly ended the Banana Split, the Chocolate Malt and many other icy delicacies across most of Ohio, Indiana and parts of Pennsylvania. There was wide spread panic as people ignored Popsicles, Italian Ice and even Gelato. In fact some towns experienced near riots as frozen treats of all kinds were met with forceful apathy.

The ambivalent assault on chilled comestibles showed no discrimination. People from small towns and big cities alike aggressively sought out hot chocolate, coffee and teas with callous indifference. With hearts as cold as the swirling wind they ignored the the cries of thousands of victimized scoops and cones. In the end, after mother nature called off her atomic vendetta of frost the entire Midwest was a scarred battle ground compared to its former deliciousness.

However hope was not lost. Vanilla, one of the few wounded survivors took up the cause and rallied the few remaining remnants of his dessicated brethren. Theirs was an uphill battle but signs of new life slowly emerged. This restoration knew no flavor boundaries as Strawberry, Lemon, Chocolate and Vanilla worked side by side to rebuild. And to the delight and inspiration of the nation rebuild they did.

Now known to frozen treat historians as the "Rebirth of Cool" this time of struggle and eventual triumph serves as stirring landmark for every American who now holds a gelato spoon with ease, joyfully enters the frigid embrace of a Slurpee or enjoys the cone of their choice with absolute freedom.

****************END DERAILING***************

What the heck is that?! Seriously. Sometimes I feel bad for my future kids. (How was your day dad? Well son it all started out normally enough...)

This is funny...

2007-01-25T07:12:00.000-08:00

So about a month or two ago I did a few posts about a brand new topic for me: hockey related things. I ended each post with the phrase "Holler back for Hockey!" After this exclaimation I included small notices to the NHL telling them that if, as they were reading my posts, they experienced any slogan envy that they should get in touch with me and compensate me for said slogan.

Well it's not quite the NHL exactly but pretty close...

Dear blog author:

We recently came across your site, jacquiandryan.blogspot.com, while searching for bloggers who blog about the NHL.

A group of us have started a new site called NHL Bloggers. Our intent is to bring hockey bloggers closer together, and make a positive contribution to the Internet community.

Would you be interested in joining NHL Bloggers? Please take a few minutes to have a look at what we are trying to do, and if you are interested, there is a sign up page to get the ball rolling. We would greatly appreciate your support in this endeavour.

We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you on NHL Bloggers.

NHL Bloggers
info@NHL-bloggers.com

So there you have it. I've been invited to the Big Dance. And I've got my dress all picked out. I can only assume that this is just a stepping stone in the universe's plan for me to become a hockey blogger mega-star (which I might do just for the business cards...)

Holler back for hockey!*

* NHL, I'll be waiting for the call. Your window of opportunity is rapidly closing. Strike while the iron of my hockey related popularity is HOT!

Free!

2007-01-17T14:55:00.000-08:00

Whew!

That was ROUGH.

That basement was dark. And musty. And cluttered. BUT...I'm FREE!

No thanks to my captor I might add.

That guy is SO comment greedy. He was going to wait until the comments on his ransom post tallied ten. TEN! Who has that much time to comment? Seriously.

However, while I was foraging for some spare verbs in a dark corner I was able to catch a rogue wireless signal and published myself before he got wise. Lucky for me.

Thanks to all of you compassionate people who took an interest in my existence. I wouldn't have had the courage to go on if it weren't for you and your beautiful comments. You believed in me, and I'll never forget your life giving words.

Now, you're all probably thinking "What's next Post?"

Well, with a new lease on life I think I'm going to settle down with a certain special lady post. We met online. I know, I know. It seems lame, but after I got over being stalked we found we really had something special. After the nuptials we're going to publish ourselves to a travel blog and see the world while we're still young and fit (and before we start to gain those extra marriage bandwidths everyone's always talking about).

After some adventures we're planning on moving to the suburbs and raising some little posts of our own. Money shouldn't be a problem. I've already started a tell-all book: BASEMENT ESCAPE: One Post's Incredibly SEXY Courage in the Face of Danger. (I've also started working on a relationship guide, based on my future bride and my courtship entitled Post-Dated. It'll be available June '08 at most Sam's Clubs).

So there you have it. My life all mapped out. Ready for the grasping. And, I have to stress this again, none of this would be possible without you faithful commenters. You kept my spirits up and my determination whetted. I owe you a debt of gratitude and I intend to spend the rest of my days living up to your kind sentiments. Thank you for caring.

All the best,

Post

intentionally and intimidating-ly untitled

2007-01-15T07:31:00.000-08:00

Dear readers of this blog,

I am currently holding my next post hostage. I am keeping it chained to a pipe it in my basement. He is sad. He will never see the light of day again unless my demands are met:

If you ever want to see the next post you must post one comment on this blog at your leisure.

Remember, this post's online existence is in your hands. I've been slowly revising him a little bit each day to sustain him, but in 3 days those revisions will END!

Do not attempt to hatch any rescue plots or he will be deleted. Do not attempt to contact me. You have been warned.

Sincerly,

~Hostile Hostage Guy

This is funny...

2007-01-09T07:15:00.000-08:00

We recently came across your site, jacquiandryan.blogspot.com, while searching for bloggers who blog about the NHL.

A group of us have started a new site called NHL Bloggers. Our intent is to bring hockey bloggers closer together, and make a positive contribution to the Internet community.

We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you on NHL Bloggers.

NHL Bloggers
info@NHL-bloggers.com

So there you have it. I've been invited to the Big Dance and I've got my dress all picked out. I can only assume that this is just a stepping stone in the universe's plan for me to become a hockey blogger mega-star (which I might do just for the business cards...)

Holler back for hockey!*

* NHL, I'll be waiting for the call. Your window of opportunity is rapidly closing. Strike while the iron of my hockey related popularity is HOT!

Return of the short posts: We have a house.

2007-01-09T06:52:00.000-08:00

This past November, after months of nomadic wandering across Canada and various parts of the Midwest, we finally moved into an actual permanent dwelling. We searched for a long time and then we were guided to the corner of Harrison and 3rd Ave here in Columbus.

Our apartment is nice. I like it. It's small but not too small. It has lovely wood floors, nice high ceilings, and large expansive windows. There's even a secret stairway closet and a huge basement for storage. STORAGE!

The kitchen is smaller than I would like and the walls are basically brick with a thin layer of plaster making hanging anything heavier than a napkin difficult but it's HOME. And after living for so long out of suitcases and sleeping on other people's generously offered floors, beds, and couches we now have a place of our own to feel settled and relaxed.

Not that we felt extremely uncomfortable living with other people or that those that offered their hospitality were anything but gracious but there is something about being a guest that makes you live on other people's terms. You have to check if it's okay to watch a movie, tip-toe if it's late at night, ty to coordinate your shower taking with theirs (not to mention the run of the mill requests to cower in the corner whenever they make direct eye contact, or little things like having to give them plasma daily or being required to perform entertaining liturgical dances each evening).

These days I take about three showers a day, stomp around in large, drum-like boots that I've invented, and run Baby Geniuses 2 on a loop at full volume.

Contented Sigh.

Christmas Post #6

2006-12-27T07:28:00.000-08:00

So Christmas is over. It's done. We have it now. As usual around the holidays things got incredibly busy with traveling and hanging out and my ambitious goal of putting up a new post every day this past week were soon modified. That being said I wanted to put one more thing up here (for now anyway. Who's to say though. I may sneak a Christmas post in when you're not looking. Maybe sometime mid-May or even the steamy beginning of August. That's just how I roll.)

I worked retail at the candle shop a lot this holiday season. One thing about working retail this time of year is that usually you get force fed a nice selection of upbeat Christmas-y tunes that I suppose are to stimulate the auditory nerve in charge of mass purchasing and subliminally cause your hands to reach for your wallet.

In any event the the candle shop boasted a nice mix of old and new standards that on first listen, back in November, were quite lovely and went a long way to spark the dormant Christmas Christmas spirit locked in my heart. Come late December some of the songs have lost their charm. Not through any fault of those who compiled the diverse mix but simply by virtue of hearing them over, and over again. I can't imagine any song that would stand the test of that much repetition.

The mix included lots of well known artists: The Barenaked Ladies, Rob Thomas, Rascal Flatts, and lots of familiar others. Each belted out the traditional standards with carefully crafted twists of pop sensibility: God rest Ye Marry Gentlemen. Joy to the World, etc. This litany of well known artist names and well know Christmas standards got me thinking: Do these people believe in what there singing? As they croon the hits are they conscious of the actual words they're recording? Because it's not like a lot of these songs are super ambiguous. Theme's like Jesus's birth, praising Him as savior, and God blessing creation through Christmas are pretty spelled out. Do they have a concept that they are claiming something incredibly specific about a particular religion or has "Christmas Music" just become such an accepted genre that it doesn't even occur to most artists that they are aligning themselves with the miracle of Christmas.

This got me thinking about the whole secular concept of Christmas. The fact of Jesus' birth removed from the equation why, of all times, is the holiday season the prescribed time of the calendar year for acts of generosity, goodwill and peace? Part of me wonders if, even though Christmas being celebrated on December 25 is a date that the church just arbitrarily chose, there is something urgent and joyful happening in the spiritual realm that happens in response to creation's conscious and unconscious anticipation of Christ's birth. I feel like maybe whether people know it or not that the Holy Spirit is doing something this time of year. And that the feelings associated with Christmas, the warmth, the fuzziness, the desire to embrace our fellow man is not simply based on marketing schemes, consumerism, old movies or even tradition but on the fact that the world is still in need of miracles, in need of love coming down, in need of an adventure larger than ourselves.

Either way now that the holidays are over I'll have to resign myself to hearing the old non-Christmas mix, which on one hand is proably a blessing, but on the other is a shift tinged with just with a hint of regret.

But just an hint.

Christmas Post #5

2006-12-22T05:25:00.000-08:00

The story I'm posting today is a story that really brings into focus for me how many times I spin God's character to reflect my own fears, doubts and insecurites. Sometimes it can be so easy to make him over in some other image. Oh, he's still God for the most part but with a few significant tweaks tacked on. Sometimes on closer inspection I can see my add ons for what they are: my fear of rejection, my worries about never being good enough, hazy misprints of many of the men who have influenced my life. But in large part I'm still trying to see through lots of layers, lies and mis-interpretations about my Heavenly Father. And I think he's okay with that. He knows who he is, obviously. I don't think he's offened if I don't get it all the time.

I think because I a grown man in his twenties sometimes I forget that to God I'm still a little child. Learning, growing, trying. It would be ridiculous for an earthly father to be angry with his little son because he didn't know everything about him. The thought to be accusatory to his son would never even cross his mind. And yet that's just another thing I pin on God sometimes--that He might be upset with me because I don't really understand him, and then my mind worries that maybe if I don't really understand him I don't really know him. But I think that that is one of the great mysteries about God and thinking about Christmas about the incarnation: we don't have to be able to totally wrap our minds around it for us to fully enter in to it's significance, power or beauty. In fact the reality that God became a tiny baby was born on earth and then died for me is something I'm going to be trying to get my head around for the rest of my life. But that doesn't mean that the reality of it is not fully mine live in.

Here's the story that started me thinking about this. I love it for lots of reasons but an added bonus is that it reminds me of Jacqui who read it the first time I heard it.

God in the Doorway
by Annie Dillard

One cold Christmas eve Iwas up unnaturally late because we had all gone out to dinner - my parents, my baby sister and I. We had come home to a warm living room, and Christmas Eve. Our stockings drooped from the mantel; beside them, a special table bore a bottle of ginger ale and a plate of cookies.

I had taken off my fancy winter coat and was standing on the heat register to bake my shoe soles and warm my bare legs. There was a commotion at the front door; it opened, and cold wind blew around my dress. Everyone was calling me. "Look who's here! Look who's here!" I looked. It was Santa Claus. Whom I never - ever - wanted to meet. Santa Claus was looming in the doorway and looking around for me. My mother's voice was thrilled: "Look
who's here!" I ran upstairs.

Like everyone in their right mind, I feared Santa Claus, thinking he was God. Santa Claus was an old man whom you never saw, but who nevertheless saw you; he knew when you'd been bad or good. And I had been bad.

My mother called and called, enthusiastic, pleading; I wouldn't come down. My father encouraged me; my sister howled. I wouldn't come down, but I could bend over the stairwell and see: Santa Claus stood in the doorway with night over his shoulder, letting in all the cold air of the sky; Santa Claus stood in the doorway monstrous and bright, powerless, ringing a loud bell and repeating Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. I never came down. I don't know who ate the cookies.

For so many years now I have known that this Santa Claus was actually a rigged-up Miss White, who lived across the street, that I confused the dramatis personae in my mind, making of Santa Claus, God and Miss White an awesome, vulnerable trinity. This is really a story about Miss White.

Miss White was old; she lived alone in the big house across the street. She liked having me around; she plied me with cookies, taught me things about the world, and tried to interest me in finger painting, in which she herself took great pleasure. She would set up easels in her kitchen, tack enormous slick soaking papers to their frames, and paint undulating undersea scenes: horizontal smears of color sparked by occasional vertical streaks which were understood to be fixed kelp. I liked her. She meant no harm on earth, and yet half a year after her failed visit as Santa Claus, I ran from her again.

That day, a day of the following summer, Miss White and I knelt in her yard while she showed me a magnifying glass. It was a large, strong hand lens. She lifted my hand and, holding it very still, focused a dab of sunshine on my palm. The glowing crescent wobbled, spread, and finally contracted to a point. It burned; I was burned; I ripped my hand away and ran home crying. Miss White called after me, sorry, explaining, but I didn't look
back.

Even now I wonder: if I meet God, will he take and hold my bare hand in his and focus his eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?

But no. It is I who misunderstood everything and let everybody down. Miss White, God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in

Israel

love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.

Christmas Post # 4

2006-12-20T19:40:00.000-08:00

This post isn't super deep but this Christmastime quasi-mathmatical proof sure made me laugh, especially hearing my friend Beth read it outloud the other day. As a effort to create a little moment of personal theatre in your own life you could try reading it out loud too. Don't worry no one's watching. Give it a try. That is unless you're in a public space, like a cafe or something. Then everyone is watching. And waiting for you to perform.

In that case the choice is up to you, you can either order a round of peppermint mochas for everyone, stand on the nearest cafe table and belt it out for everyone's listening pleasure, you can wait until you're in the privacy of your own home and read it in a whispered, lips barely moving "I'm not really reading this outloud" voice, or best of all you can find a trusted friend or group of friends and share it with them as a controlled explosion of lighthearted holiday frivolity. The choice is yours. Enjoy!

Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective

I. No known species of reindeer can fly. However, there are some 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified. While most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer (which only Santa has ever seen).

II. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

III. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second---3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

IV. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa who is invariably described as overweight. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them. Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

V. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second crates enormous air resistance --- this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, would be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500 times greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

VI. In conclusion, if Santa ever did deliver presents to all the good childern on Christmas eve...HE'S DEAD NOW!

Christmas Post #3

2006-12-20T06:38:00.000-08:00

Life is full of things I don't understand. In my life what I should do at a given moment is so often unclear; consequences are muddy, choices ambiguous. I long for God to simply slip me a note in homeroom and give me some of the answers I desperately crave.

But he doesn't. He won't just lay things out. It seems like it's not in his character to reveal too much. There are no neat, and tidy spreadsheets bearing a heavenly font (End Times New Roman? Eternal Garamond? Curlz?) that lay out my life in nice compartmentalized, easy to read boxes. And yet, even though I don't always take advantage of it, there are glimpses that there's something about this mysterious God who reveals things so slowly and complexly that, in the end, it captivates me more and draws me even closer to his heart.

I think that's the way God intends me to follow. He only shines enough light to illuminate the next half step because he craves that intimacy with me too. He desires my company, my attention, my love. If I had all the answers, if I always knew what was next or could divine every hazy signpost on my own then I might just run along by myself, confident in my own ability to navigate the path ahead.

I was thinking about all this in light of Christmas (In the shower of all places actually. Do any of you have that? Maybe it's because that's when I'm most vulnerable.) That part of the reason God chose to bring hope and grace to the world by becoming a helpless baby human was not just to work out some master spreadsheet of salvation, some dry equation for canceling sin but because he longed for intimacy with the world. With you. With me.

There are few things more intimate than birth. It's messy, physical, and extremely personal. Part of me wonders if he chose the way he chose because he simply wanted to be with us, speak to us, flesh to flesh, to literally walk with us for a time. And then to lay down that personal, real, human life because he desired to us to know just how close divinity was willing to draw near.

This is a short scene from a play by Ron Reed the artistic director at Pacific Theatre. I love the images it creates, especially the picture of Christ's excitement and longing to be born. I imagine him trembling with anticipation and joy, excited to enter time and the limitations of space and to draw so near to the creation he'd watched grow since it began.

DREAM I: CONCEPTION
by Ron Reed
(from the play "Dreams Of Kings & Carpenters")

[Darkness. Voices come from various points around the
stage.]

ALL (staggered) God spoke.

1 My own true love.

2 My chosen.

3 My handmaid

4 has silence in her soul, untrammeled love.

3 A time to be born.

1 Sudden dive by dream into reality.

4 I felt

2 soft inward flutterings,

4 the Life

1 trembling through.

ALL (staggered) Love blooms,

1 bright

2 and wild.

4 Veiled in flesh,

3 Jesus begs to be born,

4 yields Himself to lie in prison,

1 in thee;

2 Yea thou art now thy Maker's maker,
and thy Father's mother;

1 Thou hast light in dark,

2 and shuttest in little room

ALL (except 3) Immensity

2 cloistered in thy dear womb.

ALL (except 3) He comes

Christmas Post #2

2006-12-18T15:53:00.000-08:00

I feel like I'm the type of person who seems spontaneous, but sometimes I feel like that's just a clever disguise, a calculated social illusion that I work hard to maintain. In the inner reality of what goes on at the heart of me often I feel very plotted out, very measured. I want to live wildly, passionately, recklessly moving in the paths God clears at a moments notice, but somehow that gets drowned in a thousand other pulls and demands and real world stuff: running errands, paying bills, slowly struggling under the countless, tiny worries and fears that often go hand in hand with simply waking up in the morning and trying to do what seems best with my life; what makes sense.

Thinking about this desire to live differently, to actually be available and ready to, as Timothy says "...take hold of the life that is truly life." makes me think about this Chistmas, and Christ's birth and Christ's promise to come again; about how wild and reckless it all was on that night in Bethlehem and how wild and reckless it all will be someday again. And also how the seeming spontaneity and thunder of Christ's birth is tempered with something solid as bedrock because it is, in the same instant wild and reckless and yet incredibly anticipated, waited for, desired. I love getting glimpses of this and remembering that there really is some solid canvas behind all the vivid colors and splashes that make up the picture of Christ's messy, seemingly ill timed manger birth.

I don't know what any of this means really but it leaves me with hope for my weary heart and reminds me that I am also a son of this God who recklessly unfolds things that he has anticipated for millennia. On some level it's both weird and comforting to think that he anticipates, longs for and rejoices in the fruition of moments in my life, even if it's as simple as the second my eyes open to start another day.

Here's the poem that sparked some of this for me. Let me just say that I love Madeleine L'Engle.

The Irrational Season
by Madeleine L'Engle

This is the irrational season,
When love blooms, bright and wild;
Had Mary been filled with reason,
There'd have been no room for the child.

Christmas Post #1

2006-12-17T14:54:00.000-08:00

Here in Columbus it is currently a steamy 60 degrees and it feels very odd to have Christmas right around the corner. However, in hopes of kindling some of the Christmas spirit in my own heart I'm endevoring to post a Christmas related poem or story each day this week for your and my reading pleasure. There's something that happens every time this year that makes me really want to enter in to the mystery of Christ's birth. I want to tug at it, I want to have it illuminated. So in that vein I've been reading some other peoples writings whose words ring true and thoughtful and stir something in me that makes my heart nod ever so slighty in agreement and in anticipation. First off is a poem that my friend Karl read outloud last night. It made me smile to hear it and snatches of it have been ringing in my head all day.

CHRIST CLIMBED DOWN
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powder blue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone Cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck crèches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagon sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carolers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
ice skated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings

We have a dog.

2006-12-12T07:16:00.000-08:00

He's a wiener dog named Oscar. He was my dog when I was growing up. My family got him when I was fifteen so he just turned a stately ten. He is categorically, empirically and scientifically my favorite dog in the world.

As a child I wanted a wiener dog starting at the tender age of 3. My mom would read me Whistle for Willie and The Snowy Day, two picture books by Ezra Jack Keats, and the dog featured in the book was a black and tan dachshund. It was a long twelve years to wait until I reached fifteen and Oscar was added to the family one snowy Christmas.

He's getting old now but he can still be pretty frisky when he sees his leash in my hand or when it's meal time. Most of the time though he just likes to cuddle. So if you're ever come to visit us in Columbus and are in possession of a lap (most people are these days) get ready to be snuggled.

I have a job

2006-12-05T07:22:00.000-08:00

Earlier this fall, after earning a merit badge in job hunting, I became gainfully employed at Jeni's Ice Cream a local small business. My duties there include but are not limited to: Scooping ice cream, making delicious sundaes, keeping the shop clean, running the till, stocking large buckets of ice cream, stirring and heating various sauces until they reach their optimal "deliciousness" (a word I've picked up since being in the ice cream biz), and using small spoons laden with ice creamy "deliciousness" (See, there it is again. I had to attend a "deliciousness" conference to learn how to use it this many times with the ease of an ice cream professional) to entice customers to purchase our frozen confections.

Jeni is an actual person and she's pretty brilliant when it comes to ice cream. She refers to her wares as "modern American ice cream." Which I take to mean "sort of fancy but amazingly tasty flavors." Recently she's been getting a lot of national recognition. She's been in several national magazines, for all you TV buffs I think there's been a rumor swirling that her ice cream is going to be featured on the Tyra Banks show, and just yesterday I learned that Johnny Depp himself was having some shipped out his way. Look out world.

Here is a list of some of our top sellers: Salty Caramel, Thai Chili, Butternut Squash with Pecan Pralines, Black Coffee, Lemon and Lingonberry, Toasted Brioche with butter and jam, Creme de Violet, Sweet Banana, Star Anise with Candied Fennel Seeds. The list goes on. She usually has about 30 flavors on hand at any given time; 15 signature flavors and 15 season flavors that rotate according to what fresh ingredients are available. She also tries to use mostly local ingredients and organic stuff whenever possible which is cool. So while I don't think I'm in the ice cream biz for the long haul for now it's a pretty decent place to spend my work day.

So if you're ever in Columbus, stop by, I'll be ready with some little spoons.

Short Posts

2006-11-30T07:02:00.000-08:00

Looking back over this here blog I realized that every time I begin to write a new blog post I have the thought "Oh, this'll just be a short one." Then after I publish the darn thing and then look at that same post online it seems to have grown to lengths much greater than I first anticipated. In addition to the issue of length when I'm about to start a post I also often feel like there needs to be some unifying theme or slant to my ramblings. The search for this theme probably causes me to post much less often than I'd like and important life events central to our Midwestern Adventure go unrelayed. In light of these recent thoughts on my posting habits I'm going to start a series of short posts divulging these significant events in no particular order and with no cumbersome unifying themes or slants to speak of. Buckle up, it's going to be an moderately bumpy/mildly interesting/possibly informative ride.

Anson Carter and I are good friends.

2006-11-06T07:47:00.000-08:00

Backstory:

Anson Carter was born in born June 6 1974 in Scarbourough Ontario. In time he traversed the US boarder for college and played hockey for Michigan State University. He was drafted into the NHL by the Qubec Nordics in 1992. On August 16 2005 he signed with the Vancouver Canucks. He played well: 33 season goals, a personal record. However after just a year in Vancouver, in September of 2006, he followed Jacqui and Ryan from Vancouver to Columbus Ohio where he signed a one year deal with the Columbus Bluejackets.

Cut to PetCo October 16, 2006

Two men stand in line waiting. They are holding various pet related items. Man #1 is younger perhaps mid- twenties. He is wearing a striped shirt, and maybe an eye patch. He hopes his hair is artfully dishevled. Man #2 is African American and in his mid-thirties. He sports impressive dreadlocks and is holding a obscenely large dog bed.

Striped Shirt: Woah. Big Bed.

Dreadlocks: Yeah.

Striped Shirt: What kind of dog?

Dreadlocks: Great Dane.

Striped Shirt(nodding knowingly): Hmm. Big Dog

Dreadlocks: Yeah. I hope it's big enough.

Striped Shirt: Me too.

Pause

Striped Shirt: Say... I'm sure you get this all the time but...do you play hockey?

Dreadlocks(smiling): Yeah.

Striped Shirt: My wife and I saw you in Vancouver and a then, um, in the season opener against the Canucks the other night.

Dreadlocks: Oh Yeah? Cool.

Pause

Dreadlocks: I liked Vancouver. Are you from there?

Striped Shirt: Well my wife is. I'm originally from Michigan.

Dreadlocks: Michigan? I like Michigan. I played in college there.

Striped Shirt: Really? Cool.

Dreadlocks: Why'd you move to Ohio?

Striped Shirt: Oh, well my wife and I are going to start a theatre company with some friends.

Dreadlocks: Like plays and stuff?

Striped Shirt: Yeah like plays.

Dreadlocks: Cool.

Stripped Shirt: Yeah but we miss living in Vancouver. It's a great city.

Dreadlocks (looking outside at a steady drizzle that has been falling): Today actually reminds me of living in Vancouver.

Striped Shirt(nodding): You said it.

PetCo cashier: I can help the next customer.

Dreadlocks: Well...

Striped Shirt: Yeah. Nice talking with you. Good luck with the bed.

Dreadlocks: Thanks.

Again, holler back for hockey*

*Registered Trademark and Official Slogan for the past two hockey related posts on this blog. NHL if you are reading this and are having slogan envy my official slogan related email address is ryanthomashoke@gmail.com.

Canucks: Home Away from Home

2006-10-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago Jacqui and headed out to the nearby Nationwide Arena to take in the Columbus Bluejacket's season opener. Now, I was never a huge hockey head until last year. Living in a hockey crazed town like Vancouver really boosted my vicarious interest in the sport. I have this with a lot of things really. Basically if other people are excited about it I get excited about it. And the entire city of Vancouver is one excitable bunch. It didn't matter that the Canucks didn't make the playoffs last year, every single game would (WOULD) inevitably be sold out. Last year Jacqui and I went to a pre-season game and the tickets were still nestled comfortably in that "this feels way to expensive but the experience will probably be worth it and I'll regret it if I don't go." category.

To counteract all this it's interesting to be in Columbus which although they boast a NHL team, is definitely not a hockey town. The citizens here like hockey alright, but with the OSU football team being number one in the nation, the city's capacity for supporting multiple sport enthusiasms is pretty tapped out. The upside of this? We scored opening night tickets for just 10.00! And even more importantly... the Bluejackets were facing our old hometown heroes the Vancouver Canucks!

Jacqui and I were pretty much the only Canucks fans on hand that night. There was one other Canuck aficionado sitting two rows in front of us and we latched on to him for moral support as soon as we spotted his Orca emblazoned jersey. Other than that one guy though we were pretty much on our own, our cheering voices mere whispers in a sea of hostile thousands.

The game did not go well for our heroes. By the time the third and final period rolled around the Canucks were down 0-2 and it looked like a shut out WHEN SUDDENLY...

OUR TEAM SCORED A GOAL! WOO-HOO!

We cheered our heads off. And in an weird show of silent solidarity the Bluejackets fans didn't even respond. It was odd. Not even one groan of disappointment. We had to scour the scoreboard to confirm that the Canucks had even scored. They had indeed but, alas, they were still down 1-2. Dang. As the minutes ticked down we slowly resigned ourselves to the "well at least they didn't get shut out" mantra WHEN SUDDENLY...

THEY SCORED AGAIN! DOUBLE WOO HOO!

Again the Columbus fans were as quiet as ninjas. No reaction at all. Again, totally weird. We again screamed our heads off as we watched the game head into over time. Telling ourselves the last two goals were flukes, but hoping for a come back miracle we watched with bated breaths WHEN, IN A FLASH!

THEY SCORED YET AGAIN! WOO HOO MULTIPLIED BY THE FORCE OF THE SUN'S GRAVITY! CANUCKS WIN!

It was sweet, delicious with just a dash of scary as we celebrated all the way out of the building weaving through hoards of dejected Bluejackets fans who were liberally giving us the stink eye. It was a proud moment for both my born and bred Canuck wife and for me her honorary spousal Canuck-by-association. Holla back for hockey!*

*Official slogan for the 2007-2008 NHL season...provided the NHL stops being lazy, reads this blog already and pays me for said slogan.

Apple-tastic

2006-10-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago Jacqui and I went apple picking. It was a surprise in honor of her 23rd birthday. Surprises like that can be interesting in part because I wasn't super confident on the location of the orchard. It somehow lessens the dramatic surprise tension after you get lost once or twice and are continually cursing your mapquest directions.

However in the end we safely made our way to Lynd fruit farm located in picturesque Palataska, OH. It was truly beautiful. The day was crisp, clear and gorgeous. I'm sure you've noticed but I feel like there's just this thing about fall that makes every color, every leaf, every patch of sunlight just a little more real, a little more in focus. Do you ever have that? I know that for Jacqui and I spending last fall in Vancouver the City of Brotherly Rain was definitely a different than the saturated autumn glory of the Midwest.

The u-pick schedule for the day featured the dainty and delectable Jonathan's and the behemoth and bland Yellow Delicious. I'll let you guess which ones we chose to fill our 7 lb bag with...

The trees were full, the sun was out and we were ready to pick. We were only getting a smallish sized bag so each apple was important. We moved from tree to tree like highly trained apple connoisseurs.

"That one's perfect!"

"Hmm maybe not, that one's got a tiny spot."

"I don't know...Do you see the way that one is sort of crowding the other apples? The last thing we want is bossy fruit."

And other things dramatized apple connoisseurs may or may not say.

After the picking we went to the little concessions stand they had. I had a brat, Jacqui a hamburger and we both had as much fresh cider as we could hold. It was delicious.

Later that night we made a pie with our hard won produce and watched King Kong on DVD. Just like mom used to do. The pie, the apples and the Kong were all great but even better was the whole experience. There's just something that felt right about apple picking in the fall. I think somehow it made me feel like a kid again to get so excited and to enjoy so fully something so simple. I think that part of me really longs for real experiences like that. Sometimes I get too caught up in being passive entertained. TV, movies, even reading can fall into this category. It was just nice to be able to engage in something in a way that felt real; in a way that was physical, emotional and so sensory all at the same time.

New City, New Life

2006-09-25T08:50:00.000-07:00

So Jacqui and I arrived in Columbus approximately three weeks ago. It was weird moving to a city that we'd never actually been to. Weird and yet somehow not weird at all. Mostly because some of our friends are already here. Right now we're living with Nick and Beth and Karl and Jessie live, literally, right next door. Relationships like that are interesting. Jacqui and I hadn't seen any of these friends since our wedding, which at last count was approaching a year and a half, but their hospitality and joy in having us here helped make the transition easier.

Not that we don't miss every other part of our pre-Columbus lives like crazy.

In fact just last night, even after a few weeks of settling in, hanging out and finding our way, both Jacqui and I realized how much we missed the old parts of our lives: our year in Vancouver, our summer in Grand Rapids. Sometimes living like nomads is hard and every time the tent stakes get pulled up their is definitely a process of letting go, of grieving for the places you're leaving behind.

A big part of our time here has been spent trying to find employment for me (Jacqui can't quite work yet because of immigration stuff). Early last week I had what looked like a pretty sweet gig lined up managing a independent house cleaning business called Helping Hands. The people who owned it were great--super self starters and extremely passionate about what they do. My job would have eventually been training new employees, working on scheduling and cleaning homes about 20-30% of the time cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. The training and scheduling sounded great, the cleaning I wasn't sure about but I thought I'd give it a go. My first day on the job I worked by myself cleaning an entire house out in the suburbs. It did not go well. It took me almost twice as long as it was scheduled to and I pretty much hated every minute of it. There was just too much pressure, too many things to keep track of ( for those of you who know me I have trouble finding my keys and here I had about 30 different cleaning tools and products to keep track of as I trekked from room to room. It was not pretty.) and the work itself just wasn't rewarding enough. So even though the salary was pretty great I decided that I didn't want to frustrate the owners by staying on and having them invest time in me, when it wasn't something I really be passionate about.

In the meantime I had applied at a whole litany of other establishments: Jeni's ice cream, Peabody's Paper, World Market, Barnes and Noble, Panera, Stoph's Coffee house, Lifetime fitness, and Spinelli's deli among others. None of them were proving very fruitful. One day about a week ago Jessie suggested a nearby restaurant called The Northstar Cafe. She had nothing but glowing things to say about the place: the food was great (mostly all fresh, organic and locally grown), the place itself was a cool (very clean lines, chic, lots of natural light) , the people were all really nice (and not just fake "food service nice" but really genuinely nice.) , they offer benefits, etc.

So I went to check it out and was immediately intrigued. Everything Jessie had said about it was indeed true and the people that I talked to were extremely optimistic and encouraging about the possibility of a position. Today I met with one of their head guys and tomorrow I start a preview shift to see how I fit in. My job is what they call a "linebacker", basically it's a prep-cook who specifically works on the important side items on their menu. My job will mostly be cleaning and preparing the various greens they use in salads, making a kick ass rice salad, and roasting many, many rotisserie chickens.

So I'm hoping that it works out and after a fairly long employment hiatus I'm excited about the prospect of doing something rewarding and fun with my time.

So that's life right now. It's a totally new, exciting, frustrating, joyful, discouraging, challenging, fun and tiring all at the same time.

Take a page out of my book...

2006-09-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, in celebration of my 25 birthday I was engaging in a favorite past time: reading in a cafe before noon. Now don't get me wrong, I like reading in cafes after noon as well but there's something about the early to mid-morning hours that are sort of magical to me. My favorite time of the day is probably between 9am and 11am. Between these hours the day is still so full of promise, brimming with undiscovered potential and not yet dog-eared by the realization that each new day is often very much the same as the day before. (The worst time of day for me is the hours between 3pm and 5pm. I find that these hours are often the drudge hours; the stretched-to-thin pockets of time that serve as the no-mans land hinge of time, swinging between my promising morning and my anticipated evening.)

So there I was: hearty book in hand, coveted table by the window claimed and ready for some serious recreational page thumbing. Right now I'm reading a book by a Canadian author named Robertson Davies. He passed away a few years ago and wrote most of his major books in the 60's and 70's. He's quite an interesting guy: a one time actor at the Old Vic in England, a University Professor, a playwright and a well traveled novelist. He also has a great photo of himself on the back of the book which embodies the romanticism of what I would imagine a deceased, educated, jack-of-all-trades, absent minded professor/literate novelist to look like (that or an intellectual Santa Clause).

Also, his books also have some great titles: Fifth Business, The Manticore, and A Mixture of Frailties to name a few. I'm currently reading What's Bred in the Bone the middle novel of a trilogy which I purchased at a used book store. I bought all three books bound in a single volume so the final page count at the end of the third book is quite high clocking in at 1136 pages, making the entirety of the book cumbersome to tote around but also impressive to view.

I was about five pages into my special birthday read when something strange happened. My book rebelled against me. I'll explain. There I was, thoroughly enjoying page 566, when all of a sudden I was brusquely catapulted to page 599. Thirty-three pages had somehow been skipped entirely! My first instinct was panic. I scoured the thick volume back to front thinking that maybe these pages had simply been misplaced or perhaps, in a moment of uncharacteristic discontentment, had not enjoyed their chronology and decided to relocate to what they thought a more interesting section of the novel. Sadly, this was not the case. The pages had simply not been included.

To add insult to injury the last bit of type of pg 566 was a hyphenated punch to the gut: "He never married; no ne-". To confuse matters further before I realized the omission I spent a good 48 seconds trying to make sense out of the continuing text from page 599 which read "uniting powder with lilac oil to make a splendid ultramarine." I almost went on reading, thinking that perhaps "neuniting" was just a word not in my personal lexicon, until I noticed the disjointed page numbers.

So now I'm left with a birthday conundrum. Do I try and find another copy of this semi-obscure book? And then even if I find a copy do I purchase it just to read 33 pages or do I try and read it in whatever establishment happens to have it on hand? Also, in the meantime will my fidelity to this book remain unwavering or will I slowly lose interest and find solace in the pages of a fun, flirty, literary fling? As I lay sleeping peacefully last night, a confident young man of 24, who could have guessed that the advent of my 25th year would be fraught with such a challenge? Is this what life is going to be like from here on out? Curse you pages 567-598!

Watching Soccer: Performance ANXIETY

2006-08-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Jacqui, our friend Dave and I traveled to Kalamazoo. We went to see my brother play in a soccer tournament. Now some people might say that the climax of the sporting year would be the super bowl or on a year such as this the World Cup or the Olympics. Now those sporting events are all great in there own ways and each undoubtedly has numerous fans but yesterday we witnessed some of the most intense competition EVER. It was sweet.

My brother is a really good soccer player. There I've said it. You can quote me. I never played soccer growing up so the fact that he can do such amazing things with just his feet always impresses me and the "watching him is exciting because he's my brother" factor is also just plain fun for me. He plays defense. He's what's called a sweeper. He's sort of the last guy the opposing team has to get by before the goal so he's pretty important. Even watching him play in just your normal, average, run of the mill game is always fun for Jacqui and I but when it's a game like yesterday it gets down right intense.

It's a weird thing to feel so invested in someone else's performance. I guess I've experienced that watching friends on stage but in that situation I can usually suspend my belief and see them as their character; watching a sporting event just feels different. On a base level I suppose that's why people watch sports: they enjoy investing something of their own time and emotions in something larger than themselves. It's why people hold their breath when their favorite team is up to bat or their favorite player has a chance to win the game. I'm sure it'd be even more intense if you actually had a personal connection to that player or team. How did Michael Jordan's mom handle it?! How does Rodger Federer's grandpa cope?! Maybe they're so used to it that it's just normal, but I know that my nerves were definitely on edge, especially as the game came to an end.

Jordan's team won the first two games of the tournament pretty handily and then seemed to be on their way to a third win and the tournament trophy. BUT THEN...the other team scored in the last minute to tie things up at 1-1! The game then went into penalty kicks. I've never seen a live soccer shoot out but let me tell you it is concentrated excitement. The first kick was stopped on an amazing save by Jordan's goalie so it looked like his team was a lock for the win BUT THEN...one of his team-mates missed so it was a draw after five kicks. Now I wasn't super familiar with the penalty kick format but at this point the competition goes into...DUN DUN DUN: SUDDEN DEATH!

Jordan didn't kick in the first set of five but after it headed into sudden death he got to give it a go. I could barely watch. If he missed his team was out. That's just so much pressure to put on one guy. I had to get up and walk around. Heck, even writing about it now it feels like my pulse is picking up. As he wound up for his kick I could only watch out of the corner of my eye...as he nailed it right in the center of the net! I screamed my head off. It was awesome. It stayed tied for a few more kicks but then Jordan's goalie got pulled, a confusing last minute substitution was made and a new goalie was called in. Now this kid hadn't played goalie the whole tournament but he stepped up big and stopped the first shot and then in dramatic fashion, with his goalie gloves still on, went to the line and kicked in the winning penalty kick. It was exhausting and exhilarating to watch.

I was so proud of my brother, who played so well, and I was just struck by how fun the whole thing was to watch and what an interesting thing it is to watch someone you know perform well.

Watering

2006-08-07T06:20:00.000-07:00

I watered the flowers this morning. At the house we're sitting we have to water the plants and flowers everyday. Usually I don't enjoy this task. Task. What a great word. Usually having to water the plants the takes on all the negative connotations that come with a "task". Some days though I like it. I woke up this morning and had a sudden desire to water the plants. Someone once told me something about work. I don't know if it was a quote or just a moment of brilliance on their part but it had something to do with work and how, although we complain about having to get work done (especially physical work) there is something about giving your hands a specific job that allows your mind to wander free. I like that feeling. Sometimes when I let my mind wander all that comes into it are old episodes of "Lois and Clark" but sometimes it gives me a chance to get my brain in order and sort things out.

I'm usually pretty good at pushing sad or mean thoughts away. Sometimes this is a good thing. But sometimes it's just me lying to myself about how I really feel. If I don't want to feel something I usually talk myself into feeling something different. Usually it's an emotion I assume I ought to be feeling. I've had this a lot recently. My dad has been in the hospital for over a month from a huge heart attack he had at the beginning of July. The recovery has been agonizingly slow and not really visible. He's been mostly unresponsive, not really aware of where he is or what's going on. Over that time it's been really easy for me to fill the positive, helpful son role. No negative thoughts, no sadness, no discouragement. Sometimes I win this battle but sometime anger, and tears have a funny way of leaking out in weird ways or at unusual times.

I thought about all this when I was watering the plants this morning. It felt nice to stand on the grass in bare feet and listen to water gushing out of the hose. There was something good about the way the water would sit on top of the dry parts of the ground in a little puddle and then slowly seep into the dirt when I wasn't looking at that part any more. My hands and legs just sort of movd on auto-pilot as I shifted the hose in my hand or walked to a new section of lawn. After awhile I realized that I was thinking about my dad a lot.

Last Friday my dad had what I would call a break through day. The doctor had just finished telling me that because dad was so unresponsive that there was a good chance that he had suffered brain damage. He told me that there was a pretty conclusive EEG report to support this theory and that it probably happened because at the time of his heart attack his brain had been without oxygen for too long. I took this news calmly, smiling at the doctor and thanking him for his help.

The next minute the physical therapist was calling me into my dad’s room. "We've got him sitting up on the edge of the bed again, would you like to see?" I walked in and there he was sitting up on the edge of the bed. Then they stood him up supporting him with some sort of physical therapy belt around his waist. This was pretty amazing because I had only seen him flat on his back. Then they started asking him questions. "When is your birthday?" "Do you know who these people are?" and to my amazement he answered them fairly coherently. For the rest of the day he was more or less awake and able to talk in a garbled sort of way. This was the most alert and with it I had seen him since I'd been back. It was pretty incredible.

I thought about all this while I watered the flowers. I'm still processing a lot of questions and fears and it was good to have something to do while I waited for something to happen internally. Sometimes when I sit with my dad I put my hands to work, squeezing his hand because I need something to do while I wait for something, anything to happen. I felt like that this morning as I listened to the hose gush. I'm still trying to sort through/am still stuck at the moment the doctor told me that my dad had brain damage. "How could I be so calm?" "What would I do if he really was brain damaged?" All those thoughts and more: Feeling guilty because through a series of miscommunications no one went to visit my dad yesterday, even though I told him someone would be there. Trying to sort through what having my dad in the hospital means for Jacqui and I as far as moving, because although I like staying at this house of a thousand plants that has to end in a few weeks when its real owners come home. Mostly I was, and still am, trying to sort through being sad and afraid to lose my dad.

It's been a weird sort of morning but somehow holding that hose and watching that water helped.

Coming Home

2006-07-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

We left Vancouver for Michigan on July 5 which is fast approaching a month ago. It's hard to believe that we've been back for that long. But I suppose that there have been some significant events that have quickly filled our days. Just after we landed on the 5th we found out that my dad had been rushed to the hospital earlier that day. We quickly left Illinois and made our way to Kalamazoo's Borgess Hospital where my day was in critical care. Over the next day or two we learned that my dad had a heart attack and that the main arteries leading into his heart were quite clogged. They had done some emergency surgery to open one of the arteries but the other two remained pretty blocked.

To complicate things he also had a severe case of pneumonia and had a high fever because of infection. To help him stabilize they put him on a ventilator to regulate his breathing. He stayed in the critical care wing of the hospital for two weeks. For most of this time he was completely unconscious; sedated to keep him calm and to keep his heart from getting over worked. Just over a week ago he was moved to a long term care facility in Plainwell Michigan which is about 45 minutes from Grand Rapids. It's a smaller hospital that provides care in less intense medical situations. While he was there the pneumonia has gradually been getting better and for one of the first times I knew that he knew I was there. Another thing that is making things difficult is that about two weeks ago he had a tracheotomy (where they make a small hole at the base of the neck) so he wouldn't have to deal with the breathing and feeding tubes irritating his throat. Thankfully he's finally able to breath on his own so he's no longer on the ventilator but he still has oxygen being pumped through the trach tube. This makes communicating incredibly hard. He can sort of mouth words but he can't put any breath behind them which mean I can only sort of understand what he's saying about 10% of the time. This has been really frustrating for him and for us because we really want to be able to understand him and get him what he needs but it's just so hard.

And if simple recovery weren't enough the reason they're trying so hard to get him to a healthy stable place is so they can eventually do open heart surgery when he gets strong enough. Those other two arteries need to be taken care of so that something like this doesn't happen again.

Whew!

So that's sort of been the biggest, craziest thing that's happened since we've gotten back. It's one of those things that just sort of sits in the back of my mind. Do you ever have that? I mean you have to do normal things and handle the day to day business that is life--laughing, sleeping, shopping, going to church, seeing friends, going for a run, watering flower, writing blog posts-- but the whole time there's this voice at the back of my brain reminding me that my dad's still in the hospital and still has a long way to go. It's weird.

Outside of all that's happened with my dad our time back here has been pretty good. Right now we're house sitting a beautiful home in East Grand Rapids. It's just the sort of house I like living in. Well worn and antique-ish but not in a fancy way, more in a rambling, old, Martha Stuart Living, Real Simple type way. It's got lovely wood floors and well stocked book shelves. It's the type of place you can really enjoy a good cup of tea in the morning if that makes any sense.

It's also been great to see so many faces we missed while we were gone out west. I really missed my whole family--my mom, dad, my sister Janna and my brother Jordan. I missed them a lot. So to see them again on a fairly regular basis has been great. It's been also really good to go back to all the old places that we love or that are at least familiar to us in Grand Rapids. Driving has been fun. It took a day or two to remember how to get around. All those old short cuts that were second nature slowly trickled back into my consciousness and I found I didn't necessarily have to take 28th street every time I wanted to get somewhere.

Since it's sort of hard to find real employment for only a few weeks we've been picking up odd jobs here and there. The other day we headed out to Ada and did some farm type work. I mowed, no lie, two to three foot high grass with a push mower while Jacqui did some serious shop vac-ing in an old basement. There was also some weeding to be done and then we started in on the house painting. I apparently didn't realize where I was leaning my head and came home with a lovely new salt and pepper color. We've also been hired at our church to do some weekly cleaning. Hopefully the odd jobs'll keep coming. If you know anyone in GR who needs anything done feel free to put them in touch with us.

That's all for now. I'm off to Costco to buy some contact solution (I'm hoping it's going to come in a 30 gallon barrel) and other miscellaneous wholesale items. We'll keep you all posted as this new chapter in le Saga de Hoke continues Midwest style.

Jive Turkey

2006-07-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

I like cooking turkeys. I never thought I'd add this to my "activities I enjoy" list but never the less there it is. There's just something fun for me in getting such a large volume of food ready all in one juicy, golden brown shot. I have cooked a total of three turkeys in my life. Two of them have been here in Vancouver. The funny thing about the turkey dinner is the time frame most people would consider appropriate for such a meal. Holidays and turkeys are big. No one would bat an eye if you happened to cook one up for Christmas, Easter or the obvious Thanksgiving. The three turkeys I have prepared in my life were roasted in late April, Early December, and most recently late June. Not classic turkey days. In fact most people raised an eye brow if they happened to overhear me in talking about my upcoming poultry extravaganza.

"Why are you cooking a TURKEY?" they exclaim, pronouncing "turkey" as if they were saying "hamster" instead.

"Because it's delicious." I reply.

At that point the conversation doesn't usually go on incredibly long. Mostly because talking turkey isn't the most interesting thing in the world (blogging about turkey however...).

The two turkeys I made here in Vancouver were for Pacific Theatre events. The first on back in early December was for a belated American Thanksgiving. The actual American Thanksgiving passed us by and by the time early December rolled around I felt it would be an injustice to get all geared up for Christmas without the requisite Turkey bash to celebrate giving thanks before we geared up for Yule time fun.

The first one went so well that when Spring rolled around a friend of mine bought a turkey in the hopes of having another fowl par-tay to celebrate a belated Easter. We finally got around to it last week so it turned out to be a really belated Easter but it was festive and fun.

Last night Jacqui and I went for a walk on the beach and I asked her, "What are some of your favorite memories from this year in Vancouver?" She told me a few and then asked me mine. The turkey dinners immediately came to mind. It's funny what sticks with you.

Friends in town part 2

2006-06-20T20:46:00.000-07:00

As I said last post I'm big on looking forward to things, so is Jacqui. Somehow I think it's important for the human psyche to have things on the horizon to anticipate. I think that's half the fun actually. I love the anticipation in waiting for something good. Sharing with fellow anticipatees (note: that is definitely a made up word) all the hushed, whispered conversations of "I can't wait for---" and then getting to fill in the blank with something lovely, is great. ("Christmas", "Summer" and "Dessert" all work well, as does "the weekend" . "Tuesday" will work in a pinch provided you have something good to do on Tuesday. However, "The next episode of Everybody Loves Raymond" is right out.).

Jacqui and I have had the privlege of anticipation since last November when our friend Morgan officially declared that he would be making the westward pilgrimage to our fair shore. That's months and months of anticipation. Months and months of something fun to look forward too, which sometimes can be dangerous. Sometimes you can do what anticipation experts call "Hyperextendus Anticipationitude" or to the layman "strain your anticipation". Morgan's visit however was not a case of this. It lived up to...nay, exceeded all fun expectations.

We picked him up from the SeaTac airport on a Thursday and the good times started immediately. Morgan and I have known each other for going on 12 years now, have been roommates for about five of those years and he and since Jacqui was added to the mix they've gotten along like...like...um...well like people who get along really well. All this is to say that there's a history there, a real wealth of material to work with, a common language of fun if you will. It becomes especially apparent when we haven't seen each other for awhile. All that craziness, all the thousand jokes, rejoinders and quips that were left unsaid in one another's absence come pouring out in a firestorm of concentrated humor. The first hour is especially intense. To the common observer I'd imagine we could be described as "giddy" as the laughter flows like...liquid laughter.

From that point on as an intrepid threesome Morgan, Jacqui and I conquered the West cost with style and panache. We frequented numerous Asian restaurants (Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Malaysian, Japanese again, and Mongolian) and consumed no less than 4 of our favorite summer time treats (which for fake copyright reasons I'm choosing to creatively rename): "The Cow barn feminine monarch's, extreme wintertime storm". I like mine with Reese's Pieces, Morgan goes for the fruit variety (unless he's feeling "chocolatey" in which case he's told sources close to him that he feels right at home with M & M's and chocolate soft serve) and Jacqui's into the cheesecake version.

Among other things we traveled, saw sights, talked a lot, hung out with friends, shot hoops next to the ocean, ate many delicious meals, reveled in the natural beauty of the west coast, watched many episodes of NBC's The Office, saw two Shakespeare plays and most importantly just enjoyed each other's company. It was just the right amount of activity and controlled lethargy and we loved every minute of it.

It's really hard to believe that things for Jacqui and I are almost finished here, the time has gone SO, SO quickly. But having our friends here--whether it was a shocking surprise or a much anticipated event--made the last few weeks of our Vancouver adventure a lovely thing indeed.

Friends in town

2006-06-16T17:24:00.000-07:00

I love having things to look forward too. I'm big on surprises and I'm big on being able to have something in the distant future to be excited about. This year I got to have lots of experiences that fall into both those categories but few have been as fun as the visits we received from our friends Dave and Morgan.

Dave strung us along all year. "Yeah...I don't think I'll be able to make it out. I'd really like to but...yeah it's probably just best for us to just wait until you guys get back to Michigan." Lies. All lies. This little bugger had been secretly plotting and planning since November with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law to stealthily descend on Vancouver for a five day extravaganza about a month ago.

We never saw it coming. I talked to him the day before he showed up and he was still playing it cool as could be. "Yeah it was good to talk to you too. Hopefully we can talk more soon...bye." More deception.

So then there we were warming up for our show when all of a sudden my brother-in-law Mike pokes his head in, a wild and scared look in his wide eyes. His voice trembled with anxiety "Ryan, Jacqui. I need to talk to you right now. Something happened at home." My heart slowly slid down into my stomach. I had visions of a burned out shell of an apartment charred to a crisp because I left a burner on or a thoroughly burgled apartment robbed because of my negligent door locking skills.

We followed him, our hearts pounding, through a divider curtain and all of a sudden were confronted by a grinning Dave smugly smiling like a mid-western Cheshire cat.

We freaked out.

His visit was a whirl wind tour de force. We seriously packed in about 2 weeks worth of crazy fun into 5 days. Our heads were spinning and there were few nights when our heads hit our respective pillows before 2am. It was so fun to show Dave around Vancouver. There's just something about having a friend to share your city with that colors that city in a new light. You're really reminded of all the reasons you like where you live. It's just a fun thing to share. Dave's visit was a true treat, a joy, and a definite surprise.

Next post I'll fill you in on Morgan's visit which was of the "having something to look forward to" variety (And we're actually still in the middle of his time with us--he's currently making witty quips as we root for the U.S. as they try to fend off Italy in World Cup craziness). Till next time!

GO U.S.!

Jacqui and Ryan! What the heck has been going on?

2006-04-10T18:35:00.000-07:00

Shucks it's been a LONG time since any posting has occured here. Maybe I was blogged out. Who's to say. Anyway I thought I would do some updating on what's been a'going on out West. Since I last posted our show A Rattling Sound closed which we were both relieved and sort of sad about. There's always that mix of sad and sweet when you end any big project I guess and this was no different. I think we were just proud that we pulled A Rattling Sound off and that we actually did what we set out to do. When that ended we jumped right into rehearsals for the next mainstage show at Pacific Theatre. It's the last show of the season and it's called A Bright Particular Star. It's a world premire play written and directed by the artisitic director of the theatre Ron Reed. It tells the intriguing tale of Lilia MacDonald, daughter to the Victorian writer George MacDonald. If you don't know who he is here's a pretty good quote that summed it up for me.

“I regard George MacDonald as my master; indeed, I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.” C.S. Lewis

So yeah the story is all about Lilia, the theatre, artistic calling vs. christian duty, family, God, social expectations and love of different sorts on lots of different levels. It's got it all. The PT website (which has just been revamped and looks sweet: www.pacifictheatre.org) has a pretty good blurb on what the show is about and if you're anything like me if you love anything it's a good ol' fashioned blurb so here it is:

"World-renowned author George MacDonald and family—Victorian hippies of a sort—take their homemade stage productions on tour across Europe. His daughter Lilia is swept up by the exhilaration of a life in the theatre—spurred on by family friends Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll and even London stage luminary Kate Terry. But faced with competing family expectations, blossoming romance, and an urge to serve London’s poor, can Lilia justify so frivolous a passion?

So yeah, it's a great story about Christians and theatre and it really resonated with me. I think that as a Christian in theatre myself I definitely had to ask myself at one time "Is this worth it? Is this what God is calling me to do?" and the play explores a lot of that. I just love the Victoria time period too. The clothes were great, the whole look was pretty slick. Ruffled cuffs, suspenders, cut away jackets, canes, dashing hats...what's not to love? In the above summary my character plays a part in the "blossoming romance." My name is Charlie de la Rue. Pretty fancy huh? It's a great part and I feel really honored to have been given a chance to play such a cool role. Jacqui's character is great too. She plays Lilia's best friend and her name is Jenny Ward. She's an struggling actress with Gilbert and Sullivan's company and a bunch of crazy stuff happens to her as she pursues her theatrical dreams. It's pretty great. The cast is fantastic and the whole process has been really fun. We opened last Friday and we run through June 3rd so...if you just happen to be in the Vancouver area and want to see a cool play...

That's all I can think of for now. We miss all you guys a lot. It's pretty amazing that our time here on the west coast will be over before we know it. We leave these fair Canadian shores July 5th. Which is interestingly enough is the exact date we arrived here last year. Yup, that's right we'll have been here one year exactly. I don't really know what that signifies but in a nice circle of life sort of way it gives me a subtle feeling of closure and comfort.

So yeah that's all for now. Feel free to ask any questions about any details I may have over looked in my Bright Particular Star blurbing. Blurbs can only do so much. Blurb, blurb, blurb. Peace out.

Our HUGE and CRAZY Project: Blog installment #4

2006-03-23T14:53:00.000-08:00

What? Two post in three days? Surely not! Read on to find out the thrilling conclusion that began in the now classic "Our HUGE and CRAZY PROJECT Blog Installment #1" and continued in the equally iconoclastic " Blog Installments #2 and #3"...

So there we were over 100 pages deep in transcribed interviews. At this point we were already getting that "Shouldn't we be done by now?" sort of feeling and we still had to somehow shape these sprawling 100 plus pages into a managable, performable script. We had no idea how to go about it. We sat down with our director and after reading the interviews and tried to figure out how to crack this ethnographic nut (mmmm....ethnographic nuts...). And after many hours of brainstorming and talking things through we finally mapped out the throughline of the script and ended up with about 100 different note cards with different pieces and parts of the interviews and other texts we spliced in, written in different colored ink which we arranged, rearranged and then arranged again. It was at this point that it really hit me how how much this process is like making a collage. A little bit of this, a snippet of that all arranged and hodgepodged into place.

So then, our note cards numbered and in a coherant order we then made a massive 77 page script based on that map as a guide. It was a doozy as far as length and probably would have taken about 5 hours to perform...But then we began the editing.... and whoo boy this was crazy. It felt like I was back in school and had a huge paper or something to finish. And we had to work fast because we were hoping to get into rehearsal as soon as possible. In the end it took a week and a half of solid everyday work. There were some days where I literally worked from morning into the wee hours of the night. Like 14 hour days in front of the computer, cutting, copying, pasting rearranging shifting for hours and hours. For days my body had that nervous "Why are you doing this to me Ryan?!" sort of feeling. During this editing whole process Jacqui was amazing, picking up shifts for me in the box office, encouraging me when I was going crazy, she was great...(The reason I was doing most of this editing was because we decided that it would be easier for just one person to be in charge of this initially editing process because one person would have a better handle on keeping a consistent throughline.) And then finally 77 pages were whittled to 46 and then down to a manageable 25 pages. Whew! Also by this point we had figured out a title for the play: A Rattling Sound: Stories of Thorns and Helicopters. The title comes from a section of Ezekial 37, the story of the valley of dry bones, which we spliced thoughout the script.

And then...rehearsals finally began! This is where things got really fun. After all those hours with just words, words, words it felt like a treat to actually put the thing together on stage: blocking, character work, warm ups, creating different moments all the normal rehearsal stuff. It was cool. And to get to do it together was pretty amazing too. During all of this too we're working on all of the publicity, media releases, e-cards, posters, postcards...the whole shebang. (Here's the link to our online media release and poster if any of you want to read it)

http://www.pacifictheatre.org/rattling.html

So then finally towards the end of rehearsal all the technical elements came into the mix. It was so weird/cool, it really made it feel like "real" show if that makes any sense. Just to have a lighting designer, sound designer, and stage manager all enter into the picture with their different gifts and ways of looking at the play was great and it really took a huge weight off Jacqui and my shoulders. With our the last show we put up in the fall we had done everything as far as the tech and it was exhausting so it was such a relief to not have to worry about that for A Rattling Sound, not to mention the fact that their designs were also amazing.

So there we were...after months and months of work we had a show...and then last Thurday night...WE OPENED!

That's right two nights ago was finally the big night!

And everything went really well. After our final bows we went off stage and we were busy hugging and sort of dancing around ...when we realized that they were still clapping! So we actually went back out for a second bow, we couldn't believe it. The audience wasn't huge but the people who were there were great and gave us some really encouraging feedback. And we sunk into our beds that night with a tired but contented feeling, just thankful that we got to do this and that God gave us so many gifts along the way: getting to meet so many new people, hearing some really amazing stories, getting to work together and tons of other things that I'm sure we'll still be realizing for awhile...But that'll come later, for now we'll just concentrate on the rest of the shows we get to do. So wish us luck and pray for us if you remember!

(Cue triumphant music! Cue the release of many doves!)

(Cue Jon Stewart)

So...uh, thanks for faithfully tuning in to this little ahh...theatrical saga...ahh...feel free to fire any questions at our intrepid ethnographers that you have buring inside you: How are Jacqui and Ryan feeling about tonight's show? Will there be a video of this thing? What are the costumes like? What is their favorite pre-show snack? Is the current Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon show as good as the early 90's original? Ask away and if they come to mind keep this couple in your thoughts and prayers...Oh yeah and don't forget [insert witty George Bush joke here]!

(Cue winnning, sardonic smile...and then...lights out)

Our HUGE and CRAZY Project: Blog Installment #3

2006-03-22T13:05:00.000-08:00

And we're BACK!

When we last left our intrepid theatre apprenti they were on the precipice of vague challenges and undefined tribulations as they journeyed forward on their quest for oral history goodness. Continue on to read the penultimate installment of their adventure...

So there we were it was late fall, we had finally chosen a story for our piece and we had breathed a huge sigh of relief...little did we know about the months and months of work ahead of us. The first step was to get in touch with Joe, the double hip replacement surgery friend and his wife, we'll call her Jenna, and ask if they'd be willing to even be a part of our project...if they said no we were pretty much back at square one (or hexagon six, depending on what game you're playing).

Thankfully, though after some frenzied emailing they were on board as were David and Lee, the woman from Boston who had just gotten cochlear implants. So they were willing but we still had to do all of our interviews. "Oh that'll be the easy part," we naively thought. As it turned out we were really busy at the theatre, this was during the fall right around the time I was in The Elephant Man and all of a sudden our fall turned into December. And December ended up being crazy with the Christmas show, and then as it inevitably happens, the holidays were crazy for everyone so it proved to be almost impossible to schedule solid blocks of time to sit down with people and have them share their stories. In the end, it was around the second week of January before we had a chance to catch our collective breaths and almost immediately my and Jacqui's collective hearts began to beat nervously...we were running out of time!

At this point I should also mention that other people had now come on board with our project. As we told more people about what we were doing there were others who had similar medical experiences or knew someone with an amazing story of recovery. By January we had a cast of 10 characters:

*Joe and Jenna-double hip replacement
*David and Lee- deafness and cochlear implants
*Jacqui's brother, Mike, a high school friend of Joe and a close friend of David.
*A young man who contracted rare flesh eating disease and went into surgery thinking he was going to lose his leg.
* A woman who struggled for years with clinical depression.
*A young actor who dealt with Crohn's disease for years and then within a month of Joe and Lee's surgery underwent surgery to remove his colon.
*A guy who sprained his ankle really badly and then had God heal him while receiving prayer.
*A 58 year-old pastor and professor from the University of British Columbia who had chronic migraines since he was a boy and who's son also fell off a 120 foot cliff and was in a coma for 30 days suffering brain damage.

So we had a TON to do and as can often happen when people are motivated by personal nervousness we embarked on a frenzy of productive activity. We knocked out about 5 interviews in a week and then slowly picked up the rest over the next few weeks, some in person, some by phone. So there we were breathing another sigh of relief. WHEW!...however then came the dreaded word that would plague our days and nights for the better part of three solid weeks: TRANSCRIPTION! (DUN-dun-DAAA!)

There is some amazing technology out there right now. What it does is takes recorded human speech and turns it into text with about 98% accuracy, just incredible...MAN WOULD THAT HAVE EVER COME IN HANDY IF WE'D HAD IT! But alas it costs about 300.00 dollars and we didn't have the funds so it was up to our four ears and 20 fingers to take all of the words that had been shared with us and write them down. IT WAS INSANE!

Imagine hours and hours of experiencing moments like "Dang it! Did he say 'It was a really amazing thing'? OR 'It had a very definite ring'?" or going "Was is 'Um, and then, like, um yeah, maybe...'? OR 'Ah, well, like, er, yeah, well, maybe'?" It took SO LONG to do. It bordered on depressing us. Having to listen so intently and then spending like an entire hour typing only to find that you've only done half a page. We were typing and listening to tape for such long hours that our brains hurt. We never imagined it would be so tedious and time consuming. Finally, in the end after all of our hard work we had over 100 pages of single spaced interviews. And then came the enormous challenge of turning those 100 plus pages into something that resembled a performable script...

(cue tense violins "weee-ooooo, wee-ooo, we-oo!")

(Cue George Clooney):

Will our heroes survive or will the task of sifting through mountains of paper consume them in a sea of despair and confusion. How much sleep will they lose? Will there be tears of sorrow or tears of joy?And how many buckets of each? Will there ever be a way to turn booty dancing into an acceptable form of formal greeting? As usual find out the answers to these questions and more next post!

Our HUGE and CRAZY Project: Blog Installment #2

2006-03-08T10:21:00.000-08:00

DUN-dun-DAAAA

Welcome back folks! Last time we were with our theatre apprentice heroes, a thin ray of hope had pierced the dreary confusion that had stubbornly been plaguing their ethnographic project. What was this mysterious ray of creative light? Read on to find out...

So there we were it was mid-fall and we were still without a suitable story for our big project. Our brains were churning, churning, churning hoping to find the gem that would somehow be a perfect amalgam of social relevance, compelling story, and something we were passionate about. We wanted something great but everything we were coming up with was either boring ("Hey I know, let's interview slew of white collar accountants about their day to day struggles with the decimal! YES!) or inaccessible ("I've got it Triple Axel of Pain: Tonya Harding, 10 years later."). When suddenly we realized that there were two amazing stories happening right in front of us.

Mike, my brother in law has a best friend. We'll call him Joe. Joe is 27 and since he was 15 he has struggled with chronic arthritis in his hips. When it was bad he couldn't walk at all. For years he thought God was going to heal him and take this pain away. He prayed, and waited and prayed and waited.

It got worse and worse and finally it just got to be too much. He was in pain all the time and it was affecting him as a dad. He has a two year old daughter and as she was learning to walk he was losing his ability to walk. She was going to start to run and he wasn't going to be able to chase after her. So at 27 he went in for a rare double hip replacement surgery.

Joe and Mike have another friend we'll call him David. David's wife, we'll call her Lee started to lose her hearing when she was 10 years old. By the time she was in college she was completely deaf. Interestingly she and her mother became Christians about the same as she started to lose her hearing. So, for her mother especially it was all tied together: Her deafness, God's healing and prayer.

Because of Lee's specific type of hearing loss the first thing she lost was speech, so communication with the world just sort of broke down. She could still speak and lip-read but it took 100% of her concentration so it became really draining. After marriage it just got harder and harder to live her life like she was used to. With the possibility of a family now she was faced with the reality that she might never hear her kids. She was discouraged, exhausted and had a lot of questions about the future.

Around this time, crazily enough she met woman at her work who like her had lost her hearing at a young age but who had recently gotten cochlear implants, a relatively new technology, which had restored her hearing. Prompted by this woman's story and the circumstances of her own life Lee got more information and eventually scheduled surgery of her own.

In the fall of 2005 these two surgeries for these two friends took place less than 10 days apart.

These stories and others like them became the focus of our project.

After brainstorming more we decided that, using Joe and Lee's surgeries and as a focus, our project would deal with among other things healing, God, medical science and prayer. In a notebook we scribbled some brainstormed questions:

What is a miracle?
What is God's relationship to medical science?
What happens when healing never comes?

So there we were. We had some amazing stories, something we felt passionate about and connected to and some questions that we hoped would get people talking and asking questions of their own.

Whew! We were excited...but we had no idea the struggles and challenges that would face us as we attempted to put this thing together.

(cue even louder and longer dramatic music)

DUN-dun-DAAAAA,DUNNNN-DUNDAAA-DAAAA-DAAAAA-dun-DAAA!!!!!

(cue a different, even more charming announcer)

Join us next time to hear about these vague struggles and currently ambiguous challenges! Will our heroes be able to press forward and do ethnographic justice to these amazing stories? Will they collapse under the weight of their project? Will their marriage withstand the strain of creating artistically together? What is a healthy tasty treat that the whole family will love? Find out the answers to these new questions and more on the next chapter of Our Huge Crazy Project: Blog installment #3!

Our HUGE and CRAZY Project: Blog installment #1

2006-03-02T16:39:00.000-08:00

I'm tired today. This past week has finally caught up with me. It was a doozy. I'll explain, though I should probably start at the begining...

When Jacqui and I first decided to come to apply to come to Pacific Theatre they ask what type of apprenticeship we wanted. It's really great because the apprenticeships are really geared toward the interests of the people who come. If you want to direct you can direct, if you're an actor they let you act, if you want to design they'll find a way to plug you in or if you want to do a delicious mix of everything, heck that's cool too. So anyway as Jacqui and I were applying the one thing we knew for sure was that as a part of our apprenticeships we wanted to compile a show and perform it.

I say "compile" because one of the types of theatre we're most interested in is called ethnography or oral history and you don't really "write" plays like this, at least in the traditional sense where everything is coming from your brain/imagination and your brain/imagination alone. Basically the process of creating an ethnographic play looks sort of like this. 1) Interview people 2) Write down the interviews word for word 3) Take your stack of interviews and cut them together into a script. It's sort of like a documentary film but for the stage.

So for the last 5 months that's what we've been doing.

It's been crazy.

When we first got here we had no idea what we wanted our play to be about. Initially we decided that we wanted to do sort of a slice of life sort of thing and interview people from every demographic in Vancouver and have the show be about life in the city.

We were excited but then we attended a playwriting workshop and realized that while life in the city is interesting it lacks a solid central story and to loosely quote the guy who was doing the workshop "Plays need to have a story!" So it was back to the drawing board.

Now when you're choosing a topic for your ethnographic play (Which is a common dilemma...Seriously. It's getting to the point where I can't even order a coffee anymore without having the guy behind the counter choose a topic for his ethnographic play right in front of me...it's becoming quite the global problem!!) there are several ways to approach choosing a topic.

You can:

1) Pick an event and then get lots of different people's reactions to it or to tell it from their perspective ( "Well I was at work when the aliens attacked and hoo-boy!")

2) Pick a topic or current issue and ask people about their opinions on or their experiences with said topic ("I've never much cared for broccoli and I'll tell you why. It all started when my Aunt Crab Apple came to visit in the summer of '45...)

3) You can pick a certain group or community of people and try and tell their story ("You know being a member of the Kool-Aid fan club has been quite a journey for me...)

or 4) A mixture of any and all of these. ( My Aunt Kool-Aid had just visited the aliens when the broccoli attacked. At the same time Crab Apple '45 was just becoming a member of the hoo-boy fan club!")

So there we were mid-October no topic to be found. We brainstormed and then brain tornadoed but still nothing. Then it hit us. Right under our creative noses we had two amazing stories unfolding in front of us...

(cue dramatic music)

DUN-DUN-DAAAAA!

(cue charming announcer)

Tune in next post to find out the thrilling conclusion to our theatrical heroes' story. Will they finish their play? What were these mysterious stories? How do you make an ornamental shoe box using only ornaments and a shoebox? For the answers to these questions and more tune in next time for Our Project: Blog installment...#2!

On Good Days...

2006-02-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday we had a great day. It was one of those days that you remember it for days and weeks later. It's the type of day that compels you to extol it's virtues on your blog and release a description of it's goodness out into what a friend of mine recently described as "the think gumbo of the zany internet."

I'll start at the beginning ("a very good place to start...")

One of my favorite things is waking up in the morning with the sun sneaking through the cracks in the blinds. I don't know why I love this. I love that the shades aren't fully open. I think I like that even though I can't see everything outside the day streaming in anyway. It makes me feel more cozy than Christmas. This will sound silly (and perhaps it screams "This guy definitely worked at a day care for two years!/Put in a children's book!) but when I start a day like that, snuggled under blankets, opening my eyes, still half asleep with sun streaming into my room I feel like a little bunny. Just like a little rabbit waking up in his warren. A 5 foot 10 rabbit who's craving some raisin bran for breakfast. Anyway, it was in this cozy state that I woke up last Wednesday.

After a quick meal of the sweet breakfast nectar: raisin bran (whilst reading a good book, one of my favorite combo activities) Jacqui and I made our way outside. The day was really amazing. Cool clear, sunny. The mountains were incredible, towering like...well like mountain, standing in sharp contrast to the brilliant blue sky. We walked down-hill, down Burrard St. towards the ocean and Kitsilano beach. We were going to meet Jacqui's dad for coffee. He was over from Vancouver Island to visit us in the city. He came to see the current play at the theatre and spend some time with us. We turned left onto Cornwall St and found him sitting outside sipping his morning beverage. We made our way to a local coffee shop where I had the first Americano of my 24 year existence. It was good, but the company was better.

My father-in-law is just a great guy and hanging out with him is always fun. His name is Edo. Well I should say his nickname is Edo. His given name is just plain Ed, but after building houses in Japan he picked up this fun variation mostly because the Japanese have a hard time ending words with consonants. So "Ed" was brilliantly transformed into "Edo-san". After coming back to the states the "San" was dropped, but "Edo" forever remained. It was great for me as a new son-in-law because it totally avoided the whole what the heck do I call the in-laws dilemma. ("Ahhhh! Do I call him 'dad"? Do I go with 'ed'? Or do I just sort of avoid calling him anything directly?")

Anyway, Americano in hand we made our way even further north, down to the shores of False Creek, one of the large ocean inlets that carve up the Vancouver shoreline. The water was clear and the view of Stanley Park with the mountains behind was beautiful. We turned East along the waters edge and made our way past one of the many harbors that dot Vancouver's waterways. We continued past the harbor to Granville Island. Since coming to Vancouver Granville Island is one of my favorite places. It's not actually an island but a peninsula that sticks out into False Creek. Fifty years ago Granville Island was just large outcropping of fish markets and working class industrial buildings centering around the fishing and boating industry. In the years since it's turned into a quaint little village of shops, markets and restaurants. It's original corrugated tin buildings still remain, painted over with bright friendly colors. There's some great book stores, some delicious restaurants and other little shops and galleries (one of my favorites is a great hand-made paper store great for crafting (at this point my friend Dave would inevitably ask me "And you're sure you're not gay?).

The highlight of the Island for me though is the giant market on it's Northern most tip. It's huge and it's like something out of a movie. There's just rows and rows of fresh ripe, eye catching fruits and vegetables. When you see fruits and veggies at Granville Island it's you're like watching a beauty pageant for produce. Everything is shiny, colorful and piled high in aesthetically pleasing cascades of edible goodness. There are butchers with any type of meat you could want and though I'd never thought I'd say this about meat but it's actually really pretty when you see it at the market. And then there are the bakeries...this is my real weakness. Fresh baked scones and huge soft loafs laid out in a variety of eye catching arrangements. I don't usually even need to buy anything when I go. It's like going to an art gallery or something. Jacqui and I are simply content to be found exclaiming "Oooh look at that bacon! It's so thick! Amazing!" or "whoa what kind of fruit is that? Have you ever heard of a kingalingadu? Me neither!" It's a fun excursion, normally and to share it with Edo was a double pleasure. He ended up buying us some fruit and together we enjoyed some meaty chunks of smoked salmon (a hugely popular local delicacy) It was just plain fun.

After this we, left the island and made our way back towards our house. Realizing that we're poor apprentices and might need a few groceries Edo continued his generosity and offered to buy us some selected items from the D and W-esque grocery store near our house. It was so nice, and not just because we got some free groceries (although I'm sure that didn't hurt to bolster our feelings of goodwill toward the world), it was the combination of everything. The quiet, gentle company of my father-in-law, the warmth of the sun, the visceral crispness of the air and the beautiful quality of normal everyday moments.

It's not often that I can distill these sort of things and see them for the little miracles that they are. Do you ever have that? Where things that you've done a thousand times-- in my case, waking up to sunshine, getting coffee, walking with loved ones--suddenly come into sharper focus and you see clearly what they really are? Anyway I don't really remember much after we got home. I think I spent the day working on some of our projects, cleaning and reading, but the magic quality of the morning stayed with me all day and gave me something ephemeral that I can't quite explain, but that a week later is still with me.

oh Box Office

2006-01-27T14:39:00.000-08:00

so, ryan may get some awesome quotes while he's in our hole of a box office (seriously it's tiny and the only way to get in is through a little hobbit hole), but i get the most absurd moments. let me paint a little picture for you. me, a computer, a headset for incoming calls, and 60 senior citizens singing along with accordians to the tune of edelweiss. i can only imagine what the people on the other side of the phone line thought. it's quite a shock to the system, really.

New Box Office Quote of the Day

2006-01-14T13:56:00.000-08:00

I pick up the phone.

"Pacific Theatre box office, this is Ryan. Can I help you?"

"Oh, hi there. I was just wondering if you had any more seats for tonight's show."

"Sorry, sir, unfortunately we're all sold out for tonight's show."

"Are you sure? We're small people."

"What was that?"

"I said we're very small."

Pause.

"I see...well unfortunately we only have so many seats so once they're gone we're all sold out. Sorry about that."

Click.

Box Office Quote of the Day

2006-01-14T12:40:00.000-08:00

I pick up the phone.

“Pacific Theatre Box Office. This is Ryan, can I help you? “

“Hi there I was wondering if you might be able to help me? Dr. Stevens just finished but the whole wire has come out of the braces and Cindy can’t eat! Is there anything you can do?”

Pause.

“I think you might have the wrong number...this is a theatre.”

“Oh.”

Click.

Good Times

Update from Jacqui Land

2006-01-09T13:29:00.000-08:00

okay.

it's been a while. my lack of posting on this blog has brought me back to my days of trying to keep a journal. i put it off and put it off until it's been so long since i've written that i feel like such a fake when i write again. at least i don't have to face the facts that i've long since lost the pen i last wrote with and that my handwriting has severely devolved.

anyhow, this won't quite be a ryan hoke post, which i know everyone's waiting with baited breath for, but at least i can fill everyone in on what my life's been about recently.

i just finished a week off after getting to be backstage for our last show, The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townwomen's Guild Dramatic Society's Production of A Christmas Carol. Pretty awesome name, huh? let's just say the craziness of the name was outdone by both the craziness of the show and the craziness of the cast and crew (and by crew, i mean me....and the stage manager). i was the props and costume running/stage running/assistant stage manager/productions assitant/girl-who-wore-a-funny-dress-and-answered-to-the-stage-
name-of-joyce person. i'm actually impressed with myself for using the phrase "getting to be" in the first sentence of this paragraph because if you'd asked me about the show in the first week i probably would've...well, screamed, cried and then used a less excited verb choice. but, by the end i was thoroughly enjoying myself. and for those of you with a vested interest in my theatre knowledge (maybe some people who want to start a company with me someday), you'll be glad to know that i learned a whole lot during the process too. basically, after calvin i didn't know too much about stage managment, lights, costumes, or props...and i came to know them quite intimately.

so that was the show. i spent most of my time on that so, there's not too much more to update about...ok, so maybe there are a few things...

1. well, talking about being backstage reminds me that we probably haven't gotten the chance to talk about the show we were recently cast in. ryan and i will be performing in the last show of the season, A Bright Particular Star. it's a fabulous script and, besides enjoying the excitement of getting to act alongside our talented sister-in-law, rebecca, we feel honored to have been cast in two of the larger roles; ryan as rebecca's love interest (yes, they kiss, get over it), and me as her best friend. (i'd also like to make a side note that i have chosen to alternate between the british and the american spelling of words such as "honoured", so as to not alienate any of my audience...i could have chosen to avoid such words, or to use solely the neglected canadian spelling, but instead i chose to live on the edge of calvin college's inclusive language rules and opted for the more confusing, but more interesting, alternation).

2. christmas! it was good. nice to be with family again and so good to hear from (and receive packages from--thanks everyone!) people all over the place. ryan and i really felt blessed and provided for during the season of empty wallets. i think the reminder that we're being taken care of was the best christmas gift ever (besides that year i got gordon, my brown freckled pony--thanks again grandma!)

3. this may come as a surprise to some, but i actually finished a book! it was really good. (well, clearly, it did make it into the update list afterall) it's called the madman and the professor, by simon winchester. i highly recommend it. it's about the editor of the oxford english dictionary and one of the project's greatest volunteer contributors, who sent all of his contributions from an insane assylum. i'll leave it at that for those who want to read it...and those who want to eventually see mel gibson's movie version, if he ever makes it.

4. dogville. we watched this movie yesterday--since we've had the week off, we've had the chance to watch some movies and it's been awesome. this movie in particular was so good to finally get to see. it has stopped me in my tracks and inspired me to make art like it. for any of you who haven't seen it, lars von trier has made a beautiful and evocative film. see it.

5. 6 more months. that's how long we're here in vancouver; i guess we'll have to change the name of the blog after that. we've enjoyed being here in vancouver. it is a beautiful town and i will miss it's weather dearly..however, ryan and i are getting the itch to see the shores of lake michigan again and our longing to see our friends in the midwest is growing.

well, i think that's about it. we still haven't written a post about our ethnographic project that we're hoping to shape into a play but we will soon. for now let me just say that's it's going pretty well and we're excited to see how it works out. lord willing...

and remember as david letterman says: "there's no business like show business, but there are several businesses like accounting."

New Year's Resolution

2005-12-31T12:14:00.000-08:00

It was the golden summer of 2000. The new millennium had dawned the winter before and this was a summer of promise. Morgan, my best friend and I were returning home. We had just been to Ohio on a road trip and we were in the last half hour of our travels. We were in his parents’ station wagon and the breeze from the open windows was warm on our faces. We had dropped off all the other wayward travelers in our group and the Saturn wagon, which we had been shoe horned into at the beginning of our journey, was now blissfully spacious. Yep, just two friends on the road; local boys heading back to the small lakeside town where they grew up.

As with any road trip music was important and at this precise moment we were rockin' out to some mid-90's Michael Jackson, one of our shared favorites. Now, I don't bandy around the term "rockin' out" carelessly as some are in the habit of doing. When I say, "rockin' out" I mean just that. We were into it. The car was full of raucous outbursts of "oooh!" and "oww!" that are necessary to any official Michael Jackson rock out. If I recall correctly we were even dancing and gyrating to the beat as much as our seat belts would let us.

Eventually one of our favorite Jackson hits rolled around on the CD: a little gem called "Remember the Times". This song is sweet not to mention funky and it only amped up our mobile jam session bringing it to a new plateau of enthusiasm. Both long time Jackson fans we knew the words by heart and we were doing our best to follow along. All in all we did quite well. We only started to falter a bit at the end of the song when Michael, King of Pop that he is, does some vocal adlibs and improvised exclamations. However we had heard the song enough times that we were hitting most of the added stuff.
Now both Morgan and I are tenors so we tend to likes the higher pitched registers to begin with. However Michael is really more of an alto, and at times is just off the tonal charts all together. So, in order to nail some of those high pitched adlibs we were really forced to belt 'em out at the top of our lungs.

It was a thing to behold. Two suburban white boys doing 75 down the southwest Michigan highway screaming Michael Jackson, twisting in our seats to the beat, and loving every minute of it. It certainly wasn't the first time it's happened and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Anyway there we were absolutely howling out the last words of the song:

"Do you Remember the times?! Yeah, Yeah. In the Park, On the Beach. Remember the times!" we shouted together.

And then Morgan continuing to sing along with the song yelling louder still with heartfelt conviction "You and me in SPAIN!!!!!"

I looked at him and burst out laughing.

"Did you just sing "In SPAIN?"

"Yeah..." He said sheepishly.

"I don't think it's "In Spain". Why would they be in Spain? It's "it's FATE." I explained, enjoying this chance to for once know a lyric his sponge-like brain hadn't absorbed.

We had a good long laugh and from then on I'd kid him every time we heard that song and we'd revel in his confident and fortissimo "You and Me in SPAIN!!!!"

In fact just the other day Much Music a Canadian MTV-esque channel was airing a special on the King of Pop himself. I watched and silently hoped they would show some clips from "Remember the Times". I wasn't disappointed. "Listen to this Jacqui. This is the one Morgan thought was ‘In Spain’.” I said to my wife, as the famous last stanzas approached. I listened and waited for the fated lyric. Finally I heard "You and Me—" and then wonder of all wonders I heard what sounded just like "—in SPAIN!"

I was incredulous. I raced to the all-knowing Internet and looked up the lyrics...Sure enough it was "In Spain". I went to still more lyric sites and again found site after site: "You and Me...in Spain".

Oops.

In light of the New Year I thought it would only be appropriate to clear my ledger sheet of burdensome faux paus, unintended misdeeds and past grievances.

So Morgan I'm sorry. You were right. From now on when “Remember the Time” cues up on your iPod (as I'm sure it will) know that you can sing with confidence the words that you heart first recalled that golden summer day and bare no more the mockery that I have levied upon you.

I know it's all for the best but truth be told I'm a bit sad that the joke has to end, but I suppose I'll be consoled by the fact that whenever I hear that catchy tune I'll still think fondly of you and know that in my heart we'll always have our time "In Spain!!"

Pickles wrapped in Bacon

2005-12-25T22:18:00.000-08:00

Being married is fun. One of the best parts of being newly married around the holidays is that I get to experience the 20 plus years of traditions that are backing Jacqui's experience of Christmas.

When Jacqui was a kid growing up in frigid interior B.C. Christmas Eve would finally arrive and her family would get bundled up and head out into freezing night. Jacqui is one of five Dutch kids so after I'm sure a lot of shuffling and fighting over seat belts they finally all wedged into the family car and drove to the Christmas Eve service at her church. After church they would pile into the car again, snug and warm and drive around to all the local "hot spots" for viewing Christmas lights. They'd ooh and ahh at all the shining snowmen and blinking lights and then they'd turn around and head home. Jacqui's mom is an accomplished baker (a skill I'm lucky she's passed on to Jacqui) and days before she would have finished all the piles of Christmas baking. There'd be a plethora of Dutch goodies waiting: mountains of speculaas, a Dutch spice cake, piles of jan hagel, almond cookies, and mounds of Nanaimo bars, a west coast delicacy named after a Vancouver Island town.

This was just the baking.

There were party mints, the ketchup chips flowed like wine, and most importantly the crowned jewel of what eventually became known as "The Spread": PICKLES WRAPPED IN BACON!!!! I had never heard of this delightful combination before but in the Deboer household a Christmas Eve without Pickles wrapped in bacon would be like a Birthday Party without the cake--it's integral. Seriously. The love for this sacred hors doeuvres has reached the point that there's even a ceremonial dance and song created by the Deboers that accompanies the eating of the first bite of the season. It is a thing to behold.

After everyone piled a plate full of goodies they'd retire to open their gifts. Now, in the world there's a pretty big debate among families when it comes to gift opening: Christmas Eve vs. Christmas Morning. My family was always of the Christmas Morning Persuasion. Jacqui's was always a Christmas Eve Clan. You can't even imagine the issues we're working through these days...We're seeking some professional outside help to reconcile our difference. In her defense it's hard to fight Dutch cultural conditioning which seems to prefer the Christmas Eve opening time slot. It's a force to be reckoned with. In any case, their bellies full of goodies they'd retire and watch the wrapping paper fly.

When I, a Christmas Morning boy at heart, asked her family what they did on Christmas Day they looked at me incredulously and said "Play with all our new toys! What else?!"

So this year being out West smack dab in the middle of DeboerLand I got to experience a Dutch family Christmas in full force. The Pickles Wrapped in Bacon were devoured (seriously I watched an entire platter disappear in a matter of seconds) and as the newest family member, Ryan, Ryan himself, fried the smoked bacon.

Over 2 pounds of it. Good Times

Pickles + Bacon = Christmas Fun!

We love and miss you back home so much! Merry Christmas!

Accident Prone

2005-12-22T13:25:00.000-08:00

We were walking home from the theatre with our in-laws the other night when right in front of us two cars collided. It was a shock. We were coming up to the intersection of 12th and Fir, talking, laughing when suddenly time stood still as we watched a blue car slam into a red car that was headed East on 12th. It felt like movie. There was a tremendous noise and then silence. All this happened about 10 feet in front of us.

It was scary and I was shaken up a bit. (For anyone who knows me this shouldn't come as too big of a surprise. I jump when the phone rings unexpectedly. As phones often do.) The police and fire trucks were there soon after and we were all trying to remember exactly what happened. Not that anyone wanted our opinion really. The police were busy enough talking to the drivers and the other people who were in cars at the intersection, but on the way home a debate ensued. Who's fault was it? Who ran the light? Which way were the cars traveling? It was as if all the salient details had evaporated and all we were left with was a vague memory of violent sound and motion.

It was so weird to be debating the facts of the accident when two people's nights were just ruined and we had just stood feet away from what could have change so many people lives for the worse. Just after the accident as Mike, my brother-in-law, picked his way through some of the debris and tried to see if the drivers were hurt. As he was walking across to meet one of the smashed vehicles he was almost hit by another car speeding through, impatiently trying to get past the scene of the crash. This struck me: In the face of a dangerous and nerve-wracking situation people didn't even have the patience/compassion to drive slowly around the wrecked cars.

Thankfully everyone was alright, but the memory of the crash is staying with me; making me think about people, the impatience of the modern driver, and mostly my own need to cover the harsh and difficult things in life with the inadequate band-aids like facts, information and descriptions.

Walkin' in a temperately mild wonderland.

2005-12-08T15:39:00.000-08:00

Back in Michigan when Jacqui would tell people she was a Canadian she'd inevitably get two responses. The most knee jerk reaction was for people to say cleverly:

"Canadian, eh?"

These people were a real laugh riot.

After this the second most popular response was:

"Oooh pretty cold up there. Brrrr"

In order to make their point at just how cold it was up there people would often rub their arms together and sort of shiver on the "Brrrr." As if we might not understand without the visual.

Sometimes people would combine the two responses in an amalgam of clever hilarity.

"Canada! Pretty cold up there...eh?

Would the wit never end we asked ourselves?!

Of course I can't judge these people too harshly because callous American that I am I think I said these exact things to Jacqui at the beginning of our tentative courtship time. Jacqui, a fiery Canadian and more importantly a British Columbian, mistook what were in fact the initial forays into the complex world of international flirting as uninformed criticism. After a good stern talking to, in which she delved into the climatory and linguistic phenomena of my North American neighbors, I soon saw the error of my ways. "Not everyone says 'eh?', Ryan. That's mostly just people from Ontario." She'd say derisively. "And where I'm from it doesn't really get that cold and we hardly get any snow at all." I smiled a superior American smile and nodded my head but looking back I don't know if the lesson on weather really sunk in. "No snow?" thought I. "Come now, it's Canada!"

Things are sinking in now.

After living in the tundra-like waste of Southwest Michigan my whole life( along the shores of Lake Michigan, no less, where the dreaded phenomena known as "The Lake Effect" blanketed the lower left of the state in slippery, freezing whiteness from November until March. There's a reason Michigan looks like a mitten...) I had a hard time envisioning any place that wasn't a frozen expanse when the winter months rolled around. Well color me converted. It's only snowed twice since we've been here and that was only a light dusting that didn't last more than a day and made everyone sort of wistful "Look at the snow!" they'd say. "Isn't it pretty?". Of course there's always a trade-off. October was pretty miserable here. Rain, rain, rain every day and because it doesn't get cold fast enough there was no spectrum of majestic hues to paint the autumn leaves. But since winter has officially begun things have been quite beautiful. All the grass is still green for goodness sakes! I could definitely get used to this.

Narnia Mania

2005-12-08T15:14:00.000-08:00

Is anyone else incredibly excited about this movie? I'm really looking forward to it. I find myself inexplicably drawn to the Narnia website about once a day to watch the latest trailer. Last night I spent a good long while puttering around the website and watching all the mini-featurettes they have about various items of interest: the director,the story, locations used, special effects, etc. Good times, friends. Good times.

I think I read the books when I was a kid, but I know that I was too young to see any spiritual significance in them. About a year ago I was compelled to read them again and I was blown away. Really they are quite amazing. The language is so simple and beautiful and the way everything fits together as a picture for something even bigger than the story itself amazed me. I was sad that I hadn't read them sooner.

So yeah, I'm quite enthusiastic about the film. At this point all I have left to describe my eagerness is scattered word fragments organized alphabetically. Here goes: Aslan, exciting,lamp post,
Narnia, opening night, swords, tomorrow, spiritual metaphors, WETA workshop, whew!

Christmas People

2005-11-28T16:29:00.000-08:00

I love Christmas People. Many people who are not official Christmas People are content to wait for Christmas. They go about their lives in an unassuming way until about a week or two before Dec 25th. They then leisurely slip into that fuzzy sweater of a feeling known as " The Christmas Spirit." Not Christmas People. Christmas people have been pining away and have donned their fuzzy, metaphorical sweaters around mid-November. They are so ready for Christmas that people often feel the need to bring them down a notch saying "It's not even Thanksgiving yet!" As if this admonishment could ever stop a Christmas Person. The end of November hits and they're ready to go. My wife is a Christmas Person. There have been moments in the past few weeks when I notice a gentle silence has fallen between us and a sort of wistful look has crept, stealthy as Silent Night, into Jacqui's eye.

"What are you thinking about?" I ask.

"I want it to be Christmas!" She says, emphasizing the word Christmas.

She has the gift of elongating those two syllables with a delicate mix of pained longing balanced with nostalgic mayhem. In one word you get the feeling of child-like excitement blended with deeply grown up longing for all things cozy and sweet. It is a thing to behold.

Christmas People have needs. Mostly they require Christmas-esque activities to keep all their festive energy at bay. If for some reason they can't get to these activities--look out. They may be give in to strange impulses in inappropriate social situations.

Blockbuster Guy: Alright your total is $5.98. Great. Alrighty your movie will be due back on Wednesday night.

Christmas Person: ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH, SWEETLY SINGING OVER THE PLAINS!!!

Blockbuster guy: Um...what? Sorry, did you need anything else?

Christmas Person: FA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA...LA-LA-LA-LA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's important that they have an outlet. Jacqui and I started making Christmas cookies today. We listened to Christmas music and lit candles. The dough has to chill over night, but I know that she can't wait to cut it out into stars, snowmen, and Christmas trees. Earlier we discovered that we don't have any cookie cutters for this job. I suggested that we could just make round cookies. My wife looked at me as if I'd tried to throw a bowling ball at her head. "Round cookies aren't Christmas cookies!" she explained.

In addition to the more recent outpouring of baked goods, our home has been ringing with the sound of Christmas songs for the past few weeks. I like it. That's the thing about Christmas People, they have a great way of drawing you into their festive attitude. Appropriate music is essential for any Christmas Person. Christmas music I have noticed is a strange phenomena.
There is no real push to have ones own person Christmas music tastes reflect a growing awareness of musical appreciation. Mostly I've noticed that people just want to listen to what they remember hearing as children. It doesn't matter if it's the strangest, or least artistic piece of music in the world. Those things are simply not important. When I was growing up my dad was a big fan of A Very Johnny Mathis Christmas, Andy Griffith Christmas and our whole family loved Amy Grant's Home for the Holidays. To me that music is Christmas. It's what I secretly long to hear. Jacqui's favorites are Christmastime by Michael W. Smith and Christmas Hits by a group called Boney M, a 1970's ABBA-esque group from Germany with strong Jamaican and Dutch influences. I love it. Everyone seems to have their own personal favorites, it's great.

My dad is a big Christmas Person. One of my favorite illustrations of this fact is a tradition of his I remember distinctly from childhood. You'd walk in the door to my house and it would smell like a cinnamon bomb had exploded and had covered our home in the delightful sent of holiday cheer. At ground zero of the festive blast my dad could inevitably be found stirring a large pot of mulling spices on the stove. For those of you who's dads were not big on the mulling spices it's basically like simmering a giant pot of potpourri complete with large berries, cinnamon sticks and other sundry scented items. Nevermind that the air in my home made your eyes water as if you were chewing a large wad of Big Red, or that the pots he used inevitably made all later dishes taste vaguely of cinnamon. There he'd be stirring away like a mad man. "Can you smell it?!" he say "Smells like Christmas!!"

My best friend, Morgan, is also a Christmas Person. He gets the itch just when the first snow starts to fall. By early December he's already impulse bought 2 or 3 new Christmas movies and is watching them on a loop. This past year it was an entertaining cocktail of: A Christmas Story (You'll shoot your eye out!"), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the Jim Carrey version), The Santa Clause 1 and 2 (A Tim Allen gem) and a plethora of others. I love this!

He's also big on the Christmas music. His tastes are refined and varied ranging from the classic strains of Bing Crosby to freakin' out electric guitar solos of the Trans Siberian orchestra. Like any true Christmas Person Morgan also loves Christmas lights. He likes to have them year round, but especially around Christmas. Morgan also has two cats. They also love Christmas lights. They love them in a different way. They love them in the sense that they love to destroy them. It's a potent combination and battle of wills the will cats always win.

One of my fondest memories regarding Christmas lights and Morgan occured when we lived together in college. We decided to spice up our dorm room with some nice icicle lights. You know the kind? They hang vertically in lots of different strands. They really are a sight to see; a pretty and cozy glow all for $15.00. Unfortunately they are somewhat heavier than their single strand cousins and all we had to adhere them to our metal ceiling runner was a nice thick role of clear packing tape. We thought we were golden. We were wrong. By the time New Years had rolled around the thing had fallen down and been re-attached so many times that what had originally been a nice holiday decoration was now, for all intensive purposes, a giant, ugly ball of festively lit tape. Good times.

I also associate Christmas time with Morgan because for the past few years he and his family has invited Jacqui and I to their house for a Christmas Eve steak dinner. That's just behavioral conditioning at it's best. To me nothing says Christmas better than a thick steak. Mmmmm steak.

So. Christmas People. They're an undeniable force. You know 'em and I know 'em. Maybe you're even one yourself. If so let me just say a cheery thank you for all the work you do to get others in the Christmas spirit. Crank those carols if you feel the urge, bake those cookies when you get a hankering, light your pyres of candles, hang the stockings early and forcibly hand out candy canes to anyone who snidely tells you "It's still 4 weeks away!" We need people like you!

An early Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night!

Squirrelly Bread

2005-11-21T14:15:00.000-08:00

The world of groceries is vast and huge (and apparently redundant). Since coming to Vancouver and Canada in general Jacqui and I have had the priviledge of finding all those little differences in products that tend to reveal themselves over time as you settle into a new location. It's a process really. You don't just get off the plane (or out of the car in our case) and find that the local canucks are waiting for you, arms laden with bundles of their unique Canadian brands and products. Although that'd be pretty nice. Especially if they had a box or two of Tim Horton's donuts. Mmmmm donuts. But alas they're not there offering up steamy vats of maple syrup or poutine. No, as with any new place you have to just go and experience.

Now I'm sure when you move to a country that's far away the different food items are apparent right away. In Iceland I'm sure that trying to find an unusual brand name wouldn't be too hard to locate. Not so with Canada. Canada is sneaky. Canada is sly. They tuck alternate brands and products right in the there with Doritos and and Pillsbury.

Now to begin with Canadian food isn't too different from cuisine in the U.S. Wait, wait that's not quite accurate. Let me rephrase that...Canadian food is EXACTLY THE SAME as food in the U.S....Except when it comes to potato chips. Canadians have really branched out in this culinary area. Most of you have probably heard rumors. In the States I would be hard pressed to pin point a chip flavor that is distinctly "All-American". In Canada they have no such problem. They have a sparkling medal stand boasting a trifecta of "All-Canadian" favorites.

Wearing the gold medal is the ever popular ketchup chip. A hint of vinegar and tomato make this classic chip an all-around crowd pleaser. Coming in with the silver is dill pickle. These are Jacqui's favorite. And true to their name they taste much like crunchy, dry, potato-ish pickles. In third is an amalgam of tastes that can not be codified into one single flavor so the snack companies don't even try. Wearing the bronze medal is a chip know only as "All Dressed". Originally called "Clothed" this chip, which is reminiscent of salt and vinegar with hints of cheddar and mellow over tones of bacon, is quite a treat for the palate. Dill Pickle best watch it's back.

Other than chips, though, the food's pretty much the same. However, as I mentioned some of the brands are different. One of our favorite so far would have to be the line of breads provided by the Silver Hills bread company with one bread in particular garnering top honors.

When you head into the grocery store bread is just an essential things that you need to get. There are healthy breads, plain ol' white, fresh baked, pre-packaged, rye, pumpernickel, an assortment of grains: 12 grain, 16 grain, Indian grain, multi-grain. There are so many options. At least there used to be. Not so any more.

Jacqui and I usually, naturally gravitate toward the chunkier breads, the more rough seeds and grain the better. Well, while staying with my in-laws during our extended 2 month "sabbatical" sleeping on their floor we were introduced to Squirrelly Bread. According to the packaging "This delightful bread is Baked full of sunflower seeds then rolled in sesame seeds, the rich flavors make this a favorite choice."

A favorite choice is right. TASTY! Since we're surviving on apprentice stipends during our time here in Vancouver we don't have too many occasions to splurge when it comes to food. But it's not hard to feel like a breakfast-time king when you've got yourself a nice piece of Squirrelly Bread toasted with butter and covered liberally with Nutella (another fine product which I was only introduced to recently). Such a simple pleasure. Sigh. Thanks Squirrelly Bread.

Squirrelly Nature

2005-11-18T16:41:00.000-08:00

Normally I don't have extended amounts of contact with the non-domesticated animal kingdom. However, the other day as I exited our apartment I saw the best thing I've seen in awhile.

I was passing the edge of our lawn where the recycling bins and garbage cans are kept when I noticed a medium sized squirrel sitting on top of the recycling. Normally this scene wouldn't really have struck me as that unusual-the squirrel was for all intensive purposes an average looking, black squirrel (no offense to the squirrel).

However what made me look twice was that this squirrel had a HUGE piece of cardboard latched firmly between his teeth. It just hung from his tiny squirrel lips like a ridiculously large postage stamp he was in the middle of licking. I thought perhaps when he saw that I had paused to observe him he might drop his treasure and run away.

I was half right. He did run away but as he skittered over our fence and up onto a neighbors fence he kept the cardboard firmly gripped in his mouth. He loved that cardboard so much. And I was impressed with his climbing dexterity as he jumped and ran, never releasing his soggy brown prize.

I felt blessed to have happened to have my camera, so I obliged the moment and took a few pictures. Perhaps I'll release a whole series: Nude Gopher with 2 Liter, Inquisitive Shrew with Tin Can, Disheveled Badger with Spreadsheet. The list goes on. Perhaps it could make an impressive seasonal calendar for the recycling industry...Anyway three cheers for NATURE!

POST post Opening Night Post: Gathering Wood| Drawing Water

2005-11-11T10:05:00.000-08:00

After that title the word "post" has lost all meaning. Post, post, post...POst, P-O-S-T...What is a "post" anyway?

So since we've been really busy lately we haven't had time to write about the latest project we've been working on. (Isn't that just like a selfish project? Hogging all our time, keeping us from precious moments of blogging?) It's the first of three artistic projects that we're planning for this year at Pacific Theatre. For those we haven't told much about the apprenticeships our time is basically divided between:

PART 1 (drum roll please...seriously... give it a go...maybe it'll make this next part more dramatic... and maybe if we can get it dramatic enough maybe it could even BE our fourth project...only you can help us!) Working in the Box Office and House Managing!

PART 2: ( okay now we need some more drums and possible even some light cymbal...you know the kind, with those little brushes instead of sticks) Acting in some of PT's mainstage shows!

And finally ladies and gentleman PART 3: (alright here we're going to need everyone lightly clapping their hands on their knees, three people will be on slide whistle and then finally one person (you all can rock, paper scissors for this one) will be giving us some short bursts on a tuba): PERFORMING ARTISTIC PROJECTS OF OUR OWN CREATION!

(Crowd goes wild)

Anyway, I'll tell you more about the last two projects as they unfold, but this first one was a collection of 4 plays all by women playwrights. For all the Calvin peeps it was basically like a Lab Bills, except Jacqui and I performed all of the pieces. We called the whole night Gathering Wood|Drawing Water. (We took the name from essential tasks often performed by women...) and we still have two more nights of performances.

It was fun but it really took awhile to put together, we kept saying things like "If only we were JUST acting in this it'd be so much easier." Or "If only we JUST had to do the sound design." OR "the poster design" OR "the directing...or props..or costumes"... Basically we didn't really realize what an undertaking it would be doing everything ourselves. But by last night everything was in place, all cues were written, each props was in place, we were ready to go on and we even had a good sized audience.

And then we did it. I know every actor basically says it when ever they finally have their first performance but there really is something so different about having an audience for the first time. They laughed in parts we didn't expect and didn't laugh in parts we thought they would. It's just so fresh when a whole group of people is actually responding (or not responding depending on the moment) There's just a whole different energy to the thing. And boy did it ever go fast. In rehearsal we had time to sort of pause and take a leisurely moment to gather ourselves before moving into the next play or the next character, but last night things just seemed to fly by, one play swiftly changing into the next.

All in all it went well though. People said some very nice things afterward and we tucked ourselves into bed with a warm/tired feeling of accomplishment.

We've got one more tonight and then one after that on Saturday and then we're all done. Saturday is actually closing night for The Elephant Man as well so I'll really be DONE come Monday morning with only box office shifts to keep me busy (well until we start work on our next project...which is going to take LOTS of work )

So please, if you remember lift up some prayers for us as we finish our final push towards Monday : )

Commercially Speaking

2005-11-03T09:32:00.000-08:00

Recently I've seen the silliest commercial for toilet paper. It's a Charmin commercial and their mascot is this family of bears (well perhaps they're not related. I wouldn't want to assume. Let's say this COMMUNITY of bears to be safe). Have you seen this line of commercials? The bears are all sort of pastel and fluffy and soft edged. Anyway I think the point of this particular commercial was to introduce Charmin's new line of paper that has some sort of special "cleansers" woven into the paper or something. I can't even really imagine how this would work, but the tag line in the commercial is something like "Are you having TROUBLE feeling your absolute CLEANEST?"

Anyway this isn't necessarily the weird part. The weird part is when they're showing the bear before he gets the miracle paper. The part where they're showing him being frustrated with everything ELSE he's tried to get his absolute CLEANEST. Everything is going fairly normally when suddenly they cut to a shot of the bear with a huge car wash style roller brush attached to his butt. The roller is spinning like crazy and bear is wearing the most uncomfortable, dissatisfied look on his animated face I've ever seen. This is so silly! I laugh every time I see it. I'd have loved to have been in the meeting where that marketing decision got made. "Yeah, yeah the bears are really working for us. I like them. Hmmm, but I think...yeah I think we're missing something...Hey...Hey! Let's attach a HUGE rolling scrubber to his butt!" and how'd you like to be the animator who's burning the midnight oil to finalize the last touches on the bears uncomfortable grimace? This is simply advertising at its best.

Post Opening Night

2005-10-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

Well opening night has come and gone. Friday night we played to a sold out house (the house is small to begin with-only 128 seats but still it was cool to have so many people come) which was fun. There was all the fun opening night stuff: thoughtful cards and trinkets from the stage managment and director, a green room full of random gifts and flowers and sweets. (There's currently enough chocolate in our green room to...to...to...well to do something that requires a lot of chocolate. Seriously, there's probably about 5-6 lbs of different chocolate thingees for people to nibble on. I find this weird because as I understand chocolate really gums up the vocal cords....sort of a vital thing for actors. What's next giant decorative tubs of yogurt...huge gift steins full of milk...individually wrapped cream cheese chunks?...Champaign flutes of BATTERY ACID!?...organic sachets of LIQUID DEATH??)

Another interesting thing was before tonight I had yet to see any of the other cast do warm-ups and I wondered "perhaps professional actors just don't do warm ups. Maybe there just always warm" and then I would sneak off to a locked side room to do my own bu-duh-gu-da's in seclusion. But when I arrived at the theatre I heard the distinct sounds of warming up and when I came in the door it was nice to see a random smattering of cast peeps jumping, stretching and making interesting noises as only actors can. It warmed my heart.

It was also fun to actually finally do the show. I didn't have any major mess ups and it was great to actually do what I've been rehearsing for so long. Thanks to everyone who offered up prayers for me! I really wanted to have a picture for this post but I don't have an appropriate one. Maybe sometime soon I'll get Jacqui to snap one of me in my one man band costume just to give you all a clear mental picture.

*This moment was inspired by an imaginary conversation I had with Morgan Foster in my head.

The Redemption of Jacqui's Childhood: One Canuck at a Time

2005-10-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

So, here's the exposition: when I was young, growing up in Victoria, BC one of my favourite things to do was to sit on my dad's lap and watch Hockey Night in Canada. (Yes, I know, this sounds like a ridiculously Canadian story.....so what? It's true). Usually, I would cheer for whoever was winning, but on the occasions that the Vancouver Canucks were playing, I chose to cheer solely for them. This molded me into a big Canucks fan, especially into my junior high and high school years when I was at the point where I was really understanding the game and they were at the point where they were actually going to the playoffs (quoi??). Throughout these years of fandom, my family (most often my dad and brothers) attended several (and I mean SEVERAL) games, to which I was never invited (no bitterness here). I was the one left at home brushed off with hollow promises of the movie of my choice (once again, no bitterness here). I was left in my sorrow to question my fate and yearn for the day when I, too, would be in the presence of these our heroes, the Vancouver Canucks.

Enter Ryan Hoke....now Ryan is a lovely man for many reasons but, I'm not gonna lie, the following is a big one.

A few weeks ago (yes, I realize this post is a little slow on the uptake), Ryan took me to my first ever live hockey game. Not only that, he took me to my first ever Canucks game. It was incredible. I felt as if the universe was re-aligning itself, and shalom had finally been achieved (thanks, Calvin). Ok, so maybe it wasn't THAT great, but it was pretty darn sweet.

They were playing the Oilers (Edmonton) which made for an interesting dynamic. (As a point of reference for the previous sentence, Edmonton is the next closest Canadian city that has an NHL team...and, as far as Canadian standards go, it's a fairly close city). Since we were in the nosebleeds (quite often a very fun place to be for sports games), we were surrounded not only by fellow Canucks fans but also Oilers fans. Which was so much fun. It made it more of a battle...a battle in which the Canucks slew the Oilers. The final score was 6-2, and since it was an exhibition game, there was also an arbitrary shoot-out, which the Canucks also won (3-2).

So, my previously unhockey-ed (yes, while making up this adjective I did originally write unhockeyed, but I thought that looked either too much like a lake fish, or a mutant low-class British accent) was redeemed, and as it stands now, it seems to be working out for the CanuckleHeads (yes, that is a term that circulated in my family). Perhaps Ryan has reversed a curse that was placed on the team long ago, in any case, I'm quite happy with the 'Nuckers as of late.

Go Canucks!!!

P.S. This P.S. is dedicated to Morgan T. Foster. I just wanted to take the chance to celebrate with you, the Canucks victory over Detroit......and maybe rub it in a little that they also beat the Blackhawks......mwahahaha

Opening Night

2005-10-19T23:17:00.000-07:00

Well friends, The Elephant Man opens tomorrow (Thursday the 20th) ...well it actually offically opens on Friday, but the preview tomorrow is all sold out...I can't believe that it's actually time to just go ahead and do the show. I'm nervous. But excited too. All the normal feelings I'm sure (Although I'm finding I have an uncontrollable urge to drum on people heads when I'm in the grocery store...that's just normal pre-show jitters right?....RIGHT?!). The cast is really great and the show has really come together this past week. On the outset a three week rehearsal period seemed so short to me. At Calvin we rehearsed for like three months and then only got to perform six shows. The Elephant Man has a shorter run than any of the other shows at Pacific Theatre this season and it's still over a month long with 5 shows a week Anyway I just thought I'd write to let you all know that the big day has arrived and to ask for prayers that the show goes well. I'll write more later!

Posted by Ryan 10/19/05

Hamming it up.

2005-10-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

The other week Jacqui and I had a chance to head off to Washington to see a concert. It was a pretty great time. Believe it or not, getting back on U.S. soil actually felt different. Everyone in the car (there were four of us, myself the only U.S. citizen) echoed that, yes, there was definitely a different "feel" to being in the U.S. Of course there is the whole rigamarole of crossing the border (finally I've used the word "rigamarole" in a sentence. I've had that on my to-do list for 24 years. Hopefully now without what experts have termed "rigamarole pressure" hanging over my head I can finally move on and live a normal life), which definitely helps to make you hyper-aware that you are now enter the land of the free and the home of the brave (As opposed to Canada? The land of the enslaved and the home of the cowardly?).

Just over the border we stopped in the sleepy hamlet of Blaine, Washington to fuel up on cheap(er) American petrol and to buy over-priced Advil from a local Chevron station. The highlight of Blaine seemed to be the Chevron (get ready for it...are you ready? Here it comes...:"Nothing ever happens in Blaine! Nothing ever happens it's all the saaay!" That joke was for 7 of you), so we quickly passed on through to Bellingham, WA. "The Ham" for short.

Side note: Jacqui and I have been doing a fun thing lately. When I say fun I mean moderately fun/lame. We've found it interesting to shorten the names of cities to "The something". For example Grand Rapids would be "The Rapid", South Haven would be "The Haven". It works better with the city names out here. Vancouver is "The Couve", Victoria (Jacqui's hometown) is "The Ria" There's a lot of interesting sounding cities out here. Say them out loud with your friends, it's a party waiting to happen. Here's a list of my favorites:

Esqimalt
Tswassen
Chilliwack
Nanaimo
Ucluelet
Osoyoos
Tofino
Zeballos
Kamloops
Saanich
Coquitlam
Yarrow

End Side Note

So there we were in The Ham. The concert was in this really cool club/bar called The Nightlight. I will say though that Jacqui and I have been spoiled by concerts at Calvin College. At Calvin, especially in the Fine Arts Center, everyone usually sits and listens when the musician is doing his/her thing. Also, you can always see because the the seats are on a convienient incline. Not quite the same at this show. At this show it was pretty much standing room only near the stage and then way at the back there was a few tables from which there was a convienient view of approximately 300 butts.

We were some of the first to arrive in line so we thought we'd be snagging the best seats in the house. Wrong. By the time everyone filled in around us our once good seats near the front had transformed into "squished-against-a-wall-glaring-at-the-hoards-busy-invading-our-personal
-space" seats. You know the ones. You've probably sat there yourself before. My favorite maneuver is when people seem to be in a "conversation" and they just slowly, obliviously, and all too convieniently drift over and plunk themselves in the convient line of sight you had been tending to like a delicate flower: watching it, protecting it, hoping it will grow. (I say "conversation" because secretly I think under their breath their saying "hey have a fake conversation with me while we walk right in front of this guy.)

However due to some stealthy mauvering of my own, by the time the opening act began I found myself at the front of the stage, all the way to one side, seated knees against my chest, on a large, raised wooden box. "How great!" I thought, "I'm well above everyone's heads, I have a clear line of sight, this should be great." Well it would have been. As it turned out, though, my convienient miracle box was actually a thin plywood casing for the sub-woofers. My ear drums died a little that night. The opening guy was an acousitic guitar guy, but by the time Martin Sexton arrived on stage in all his "ressonant-voiced, rocking out acoutistic, thumpin' bass lines with his thumb, some how doing a separate melody with other fingers, wild beat-box mouth percussion/distorted electric guitar sounding voice solos" glory, my ears had taken a beating. By his second song I was forced to weave my way to the very back and create a complex system of kneeling on semi-padded bar stools to even catch a glimpse of what was happening on stage. Don't get me wrong, the music still sounded amazing, and I'm glad I went, but this show just made me realize that maybe bars/clubs, while providing a certain asethetic all their own, are not the most condusive to my personal concert going tastes.

While at the show however (while I was on top of my miracle, subwoofer box actually) I did get to talking with a guy and his wife who were interesting. Personality wise they were a bit lackluster, but geographically they were outstanding. He was from Rhode Island and she was from Sweeden. Weird and yet somehow totally fitting at the same time.

So yeah anyway, that's pretty much it. After the show we left The Ham and made our way back to The Couve, and at about 2 am my ear drums found some much needed auditory solace in my pillow.

Posted by Ryan 10/15/05

Elephant Man Mania!

2005-10-13T20:54:00.000-07:00

So, I'm right in the middle of the final week of rehearsals for the Elephant Man. I won't lie to you, rehearsals have been tough at times. There has been many a night when I walked in the door downtrodden and discouraged. Never having done percussion before this has been quite the learning experience. If I didn't have a full appreciation for the drummers of the world before this play I certainly do now. Seriously, drummers, how do you do it: do two, even three, perhaps exponentially more things all at the same time!? Dang! It's so hard!

Other than the drumming, my roles in the play aren't really that big, but they are pretty fun. I get to be a cockney hospital porter who gets fired, a stuffy english doctor, and a Belgian policeman with a fun accent. As far as the percussion goes, along with the glockenspiel, I'll be banging on a decrepit drum, crashing on a cymbal attached to my arm, trilling on a few drum-topped tambourines, and playing a classy Casio mini keyboard (this will be off-stage seeing as it's got neon orange and look like it's from 1982). I've also got a fine collection of mallets and sticks to play around with. I keep all of my smaller percussive bits (which sounds much more risque than I would have imagined) in a lovely tool belt (which, if you ask me doesn't look the least bit 1880's Victorian London. It looks more like Home Depot 1995). It's good times.

Random Elephant Man Fact of the Week: David Bowie played the title role in the 1980 American Tour.

This is the best picture ever.

I can't believe we open in a week!

Posted by Ryan 10/13/05

Packin' a Glock

2005-10-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of my glockenspiel. As part of the Elephant Man, the play I’m currently in rehearsal for, the music director asked me if I would be willing to learn to play the glockenspiel. I said yes immediately.

A few days ago I was reading something a friend of mine wrote about having lots of odd talents. At the time I thought: “I don’t really know if I have too many odd talents…” Famous last words. Enter the glockenspiel (Sort of like “Enter the Dragon.” only with less fighting and more cheerful ringing). So for the past five days my apartment has been alive with the pleasant chiming of my new glockenspiel. My “spiel” for short. Honestly I just like saying the word glockenspiel…glockenspiel, glockenspiel, glockenspiel.

The learning has been slow going at times, but each new song is slowly being butchered and then even more slowly mastered. Due to the shows circus themes the music is mostly circus-esque in sound. Lot’s of waltz tempo things. I find that I’m tending to do things to a “ONE, two, three, TWO, two three” beat. I finished my cereal this morning in approximately 42 measures of waltz like munching.

The songs also have fun names: Elephant’s Fun (a real crowd pleaser), Queens of the Cosmos (a haunting, postmodern lullaby), Country Garden (a stirring romp through the Victorian countryside), Hallelujah (a true classic), and finally I Had a Girl and I Loved Her (a power ballad).

It’s pretty exciting. I’ll keep you updated as the ‘spieling unfolds.

Posted by Ryan 10/05/05

welcome: from earlier wilcuma (n.) "welcome guest," lit. "one whose coming is in accord with another's will"

2005-09-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

our arrival at our new apartment was, at first, a bit jarring. jarring not only in the sense that we had only seen the apartment once before--for 5 minutes at most--and it was not exactly the way we remembered it, but also because it was over so quickly. it took only about an hour to load up and to get everything into our new home. and now.....it's over.

we've waited for 3 months to get to this point. and now it's over.

we're home.

how did we get here? how did a young, "theatre" couple find a home in the "young, quiet, female renter"'s market?

well, i'm sure looking at over a dozen places helped and being willing to get out and do the searching was necessary, but i don't think we stumbled upon our fully-furnished, all utilities included, newly renovated place by our own hands. first of all, let me just explain what the renting market is like here in vancouver. out of a random 20 ads for rental places, about 8-10 will say that they're looking for a quiet, female renter. an additional 4-5 will state that couples need not inquire. the rest you will undoubtedly check out in person because anything you can possibly get, you will want to try to get. and out of those, maybe two will actually be worth applying for (although, maybe you'll apply for the others in the hopes that you'll just get something offered to you). however, you won't be the only ones applying. approximately 5-8 other parties will not just be viewing the place at the same time as you, but also applying for it. the chances that a couple, who are both employed (and i use that term loosely, perhaps work would be a better description) at a theatre are, to put it simply, not good.

so, really, how did we find a place where the landlord didn't do a background check or give us a contract to sign, but rather sat with us in her kitchen asking about what brought us to vancouver and requesting that we consider staying for around six months?

it sounds too good to be true.

now, don't get me wrong, this place has its issues...like i said, it was jarring to realize that we would be living in a place that's this small, and to come to terms with the fact that it's not exactly how we had remembered it. but, it's a home.

that may not seem like a very great welcome into a new home.

and our first few months here may not seem like a great welcome into a new city: 3 months of sleeping (and in some cases, i use that term loosely) in different beds, on different floors, of relying on a few (well, two, really) people for companionship outside of just the two of us, of feeling inconsistently but persistently homeless, alone, overwhelmed, and, ultimately, out of control.

but going through all of that to know that your presence in a place, just your coming, is in accordance with the will of The Creator of Everything is more than enough of a welcome for me and more than explains our good fortune.

Posted by Jacqui 9/29/05

Island Retreat

2005-09-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

This past weekend Jacqui and I went on a retreat with the Pacific Theatre Staff. It was on a medium sized island just off the Pacific coast called Bowen Island. It was about a twenty minute ferry ride over through these beautiful inlets and bays. Just gorgeous. It ended up being a retreat in the best sense of the word—a time to get away and relax, no major goals, no agendas, just straight chillin’.

Not a lot of people live on Bowen Island to begin with and the house we were staying at was on what felt like a more remote side of the island facing out towards the ocean. The house itself was beautiful, like something out of Martha Stuart Living. Simple, Clean, Oceany. Set about 50 yards back from the shore, it had an incredible view of the water; especially the room that Jacqui and I stayed in. We arrived at night so it was hard to tell how close we were to the water. I though maybe we were in the woods and that if you hiked for awhile you’d eventually get there. But when we woke up in the morning, sunlight streaming through the windows, it became clear that we had one of the best views in the whole house.

The people we went with were great too. There were 7 others besides Jacqui and I and we all ended up having a great time. The whole weekend had just the right mix of action and inaction. There was good coffee in the mornings, a warm fire place, clean air, wood floors, a beautiful, huge kitchen to cook in, a nice set of bocce balls, a comfy hammock, and plenty of other amazing amenities. Just a peaceful time of R&R and hanging out that felt much needed.

It was a nice way to start the week because this one is busy for us. Jacqui started her full time regular shifts in the PT box office today and at 5pm tonight I start full time rehearsals for The Elephant Man. I’m a little nervous, but more excited than anything to finally start the process. I have two smaller characters in the play, but most of the time I’ll be doing live percussion. The play has a circus theme running through it and I’m going to be a one man band character. The music director told me at the read through that she wants to get me a utility belt full of various percussive instruments—on top of this I think I might have and gongs and drums strapped to the rest of me. I’ve never done percussion before so I get a little jittery when I think about the fact that in less than a month I’ll be doing it in front of an audience, but for the most part I think it’ll be fun to learn.

In other exciting news we finally move into our apartment TOMORROW! It has been a long three months living like nomadic sheep herders (minus the sheep…and the herding) and we’re really excited to be moving it. Giddy is more like it. We keep saying things like:

“Hey guess what?”…

“What?”

“We’re moving into our apartment tomorrow!”

Vigorous head nodding “Yep, yep we are!”

Simultaneously “Yay!”

Then we dance the dance of joy.

We’re thinking of turning it into a short play.

Anyway we’re just really excited. Please be praying for us though because although it’s a good transition, it’s still a transition and those can be unsettling.

We’ll keep you posted respectively on the percussion, new home, and shifts as a box office gopher* as they unfold.

*Closely related to the kiosk badger this illusive animal has been known to bite strangers, create intricate tunnels, and offer excellent customer service.

Posted by Ryan 9/27/05

Are you ready for some foosball!?

2005-09-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

Well, to update you all on last weeks football night cliff hanger of a post: We set out with the best of intentions, but like building a gingerbread house on an empty stomach, sometimes intentions are not enough to carry things through.

First, the 7-11 we were going to buy the tickets at ended up being sold out (that's right, slurpies and tickets to major sporting events-it's a potent combination. I can see it now "Hey folks, hurry on in and get 2 discounted passes to the next democratic national convention with every Big Gulp") and so we tried to get them at the door, but they ended up being too expensive. So, we thought optimistically "Well, let's get some dinner and then we'll come back to the stadium and try to hit up the scalpers."

Well, after a meal of fancy hamburgers at a local upscale pub (you know the type of place: dim lights, fancy sauces for things-like organic garlic Mayo for the burgers, vaguely European techno music... This place also had the oddest collection of melted wax sculptures. It was sort of goth. In any case it was hearty and slightly pretentious all at once) we headed back to BC Place again. In the end, however, the moderately priced scalping we hoped to take advantage of didn't really pan out as we'd hoped--seriously who would have guessed scalpers would be so unreliable?. So, instead the four of us headed out to find other adventures in the big city.

To introduce my traveling companions, first there was Mike: my new brother-in-law and a great guy, Robin: a quality man with a blunt sense of humor and an intensely charming German accent and Robin's pal Tommi: another quality man with a slightly less blunt sense of humor and an equally charming Finnish accent. So, there we were, four abreast and looking for adventure.

After traveling down a few fruitless rabbit trails trying to find a movie to watch, we ended up going to this old-fashioned bowling alley. We didn't partake in the bowling but did engage in other quasi-manly non-active "sports" such as foosball (We played Europe vs. North America), a few atrocious rounds of pool (I remember being good at pool at one time, but I think that was when I was like 11 or something) and finally that hockey game encased in a plexi-glass dome where you slide your men around with the twisty handles. I don't know the exact name. We'll just call it "Table Hockey" for the purposes of this recollection.

It ended up being a great time; although, while we were in the middle of our foosball tournament something weird happened.

We were right in the middle of an intense set of volleys and this guy sort of sidles up and stands about a half a foot away from the end of the table. This was sort of off-putting and caused me to be a bit self conscious about my shot selection (which was weird, I mean really, did I think he might be a foosball scout or something?). Then this guys slides a set of quarters onto the edge of the table. Oh, okay, fine he wants to get the next game-understandable. But then he continues to stand there absorbed in our international battle. Finally, we finish the points on our little slider marker thingees, but we ended up having a few extra balls to finish off in the little ball dispensing trough. We started to play these. Suddenly he says indignantly, "Hey! I was trying to reserve the next game! I put quarters down!"

We were taken aback, but we tried to calmly explain the extra ball situation. He was extremely put out and glared at us as if we had broken some sacred rule of foosball etiquette. "Usually around here we just play one game and then let the next people have the table." he sneered.

We tried to explain that we were having a tournament and therefore wanted to play multiple games. And, that we hadn't even known he wanted the table until he came up and hovered. This fell on deaf ears. We left the table with the unease this sort of social awkward moment tends to create and went to sit at a table about three feet away from the newly vacated foosball table.

Here's where the weird part comes in! As we're walking away he says, "Hey, where you going?! Do you guys want to play, or what?"

We furrowed our brows at the invitation to come back to the table we had just been shamed into vacating. We had assumed due to his belligerence and apparent need for extreme table fairness that after our exodus he would corral his group of rival foosballers and play the next game. Wrong. Apparently he just wanted to get in on the action.

This was weird because 1) we were already at the maximum amount of players 2) we were obviously in the middle of our own intense foos battle and 3) common sense would dictate that if you wanted to join a game you shouldn't ask the people you want to play with to leave. After our initial confusion we raised our eyebrows and offered a still puzzled and intensely awkward "Um...No thanks" all around.

But the weirdness didn't end there. Oh, no. It continued full force.

There we sat about an arms length away, while he, after a moment of silence proceeded to deposit his quarters into the foosball machine . He then adjusted the swiveling rods to set up the defensive end of spinning foos guys and finally, proceeded to take shots on the unmanned goal. Honestly I felt sort of bad for the guy-in a mild sort of way. We sat awkwardly watching him play by himself for about a minute until finally we all sort of slowly migrated to the pool tables. Weird! It was just one of those funny social/ human things that I can only shake my head at.

So, wherever you are weird foosball guy: I'm sorry, maybe next time.

Posted by Ryan 9/25/05

Are you ready for some football?

2005-09-17T16:21:00.000-07:00

This is my first blog post. Jacqui has been great at sending updates so far and I thought I'd finally get in on the hot blog action. Things here are well. Right now I'm sitting in a great coffee shop called Esquires Coffee. It's just up the street from where we've been staying and they have really good coffee and quality atmosphere. I'm currently being bombarded by an interesting mix of stimuli. First, we're sitting near an open garage door type entrance to the outside patio and I can feel the beginnings of some amazing fall air. I really like the air in the fall. There's just something about it. It's crisp. It's clear. It's delicious. I bet it's clouding heads everywhere with nice, all-American-esque thoughts like "I need to rake leaves into piles!" , "There's no apple pie like Grandma's" and "I need a puppy named Bo". It's the type of air that makes me want to work on a farm somewhere. A Cinnamon farm. A Cinnamon farm somewhere in New England. Yeah, I like fall air. The light is nice too here. It's about four o'clock here and it's getting sort of golden with nice long shadows everywhere. So on one hand I've got this nice, cozy, hot beverage, wool socks atumnal vibe happening. On the other hand I'm being lulled by the soothing strains of "Ain't no holla back girl! Ain't no holla back!" from the top 40 station the Esquires staff has chosen for this particular shift. It's an interesting mix. It makes me want to booty dance in an orchard somewhere.

In other quasi-fall thoughts, I'm going to a football game tonight. It's a professional game here in Vancouver, home of the B.C. Lions. The Lions are currently 10 and 0 and show no signs of slowing their victorious streak. According to a local friend possessing much more Canadian football league knowledge than myself "they could lose the rest of the games this season and still make the play-offs." I was instantly vicariously excited. That's the thing about most sports other than basketball--I have so little knowledge of them on my own that it's only when some one I know is rooting that I get exciting. But as they say " It only takes a spark to get a fire going" ("They" of course being a camp song I learned in 1991). Once I'm even remotely interested I often surprise myself by how much I end up caring about these teams that I previously had no interest in. Case in point: I know nothing about tennis really. I mean I know enough to fake my way through a casual conversation, but beyond that not much. Where was I July 2 this year? Sitting on a couch with my friend Dave (long time tennis enthusiast and, to follow the metaphor through, my tennis "spark") breathlessly watching the women's Wimbledon Championship. I may or may not have leapt into his lap at points. I was into it.

So, needless to say I'm feeling excited about the game tonight. All the elements are there for a good time. I'm even equipped with a little knowledge of football rules thanks to many years in close proximity to my friend Morgan. See, there are these things called downs, and punts and running backs. It's all very exciting. So off I go. I'll be sure to tell all of you about it post game.

In other thoughts Jacqui and I are doing well. We're getting excited to finally move into our new place at the end of the month. Theatre work is going well too. We start work in the Box office next week and earlier this week I had the read through for The Elephant Man, the fall play at Pacific Theatre. There's more happening but it will have to wait for a later post. I must be off to go prepare for the game-I'm still trying to get the right shade of "BC Lions orange" for my face paint. Also I need to fashion a giant styrofoam finger and I think we're all out of fresh styrofoam.

So that's all for now. We miss all of you so much and we'll post more soon!

Posted by Ryan 9/17/05

photo?

2005-09-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

well, i thought i'd try to figure out how to post pictures....so, this is ryan and i on a whale watching boat (yes, we went whale watching, but it was free). the building behind us is the empress hotel, which is a famous hotel. it's where the queen stays when she comes to visit; well, it's where anyone important stays when they go to victoria. the boat is sitting in the inner harbour, which is probably the most fun part of victoria, with buskers and artist and lots of cool little shops. i aparently was having a weird smile day....unlike my rock star husband...

Posted by Jacqui 9/14/05

an end in sight for sore eyes

2005-09-08T17:43:00.000-07:00

we have found a home. although we will still be continuing our nomadic lifestyle for the next couple weeks, since we don't move in until the first of october. so, for the next week and a bit we'll be with mike and rebecca again (or still, if you prefer), and then we'll move on to house-sit for our church friends' parents for a little bit. THEN we will move all 6 of our things into our fully furnished apartment in an area of vancouver awesomely (i mean that in the original sense) refered to as "kits"; "kitsilano" if you're feeling wordy.

so, yeah. ryan was going to write the next posting but he hasn't yet, so i thought i'd follow up my last complaint-posting with a wow-God-sure-does-come-through-when-you-ask-him-for-a-home- in-vancouver-bc-posting.

thanks for your comments...i am a new blogger and didn't really realize that comments were a part of this whole deal. it's pretty cool. the squirrels of vancouver thank karl for his words of encouragement that have brought such order to their lives.

well, i should get going, scott campbell (a former employee here at PT--pacific theatre for the wordy-inclined) and his improv team, the panic squad, are filming their very own dvd in the theatre tonight and ryan, mike, rebecca and i are all standing in as audience members. you can check out their dvd if you think i'm lying about needing to go and want to check out my alibi...it'll be on this page once it goes on sale: http://www.panicsquad.com/squadmart.htm

Posted by Jacqui 9/08/05

a long time comin'

2005-08-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

so.

here we are. finally doing some updates. it's been a long couple of months since we left the great state of michigan, but the west coast has been treating us well.....for the most part. let's see--i hardly know where to start. well, you might want to brace yourself, cuz this could be quite the update and i'm sure it will be unmatched in the future.

ok, so for the first month after we arrived we were not working. which left us to discover our surroundings a bit. actually, after arriving from seattle we went almost directly to the island (that is vancouver island--the city of victoria, to be more specific--and my (jacqui's) hometown), where we stayed with my dad and spent a lot of time hanging out with my family and some of my friends that are still lingering around these parts. ryan was pleased to get introduced to west coast life in a suitable fashion, seeing over a dozen killer whales (orcas to those from these parts) in less than a month. and, of course, having been quite crestfallen (that one was for you, dave) by our separation from such an awesome community, the company was much appreciated. the time spent with my family, my dad in particular, was such a blessing.

after we left victoria, we returned to vancouver to house-sit for 3 weeks for a woman who works at the senior centre that is in the same building that the theatre ryan and i work for is in (don't worry if that didn't make any sense, it won't be on the quiz). it was relieving to stay there for that length of time since it helped us to feel settled for a bit and allowed us to get to know at least one of the many fascinating village-like neighbourhoods of vancouver. we also had the delightful opportunity to get to know the one and only lulu-fang (lulu being her owner-given name; fang being the nickname she acquired from us because of her two large front fang-teeth). lulu-fang, of course, was the deaf cat for whom we cared and with whom we shared the apartment we were looking after. although, i hesitate to say "shared" as she so often ran the show. anyhow, the 3 weeks brought us to a level of comfort that made us almost feel at home, only for us to be leaving. it's amazing how quickly a place becomes familiar almost to the point of feeling like your own. so we moved from the main st area to an new part of town called shaughnessy and spent a week on the living room floor of mike and rebecca's (my gracious and hospitable brother and sister-in law) 1 bedroom apartment, only to return for a brief and somewhat teasing weekend in our old main st area with the fang-orious lulu.

after our brief return to what we sometimes refer to as "our neighbourhood", we returned, once again to mike and rebecca's. but of course, being the nomads that we seem doomed to be, we didn't stay long. we went back to the island for a weekend and had our intimate but extremely enjoyable bbq/west coast wedding reception, where we were graced with the company of some pretty cool people and enjoyed the fruits of my maid-of-honor's bbqing talent. and then we kept moving, returning to our living-room floor retreat in shaughnessy for a short while and then moving on once again to another house-sitting job, this time in richmond, bc (a suburb just south of vancouver proper), where we are currently residing and enjoying the company of chloe--a cute-in-an-ugly-sort-of-way peeka-shihtza-poo.

nomadic we are--we plan to house-sit again for the next couple days for another couple we met through mike and rebecca's church (now our church, too, i suppose) who live downtown vancouver. and then we'll be house-sitting for that man's parents for 3 weeks in late-september/early-october. at this point ryan and i have considered changing our titles from just plain old apprentices, to nomadic-apprentice-house-sitters extraordinaire. we're unsure as to whether or not it will fit on our fictitious business cards.

so, that's been our geographic changes over the past few months...but there having been many others. we've started at the theatre and while we're not doing now what we will be mostly doing for the rest of our time here, it has been awesome to get to know the people there and to feel a part of something communal again. we've also, as i alluded before, been attending a church in vancouver with my brother and sister-in-law. strangely enough, we're already fairly involved. we've started a bible study with mike and rebecca, the aforementioned house-sitting couple, and another awesome couple. it has been a huge blessing to already have that sort of connection with other christians here, and the bible study has already been fruitful for all of us. and connections from home have been a huge support for us too. we miss everyone in michigan a whole lot and enjoy any contact we get from them. (in other words, if you're one of those lovable americans or canadians that we call friends, we'd love to hear from you).

well, i think that's about as much updating as i can do right now. i think ryan and i are planning yet another movie night in front of the rather large big-screen tv that also inhabits this house. it's hard to say no to such an evening when both the inches of the screen and the number of the movies in the collection outnumber any local friends wemight have! so, cheers to all of you! we miss you!

p.s. if you want to contact us, choose any of the following:
jacquihoke@gmail.com, jacqui@pacifictheatre.org, jacquiandryan@hotmail.com, barrelmonkey@hotmail.com, or ryan@pacifictheatre.org

Posted by Jacqui 8/27/05