Monthly Archive for October, 2005

I’ve had a few things to post lately, but I’ve been at home when I’ve thought about it. For some reason, I cannot access my journal through my VoIP router. I’m sure it’s some damn security setting, but I have no idea which one. I was able to access my journal through my internet provider before I installed the router, so I’m pretty sure that’s where the problem is. Anyway, here’s a few things I’ve been wanting to post.

Saturday:
It’s funny, I’ve been kinda excited today because of a couple of things. 1 ““ Sharron’s going to be here a week from today (Yay!) and 2 ““ a friend of Tom’s told me he might be able to get me some Master Replica’s stuff and rock bottom prices (perhaps free). Both of these things are pretty damn cool. However, then I read Scotts blog today. I already knew about this as Annie told me over IM a week or so ago, but man, the way Scott tells it is just so cool and I found myself getting all excited for them. I guess it just kind of blew my mind that something like my friends getting pregnant could get me so excited. Congratulations guys!

I saw my first Japanese speed trap today. Not at all what I expected. Instead of passing a police car and having them chase you, there was an independant radar or maybe a camera set up. Up the road a bit waited the police, but not in cruisers. Instead, the policemen were walking out into the road and flagging down the cars. It looked pretty dangerous and I hope they weren’t flagging me since I didn’t pull over. I was however, going pretty fast. Ah well. Just thought it was strange.

Sunday:
On my way home from a short notice poker game I was stopped at a red light. I noticed several motorcycles coming from the opposite direction, and loudly. What was strange was their seeming lack of notice that they were using all lanes of traffic. What was doubley strange was that they didn’t stop at the red light but instead just kept on going right through it. When they passed me, I noticed many of them were swaying quite strangely on their bikes. How very odd. Yakuza?

But first an interlude about Poker. :-)

I did manage to get 4 guys to come over on the weekend before last to play some poker. Apparently they used to play all the time, but the guy that organized it has left. Looks like it’s up to me to save the day. The guys were very impressed with my house and table. Then they were even more impressed when I flipped the top over to reveal the felt gaming surface. However, they weren’t impressed with my poker skills. :-) We ended up playing three rounds of Texas Hold’em. Each round lasted about 2 hours and we played until about 1am. Whew! The first round was a $5 buy in and the next two rounds were $10 buy ins. Not as high stakes as I’m used to (Well, I’m used to $20 which isn’t much higher), but we had a good time, so that’s what’s really important. :-)

So why do I rock then? Well, I finally had my initial feedback with my boss today. Since it’s so far into the rating period, it was really more of a mid-term feedback than initial, so instead of talking about expectations, we talked about how I’m doing. In summary? I rock. I need to work on being more succinct and detail orientated, but otherwise I’m doing a bang-up job. This is really funny actually since there was a rumor going around last week that I was going to be fired. :-)

So yeah, I totally rock. :-)

So, a couple of good things going on.

1 – I finally managed to get the internet people to agree to come out tomorrow to install my internet.

2 – I’m having a few guys come over to try out my poker table on Saturday night.

3 – I managed to get Friday off of work to make it a 4-day weekend.

This is all good stuff as I was feeling pretty depressed last night. I knew this is the way it would be before I moved as it’s happened during my last two moves, but it still sucks. Last night I was just really missing my friends in Mongomery and really wanted to go play some games with them.

Thought this was pretty interesting.

Entertaining characters make “˜Appointment’

ALEC CLAYTON
Published: September 30th, 2005 12:01 AM

Agatha Christie’s “Appointment with Death” at Lakewood Playhouse is not a typical whodunit.
Oh sure, it has many of the standard elements: a large group of people thrown together (in this case, on a tourist excursion to the Holy Land) and a murder with multiple suspects. But there are not so many suspects as in the usual mystery romp, and they are not killed off one by one in the standard fashion.

The murder doesn’t even take place until close to the end of the play, and by then the audience has little doubt about who is going to be killed. A good half of the audience would probably like to do the deed themselves, because the victim is such an evil old “¦

Well, I won’t say more, even though the identity I’d be giving away is no great mystery ““ the point being that this is not a plot-driven mystery; it is character-driven entertainment. And there are characters galore.

It’s a motley crew that comes together in the King Solomon Hotel in Jerusalem and travels to the red cliffs of Petra. There is the flirtatious Italian girl (Stacey Todd), who flits in and out unnoticed by all but the hard-drinking and boisterous Alderman Higgs (played with gusto by Dave Van Arnam). Others in the cast include the smarmy Jefferson Cope (Patrick C. Schroeder); the self-possessed doctor, Sarah King (Season Luben); the flighty Miss Amabel Pryce (Val Kirkwood); Dr. Theodore Gerard (half Sigmund Freud and half Hercule Poirot, as played by Tom Phiel); the British and oh-so-haughty Lady Westholme (Brynne Garman); the comical Dragoman (Michael Dresdner); the inspector Col. Carbery (Michael Osier); and a couple of Bedouin boys played by Ike Weileman and Jesse Dawson. That still leaves the pathetically ludicrous American Boynton family ““ the evil and manipulative Mrs. Boynton (Lynn Geyer); the sweet Ginevra Boynton (Beth Meberg), who has been convinced by her mother that she is insane; Lennox Boynton (Tim Goebel), who is about as insane as you can get and not be put in a straitjacket; Lennox’s wife, Nadine (Lorrie Fargo), who is torn between love for her husband and her infatuation with Cope; and finally the kindly and innocent Raymond Boynton (Steven Thomas).

As the play was adapted for the stage, Christie wisely took her famous detective Hercule Poirot out of the script. As a result, the murder mystery is secondary to the enjoyment of watching the eccentricities of these many characters unfold.

We see Lennox Boynton fall apart before our eyes, as Goebel plays him with a marvelous set of ticks and twitches, wringing his hands and never making direct eye contact with anyone on the set or in the audience.

We see the shy and innocent Raymond blossom into a love ­struck young man. We see him stand up to his fears and succumb to them again ““ and then stand up again with Dr. King’s encouragement. Thomas, who played a similarly lovestruck youth, Slender, in “Merry Wives of Windsor,” seems made for the part.

We see the ex-prison warden mother Boynton abuse and manipulate her children, and we want to strangle her (Geyer is outstanding as Boynton).

We bristle at the spiteful Lady Westholme, and we want to see her get her comeuppance. We feel compassion for Lennox’s wife, Nadine, and understand that, burdened as she is with such a dysfunctional husband, she can easily fall for the slick Jefferson Cope. And finally, we laugh at and with the marvelous Dragoman because Dresdner plays the part with such flair.

The one bothersome aspect to the performance was that it was far too obvious that some of the actors were acting ““ most noticeably Schroeder, and to a lesser degree Phiel.

“Appointment with Death” is an entertaining story presented with style under Marty Mackenie’s skillful direction .