When Parantheses Ruled the Earth

I am a big fan of surprising people (and I don't just mean jumping at my sister Arielle as she exits the bathroom) (although, that is quite fun).

Last month, for Dad's 29th birthday (ha!), I surprised him with a ticket to see "Walking With Dinosaurs: The LIVE Experience" with me, and on Wednesday we went.

I'll give a slight pause to allow you to turn green with envy.

If you've been living under a rock and have never heard of "Walking With Dinosaurs" (as most of my co-workers do), I'll explain. It was originally a 6-part BBC miniseries (they make the best) about, you guessed it, dinosaurs. It combined state-of-the-art computer graphics (sidenote: where did the term "state-of-the-art" come from?), some wicked cool animatronics, and was done in the style of a regular nature program; meaning it pretended that it was actually filming the animals and just had a voiceover narrator -- no interviews or looking at bones and fossils.

State-of-the-Art Computer Graphics


Wicked Cool Animatronics

The Guinness Book of World Records says the series was the most expansive documentary series per minute ever made (thank you, wikipedia). I have no idea what that means. The point is that the program was pretty awesome and it got lots of good reviews (including three Emmy Awards, accolades and fruit punch all around!).

So a couple years ago, some people decided to make a live show of it (of course! Why didn't I think of that?); namely, William May (creative vision) and Bruce Mactaggart (original idea). It was all developed in Australia (yay Australia!) and has been seen by over two million people. The show is currently in North America (official website: www.dinosaurlive.com) which brings us to Dad and I at the Idaho Center on Wednesday.

...

It was at this point that Dad and I were both a loss for words.

...

It was just . . . AWESOME, AMAZING, INCREDIBLE . . . ! The show ran about an hour and a half long plus a 20 minute intermission and was basically a history of the age of the dinosaurs. It took you through the Mesozoic era (containing Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods) and showcased some of the dinos of the day. Narrating and walking through the whole thing was an Indiana Jones type of time-traveling paleontologist who had an absolutely perfect voice for it. Even the plant life took us by surprise.

The dinosaurs who made the show were (interesting note, spellcheck only recognizes the names "stegosaurus" and "tyrannosaurus"):

• Allosaurus
• Ankylosaurus
• Brachiosaurus - The biggest at 36 ft high and 56 ft long
• Iguanadon - Just the carcass
• Liliensternus
• Plateosaurus
• Ornithocheirus
• Stegosaurus
• Torosaurus - Had one of the largest land-animal skulls, 8.5 ft long
• Tyrannosaurus - The baby tyrannosaurus was crowd favorite
• Utahraptor (hee hee, Aaron)

My roommate, Leslie, and her mom were also there (in a different section) and at one point it looked like they almost got attacked by the brachiosaurus. Leslie wanted a shirt that would say, "I Almost Got Eaten By The Brachiosaurus And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt."

Oh, the babies is so cute!


This thing was just gianormous!


Animatronic wizardry

I highly suggest trying to see this if it's in your area (Melanie, Aaron, it's in Salt Lake this week: 14th -18th). Also, y0u should check out a video montage of the workshop where they created everything and a Today show segment where they talked a little about the making of it.

So, yeah. Simply the COOLEST thing ever and I'm TOTARRY glad Dad and I went and . . . I have no words.

The Christmas Party Pooped

Oh so sad! So blue! So glum! The Christmas is over.

This year's Christmas was more...eventful than those of year's past. My roommate spent the week on a cruise ship in Mexico with her family. This was excellent as it provided the apartment and me with some quality alone time that had been lack as of late. We desperately needed to get in touch with each other again.

On Christmas Eve Eve (the 23rd), Arielle was supposed to spend the night with me for frivolity and fun and cable tv. That morning on my way to work (driving through the Treasure Valley's version of treacherous snow), I started to slide. Being the girl that I am (the kind of girl who listens to her father's advice), I steered towards the side of the road where there was still a bit of snow that no one had driven in. The sidewalk was right there, but it is quite a short sidewalk so I figured I'd just ride up. I seemed to have mistaken the shortness of my car. I hit it with a nice bang and a jar and then headed onto work. After work, I went home for about an hour, sat my friend's cat for about an hour, filled up on gas...and when I finally parked my car (at least 12 hours since the initial slide) I heard a nice "sssssssssss". Oh dear.

Right before my very eyes, the front passenger tire gave up. I called Dad, who told me to call my Home Teacher and call him back. I called HT Trevor, who was out Christmas shopping and said he'd be by soon. I called both the tire places that are only minutes away from me and they said that since it was 5:30 they had stopped taking requests, but since it was just a flat if I could get it in by 6, they'd take care of me. I did fail to mention to them that last time someone looked at my tires they said they'd have to go soon. So I knew they'd want to completely change 'em out. I managed to get my spare out and started changing the tire (ripping my new coat in the process). I got my spare on and just had to tighten the bolts so I called off my Home Teacher. And then, with only a couple minutes to spare before 6...I broke off one of the bolts. This was just about the straw that did me in.

I called the tire places and was told I'd have to wait for tomorrow when they open at 8am. I have to be at work at 6am. I called Dad, who told me to call my team lead, Roxanna. Roxanna's husband answered the phone (very nice man, I've met him before) who said she was taking a nap. I did try very hard not to sound incredibly pitiful and weepy, but a little seeped through because he said that if it was an emergency he could wake her up. "(Sniffle, choke) Oh no, that's fine...nevermind." Dad ended up coming the rescue. He volunteered to drive all the way to Boise at 5 in the morning, take me to work, and then drive all the way home so he could take Mom to work as well. My fun night with Arielle was ruined. My Christmas was ruined. My car was ruined.

I drove the car over to the tire shop, and walked my most pitisome and tear-stained self home. Then Roxanna called me back, "Mark told me you called and sounded upset but wouldn't tell him what was wrong." She was duly empathetic.

After being taken to work on Christmas Eve (THANK YOU DAD), I planned a ride home with a friend. During the day, the tire place called and said they'd have to replace my front tires. No surprise there. Then they called a little later to say, "We're all done and you can come pick it up! We close at 1pm today." Here was a problem: I don't get off work till 2pm. We were quite slow at work so I was 99% sure I would get off early, but still there was that 1%. With gracious help from Roxanna, my temp agency representative, and my supervisor...it all got figured out and I was off with a friend by 11am driving to get my car. I immediately headed to Nampa for Christmas Eve (Making sure to bring my work clothes since I had to be back at 6am).

Christmas Eve was a blast. Grandma Ison and Aunt Lora Dawn joined us (along with Arielle's friend Amanda). We had our traditional Christmas Eve Pizza (but left none for Santa this year), acted out the Christmas Story with the cloth/bean nativity said made by Mom & Dad when they were newlyweds, read about the Ingalls Christmas in "Little House On the Prairie", and prepared for games. By this time, the snow that had been promised to us all day was getting quite boisterous and proud of itself. Grandma and Lora Dawn left around 9pm and at 10pm Dad decided to call it quits. The snow had just been getting more and more unruly and instead of spending the night, it was decided that I would head back home to Boise. Oh weep, oh gnash. Oh ruinous night. Once again, Dad came to the rescue and and this time let me follow him all the way to Boise and then drove back to Nampa, getting home by midnight.

Realization: Within the 200+ movies my roommate and I own, none are Christmas movies.

Painting Away the Hours

I'm currently working at an IT helpdesk and it has led me to the following self-discoveries:
- I cannot become a morning person. As far as I'm concerned, early mornings are something best seen at the end of late nights.
- I hope to NEVER work a 24/7, open-every-day-of-the-year job again. I can't tell you how depressing it is to have to go to work on the holidays.
- Having to work on the holidays when it is extremely slow can lead to some interesting new hobbies.

I'll explain about the hobbies. I always bring a book to work and usually some music as well, but on those really slow days sometimes they don't suffice. And since my internet access is limited (or rather, is supposed to be...shhh), I can't surf around and look at Cake Wrecks all day. So I have discovered the joy of the Paint program on my pc. I've played Battleship with coworkers, done add-on drawings with them, and made a short series of hamster drawings (I'll talk about that in some other blog). But my most prolific venture has been one-panel cartoons. Usually they're quite silly and several are really only funny to me.

Here's one I did this Thanksgiving.

"Santa Baby" by Chanel

Thanks to some iTunes karaoke and a headset with a microphone...I recorded this last year.


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