So some of you may remember that last summer, my darling plumtreeblossom wrote and directed a short one-act play for Festival@First 6. (I helped a bit with the play itself, and then was on the stage crew for the whole festival.) Juliet’s boyfriend Rich took and edited video (thank you, Rich!), and the play is finally up on YouTube! Yay! It had to be split in two parts because it’s (a couple minutes) over YouTube’s ten-minute limit on individual videos, so here are part 1 and part 2 of Dan in the Lion’s Den, by Mare Freed, as performed at its world premier in Somerville, Massachusetts, by the fabulously talented Juliet Bowler, Kerri Babish, and Lou Lim!

(plumtreeblossom has also posted these to her journal here, and to theatreatfirst’s journal here.)

Howdy! The smaller room in my house (in Quincy, a 15min walk from the Quincy Center T station and walking distance from the shops and restaurants on Hancock and Washington Streets) is available starting immediately. Here’s the text of the ad I just posted to Craigslist:

( Craigslist ad )

Feel free to disseminate far and wide, either by pointing people at this post or by pointing them at the Craigslist post (although that will expire in a few days).

Happy birthday to the wonderful, smart, gorgeous, spectacularly energetic surrealestate! surrealestate, I am lucky to have you in my life.

All the rest of you, did you know that surrealestate is training for the Boston Marathon? (See “spectacularly energetic” above.) If you like, you can sponsor her at this link.

So, I just discovered that my voicemail has been broken for an indeterminate amount of time (but probably no more than a couple weeks). I was using a free online voicemail service called MessageSling, and I just had somebody tell me that they had left me voicemail, which I never got notified about. So I went to the MessageSling site and tried to log in, and their front page is up, but once you try to log in their SSL server is not. No idea if that’s related or not (maybe they were just doing maintenance when I checked), but anyway, I know that I have missed at least one piece of voicemail recently, so if you left me a message any time between the 10th (the last time I know I successfully got voicemail) and now, I didn’t get it. (Note: I have no idea how typical this experience is; this is the first problem I’ve had with MessageSling since I started using them a couple years ago.)

I’ve switched to Google Voice for my voicemail now, so if you leave me messages in the future I should get them.

(No change to my phone number; it’s still the same one. If you need to be reminded, it’s in this Friends-locked post.)

I can’t believe I haven’t posted this before now! I blame illness, extreme busyness, and not enough time for LJ. Anyway, by now this event is not news to very many of you because it’s been all over LJ, but in case you haven’t heard about it or didn’t know I was involved:

I’m involved with a live radio drama presentation of an adaptation of The War of the Worlds, with four performances at the end of this month at the Somerville Theater. I am doing Foley (i.e., sound effects). Among other things, you will get to see me fall down. My beloved plumtreeblossom is Foley-team captain; she’ll be onstage making lots of noise too, as will surrealestate and Laurie and Emily, whose LJ names I don’t know (if they have them). And the voice talent is very nearly as awesome as we are!

The War of the Worlds show is part of The Big Broadcast of 1938, and you can follow that link for reservations or more information. (In case anyone is confused, you use the switches and lights on the right hand part of the page to navigate the site; they turn into icons for the particular function when you mouse over them. The bottom one is for reservations.)

The War of the Worlds is loosely based on the famous Orson Welles broadcast adaptation of the novel, and tells the story from a Boston perspective. The other part of the show is an episode of the Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour.

Music is provided by the amazing Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band, so it’s guaranteed to be incredible. The whole shebang is put on by the Post-Meridian Radio Players.

Performances are Thursday the 29th, Friday the 30th, and two performances on Saturday the 31st. You should come see it!

Howdy. If you have any use for an Invacare Pronto Electric Wheelchair ($2000 or best offer), a Sony 43" HD TV ($250 or best offer), or a standing A/C unit ($180 or best offer), please see nex0s' post here. She's trying to pay for her father's cremation.

Due to a hardware failure, lists.aq.org and polyboston.org have been down since sometime this weekend. If you have a list on the machine, that’s why you can’t get to the web interface to administer it. If you’re subscribed to a list on it, that’s why things have been eerily quiet the last few days. Sigh.

I believe all the data on the drive is intact, and I’ve started work on bringing up a new server, but it’ll be a few days, I’m afraid.

(Many thanks to list administrator keyne, who noticed she couldn’t get to her lists and let me know.)

(1) I forgot to mention in my post about the weekend that Saturday morning plumtreeblossom and I got together with my old college friend beeiger her son projectmothra, and her girlfriend lediva for early brunch at Johnny D’s, and we had a delightful time.

(2) I’ve switched my phone service over to a new carrier, and I can send and receive voice calls and send text messages, but so far I haven’t been able to receive text messages. Perhaps the SMS routing system is independent from the voice-call routing system and that part of the switch hasn’t happened yet, but in any case, for now, don’t assume I can get your text messages. My phone number hasn’t changed.

(3) I have some health news (on balance good, but leaving me pretty dissatisfied with the state of my health care) which I will eventually post about. Anyway, the tingling, itching, and occasional pain in my hands and feet is gone now. :-)

(4) A lovely coda to my extended weekend was having cathijosephine and m_c_t ask if I wanted to meet them for a trip to the beach so they could fly their kites. I joined them, had a great time watching them fly kites and hanging out, and was introduced to a wonderful beach just a short walk from the T, which I look forward to taking plumtreeblossom to soon. (We had a kind of stressful experience towards the end of the evening, after it had gotten dark, when after a long walk across he beach m_c_t discovered he didn’t have his phone. The three of us spread out and retraced the path he and I had been walking, constantly calling the phone so it would be ringing, and we did find it. That was a huge relief!)

(5) And then on the way home I had an extra-thick double-malted frappe for dinner (because the places that served real food had just closed, but I’m not complaining!).

Sorry for my extreme radio-silence lately. I’ve been mostly sort of keeping up with other people’s LiveJournal posts (albeit with more skimming than usual), but I haven’t had time or brainpower to post or do much commenting. Anyway, since I’m sure you all are wondering whether I’m still alive, here’s some of what I’ve been up to lately:

Home repairs: Just after cathijosephine moved out, the bath surround (the panels on the wall around the bathtub) fell off. Well, large bits of it did, anyway. It had never been all that convinced it wanted to be attached to the wall, and it gave up. I had been thinking for a very long time (since before I moved in, come to think of it) of pulling it off and repairing whatever damage it had been put up to cover, but had never gotten around to it, in part because it involves not being able to use the shower for extended periods of time due to wating for various bits to dry. Anyway, since I didn’t have a housemate for a bit (anybody want to move in? Quincy’s got lots of history and lots of yummy restaurants! Won’t be available for a bit yet, though.) I decided I’d go ahead and try that. As is the way with these things, it quickly became a much larger project than I expected it to. It was just three days ago (after starting the project about a month ago, although of course I’ve been working on it in spurts) that I finally had a day where I left the bathroom looking better than when I started.

This has all taken a lot longer because of not having a working car any more, so when I discover I don’t have the right tool or I didn’t get enough tile adhesive, I need to either carry stuff on the T (and on the walk home from the T) or rent a Zipcar. (I have to say, I’m really enjoying using Zipcar. But still, it means having to plan stuff in advance.)

Theater: As I did last year, I’m rehearsal-assisting for plumtreeblossom’s show in the summer one-act festival at Theatre@First. Unlike last year, I’m also going to be on the run crew, which I don’t think I’ve ever done. Means I can’t sit in the audience for the actual performances, but it means I get to be on stage, albeit with the lights dimmed. Also unlike last year, the show plumtreeblossom is directing is one she wrote herself! My darling is having her début as a playwright! I’ve read a bunch of short stories she got published before I met her and really enjoyed them, but this is the first substantial writing she’s done since I’ve known her, and I’m thrilled to see her getting back into it. It is a really funny show being put on by very talented actors and it’s going to be a blast! Many of the other one-acts are also really funny too, including the one being directed by surrealestate (who is directing for the first time, if I’m not misremembering). I am really really looking forward to this and you should all come see it.

plumtreeblossom: Things continue to be delightful in my relationship with plumtreeblossom! We have lots of wonderful dates and delightful times. Tomorrow we are going to see Up for the third time. :-) Her cat Rowley who had been frighteningly skinny for a while has been putting on weight, which is really encouraging. We’d already been mentally preparing to lose him. Not sure if the subcutaneous fluids the vet has her giving him are what made the difference or not, but he’s doing a lot better.

Work: Work is busy, but rewarding, and I feel like I’m accomplishing stuff (although projects in IT, as in homeownership, tend to take several times as long as you think they should).

cathijosephine: I’m delighted that I’m still seeing lots of cathijosephine despire her having moved out. We’ve been trying to have dinner together once a week (often with darxus and m_c_t if he’s in town, and sometimes with xmelancholia). Chickenfinger (her cat) has adapted really well to moving back to her condo; we were both worried she’d be upset about moving back to a much smaller space, but she had no trouble adjusting at all.

(Other than seeing a lot of plumtreeblossom and her housemate, cathijosephine and her partners, and the Firsties, I’m feeling a bit undersocialized and missing my friends. Have been popping my head in at some lovely parties though, at one of which I got to catch a glimpse of the delightful weegoddess during a visit this side of the pond.)

I feel like there’s been other important stuff over the past few weeks, but I’ve run out of brain so I’m going to stop for now.

(Thanks to everybody who answered my David Paterson question!)

There’s a great podcasting app available for my new phone (an Android Dev Phone, the unlocked version of the T-Mobile G1, about which I could write an awful lot if I had the time and energy), so I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts. Most often, I’m listening to On Point. (It’s two hours every weekday, so that’s a lot to listen to even if I don’t listen to every show.)

Tonight, I listened to yesterday’s segment “Everything, Incorporated”, in which Douglass Rushkoff talks about the ideas in his new book Life, Inc.. I found it really really interesting. He talks about the origins of the modern corporation and of money, about railroads and corn and hiring a lactation consultant to teach you how to breastfeed so you don’t have to impose on mothers you know to talk to you about it and about being criticised by his neigbours for posting about a mugging because they thought it would hurt their property values. It’s a fascinating scratch-the-surface but very interesting examination of how we ended up with the social and economic structure we live in. It touches (briefly) on an idea I’ve had rolling around in my head for a long time and wanted to post about (but never collected my thoughts enough) about how money distorts our priorities and our notions of sacrifice and benefit, because some kinds of value and importance are much more easily measurable with money than other kinds.

Anyway, if any of that sounds interesting, I would encourage you to listen to it. The page linked above has a big “Listen to This Show” button to stream it, or you can download he mp3 here.