A brief, and boring, blog update. However, I might as well record what I did this weekend. Sadly, it will have to be in words and not pictures since I didn't take any. (Actually, though I didn't take any pictures, apparently one of the guests did. He uploaded some, so here is the link.)
On Friday night my daughter had her first big gift exchange Christmas party. She had about 25 people show up. They all played Texas Hold 'Em to decide the order of gift opening. They arrived about 6pm and we wrapped up the poker game promptly at 9:15. The poker games ran really smoothly. we had three packed tables running at the start.
The gift exchange was a great deal of fun and when one guest showed up very late wearing her cheerleading outfit, and without a gift, I forced her to perform a 'cheer' to earn a free present. This turned out to be a lot of fun as well. The 'big gift' was a giant pimped out remote control car that was about the size of a sawed off Miata. Ok, so that is a slight exaggeration but I could barely fit it in my car when I brought it home from the store.
On Saturday I picked up Dennis and Martin, guests in town from our office in Sweden. In the afternoon we went to Gehard's house for the Saturday Night Screening room event. He showed a 16mm print of the 1933 classic "42nd Street". It was one of the last films made 'pre-code' and was suprisingly provocative. It has tons of sexual references which I found surprising. Gehard has redone his basement and it just looks amazing now. I really wish I had taken some pictures but I will just have to take some the next time. I believe my guests enjoyed the film, I certainly know I did!
Afterwards, I suggested they check out the Powell Symphony Hall and Fox Theatre Box Office. I parked in the private space at the New Masonic Temple and it was just amazing to see it in the evening. The building is so huge, this giant block of stone, that at night it looks like something mystic.
We went to the Fabulous Fox Theatre box office and found out there was a show about to start. I convinced Dennis and Martin it was well worth their time and money to have the experience of seeing a show there. I asked for the best seats available for the show and was shocked to get the first three seats, in the very first row, in the dead center of the theatre! (Someone must have been unable to use them at the last minute.) I have never had such good seats in any theatre in my entire life! At first I thought maybe the seats weren't that great because they were 'too' close. However, that wasn't the case. It was a great way to see the show, so close you could carefully observe the expressions on every actors face. The show we saw was the traditional standard "A Christmas Carol", performed as a muscial. The play is always fun and the music made the evening just perfect. One of the really cool things about being so close was when they fired up the fog machines for when the ghosts entered a scene and it would roil off the stage and directly into our laps. Very cool!
After the show we continued our Saint Louis tour. I took Dennis and Martin to Blueberry Hill for a late dinner and drinks. By this time Marcus's plane had finally arrived and he took a taxi to the bar and met us there.
Today I really didn't do all that much. I screened my print of "Kung Fu" and determined I got a great deal. The print is near mint and I can't wait to show it this summer. I worked on the DeMolay calendar. I put the cover on my piece of crap pontoon boat. We are leaving it in the water this winter. I'm not certain if it will be good for anything at all next year. All I know is I don't want to dump any more money into it. Finally, this evening, I cooked a lovely dinner for my family and typed up a blog message.
Heck, I think that marks this rambling, pointless, and boring blog entry complete. Oh yeah, one more thing. I am planning to take the whole week of Christmas off since virtually everyone in our office plans to, so I don't know how much work I would get done anyway. I might as well because I have a lot of vacation time accrued by now. It will be nice to be home for the week when my wife and kids are out of school too. We have no specific vacation plans, other than visiting relatives homes for Christmas. I hope to be able to visit the New Masonic Temple and get some documentation during my week off.
It looks like I will be returning to Paris the first week of January to finalize the project I am working on. That should be fun. My one goal for a return trip is to attend an opera in Paris.
On Friday night my daughter had her first big gift exchange Christmas party. She had about 25 people show up. They all played Texas Hold 'Em to decide the order of gift opening. They arrived about 6pm and we wrapped up the poker game promptly at 9:15. The poker games ran really smoothly. we had three packed tables running at the start.
The gift exchange was a great deal of fun and when one guest showed up very late wearing her cheerleading outfit, and without a gift, I forced her to perform a 'cheer' to earn a free present. This turned out to be a lot of fun as well. The 'big gift' was a giant pimped out remote control car that was about the size of a sawed off Miata. Ok, so that is a slight exaggeration but I could barely fit it in my car when I brought it home from the store.
On Saturday I picked up Dennis and Martin, guests in town from our office in Sweden. In the afternoon we went to Gehard's house for the Saturday Night Screening room event. He showed a 16mm print of the 1933 classic "42nd Street". It was one of the last films made 'pre-code' and was suprisingly provocative. It has tons of sexual references which I found surprising. Gehard has redone his basement and it just looks amazing now. I really wish I had taken some pictures but I will just have to take some the next time. I believe my guests enjoyed the film, I certainly know I did!
Afterwards, I suggested they check out the Powell Symphony Hall and Fox Theatre Box Office. I parked in the private space at the New Masonic Temple and it was just amazing to see it in the evening. The building is so huge, this giant block of stone, that at night it looks like something mystic.
We went to the Fabulous Fox Theatre box office and found out there was a show about to start. I convinced Dennis and Martin it was well worth their time and money to have the experience of seeing a show there. I asked for the best seats available for the show and was shocked to get the first three seats, in the very first row, in the dead center of the theatre! (Someone must have been unable to use them at the last minute.) I have never had such good seats in any theatre in my entire life! At first I thought maybe the seats weren't that great because they were 'too' close. However, that wasn't the case. It was a great way to see the show, so close you could carefully observe the expressions on every actors face. The show we saw was the traditional standard "A Christmas Carol", performed as a muscial. The play is always fun and the music made the evening just perfect. One of the really cool things about being so close was when they fired up the fog machines for when the ghosts entered a scene and it would roil off the stage and directly into our laps. Very cool!
After the show we continued our Saint Louis tour. I took Dennis and Martin to Blueberry Hill for a late dinner and drinks. By this time Marcus's plane had finally arrived and he took a taxi to the bar and met us there.
Today I really didn't do all that much. I screened my print of "Kung Fu" and determined I got a great deal. The print is near mint and I can't wait to show it this summer. I worked on the DeMolay calendar. I put the cover on my piece of crap pontoon boat. We are leaving it in the water this winter. I'm not certain if it will be good for anything at all next year. All I know is I don't want to dump any more money into it. Finally, this evening, I cooked a lovely dinner for my family and typed up a blog message.
Heck, I think that marks this rambling, pointless, and boring blog entry complete. Oh yeah, one more thing. I am planning to take the whole week of Christmas off since virtually everyone in our office plans to, so I don't know how much work I would get done anyway. I might as well because I have a lot of vacation time accrued by now. It will be nice to be home for the week when my wife and kids are out of school too. We have no specific vacation plans, other than visiting relatives homes for Christmas. I hope to be able to visit the New Masonic Temple and get some documentation during my week off.
It looks like I will be returning to Paris the first week of January to finalize the project I am working on. That should be fun. My one goal for a return trip is to attend an opera in Paris.
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