HANNAH'S LITTLE FRIEND

Over the weekend, I traveled to Pennsylvania to visit my parents and give my dad a hand with his frog sculptures. While I was there, I got to see first hand how Hannah treats her new friend. I guess the torturing of stuffed animals isn't limited to my office (see APPARENT SUICIDE).

Here's another interesting tidbit. It would seem that this photojournal is 41% evil according to the Gematriculator. That's disappointing, especially since I clearly did better in September where I was only 16% evil.

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SAFARI

So much is going on right now - more than I can even explain. This week marked the beginning of yet another major project at work that's going to require my full attention and most likely a lot of overtime. But before all of this, I decided to take part of a day and go on a safari of sorts.

One of the nice things about Washington is that nearly all of the museums are free, and so is the zoo. I was really itching to put the new camera through some tests, and the zoo was the perfect place for this.

I could seriously sit and watch the hippos all day. They're absolutely beautiful.

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LONG LIVE THE KING

This was a busy weekend. Besides working on several small projects of my own, I went to see two movies, ("Kill Bill" and "Winged Migration"). I went back to the Maryland Renaissance Festival with my sister and brother-in-law, plus I managed to put in a full day at work on Saturday.

When I was at the festival just two weeks ago, I saw a group of guys yell "Long Live the King!" when they saw King Henry VIII walking with his entourage which included the Queen and several guards. The King responded well to this and talked to the guys for a few minutes, and he even gave them a quick lesson on how to properly bow to a lady. I thought this was all pretty neat, and so I told my sister and brother-in-law, that if we see the King this time, we should yell the same thing. Sure enough, we saw him, again being escorted by the Queen and a number of guards. So in unison, the three of us yelled "LONG LIVE THE KING!"

The group stopped, turned to us, and the King asked in a stern voice, "And what is this on my arm?" I thought for just a split second and nearly answered "Well, that would be your sleeve." But I knew better, and instead we each answered in a confused voice, "Um... The Queen." Fortunately our answer was what he was looking for and after we all were "encouraged" to shout "LONG LIVE THE QUEEN," the King nodded and said "You may live." Now, what really threw us off was that the King asked "What is this on my arm" not "Who is this." Still, getting in trouble with his majesty was a lot of fun. Maybe next year we'll take a page out of "Wayne's World" and yell "WE'RE NOT WORTHY!"

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SHOUT OUT

Back when I worked at Meridian Creative Group, we had an intern named Tyler. He was a punk, but he was a lot of fun and he did great Chris Farley impression. Tyler has put together a nice portfolio site at tstout.com. Check it out.

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ALL HANDS ON DECK

Fray Day was so much fun! It started off a little rocky as the room was double booked and for a while, I thought we were going to have a "rumble" with a group of elderly poets (who I think we could have taken). Fortunately we came to a compromise where they'd start early and we'd start late. After that, it was pretty much smooth sailing. We had a great turnout! I was so thrilled at how many friends showed up and the quality of speakers was much higher than I had expected. I told the story of my old friend Trisha and I driving across the country and getting stranded in a freak snowstorm on the first day of autumn. I managed to get a couple of good laughs which is really an exhilarating feeling when you're up on stage. Many thanks and congratulations go out to Geoff Long for hosting such a great event. For those who are interested, here's Bill and Goeff's take on the night.

I spent the rest of the weekend helping Hillary and Ken build a new deck on their house. That went really well. In two days we nearly got the thing finished. We even had a number of neighborhood cats out supervising the whole operation.

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FRAYED EDGES

I don't know how I let Geoff talk me into this, but I'm going to be participating in Fray Day 7 DC this Friday, October 3rd at Common Grounds in Arlington. Fray Day is an evening of open-mic, personal storytelling which promises to be a good time. I just hope they don't have a gong.

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