I hate to tell you this, but in Austin at least, summer is here. Sure it doesn’t seem like it. It’s been beautiful the past few days. Absolutely perfect. Highs in the low seventies. Skies that are that unbroken blue that stretches from horizon to horizon. But summer’s here all the same. I felt the first tangs of sweat. The pinpricks on my back while waiting at the bus stop. The wind picked up and dried them away, but they were there. Definitely there…

Speaking of the weather. I didn’t get to enjoy it this weekend due to a nasty stomach something or other. It felt like someone was inflating helium balloons inside my thoracic cavity. This lasted all of Saturday, and all of Sunday. I didn’t sleep much. I was in pain. Even though I knew I wasn’t constipated (for obvious reasons), I decided to take a laxative Sunday night. So Sunday night my stomach muscles pulsed in time to some late eighties disco beat as I lay in bed silently screaming. I was a wreck Monday (which I had off). I ended up sleeping for about 4 hours in the afternoon. My stomach still hurt, but I couldn’t tell if it was whatever had been bugging me all weekend or just muscle soreness from dancing the drug induced peristalsis boogie. I decided to see a doctor on Tuesday even though I was feeling better. For some reason I occasionally like to go see a doctor just so I can reaffirm that I really never need to go see doctors. He proceeded to lay me back on a table and prod all of the places that hurt. Once I started actually moaning he proceeded to use both hands like a hammer and chisel in the places that hurt in an effort to get more sonorous sounds of pain out of me. Ultimately he sent me off for blood work to see if I had an appendicitis (considering I had no other symptoms highly unlikely), and with the obvious insinuation, “You big faker.”

Taking care of Stella with a stomach ache was not a lot of fun. I actually ended up not taking care of her Sunday morning which I felt bad about. But sometimes you hurt. I did run 6 miles with her on Saturday before my stomach started hurting. Lance Armstrong came on my iPod to congratulate me on my longest workout yet. It was a proud day.

Back to work. I think I’m going to try to submit a play to Kitchen Dog Theater’s New Works Festival. Any suggestions on which play to submit?

Finally, Stella wants to know, “You want a piece of this? Huh? You see that cat? That cat knows who’s boss. That cat hisses at everyone it sees, but not me. Now take me out to the car.”

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Comments

Travis (http://the-holmes.blogspot.com)

2007-02-22T17:50:07.000Z

Yeah, nice as this weather is, it’s just a reminder that in fact, it should probably be a few degrees colder at this time of year. I grew up in Texas and I swear I remember February being cold in my youth, I swear it.

Tim (http://loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2007-02-22T17:56:47.000Z

As much as I believe in global warming… My first Christmas in Texas was 75 degrees. So I’m not sure I can go along with the winters of my youth being colder.

Travis (http://the-holmes.blogspot.com)

2007-02-22T18:04:05.000Z

Yeah, well, uh, I’m older than you. Those years make all the difference ;)

Caroline

2007-02-23T21:18:05.000Z

is my vote for play submission. Oh, yeah. And I’m enjoying global warming here in the Netherlands — it’s in the 50’s…

Jonathon (http://flailingmyarms.blogspot.com)

2007-03-01T07:53:53.000Z

so it feels more like we have seasons?

So the food last night turned out gloriously. We started out with Tuna and Roasted Pepper Crostini. It was trivial to make and tasted really good. I think Julie and I ate about 6 a piece. Delicious. No pictures though. They basically looked like baguette slices with tuna salad and a piece of red bell pepper on top.

Next up the main course:

That’s an Arugula Salad with Olives, Pancetta, and Parmesan Shavings in the top left. The pancetta has been arranged in the shape of a heart, although you probably can’t see that (photographing food is hard). On the plate we have Mashed Potatoes with Prosciutto and Parmesan cheese. We have roasted asparagus with anise seeds, and we have a filet mignon with truffled mushroom ragout. The filets were perfection. Julie won’t eat food that’s medium rare, so I threw them in the oven for 5 minutes. I was really afraid we were going to end up with a piece of rubber meat, but it turned out fantastically. Everything was tasty and it was light. We actually had room for dessert which was fun.

For dessert we had chocolate covered strawberries dipped in dark chocolate and then white chocolate. There were chocolate covered raspberries, and chocolate covered brazil nuts. There were fresh strawberries, and a peppermint flavored whipped cream with dark chocolate shavings. We had one big plate and fed each other. It was fantastic. Everything was super tasty and I feel like I can eat today. I also didn’t spend the entire night cooking. We were eating at 9:30. I should mention that I started a little after 7pm and Stella got a bath in between making the dessert and the appetizer.

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Comments

mcoker (http://www.phat32.com)

2007-02-15T18:05:02.000Z

Man, that looks delicious. Sounds like a lovely evening :-)

Valentines Day for me is not onerous. It’s actually one of my favorite days of the year. That’s because for me it is a cooking holiday. Cooking holidays are days when Julie basically gives me cart blanche to go out and spend as much as I want on a meal. I love them. Today I took the Dillo down to whole foods and bought lots of fun stuff. I finally even came out of my cheap mold and bought some truffle oil (I think this was in the $35 a bottle range). It will last me a long time. But I’ve always been cheap in the past.
It took me a long time to find everything because I don’t usually shop at whole foods, but I think I’ve got a great meal. I was going to be super simple this year, but last night in bed I mentioned this to Julie. “I’m just going to make a main dish, and a side, and a dessert”, I said. “And an appetizer”, said she. “Oh really? Ok, I guess I could make an appetizer.” “And perhaps another side.”, she piped up from under her pillow. So I have a more traditional meal. An appetizer, salad, two sides, a main course, and a dessert. I’ll write more about it tomorrow.
I’ve been really inspired by Top Chef also to make meals that have smaller components. Like my dessert is made up of multiple small things rather than one big thing. I think this is going to be a lot more fun to eat. I’ll let you know tomorrow.
Oh. And I don’t have to get a card because I cook. Valentines rocks!

So I apologize that this site has become a Daddy blog. I don’t know when that happened. Ah well…

The Frontera Fest piece this weekend went extremely well. The church members laughed at the right places and no one seemed offended. So life is good.

Yesterday morning Stella woke up at 6:30. That sucked. Then she proceeded to crawl around the room stop and just break down crying. She was extremely tired. Of course, this always signals the start of some new ability, but I never recognize that at the time (probably because I’m sleep deprived). So yesterday afternoon I was trying to put her down for a nap, and I noticed she was playing with her cradle cross. “Huh”, I thought, “she’s never tried to play with that before”. Then I looked up again and she was smiling and looking at me like she’d just invented a method of nuclear fusion. I realized she was a bit taller than normal. Then it hit me… she’s standing up. I called Julie in and we both marveled at our baby who can now pull-up into a standing position.

Then this morning she was attempting to unzip her sleeper. And just now I walked towards he to take away Julie’s purse and she attempted to move it out of my grasp so I wouldn’t take it. Cheeky monkey!

Some weeks are just very, very busy. Every spare minute this week I’m supposed to be working on fine tuning my script for Saturday. Then I have to start memorizing it. By Saturday. On the upside though the Daily Texan out of the blue called and asked to do an article about my play. This is pretty cool, and should get some free publicity for the church (which sorely needs it).

Stella and I went to my friend Elli’s birthday party last night at the Macaroni Grill up north. It was pretty cool, although it reaffirmed the fact that my car and child seats are a match made in hell. To get Stella in and out I have to crawl into the car in a half crouch and unstrap her, pull her out of the seat without hitting her head on the ceiling and then back out of the car in a crouch with her in my arms. But it was worth it to see all the LoopOne folks. They were definitely a cool bunch of people. I don’t regret leaving the company, but I miss hanging out with them. I was glad I got to introduce Stella to them. Hopefully I’ll find some time to have lunch or some beers with Ali in the near future.

So I need to work on publicity materials for the the church today at lunch. It’s going to be a busy week.

UPDATE: We were not in the article. I should have known.

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Comments

Elli

2007-02-08T03:09:06.000Z

It was really great to see you and Stella last night! She is quite possibly the most adorable child I’ve ever seen. Glad you had a good time!

Aunt Mary

2007-02-11T02:24:45.000Z

Hi Tim, Congrats on the articles written for your play! I’ll be thinking of you and hope all goes well for the Sat. performance. I also appreciate the photos you all put together of Thanksgiving. THANKS! Love, Aunt M

“Big Box God” is mentioned in the Chronicle Story on Mi Casa Es Su Teatro today. Don’t forget to come out at 3:15pm on Saturday with your 3 dollars!

We have two shows for you this week. First up:

**“Loaded Gun Theory presents: A Special Live Taping of The Freddy Argyle Show!”**Argyle has been hosting his near-weekly talk show in his home-studio for the past eighteen months and will bring his unique brand of “investigative interviewing” and “charm” to FronteraFest in an intimate and revealing chat with a real-life Austin hero.

It’s currently sold out (see I told you to get those tickets early). But you can head down to Hyde Park Theater an hour before show time and get on the waiting list. They’re usually really good about squeezing almost everyone on the waiting list in, but you need to get there early. Al has written a hilarious show and you owe it to yourself to see it.

If you can’t get into that show then we have another show for you on Saturday:

“Big Box God” Consultants Cynthia and Richard invite the neighborhood to tour Hyde Park United Methodist church and provide input on their much improved mixed-use plan for the site and for the neighborhood. Cynthia and Richard have been hired to repurpose the site to reach out to the “unchurched” and compete against the Big Box churches popping up on the outskirts of Austin.

This is a site specific comedy starring Julie and Tim Thomas. It’s not technically a Loaded Gun Theory piece (mainly because it’s come together so fast there’s been no time for a meeting), but I figured that you might be interested anyway. It’s at 3:15 on Saturday at Hyde Park United Methodist Church as part of Mi Casa Es Su Teatro. The cost is three dollars and here’s a map.

We had a birthday party for Erin last night. It was crazy. There were two mobile babies weaving in and out of the adults. People were here till 2 so I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep (up at 7:30). Often I don’t get a lot of sleep I’ll sack out on the floor of Stella’s room and pretend that I can actually fall asleep. Or at least try to wake up more slowly. This morning I was lying with my head on Julie’s boppie and Stella came up and laid her head on the boppie right next to mine. She only kept it there for about a minute, but it was super nice cuddling. Then a little later she took the solitare video game I was playing out of my hands, sat next to me the exact same way I was and proceeded to “play” the game. Copy-cat monkey.

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Comments

mcoker (http://www.phat32.com)

2007-02-03T18:53:46.000Z

Tim, you’re really gonna have to cut it out with all this cutesy Stella talk. You’re making me super jealous. Where can I get one of those little boogers?

Could we have a moratorium on the phrase, “I could be wrong”? Obviously you could be wrong. That’s a part of human existence. Stating it is pointless. It’s as annoying as me saying “sorry” every other second.

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Comments

Ian

2007-02-03T08:46:25.000Z

I personally find the phrase to still be quite useful, as I reserve it for those few, rare, times when I actually could be wrong. Because most of the time that’s just not possible… right?

Ok, so I got to deal with more child proofing this weekend. Stella has started really motoring so we decided it was time to put in the child gate at the top of the stairs. I didn’t figure it would take me long. It’s just 8 screws. Travis and Ashley had given us a gate that I decided to try first. They gave it to us because it hadn’t worked in their house. I pulled it out and realized that it wouldn’t work in our house either. There wasn’t enough space between our baseboards and the banister. Fair enough, perhaps that one wasn’t for everyone. So I started installing the second gate we had. It was a little shorter. It looked like it might work. But… no dice. I could barely squeeze the top part of the gate in under the banister, but the bottom part wouldn’t connect. Julie suggested taking a hacksaw to the baseboard. I was against this modification for something that we won’t have in place for that long, so I ended up cutting a chunk out of the gate so it would fit properly. I don’t get this. Banister height is definitely something that is going to be dictated by code. And almost every house in the US has baseboards. So why in the world wouldn’t hey have taken this into account? I can see why you have to pay someone to install this child safety stuff. It’s super poorly designed.
On a side note I finally got the reservation site up and running. It’s www.buyplaytix.com. I’m really happy with how it’s turned out and I can’t wait to start adding new features. I have to work on a script though first. I’ve decided to do a Frontera Piece for Mi Casa Es Su Teatro at Hyde Park UMC. It’s Sunday week, so I’ve got to get crackin’.

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Comments

Jooley Ann (www.julieholden.com)

2007-02-07T04:23:37.000Z

That picture is *adorable*. :D