FuzzyCo

I hew close to the rule "Don't Blog About Work". But, goodness, look at this fellow who seems to have anonymously written about a workplace that has no identifying details and yet the situation somehow speaks to me...

If you've talked to me lately and asked some ordinary social non-question like "how are things?" you've gotten TMI from me -- complainy, complainy. (Sorry, Chris, for dumping on you just tonight.) And that's very different than the usual Fuzzy-plan. Usually I strive to be relentlessly cheerful. I don't want to be fake, but it's usually worked for me in the past that if I talked positive, I could be positive. Lately, I've been down -- which isn't bad thing. But the bad thing is, I think, that I've been throwing it at people.

Tonight I was driving home and The Wombats' Let's Dance to Joy Division came on. It's a fun song, but the lyrics really struck me tonight:

Let's dance to Joy Division,
And celebrate the irony,
Everything is going wrong,
But we're so happy.

So, yeah. I need to dance around stupidly a little more. Things have been hard (though, they're getting better! Until they get worse again!) but that's no reason to be a grumpy gus. I've got the greatest wife in the world and a lot of fun stuff going on. And I've got my health (usually). And two weird cats. And a bunch of good TV to watch. Whee!

My experiences with marathon training last year convinced me that gradual athletic training really works -- I went from being a non-runner to making it 18 miles. Factor in that I'm a sucker for an internet challenge, and I just had to try the Hundred Pushups thing. Simply, it's a six-week program to train to do a hundred continuous pushups. I've just started the second week of the program and I can tell a difference. Soon I will be a giant muscle man! (Or... be able to do a few pushups.)

The only quibble I have with the program is that their charts are just a hair confusing. You do the inital test and that puts you in a "rank" which you immediately ignore. Just remember the number of pushups you could do from the test and that tells you which of three columns to look at when you look at the chart for each week. What they call a "level" on those weekly charts, I'd call a "rep" ("level" has nothing to do with the "rank") -- just figure out which vertical column you're in based on your initial number of pushups and then do that number of pushups in each repetition with the prescribed rest in between.

The problem is that this cat is too cute. She's one of the Mississippi cats, brought up from Erica's mom's place because she has a few too many cats at the moment. The three other cats have all gone to great homes -- Shannon has this little lady's momma cat.

The problem is that I've given her a name -- I'm not going to share it because that would make it real, but trust me, it's a clever name. And if I keep calling her this name and staring into those little kitty eyes, I'm going to want to keep her and then we'd have four cats. Four cats is too many cats for an apartment in Chicago.

The problem is that you haven't said you want to adopt her yet. Get on the stick, people! She's about a year old, fixed, has all her shots. She has a sweet disposition and likes being petted and scratched behind the ears, but she also seems to like just sitting and staring out the window.

You know, I love her more and more every day. Which is pretty astonishing, because I already loved her a lot.

I owe a bunch of people Christmas and Birthday thank you cards, but I owe one more to some anonymous person. I got a book in the mail today that must be just for me, but I have no idea who sent it. The Importance of Being Fuzzy - and Other Insights from the Border Between Math and Computers. So thanks, anonymous friend. I will, I'll shamefully confess, probably never read it, but I'll proudly display it nonetheless. (I can put it next to the copy of Life and Erica that I got Erica for Christmas.)

The 365 Days project challenges you to take a self-portrait a day for a year. I've been thinking about attempting it for a while, but I've sorta been looking for a good start-and-end date. I missed New Year's Day (not, perhaps, a good sign for the project) so I've decided to do birthday-to-birthday, inclusive. Add in the fact that this is a leap year, and I'll be doing my own personal 367 Days project.

I've got some ideas for fun kinds of self-portraits to take, but to keep it realistic, I've also set myself some rules:

The day isn't over until I go to sleep. I anticipate plenty of post-midnight "brushing my teeth and... ooops haven't taken a self portrait today, yet." Which leads to...

It's OK to suck. This whole thing is going to go down the tubes real fast if every picture has to be great. I'm going to start off with (as above) some crappy camera-held-at-arms-length photos just to get myself in the habit of taking one a day.

Failure is an option. If I miss a day, eh, it's a self-imposed goal. No one is going to cry over missed photos. If the whole thing does go down the tubes, oh well.

So day three of FuzzyFest 2008 was the big day -- my actual birthday. And I have to say it was a pretty great day. Erica and I met up with Shaun at the Little Corner Restaurant for my favorite breakfast (pork chops with two eggs-scrambled, raisin toast-buttered, grits, coffee -- 7 points in the Ordering Game). After breakfast, Erica surprised me by whisking me away to a massage and pedicure. On the way home we stopped at Metropolis and had a nice conversation with one of the roasters about their different blends and picked up some coffee for home and Erica's office. We made the tiniest effort to straighten up the house and then went out to dinner with some friends. Everyone came back to our place during the snowstorm for pie and coffee and kitty wigs. And then Noah stuck around afterwards to show Erica and I how to remix songs in GarageBand. How can you beat a day like that?

Thanks to everyone for all the kind emails and text messages and phone calls and Twitter shoutouts and Facebook wall writings and MySpace comments.

Day Two of FuzzyFest 2008 was both productive and chill. I knocked out two different video projects (links to come -- one has to wait for the client to post it, the other is secret until mid-day tomorrow), we went to a baby shower for Dan and Vicky, and I ran tech for Sickest Stories. But we also found time to knock out the last few episodes of Season 2 of Arrested Development and have a delicious breakfast and dinner. Tomorrow -- more meals with friends and pie. Pie!

FuzzyFest has kicked off this year with a great lunch with some of my workfriends at Bandera. The terrible weather we're having today actually worked in my favor -- I had been a little worried because Bandera doesn't take reservations for lunch and they're often pretty crowded. But today they were half-empty. Thanks, snow storm.

Thanks to the new bar at the Chicago Comedy Company Theater and Lillie's desire to have as many legal bartenders as possible, Erica and I are now Illinois BASSET* certified bartenders. Thanks to a two-hour online course and test we know all about Illinois liquor laws, how to cut off intoxicated customers, and how bad alcohol is for lil' fetuses, etc.

The online course was as laughably bad as you might imagine. Typos abounded: you should always check a "diver's license" because it might be "faudulent". There were videos about dealing with customers that I'm pretty sure were filmed in Wisconsin, for two reasons. One, in a video suggesting that you could "slow down" heavy drinkers by suggesting food or a glass of water, the girl responds to the suggestion of food by ordering some "cheese balls". And two, the actors' natural friendliness and affability is evident in every scene. In the one about cutting someone off, the 'drunk' says "I'd really like another drink" and when told "no" responds with two minutes of apologies about getting so 'crazy'.

One neat thing about this certification, other than the nifty certificates we got to print out ourselves at the end of the course, is that it marks the checking-off of a to-do item Erica and I have had since the start of our relationship. Back when we doing the chatting that turned into flirting that turned into going out, one of our recurring topics of conversation was Erica's casting about for a second job. She was thinking of picking up a bartender job somewhere and wasn't sure what sort of training or certification was required. I did the research and discovered that those hundreds-or-thousands of dollars 'bartender schools' are not required -- in Chicago you just need your BASSET license. So I offered to pay for the class and test for her birthday and take the test with her. Circumstances changed and we never did take the class, until now. So, oddly, sitting around on a Saturday afternoon taking online quizzes was somehow romantic.

* Beverage Alcohol Sellers and Servers Education and Training

While I was off getting other people custom cartoons, Erica was conspiring behind my back to get me a custom Laugh-Out-Loud Cats!

Well, it hasn't actually been a whole year since I had my LASIK surgery, but I had my 'one year' visit yesterday, ending my official follow-up period. My flaps looks great, I'm seeing 20/20 and from now on, my doctor said, my eye care is as though I'd never had LASIK -- an eye exam every two or three years. As I (rapidly) approach 40, presbyopia is going to kick in sooner or later and I'll need reading glasses -- ah, glasses, my old nemesis, you never remain far away, do you?

Anyone had a good experience with an oral surgeon in Chicago? Team Gerdes is looking for a recommendation. Leave a comment or email me, plz. Thx.

I've been doing this for a few years now -- constructing a quick year-in-review by just taking the first line of the first post from each month. It's obviously very superficial, and touches on few of the really big things that happened in my life year, but it's nearly tradition around here, so I'll let it stand.

January 2007: I saw the charts that Anil Dash and Tim Bray made of their blog archives, so I made one, too. more

February 2007: So I'm in rehearsals for this play. more

March 2007: I think the two things that mark this as a Hiaasen book for younger readers is that the cast isn't quite as huge as usual, there's no sex, and the ending is much more unambiguously happy. more

April 2007: Okami is, if nothing else, the most gorgeous video game I've ever played. more

May 2007: Lastlast weekend the Chicago Neutrino Project bundled into three cars (plus Dan down from Michigan and Alison flew up from Texas) and drove over to Oberlin, Ohio for the Oberlin Improv Conference. more

June 2007: Still in Mississippi. more

July 2007: Where all my Canucks at? more

August 2007: Well, there's that, then. more

September 2007: This morning I wandered around downtown Chicago taking pictures of the cast of WNEP's Soiree DADA as they... DADAed. more

October 2007: The Hot Kid exists at the intersection of Westerns (it's set in Oklahoma), gangster stories (it's the 30s), and true-crime fiction (in a touch of meta, one of the characters writes for those sorts of magazines). more

November 2007: The last-last time Erica was in Mississippi, Tricia gave her a "Ghost Hunter" camera to bring back -- a disposable camera that automagically* inserts "ghosts" into your photos. more

December 2007: Part of the reason I was so hard on Cascade Point, I've realized, was that it's in my least favorite segment of speculative fiction -- the future as a simple mapping of the past* -- the starship version of a tramp steamer is even called a "tramp starmer", which really rings hollow to my ears. more

You make a nifty chart like this one year and it seems a shame not to keep it up to date:

Black Butte Ranch, Deschutes County, OR
Chicago, IL*
Charleston, SC
Columbia, SC
Kenosha, WI
Las Vegas, NV
Oberlin, OH
Phoenix, AZ
Portland, OR
Salt Lake City, UT
Vicksburg, MS*

Here's every city I spent the night in during 2007, with an asterix indicating multiple, non-consecutive visits.

Compare and contrast with 2006

Whenever someone mentions that they're thinking of doing some therapy or counseling, I tell them, "I have a little saying about therapy. It's: 'therapy's great!'" I'm dumb, but I want to do whatever I can to help remove any stigma from f'ing going and getting some help for what ails you. You don't have to wait until you're dying to go to a regular doctor -- no one will look at you weird if you go in to the doctor to deal with some joint pain or a nagging cold or such. And just so, you don't have to be full-out crazy to go get some help from a professional about mental issues. If nothing else, having someone's whose job it is to listen to you complain -- what could be better?

I did some therapy a few years ago here in Chicago, not to fix anything major, just to kind of figure out where I was at. I figured some stuff out, and got some good tools for just dealing with things better. (My guy was great, and if you're looking for a recommendation in Chicago, I've got one. Especially if you're a guyish-guy. My guy had a bunch of baseball analogies and stuff that I could tell were aimed at making 'I'm a manly man, why am I in therapy' types feel more comfortable. Almost made me wish I cared about baseball.)

Heather Armstrong posted something really powerful today about her own experiences with therapy and brain-fixing drugs and says the same thing -- if you need help, go get it. Ain't no shame in that.

Thanks to everyone who offered help finding a new place. I'm happy to announce that we've signed a lease on an apartment. It's another of our Big Crazy Moves, as we'll be moving about half-a-mile northwest of our current place. (Our last move, you'll recall, was one-half-block south on the same street.) We'll be living on Magnolia Street, which is apropos as Mississippi is the Magnolia State. We've even got a two-week overlap between the leases, so we'll be moving between September 15 and 30. We're getting a lot of things on our wish list, including spaciousness, in-unit washer-and-dryer, and the peace and quiet of living west of Broadway. Look for a house-warming party when we're all unpacked in, say, April or so.

Hey, we're looking for a new apartment in the Edgewater area, if you happen to know of any. Now, we're not just looking for any old place -- we're trying not to think of it as running away from this place (although, we are, kinda) but as moving towards a better place (come to the light, Team Gerdes...). So we'd like to stay in this area, probably. The cats are coming with us, of course. Two bedrooms. Spacious would be great. Lots of storage. In-unit laundry and parking would be big pluses. We're leaning towards second floor and up. Sound like somewhere you know?

Update: Thanks, we're set.

Erica and I got married a year ago, on July 29, 2006. We celebrated by taking a day (and-a-half) trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin.

July 29, 2006 was also the day that my friend Anna Dufair died. She is missed.

Fuzzy Gerdes is really easy to find, but if any of my pre-college friends were trying to find me, they'd be looking for Erik Gerdes. So I thought I'd leave a little Google-bait here with some biographical info that might help people find me.

I'm not the one other Erik Gerdes in the U.S. who is now a doctor in Illinois and who went to Case Western Reserve. Neither am I any of the 16 Eric Gerdeses. But it probably doesn't hurt to put "Eric" on this page for people who can't remember how I spell my name.

I went to 3rd through 9th grades in Columbia, Maryland and attended Talbot Springs Elementary School, Owen Brown Middle School, and Hammond High School. If I had stayed in the US I would have been Class of 1988.

10th through 12th grades I went to Pembroke School in Kensington Gardens, South Australia. I attended one trimester at Adelaide University and then came back to the states and went to Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. I graduated with a degree in computer science in Class of 1992.

Some friends of mine that I've tried to find, just to bait their names, include:
Cate Rogers
Danielle Poulos
Eric Fisher
James "Murph" Murphy

If I'm the Erik Gerdes you're looking for, you can email me or check me on MySpace or Facebook if that's more your speed.

Lawrence came to visit 100 years ago (in internet time, anyway) and it was very nice to see him. The end.

P.S. We went saw this and this happened.

I had my three month eye checkup and everything is fine. My flaps, as before, are perfect. I've still got halos at night, but I think I'm just noticing them less (and my doctor keeps saying he's confident they'll get better with time -- which he's been saying from the start). I can see 20/20, albeit not as crisply as with my glasses. My eyes still get tired after 3/4 of a day of staring at the computer. And a bug flew into my eye the other day, which is something that never happened when I wore glasses, so that's a new experience of post-LASIK eyes. Whee!

For her birthday, some of Erica's friends got together to get her a house-call massage (from an old friend of hers, as it happens). And Erica figured that since Nia was going to be at the house anyway, that she'd give me a nine-month's anniversary present of a massage as well. So what could be better than waking up on a warm and sunny Sunday morning to get a massage in your own living room? Well, I'll tell you what's better -- I'm not really a fan of that standard wind-chimes-and-flute music that's common to the massage and spa world, so I asked Nia if I could pop in something of my own and I got my massage to the Kings Of Convenience's Versus. Remixes of gentle Norwegian pop is, seriously, one of the most relaxing things I can think of.

And congrats, Steve and Becky.

These numbers are not that impressive (except for that Max Speed -- the Geko glitches like that every now and then), but it's my first ride of the year, and so I share so that it will be more impressive when I get my speed up in a few weeks.

I have this crazy idea to run a Marathon this year. I'm not sure why -- I don't really like running. But it seems like a such a iconic "life achievement" that I kind of feel like checking it off. Annnd, the Nike + iPod kit could make it all a giant numbers game, which I do totally love (see the photo above).

I had my one month checkup today -- my doctor says that my flaps are fine, I'm seeing 20/20 (although not crisply - that should come with more healing), and that it's normal to still see halos at night (50% of people see halos at one month, he said, and 10% at 3 months). So again, more patience, use artificial tears, and blink completely.

Since I don't need my corrective lenses any more, I sent some of my glasses to my godkids, who were able to put them to good use.

One of the reasons I chose to do my LASIK at Northwestern was that their office is two blocks from my work -- so if, at anytime during the day I got, say, panicky about something in my eye and whether it was my flaps coming off or whatever, I could just walk over there and have them check it out. Which I did this morning. So, yeah, my corneal flaps are not coming off.

I had my one week followup visit today. My corneal flaps are "perfect", my eyes are "on the right track", and I can clean my eyelids of the goop left there by the steroid eyedrop I was using.

"Blink completely," is advice my doctor gave me about working at a computer, post-surgery, but it keeps resonating in my brain like it's some important life lesson. I'm not sure what it means other than its literal meaning, but yes, blink completely.

Last night I woke up in a panic twice because I had unconsciously put a knuckle up to my right eye to give it a good rub. I think (I hope) I got as far as applying a gentle pressure before the higher level "you're not supposed to do that" thought processes kicked in.

Halos certainly make the city at night look more exciting.

I ordered a pair of cheap glasses with flat lenses so that I can, if desired, be the 'old Fuzzy' every now and then.

I was a little worried about my fight in Rogue 8 (no contact sports for 2 weeks, my care sheet says) and I was a little tentative at fight call on Friday. But we didn't do the fight on Friday (it's in one of the optional scenes) and on Saturday it was fine.

I'm rather surprised, given how eye-phobic I am, but even after this short amount of time I've gotten really good at popping eye drops in. Drop drop drop. I'm a freakin' eye drops master.

I'm realizing that I need to be patient. Which I'm not. For the last 30 years, if my vision was blurry, I put on my glasses and, instantly, everything was clear. Now, everything is just a little blurry all the time and there's no glasses to fix it. (I tried putting on my old glasses and, woah nelly, that's blurry.) Patience and rest, Fuzzy. (Oh, and maybe don't watch so much TV -- I just finished Season 2 of Doctor Who and now I'm barreling through Torchwood. (How did Captain Jack get off Satellite Five and back to the 21st Century? Is this known?))

For the record (and because I'm terrible at remembering this sort of thing) my prescription was right eye -4.5, left eye -3.5. I went to the Northwestern Laser Vision Center and my doctor is Dr. Basti. I've been telling people that I went to Northwestern because of their "world class reputation," but a big part of going there was that it's a few blocks away from my work (I'm laaaazy). I chose to do IntraLase (meaning that they cut the flap in the cornea with a laser instead of a tiny blade) and Custom LASIK (which means, as far as I can tell, that you pay them to do a more complete job. Seriously.). Your mileage, as always, may vary.

Yesterday morning, Erica and I got up and had breakfast and took the train down to Northwestern. (When they were telling me how I should prepare for the surgery they said, "Eat what you normally eat for breakfast, because we want you to have something in your stomach for the valium." "I normally have a cup of coffee for breakfast," I said, "so I'll make sure to eat something.") There was some paperwork to fill out including, oops, the consent forms listing all the possible hideous side effects. They had given me copies of those months ago during the initial consult and, really, you don't want to be reading those for the first time minutes before your procedure. I also had to pony up several thousands of dollars. I've put the money away in my Medical Flexible Spending Account at work (pre-tax! taken out of my pay check in manageable chunks!) but I have to pay upfront and then get reimbursed from my FSA, so I had signed up for financing (12 months interest free!).

So once I'd signed my life away, they gave me a valium and then, after we'd waited in the lobby for just a little while longer, they brought us into an exam room and then things started happening pretty quickly. I had just sat down in the exam chair when they popped me back out and took me into the procedure room. They laid me down on a special chair and gave me a teddy bear to hold onto (and that teddy bear got squoze, I tell you). Numbing drops in the eyes, and then Dr. Basti put a disk right onto each eye in turn and cut the flap with the IntraLase. (It's the pressure from that disk that caused the pretty noticeable clot in my right eye, not any of the lasers.) Interestingly at this step, I'm not sure if it was from the pressure or the laser, but everything was black and I could see little tiny dots of color, almost like static. It was, in the midst of all this somewhat frightening procedure, pretty cool.

Then, for each eye again, Dr. Basti put an ocular speculum (as Kenner pointed out tonight, wouldn't it be fun to hear Sean Connery say that? Ocularrr Speculuuum.) in the eye (think, though much nicer than this, A Clockwork Orange) carefully pulled back the flap and then let the laser pop-pop-pop away part of my eye to (customly) shape it. Then he gently laid the flap back down and went on to the other eye. And then I was out of there. In all, I was in the procedure room less than 20 minutes.

We took a cab home and I went right to bed. ("I just got up, I don't know if I'm going to be able to... zzzzzz.") I got up an hour later to have a quick panic attack and then slept for most of the day. Erica gave me a little blue dog to hold onto that she had used when she had her major life-changing elective surgery, and she stayed home from work all day to bring me glasses of water whenever I woke up and answer people's email all day about how I was doing. My sweet Florence Nightingale. Last night she watched A Prairie Home Companion and I lay on the couch facing the wrong way and listened to it -- it was much like listening to the radio show. ("I don't know if I'll be able to get to sleep tonight, I mean I was asleep all day and... zzzzzz.")

Today I slept late and then went in for my 24-hour checkup. "Looks fine," was the official prognosis. My right eye is seeing much clearer than my left, which makes everything a bit blurry and disorienting, but I went to work afterwards and I was able to get some stuff done. And I can see well enough to type all this. And lights at night have nice big halos around them. Hmm... I'm sure there's more, but it's time to rest my eyes. Gotta let them heal.

FAQs:
1. No, it never hurt. It was freaky, but there was never pain.
2. That white stuff in the corners of my eye is from the steroid eyedrop I'm using and I can't wipe it away because I can't touch my eyes for a week.

The laser robots did not burn a hole through my head. But, as my sweetheart is reminding me, I should be asleep right now (doctor's orders) and certainly not staring at a computer. Thanks for all the well wishes from the well wishers.

To mark his 40th birthday my friend Lawrence is blogging 40 quotes that have some importance for him. Today's quote harks back to a time that was milestoney for me as well -- the first time I was a professional actor, the first time I (co-)wrote a piece of theater of any real length, the first time I bought a 50-lb bag of popcorn.

My sweetheart is giving me two great gifts for Valentine's Day.

For one, she let me order a new iPod. My last one broke months ago and I've been limping along with some half-ass solutions (an old 256 MB MP3 player, my PSP, etc). I'm pretty sure it's just the harddrive, but as I went to order a replacement, it was going to be in the $100+ range and I'd still be warranty-less. So, I'm getting a brand-new black 30GB iPod. Video! 2 years of Apple Care!

And for another, tomorrow on Valentine's Day itself, robots are going to shoot lasers at my eyes.

Which is to say that I'm getting laser corrective surgery. In my eyes! Lasers!

I am simultaneously excited (I've been actively planning this for a year and a half now) and terrified (I use my eyes a lot). I'm very confident in the procedure and the staff at Northwestern Laser Vision Center, but the most important question is "will I still be as cute and lovable without my geeky glasses?"

As a follow-up to his interview of me, Bilal has answered my questions.

Lawrence and Emma and Simon breezed through town and I was able to join them for lunch at Union Station. I am fortunate, indeed, to have such delightful godchildren.

Bilal Dardai (playwright, Neo-Futurist, married man) is doing one of those things -- the Interview Meme -- on his LiveJournal.

Rules are as follows: You comment on this entry requesting an interview. I respond with five questions. The questions will theoretically be tailored to you based on what I know of you (or want to know). You copy and paste those questions into your own journal, and write the answers, along with these rules. Anyone wanting an interview from you continues the game by requesting an interview from you.

So here are the questions he asked me and my answers to the same:

1) You always strike me as a very even-tempered individual. Have you always been as such, or did you have to actively cultivate this demeanor? Is there anything that can get you truly, truly angry?

Yes, yes, and yes. I was going to say I've always been pretty calm, but I realized that "neurotic" would probably be a better way of describing the demeanor of my youth. I've been actively pursuing sanguinity for a number of years now (FuzzyCo motto #6: Therapy is Great!). But get me tired and grumpy or show me great injustice and you'll hear some cursing. I'm not proud to admit it, but the number one thing that really gets me swearing-and-shaking furious is frustrating sections of video games. I have, to my shame, flung controllers.

2) Is there any job/career besides your own you've always wanted to try?

In my youth I wanted to be a forest ranger.

In my adulthood I've wanted to try everything. And I do dabble in a lot of different things. I used to be a handy-man for rental units, and a bookkeeper for a headshop, and a graphic designer (all at the same time). These days I do a little programing, a little web design, a little photography, a little video-editing. And there are seriously times when I'm on the train and there are the ads that the CTA is hiring train repairers and I really wonder how long it would take to get trained in hydraulic systems repair and what it would be like to have that job. Could I be a cop? A teacher? I think about that all the time.

3) List your five all-time favorite video games; defend your choices if you think they need defending.

In alphabetical order:

Galaga
Karateka
Monkey Island (the first three)
Samba de Amigo
Tony Hawk (all versions)

4) Is there a show you've produced that you're proudest of? How about a show you've performed in?

In the summer of 1995, my friend Matt Martin decided he wanted to direct No Exit. I was already producing a bi-weekly 'coffeehouse' music event at the Wesley Foundation (the Methodist Campus Ministry), so we somehow managed to convince people that Sartre's examination of hell would be an appropriate summer production for The Wesley Players. It was my first time producing theater, and I was the technical director as well, so I'm proud that the show went off at all. But I'm also really proud that we sold out our entire run* and that we came in on budget and made a tiny ($5) profit.

I think I'm proud of all the times I've taken risks and gotten on stage and done something new (new to me, anyway).

* To increase the claustrophobia for the audience, we put the audience on stage and built a stage on the floor -- so we only had 35 seats. And our run was three shows in one weekend. So 'sold out' was 105 patrons.

5) In a best case scenario--that is, you went when you wanted to, how you wanted to, and everybody was okay with that--describe your funeral.

Goodness, what a question. We've been trying not to think about funerals in the Gerdes household, but here goes:

When my grandma Ahlrichs died, she wanted (and we had) a memorial service, not a funeral. Her body wasn't there (in fact, it was in rural Iowa, so the nearest crematorium was hours away and she was somewhere in transit while we were having the service. It was, at some level, just a big family get together and people kept saying (and then catching themselves), "we should do this more often." So, something like that. Oh, and play Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy's I Only Have Eyes For You.

With a collective "No way!" we discovered that our friends Patrick and Jenny also went as Timm Gunn and Heidi Klum for Halloween. And Jenny just started working at the Goodman, where Erica worked for 5 years. So, basically, we're the same people, just time shifted. Which is great, because they're awesome people to be.

Congrats to Beth and Kyle on the arrival of Pierce Alexander Kolbe, 8 lbs 9 oz and 21 inches.

Yeah, we got him that hat. The drool is all Izzo, though.

We're back in town, rested and refreshed from the honeymoon -- the first honest-to-goodness vacation I've taken in years. For the next few days, all the activity will be over on the wedding blog as we post pictures, wedding and honeymoon stories, pictures, and more. And pictures. Thanks to the digital age, we've got lots of pictures.

Dammit.

I'm getting married in 13 hours! Whee!

Hey, if you're coming into town for our wedding, please let us (and others) know your itinerary, so that meetups can happen.

photo by Erica Reid

Our friends' lives are very baby-ful right now, and on Sunday we got a chance to go meet one of these new little new people: Faelyn McGuire.

Our friend Caitlin exactly nails the essential nature of Erica:

I just had lunch with my friend Erica. She is, hands down, the nicest person I know. Its like she's made of snow ponies and pixie dust. Like she'll take your hand and you'll be transported to a magical world made of candy and dream-sparkles.

Happy Birthday to my one true love. I asked this guy if he wanted to say "Happy Birthday" also,

but he's just sitting there eating a calzone!

Luke, Amelia, and Nana (that is, my mom). Photo by Don Gerdes.

Today at 3:30 pm Luke Anders Gollub was born to my sister and her husband. He's huge: 9 lb 7 oz. Congrats Heidi and Marc (and Amelia and Jake) and happy birth-day Luke.

Katie and Christopher have the latest news about Erica's dad.

... but I don't want to make a big deal out of it.

Ha ha ha, that is a lie.

Of course I want to make a big deal out of it! Whee! It's my birthday!

It is also Don Hall's birthday and Tim Whetham's birthday. And Joey Bishop, Morgan Fairchild, and Nathan Lane. And no longer with us, but James Michener (probably), Norman Rockwell, and Gertrude Stein were all born on February 3, also.

So... come see my show tonight and I'll probably be having a quick one at the Spoke afterwards. And then come to my party tomorrow night. Yay!

Am I allowed to say that we had a terrible New Year's Eve? Nobody at work seems to know what to say when I respond to their cheery "How was your New Year's?" with an honest, "Terrible, actually."

It started out all right -- we got a bunch of errands done during the day and then laid down to take a nap, foolishly forgetting to set an alarm. Fortunately, we woken up by a phone call from Erica's mom just in time to get dressed and get to Dan and Victoria's wedding. They got married in a very touching ceremony (I have photographic proof) and then we all headed to the reception.

Where I proceeded to get rather violently ill. Erica had had a couple drinks, so our rock-star friends Ryan and Laura drove us home. Erica took care of me for a few hours until she started to show signs of the illness (food poisoning? stomach virus?). The rest of the night is a blur of trips to the bathrooms, snatched moments of sleep, and the thumping of Now That's What I Call Music Vol. 7 coming from the party that raged in our downstairs neighbor's place until 6 am. Oh, and the smoke -- they smoked so much downstairs that it was smoky as a bar in our place.

Anyway, thanks are also due to Kate for bringing us a morning delivery of Gatorade and popsicles and Shaun and Kristen for the evening delivery of more Gatorade and BRAT. And to Danny O'Brien for posting the make-it-at-home recipe for ORT on his website so many years ago.

So... Happy New Year!

My favorite Canadian, my brother-in-law Marc, is now a US citizen. Whee!

Mom says: "We went to San Antonio today to Marc's naturalization ceremony. It was great. 460 people from 66 countries became US citizens. Was so glad I got to go."

As a side effect of moving FuzzyCo to Dreamhost earlier this year, I had this domain ericaandfuzzy.com just lying around doing nothing except pointing to FuzzyCo (which wasn't very fair to the "ericaand" part of the domain. And then Erica and I announced our engagement. So what better to do than start a wedding blog? Nothing, that's what.

Our friend Frankie Janisch has had a rough couple of years. A former performer and business manager at the ImprovOlympic, his real passion was food (though he combined both loves in his Taint shows and his stints on the Food Network.) Back in 2001 he opened his own restaurant and small theater -- Frankie J's on Broadway (with the MethaDome Theater -- named after the methadone clinic the space was for a while) -- and immediately ran into trouble with the Sheet Metal Workers Union. And then there was the ongoing, would-be-funny-if-it-wasn't-my-friend, fiasco of trying to get his liquor license on a dry block.

Well, after giving it the good fight for far longer than most of us would last, Frankie J's has been closed for the last couple of months. Shaun had a drink with Frankie last night and wanted me to pass this along:

Frankie is doing well. The restaurant and theatre closed. Yes. All the bureaucratic paperwork and city rules and "shenanigans" going on in the city caught up with him. He thanks all the well wishes he has gotten. He is avoiding e-mail and phone for a while. But he hears about the support and is grateful. BUT Frankie is not gone. Frankie will be back in the spring with more and bigger things. Watch for things coming this spring.