Blog-o-Rama

Lately, I have been blogging regularly. However, I have still managed to accumulate a backload of blogs-I-want-to-post.* I'm going to attempt to post these blogs and simultaneously empty my backlog in one sitting,** wish me luck.***

First of all, I HAVE to post about The Office Convention.****

It was very cool.

I was expecting it to be a geek convention, full of nerds. While it was, by definition, a geek convention. There were a lot of cool people there. Namely, THE CAST. I HIGH-FIVED AT LEAST HALF A DOZEN OF THEM.

The whole town of Scranton, PA got in on the action. In fact, a funeral home even participated!

As has been my tradition over the last several months, I slept in late that Saturday(October 27). Unfortunately, this included hitting the snooze bar and sleeping a couple hours past my alarm. Which, consequently, resulted in me arriving late to the Cast Q&A.

Luckily, I didn't really miss any of the Q&A. I just didn't have a very good vantage point. It was cool to see the actors as themselves, rather than their characters. Andy isn't an idiot, Angela isn't mean, Kevin sounds nothing like his character, and Stanley smiles. Some of my favorite parts of the Q&A were when Andy (Ed Helms) had to sing his response. There were several of these. Some of them practically required an answer in the form of a song, for example, one question was, "Can you finish this sentence, 'Give me a break, give me a break, break me off a piece of that...?" To which, Andy/Ed's resposne was, of course, "football cream!"****** He was a good sport, and over the course of the Q&A sang, "Take a Chance on Me," and "Rainbow Connection." Very entertaining.

After the Q&A, there was a Look-Alike Contest. There were some great costumes. This vending machine, complete with "Dwight K. Schrute" nameplate, was clever and original.

Even from the back, you can tell that this couple is a good Jim & Pam. If I recall correctly, they both won.

Jim:

Dwight: The guy at the mike did a pretty good Dwight impersonation. Can you tell from the photo?

Angela: Look closely, there's a dead ringer.

Cast members/contest judges:

Meredith:

Mose. Again - look for the candidate with the edge:

The Look-Alike contest was followed by a Scrantones concert. The Scrantones is the band that plays the show's theme song. But this concert also featured cast members! Yay!

Meredith started out the post-contest-concert by ROCKING THE HOUSE:

Then Meredith and Creed rocked together:

And Creed waled on the guitar:

Some chick sang a song called, "My heart belongs to Stanley":

Ed Helms sang a few different songs, including "Werewolves of Scranton."

Melora Hardin (aka Jan) can actually sing quite well and has an album out.

Darrell rocked out with Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy"

Kevin sang Roxanne.

Oscar gave the people some love. Incidentally, note how close these people are to the stage. I was there. I was that close to the stage. You know all these pictures that I've posted? My zoom is not that great - that's just how close I was. As I mentioned earlier, I high-fived quite a few of the cast members. This is because I was right next to the stage. A minute later, Oscar moves to his left and that is me high-fiving him. Oh yeah.

Then the whole gang came out on the stage to close the show with the theme song.

It was a little bit surreal being in such close proximity to actors that I watch on TV every week. It's still a little bit weird to see them on TV, now that I've seen them in person. Am I starstruck? I don't know. I realize they're ordinary people. But this was the first time that I've actually seen stars up close in person.

It was cool, too, to see how amazed they seem to be at the whole "The Office" phenomenon. They all seemed very grateful to the fans and excited to be a part of it.

So, I guess I'm going to have to pause the Blog-o-Rama. It's now 1:00 am. Oops. To be continued...


*These are blogs that I plan to post, take pictures for, promise to post, mentally compose, and/or dream up during a moment of inspiration.
**By "one sitting," I mean "one period of time in which I surf the web, watch TV, buy stuff online, balance my finances, and sit."
***I don't believe in luck. I believe in providence and the will of God. I also believe that there is such a thing as coincidence. But it's more convenient to say,"wish me luck." Is it awful to say that I believe in convenience?
****If nothing else, for the sake of Victoria, my (according to comments) only faithful reader.***** I love you, Victoria.
*****Yes, other readers, I know you are out there. I'm attempting to goad you into leaving comments. Soon I will be in Korea and will rely on comments for sustenance (in addition to food, naturally). Victoria, I still love you.
******If you don't get this joke, go watch The Office. There really isn't much point in continuing to read this blog.

Ain't No Party Like a Scranton Party

Scranton, PA is a mere 90 miles from where I live. How can I not go?

*Edit*10/25 - This was going to be a comment in response to Victoria's comment, but I decided it fit better as a blog addendum.

Yes! I'm going! I started to reconsider because I couldn't find anybody to go with me. But Jonathan persuaded me that it was worth going to alone.
Then I started to reconsider again because I checked out the website and it looked like it might not be as nerdy as I thought (part of the draw is the people watching)* and I wasn't really sure what I would do. But I did a little more looking around and found a couple of options,** and your (Victoria's) comment persuaded me that I can't miss the opportunity when I'm so close!*** Plus, what's this hangup that I have about going places alone? I don't have a problem moving to a new country by myself, but I need to have a friend go with me for a day trip? Weird. Time to get over that.

P.S. According to the website, pretty much all of the cast (except the big four: Michael, Dwight, Jim, and Pam) will be there. That should be pretty cool.

*Part of me wants to go because I'm a nerd and part of me wants to go to see people that are even nerdier than me (i.e. those who will come dressed up like their favorite characters and can quote entire episodes).
**I'm going to go to the Cast Q&A and the Character Look-alike Contest. I may see the Office Olympics Awards, too.
***Hmmm...it seems that I am easily persuaded.

Genius

Apparently, NBC created this music video back in February. How is it possible that I've only just discovered it? Am I the only one?

Spanish cookies

Question of the day: What does it mean to "spin the Filipino"? Let me just say that unlike the typical question of the day, I do not know the answer to this. Anyone care to enlighten me? At any rate, this is a funny picture. So there are my 1,000 words for the day.

Just in time!

In my last post, I said that I was hoping to post more information about my trip in the coming week. So, for anyone who has been wondering why the post hasn't appeared yet, it may be useful to note that the phrase "the coming week" has been redefined by the Board of Definitions and Redefinitions of the English Language. It now means "the next 19 days." Therefore, this post is just in time - not late, as you might have imagined.

The trip was great; I had lots of fun hanging out with Homeskillet and Strong Sad (a.k.a. Victoria and Kelly) at their place on Holy Spirit Street. Jess and I also got to go visit Jonathan in Los Hueros (which is a.t.p.e.c. - I'm giving a whopping 50 points to whoever is the first one to figure out this acronym), and he hung out in Madrid with us as well. The trip mostly consisted of hanging out with friends and visiting the places we used to frequent, for example: Casa Mingo, el Rastro, Ricci's, etc. Jess and I both spent a substantial amount of money on clothing, I made Bailey's brownies a couple of times, and we (Victoria, Kelly, Amy, Jess, and I) watched the entire collection of "The Office" - which amounts to about 8 hours of fun... or should I say, the equivalent of the average day at the office? I also got to see Troy and Heather, Ana, Shawn, and Nicole Trabes. Plus, I got to know V & K's roommate Amy, and meet some of their other friends. It was an all-around good time. Also, Matt 3 came to town the day before I left, so we met for some wonderfully minging food at Casa Mingo. Here are some pics from the trip:

Jess, Jo, Vic, and I, at La Finca de Susana, which is a culinary school where you can get amazing food for a very reasonable price. Jonny and I on the Madrid Tour bus. Jonny "working hard" at the office.This sort of reminds me of Gareth's phone holster. "Did he make 5 calls, or six? You gotta ask yourself, do you feel lucky, punk? Well? Do you?That Uncle William sure has one big Tub O' Mayonnaise.
This place has the best mojitos in the world.

This is the most amazing chocolate in the world. Seriously.
Jonathan? Playing video games? There's a shock...

Posting of post postponed until post-travel

I typed up this post a couple of days ago when I was hanging out in Gatwick. However, since I was not connected to the internet, I was unable to post it at the time. I'm hoping to post more about my trip in the coming week, but for now, here's Tuesday's post:

It is now 7:26 am of Tuesday, March 28th. I’m sitting in Gatwick airport, twiddling my thumbs. Except for the “twiddling my thumbs“ part... I’m fairly good at avoiding boredom. But I’ve been counting the hours until my flight, and they are many. Luckily, I’ve come well prepared. I’ve been reading Jane Eyre, and I occupied about 3 hours in finishing the book. I’ve got the entire collection of The Office with me (both seasons and the special), so I’ve watched some of my favorite bits as well as the special features (yes - this includes the commentary, and yes - I know I’m a nerd for watching it. It’s actually quite funny, though. Ricky Gervais is ridiculous). I accidentally left one of Kelly’s DVDs in my laptop (oops… sorry about that, Guills, I could mail them to you…), so I spent about 2 hours watching episodes of Arrested Development which I hadn’t seen. I also have a copy of Nicholas Nickleby with me, which I am eager to read. So, I’ve got plenty of supplies to help me while away the hours.

My plane was scheduled to arrive at 10:15 pm last night, but it was delayed and did not arrive until 11:45 pm. I didn’t mind, that just meant less time that I had to hang out here at Gatwick. My flight today is not until 2:00 pm, but I am over halfway there. Consequently, with all of my provisions and the amount of time that has already passed, I’ve been feeling quite optimistic, if a little tired.

I haven’t slept, because I don’t want to risk any of my things getting stolen. I’m not really that tired, though, and in a bit I’ll go buy some coffee at Starbucks - on second thought, that could be a bit risky. Last time I went to the Gatwick Airport Starbucks, I ordered an Iced Caramel Macchiato and the barista put steamed milk in it instead of cold milk… Hmm… I wonder if they’d let me make my own drink? Yeah, probably not.

Anyway, back to my optimism. I was just contemplating the fact that the time has gone by relatively quickly and it shouldn’t be too hard to get through the next few hours. Then I looked at my itinerary. I have a total of 15 hours of flying ahead of me today plus a 3 ½ hour layover in Atlanta. Fun times. Well, at least I should be able to get a little sleep on the plane. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll upgrade me to first class. I definitely need to get as much sleep as possible, because I don’t get in until almost 11:30 pm tonight, and I have class tomorrow morning - my first day of classes in my last quarter at the UW. Technically, the first day of classes for spring quarter was on Monday. Obviously, I didn’t go…

I think I’m going to close here. Someone just walked by carrying Starbucks coffee and the sight of it made me conscious of the necessity of a caramel machiatto. One of the annoying things about traveling alone is that I can’t just run down, get some coffee, and bring it back - I have to pack up all of my stuff and drag it down to Starbucks. But that is of little consequence, I desperately require a caramel machiatto. Now. I am convinced that oversight of the requirement of this critical, life-giving manna would lead to certain death. Hence, I must bid you farewell.

Random side note: If you’re looking for a song with some cowbell, “The Undeveloped Story,” by Anberlin is a great one.