last day off and such

our last real day off was last sunday, the 4th. instead of sleeping in, cleaning, grocery shopping, or doing nothing- like my penultimate last day off- i got together with a group of coworkers to make the most of it. we all hopped into a car and headed out to albuquerque for the hinkle family fun center! we gave ourselves something like 5 or 6 hours. . . thinking we’d get sick of it eventually. it was hot and sunny, so there’s no better place to start than the bumper boats, where we can soak each other and cool off a bit. my first boat had a bum motor, so lesley pushed me over to the edge where i switched boats. . . only to get one that didn’t spray. . . dammit. either way we all got sufficiently soaked. . .

hey, why not dry off while playing some put put golf? -last year, when a group of us went to the fun center, there weren’t enough people interested in put put, so we skipped it. . . i really thought i missed out. . . . i found out this time, that i didn’t. remember put put? . . .with the windmill, and the clown mouth, and holes that you had to sink in order to end up in a good area on the green, sand traps, hills, and other such obstacles? apparently the hinkles never saw these. the only ‘obstacle’ was water. WHA???!!! no windmill!. . . no closing clown mouth! for a couple of holes, using our own putters, we simulated windmill blades. . . or whatever- just to make it interesting. perhaps, this being the desert and all, water was thought of as enough of a exotic item that making it the singular obstacle was enough. there were two courses, the ‘lake’ and ‘stream’ course. . . hmmmmm. we started skipping holes, and just hitting the ones we thought looked more fun. and we finally finished it up.

then, onto go carts! yeah. . . a bit of action. . . finally. and around this time we kind of noticed that time may become and issue. we still had a lot of tokens for the arcade, and we had laser tag left. . . and a couple of us wanted to try this virtual game. we all hit the arcade for a little bit while waiting for our turn at laster tag. last time there was only a group of five of us. there were 7 of us on the trip, and we were joined by something like another ten people. . . maybe more, it was pretty damn crowded. it’s always a good time, and we even tried to have a bit of strategy- lie moving in teams and guarding base and such. hmm, maybe it’s my lack of strategy. . . . because. sad to say, i am particularly bad at laser tag. it’s possible that i redeem myself through the virtual robot war game, which i won. but the group of us squeaked that in even after the 10pm closing. so, the 7 of us now have this bucket-o-tokens if we ever get back.

10:30 on a sunday in new mexico is not a good time to want to eat dinner out. luckily the summer hours at some fast food joints have kicked in. so we grabbed some concrete outside the wendy’s and enjoyed our dinner.

so, that’s it till july 2nd. we ‘re actually just finishing up our first long week. sort of an exciting night. a light focus going on real slow and all. the raked deck has a split in it to open up and reveal a new scene. it’s half the deck, so it’s pretty large and heavy. it’s counterweighted by these large water ballasts below the stage. the ballasts are on arms and it will only take the strength of two operators to move the whole deck. well, last night, during focus- tomorrow being tech, one of the arms snapped and a part of the deck attempted to cantilever up. like a mini earthquake on stage. it was fixed toa point where we could continue the focus. . . but it will be interesting to see if and how it’s fixed for use tonight in tech. . . .

till later.