Tag Archives: atw

8968 – sunday funday!

Still too hot to do much of anything out and about in the Crisco soup-like atmosphere, so we opted to take in lunch at the Sbarro’s in the Annapolis Mall and then hit a movie. Who knows why we woke up at 7:30 on a Sunday, but it gave us a solid head start.

We finally caught the Simpsons Movie on the big screen… I was surprised – it was a lot better than I was expecting… pretty solid TV episode from back when it was funny. We only saw 3 bits that would make it warrant a PG-13 rating – an instance of nudity, a curse word (or two) and some drinking / drug use. I could see them showing all of it after 10pm on network tv unedited, or without those three instances any time at all.

On the way home, we noticed that ATW has changed the sign again, as the search for “the man” continues. (atw is now a tag just for my ease of searching the story thread and pictures, now.)

Click to view larger
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ATW NEWSROOM
‘THE MAN’
BOOT RECOVERED
FINGERS POINTED
Police say ‘NO Statement – NO case’
Meanwhile, Man Sightings run rampant
Psychic to be called.

It was a good thing we caught an early show as the later part of the day was comprised of –

BHK Birthday Part II: Electric boogaloo!
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Party at Tina’s place… Mexican food! Both Meat and veggie protein varieties – Tina’s not a big carnivore, either. Matt (her new boy) seems like a nice enough fellow and I hope they have maximum fun / minimum glum together. He’s certainly more social and generally conversational than DR or W. Dessert was yellow birthday cake with chocolate icing, compared favorably to yesterday’s lemon cake with lemon icing. Added bonus, BHK’s mom didn’t absent-mindedly start slurping the frosting off of the removed candles like last night, rather than giving them to the b’day girl to taste.

Aside from Tina and Matt, Adam, Jimmy, Louise, Chris and Larry all made it to celebrate. We fit pretty comfortably at Tina’s townhouse… I wasn’t sure if we’d all be able to manage, but it worked out quite well.

BHK’s Loot received:

from Louise : Necklace and bracelet of multi-colored pearls.
from Tina : A pair of Peridot Earrings / Hello Kitty purse (which looks like ms. kitty is making a gesture I’m sure wasn’t intentional)
from Larry & Chris – Red Coral necklace and Earrings / and some lovely crockery
from Danny – A swell looking green-stoned ring in gold. (and he got Tina some yellow-stoned earrings, too!)
from my Mom and Wilt – Turquoise and silver necklace, Halloween Snow globe, a little cornucopia and a really lovely card.
from me – a lot of knickknacks – Grease & Grease 2, a pair of pink pseudo-crocks, some stripy socks that mismatch/match, a pink headband with little jolly rogers, bath scrubbie, black cat bowl, a green wire basket, some fuzzy slippers and a gift cert to scalped.

I’m the only person that didn’t get her any jewelry… she told me specifically *not* to get her any. Now, I understand why.

May’ve recruited Adam and Jimmy into a parlor game night. Who knows, maybe they’ll lure Kendall and Amanda into it, too, and we’ll have a big night of it sometime!

I don’t know if Matt is into parlor games… I do know he digs the Redskins and is willing to put up with chick flicks. come to think of it, I don’t know for sure if Tina is interested in boardgames or not… I suspect that she, like the in-laws aren’t really into abstract games. Louise is a good candidate, but is harder to reel in to a date or time than the teens. The last time we saw her was her birthday, about 6 weeks ago.

Poor Danny has students in his classes now – he’s back to running the Sci-fi club, and is incorporating Pirates into the after school program. I should send him a bucket of heroclix or mage knight commons/doubles as a donation. He really liked the Superhero stamps and Lord of the Rings Risk game we shot off to him a little while back.

1 year ago – back from an all too brief visit, nose buttering, bunny suicides, events of the day, liberty city psp homebrew hack, jojo the cannibal kid, maple cookies, folks, met Adam / Future In-laws

2 years ago – power out phone post, hurricane katrina aftermath pictures (and Newt), Bro out, Techs unavailable

3 years ago – BK heads north, random visit to a 2001 entry, behavior variances, quiet-please

4 years ago – sleep schedule, zombie game (poor thing aborted), monkey helpers, first lost child.

5 years ago – Deer Hunter, Apache, Equality/freedom Poll, Emerson, flying saucer, heroclix 200 point armies, McD hot dogs, wpoison

6 years ago – that piercing woman , lj vibe change, many links (not all work anymore)

7 years ago – Godzilla, quizzes, leftyrok added me, IMT threatens to move all operations north to Tampa, dean martin Geotarget

8955 – sat

Things of note – when getting an ekg or a stress test, I was stuck on a stretcher for about 8 hours straight. Do it again? thank you, no.

Off on a date to see Stardust – Double dated: Bhk and Me / Kendall & Adam. We all enjoyed it – a nice combination of humor, mild violence, and general purpose fairy tale.

Played 4 games of polarity with BHK – won 3 – Also won 1 game of martian coasters.


Center of hardware store’s quirky display is stolen
ATW Hardware and Supply owner Ted Kramer wipes a tear away from one of the ladies on his rooftop display. The figure known as The Man was recently stolen from the Edgewater store.

Continue reading 8955 – sat

8935 – Thursday

After work last night, BHK and I had dinner at the Lebanese Taverna and then went to see Talk To Me which was surprisingly better than I thought. No roles were stepped on by big names (Cedric the Entertainer had me a little worried when I saw him in the credits) Some aspects of Petey Greene‘s life were left out, but you really can only do so much in a 2-hour movie. Plot-wise, there weren’t any surprises, but the story’s path seemed comfortable with simple viability. Though it was supposed to have taken place in DC, the bulk seems to have been shot in “generic city” or indoors – I didn’t get the Capitol vibe from the location. I’m glad we opted for that over The Simpsons or Transformers… I was more in the mood for a biopic than cartoony smash-em-up or yuk-em-ups.

On the way home, BHK pointed out to me that someone stole the man atop ATW hardware… now there’s a sign. “Return the Man now – Yes it was stolen)
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Aww… I
hope he makes it back… I rather like the weird little dioramas up on the roof.


I discovered the Vassal game engine. That should help with development of our own games, in addition to allowing a lot of regular new ones to try! Maybe I can lure Eryx into playing Axis and Allies minis online! All of the Carcassone variants appear to be done already, too.

Other Vassal modules that tickle my interest are –


All will be sniffed over in time, I’m sure – and now, the morning brings a new day. My ride to the train station overslept, but bhk got me to the station in fine time to catch my train into the city. That’s the good thing about planning ahead and making allowances for traffic and whatnot… I’m usually in by 8am, and this way, I got there by 8:30 (the time I’m officially due to arrive.) I did miss my “arrive by 8” bus by about 10 minutes, so I spent about 20 minutes waiting for the next one. – Gave me time to take the pictures below and write the text above on my phone.

Waiting for the bus.
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Squinty due to sleepiness and the sun in my face. I like the metro worker behind me with the long beard and short hair. The Sun was hot, and seemed overly large as it hung in this morning’s sky.


Good meeting at work today about upgrading our CMS. I like the way folks are looking to work together for a solution, rather than complain – project appears to be slated for the end of ’07, or the beginning of ’08 for testing.


Constellation Power has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to put a new nuclear reactor in Calvert county, the fourth to be applied for, nationwide, this year. There hasn’t been a new nuclear reactor built in the US since the Three Mile Island disaster, but with new tax incentives for power providers who get their applications complete before the end of next year, companies are positioning themselves to be able to take advantage of the new situation.

Are we ready for nuclear again? The US kind of freaked out after the Three Mile Island near-meltdown and the Chernobyl disaster, but with power needs proving insatiable, and with fossil fuels being subject to significant negative public attention due to global warming concerns, the timing could be ripe for an expansion of nuclear power.

Will it do anything to lower our power build? Almost certainly not. But, it might decrease dependence on fossil fuels, which can be considered a positive.


Tonight, I’m tucking in early to recoup a little extra rest.


1 year ago – paperclips, cross-dressing crooks, reading Pride and Prejudice, I predict a riot, good talking to folks, writely (now google docs)

2 years ago – sick of summer heat, paper robots!, spiffy car, where do they make balloons?, animal crackers, ADP nearly nailed, bugs bunny, heart shaped land, baron von bludd

3 years ago – sleepy, meeting, a year at current gig, 5 senses, scarecrow, codecs, game-dancing, oh danny bot, land of many colors, rain and running newtie-pic

4 years ago – bidet poll, food, vamp game, first gig paid poorly, games on the website

5 years ago – talked to rob (we never got together), baron von bludd, strange black blobs

6 years ago – rainy, Owen Ng, broken drug war link, Thunderstorm, code red, lord humongous

7 years ago – Finished HP2, started hp3, foodies, moved to the 12-8 shift at IMT Geotarget

8925 – monday –

I meant to mention yesterday that Cyn’s house is lovely… I especially like the location. Highest spot in the town, I suspect, and very private. Her art is there throughout, but it doesn’t clutter – all of it is placed in a nice way. I also got a chance to meet her daughter, who is as friendly and charming as her mom.

Fooling with nationstates again – this time it’s Salmagundia. (Newtonia has faded from the map)

Mr. Tawky Tawny just killed a guy with a stick! (he also sleeps in the nude.)

Mm.. I’d forgotten that I have a broadcast plugin on my winamp that shows my most recently listened to tracks. You can tell that BHK has influenced my listening habits a bit. (Plus, there’s stuff on there that I’ve grabbed for her use, too.)

I’m glad to see the Devil has got his due.But I think that I prefer Famous Poems Rewritten as Limericks

The Raven

There once was a girl named Lenore
And a bird and a bust and a door
And a guy with depression
And a whole lot of questions
And the bird always says “Nevermore.”

Amy arrived! i was surprised to hear that she was in Baltimore by 8:30a – She must’ve left New York at about 5-5:30. We had a lovely dinner at Friendly’s, helped the in-laws move boxes from the u-haul truck, and got in a game of super munchkin before bed. BHK pulled out a win at the very last minute, when it looked like I had it all wrapped up. Nicely played, hon!

One of the weirder aspects of Edgewater, MD. There’s a store called ATW hardware that always has an unusual manikin tableau on the roof. This time, a Hunter Thompson-esque Zombie torments a pirate with an angry rat. It was hard to get shots at that range at twilight, but I think they look ok at full size.

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Other ones have been rows of legs sticking straight up from the roof, a man and son fishing, and a chorus line.

oh! I do – from my first week of honeymoon! hard to see, but the leg-up one… can click for bigger. Taken when I was one day into being married. (It’ll be nine months tomorrow)

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1 year agothis will be our year (it still makes me cry every time I hear it), ring wearing, flemish ( The TRUTH About “Belgium” – The New World Order’s Belgian Conspiracy) , cat’s got knees / I like your pants, rust monster, underground city, lake okeechobee, ninja turtles /zoom, good sleeps,

2 years ago – GrayP, Allergy results, Candice gives me her number, google hybrid, love song / mind control

3 years ago – I Robot, The Flo, LiveJournal Gallery, 1000 white cards revisited

4 years ago – Evil Fish, Bro, Brace, bazillion questions meme, crow tools, Elton Ock, LJ pings for you

5 years ago – Janet Reno, 1000 blank white cards, lost links, Dumpster Diving,singing kitty, palm sketches, snickitty-snackitty man, managing activism

6 years ago – melted heart, epizootic, hair bears, playing majestic

7 years ago – bedtime thoughts Geotarget