Kyle's off to get Soapy

May 30th, Wednesday-Kyle's going away party! Kyle is leaving the Brand Marketing and Synergy Group to go to Soapnet.

Look how surprised Sean is by the news!

PreFab House Design

The MOCA has been hosting a pre-fab house design exhibit. Pre-fab has a bad reputation here in the US, but there are architects who are interested in pre-fab design that's beautiful and in some cases ecologically sound. Some of the designs are really modular such as the Wee House which can be built in a variety of configurations, 2 bedrooms, 3 bedrooms, or 4 bedrooms and for each set there are a great variety of ways to combine each set of bedrooms, depending on what kind of look you want. I think the Wee House was my favorite. They had configurations called "The Wedding Cake" which consisted of the two bedroom module below and the third on top, like a wedding cake. They also had the LV house by Rocio Romero. We saw the video for the assembly and they were attaching the frame of the house with steel I-beams. That house is unbelievably sturdy. It was also built from the ground up in a week using a very small crew of people, who weren't all construction workers. Another prefab house I liked was the Sunset Breezehouse, which had a middle section that could be completely open to the outside environment. It was also designed to be extremely energy efficient. You could have solar panel and there was a little garden and outdoor pool for cooling. Even the flooring and cabinetry were all made of bamboo or other kinds of renewable wood. Our good friend Rik recommended this exhibit and it now makes me want to build my own prefab house! (Rik actually met one of the architects and mentioned that it's his dream to one day be able to afford to build one. The architect replied, "Me, too.")

Celiac Conference

May 19th, Saturday-I went to the Celiac Conference and it was fantastic. They had all sorts of vendors there that were giving out free samples of gluten-free food all day. I stuffed myself on cookies and waffles and I even got to have some chocolate croissants. You'd better believe I brought some of that home with me, along with some lovely dark chocolate, three different kinds of nutritional bars, and tons of free samples of snacks and baked items. Yum. I was stuffed with carbs within the hour. I'm definitely going again next year.

Spiderman 3

May 15th, Tuesday-Daryl and I went to see Spiderman 3. I liked this movie, but it wasn't nearly as good as the first two. First of all, I started hating MJ. Kirsten Dunst has got to be bored with being the "girl in peril" and screaming at greenscreens these days. But I did like the ending with Harry. I was surprised at the whole Venom storyline as there is a specific reason behind Venom's appearance in the comic, but it appears that the black goo chooses Peter at random. And this is a kid that also randomly got bit by a radioactive spider. Topher Grace was good and I felt that his burning resentment and jealousy makes sense. And while I liked Sandman's sorrowful existence, (The poor guy can't even die, apparently.),I just wish we had one villain at a time. The way Venom and Sandman pair up at the end makes no sense to me at all. And I kind of laughed that Peter's descent into evil was exhibited by him eating lots of cookies, disco dancing on the sidewalk (Seriously, it was so cringeworthy, I really hope Tobey Maguire asked for hazard pay.), and dancing spitefully, but not by him actually doing anything illegal or seriously bad. But I guess Spiderman's journey is always an emotional one and his "evil" side would hurt the person he loved most emotionally rather than physically. It's just funny that Peter is so lame at being evil. He just can't do evil, I suppose. As usual, the effects are spectacular. The opening fight with The New Goblin was very well done and TM has many expressions for being afraid and not wanting to really hurt someone. (Those big eyes can emote!) Poor Bryce Dallas Howard gets a girl in peril role that really doesn't show off her talents, but maybe they'll pick her character up in the next movie. If they make a next movie. Maybe Sam Raimi has more that he wants to say about Spiderman that he hasn't already said. I can only hope he doesn't leave the series on this note. We all know he's better than that.

Mo's House and The Gumski's

May 6th, Sunday-Our dear friend, Mo, just bought a house and we went to a House Decorating Suggestion Party. Daryl thinks she should redecorate the house so that the living room looks like a Roman palace. I think she should put a wall in the bedroom upstairs that has a bathroom. (She just put in a curtain.) She's been trying to get her garage finished and it's all just a frame right now and the backyard is a bit messed up, but she's got tons of room back there and a four bedroom house. I can't wait to see what it looks like when she's done with it.

May 10th-12th-Our very good friends visited us from Chicago. We call them the Gumski's because they are the combination of Nathan Gumley and Mary Anne Zmaczynski. I call Mary Anne, MAZ sometimes, too. They were lucky enough to try out the guest rooms at Maurissa's new place. We had quite the adventure, too, when we went out to get sushi in Japantown. A 1 hour wait! And I think we were one of the last few people served, too.