Spamalot

King Arthur meets the Knights Who Say "Ni!" in a dark and
very expensive forest in Spamalot!
Some friends and I (mostly non-LJ'ers) went out to grab some dinner last night and to see Spamalot at the Aronoff Center.

Dinner was... well... kind of a disaster. We had reservations at Trattoria Roma Ristorante across from the theater and were seated around 6 PM. Drinks came slowly with our waiter spending a bit more time with other tables than our own. By the time he had come to take our orders, it was 6:30 easily and he never even brought us menus. Other tables had ordered, eaten and left before we even finished the salad. We finally left at 7:40-ish and still had not received our entrees. He charged us for drinks, as the general consensus was that we weren't paying the high dinner prices for a pasta meal we have to put directly in our cars.

The show made up for all of that though. I haven't laughed like that in a long time. It's hard to describe without ruining it for anyone else. It borrows from so many Python sketches, giving a great taste for the familiar but adding something new and irreverent before it was done. One skit -- the one above -- (and I'll tell this one as it seemed specific to the day) was interrupted for an Orange Bowl update (Cincinnati was winning). It flew fly by so fast that I want to see it again. It's playing through the weekend, so if any locals want to see it, you still have time.

A New Year Project

I've been thinking about doing this for the last few months, but wanted to wait until the first of the year to give it a go. I was just reminded of this little project in the Chipotle parking lot at lunch.

How much money can a person find in a year? A penny here, a dime there, the occasional quarter found in parking lots, on the carpet at work, or in the grocery aisle. I've decided to keep track of the money for one year to see how much I accumulate. What I'll do with the money is up in the air, but I'll try to do something creative or charitable with it.

The rule is that it must be found money, money lost or discarded by someone else. So the change in my washing machine or dryer, the coins between the sofa cushions, the money in my car's floor -- none of them count because that's already my money.

Today at lunch I found a nickel in the parking lot, so I'm off to a favorable start.

Current total -- $0.05.