Therapeutic Stilts

Lots of work at the church today - it's been like that all week though.  Plans for relaxing and getting some rest after a long Easter schedule got majorly sidelined with the painting of offices and maybe the arrival of new furniture.  We'll see.  At this point, I'm rather apathetic about any decor and design and more anxious to actually get some work done towards new series or Summer Xtreme.  The word of the day is Sisyphean, which pretty much sums up our frequent and pointless moving of large amounts of props and so forth from onerous to the next.  It's like Sisyphus, rolling the boulder uphill, only to have it roll back own again, at which point he rolls is up again.  

One thing that helps with stress at the office is stilts.  I am not making this up.  Josh and I walk around the entire lower floor on these stilts, and it's actually quite therapeutic.  I recommend it!  He's a lot better than I am at it, although I can walk with ease wherever I want.  He's going up and down stairs at this point.  Not sure if I'm ready for that yet.  We've had these for years - I think we picked them up at Goodwill.  Here's a picture of Maddie on them, a really long time ago!  Therapeutic stilts.  We just hop on when we need to think, and just a nice stilt walk around the whole bottom floor really helps clear the mind!

Anyway, tonight we were all about Monk again, which is no longer one one streaming channel, and now on another - with commercials.  Now there's a thing.  We're watching a television show with commercial breaks, and the funny thing is that Maddie may not be completely familiar with commercials as we know them growing up.  I mean, there were movies on cable television.  And when VHS tapes and DVDs came out, we got to watch things on our television without commercials.  But wow, I remember so many commercials growing up, ones played during my favorite television shows at night or during Saturday morning cartoons.  Anyway, we're on season six of Monk, now with commercials.  They're still annoying, but perhaps there's a tiny bit of nostalgia in there too.  We've only got three more seasons to go, so we're certainly moving along. 

Maddie spent a good bit of today in rest mode.  She was sore and wore out from the trampoline park, and so therefore spent the entire day - largely - on the couch.  She was on her phone or playing Stardew Valley.  It's Spring Break.  She's been at Stardew Valley all week.  Later on, Maddie and I were in Middle Earth a good bit today, revisiting the Mines of Moria for a bit, and out in the Misty Mountains again.  It's been fun to go back - we're at about 75% of the game now.  It's such a huge game, but we're plowing through, just a little bit at a time.

Tonight's reading was about Long Snoot, or Garindan as he probably prefers to be called.  This guy was in the first Star Wars movie, and we're reading about him "From a Certain Point of View."  Apparently, he's the greatest spy in Mos Eisley, but that's really because of his enhanced senses, so he's got an unfair advantage.  He actually looks like one of those plague mask guys in a way.  One thing we learned from reading this short story is that he actually has no love for the Empire.  He's just trying to get off this planet, that's all.  It seems that everyone wants to get off of Tatooine, we're learning. 

I have this action figure, as I do many of them.  But I specifically remember this one not being an action figure for many, many years.  That being said, I remember making one when I was eight or nine years old. I used an extra action figure body, a jawa cloak, and some clay... and voila!  Instant Garindan.  Of course, it didn't look that great.  But he was good enough for me for the time being.  Random memory there.

We said our prayers tonight after reading, and that was pretty much it for the day.  It's been a bit of letdown, this week.  But these things happen, and we wound up doing a lot of work.  More to do tomorrow and the coming week.  And then maybe we can take the foot off the gas pedal.  One nice thing today was the reintroduction of the Instant Fan Club for They Might Be Giants.  

I missed this when it was announced, but got it today and joined immediately.  I wish I could pay more to have them do a song with Maddie's name in the title, but perhaps next time.  In the meantime, I'm just excited about the new material from my favorite band going back to when I first heard them in 1991 or so.