Susan Buffett

I didn’t know it until yesterday, but Susan Buffett died last month.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/07/29/news/newsmakers/susanbuffett_obit/

She was an interesting woman, as I guess you’d have to be to be married to Warren. Susan was Warren’s sister’s roommate at Northwestern. She had wanted to marry someone else, but Warren convinced her father that he was the better man for her. She was jewish, and had wanted to marry a gentile. Warren, while not jewish, told her father “I’m jewish enough for you, and christian enough for her.”

In 1977, after her 3 kids were grown and out of the house, she told Warren she was moving to San Francisco to pursue a music career. She set Warren up on several dates to help him find a woman to take her place. They didn’t divorce or anything, just sort of went their separate ways but visited from time to time. Astrid Menks, the woman who eventually ended up living with Warren was quoted as saying “Living with Warren is the best job I ever had.”

At every annual meeting, you would see Susan and Astrid sitting next to each other chatting amiably.

If she had survived Warren, she would have become the second richest person in the United States, after Bill Gates.

She was a fierce social advocate, working on behalf of people with AIDS and other causes.

Not a wasted life, I don’t think.

Dissin’ the Q

There was an interview with Rod, the gay character from Broadway’s Avenue Q, on NPR this morning.

He was crying discrimination because the GOP convention organizers were not offering discounts to Avenue Q, which, according to the Tonys, was the Best Book, Best Score and Best Musical of 2004.

Rod: “I guess they can’t handle naked puppet-on-puppet action.”

The interviewer reminded Rod that they had gotten discounts to see another show with naked puppets, The Lion King.

Rod: “What?! That’s it. I’m calling Dick Cheney. Dick! Get ready, ’cause I’m calling you!”

Heh, heh, heh.

The Final Improvolution & Moved On Up

I sit here in my new OFFICE, pondering the final Improvolution, which occured last night, way back before I had an OFFICE.

It was a good show. Lots of positive energy, the audience seemed to eat it up and really enjoy the show. At the top, I asked the audience (by round of applause) how many people had not seen an Improvolution before, and a very small number of the large audience hadn’t. So, people came back at least twice to see it! Score!

I also noticed that the audience level had steadily grown since the first week, without any advertising whatsoever. (actually, 6 hours before the last show, there was a one line blurb in the DADDIO, the email newsletter that goes out weekly. It was small, but it was in a green font with astericks, so that musta’ brought ’em in.)

There were about 8 audience members who stayed after, and they had a good bit to say, which was nice. We established that the three improvisors who were PERISHED at the end all did some good improv in the sense of making good offers and strong second support, but they failed to create distinct characters. This means to me that the show’s concept works as intended.

This is the biggest Dad’s Garage week I’ve had in almost two years, I think. Sunday was a kid’s show tech rehearsal. Last night was Improvolution, tonight at 8pm is final tech for Colonel Fuddy Duddy’s Bestest Circus Ever, then after I am voicing the final Scandal! the Improvised Soap Opera, and tomorrow at 1pm is the first Colonel show. It’s like it’s 2001 all over again.

It’s a nice change of pace, but it also happens to coincide with a Roan Phase where he doesn’t believe in sleeping through the night. I don’t know how much sleep I got total last night, but I don’t think it was more than 15-20 minutes at a time. So I should be rockin’ tonight as it nears midnight.

Trafficking

There are few things as depressing to me than coming around the curve on Spaghetti Junction and seeing a vast parking lot on 285 westbound all the way to the horizon.

*sigh*

On the positive side, I got to observe, for a looong time, in my rearview mirror, a juxtaposition of roles.

There was a youngish woman with short cropped, bleach blond hair in a Dodge Ram pickup truck. In the passenger seat was a young boy whose eyes were just above the dash, kilroy-fashion.

The mom was hyper-kinetic. She was smoking a cigarette, bouncing in her seat (not dancing, I don’t think… just bouncing), adjusting her mirror, reaching across to roll up and down the window, tapping her cigarette out her own window, adjusting the radio.

Meanwhile, the smallish boy sat passively staring straight ahead, not reacting at all.

I don’t know what it means, but I couldn’t stop watching.

An Unimportant Thing I’m Wondering About.

Are there more bumper stickers on cars now then there were in recent previous decades?

I remember, as a child, complaining to my dad that there were all these cool bumper stickers available (“I’m going crazy, want to come along?”), and we didn’t have a single one on our cars. To date, my parents have never had a bumper sticker on any of their cars.

But I also seem to remember that bumper stickers were rare things. I may be wrong.

Somebody do a survey, okay? I’ll be here when you’re done.

Movin’ on up

My boss sent me an email to let me know he’d requested the IT department to move me from my cube to the new office (they have to change the phone extension and move my computer. Admittedly, it’s a laptop, but they’re picky about keeping track of where computers are.)

I responded to his email with the following:

Well we’re movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up,
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.

Fish don’t fry in the kitchen;
Beans don’t burn on the grill.
Took a whole lotta tryin’,
Just to get up that hill.
Now we’re up in the big leagues,
Gettin’ our turn at bat.
As long as we live, it’s you and me baby,
There ain’t nothin wrong with that.

Well we’re movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up,
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.

He responded, “Thank you, Mr. Jefferson.”

Foiled!

I’ve been trying to figure out why I haven’t gotten a single email on my personal account all day. Not even SPAM!

Then I remembered I converted my home system over to Mozilla Thunderbird last night. I believe I left it running and forgot to disable auto-mail-downloading. So, don’t send me anything important, I won’t get it until tonight.

It makes me paranoid, not knowing what emails might be coming in. It’s irrational, but addiction is addiction.

Plus, I never know when a comment’s been posted, ‘less I check that newfangled comment page LJ set up.

On a side, techie note, does anyone use Thunderbird, and if so, have you figured out how to make the comment reply forms in the emails work?