Ebony - 1992-2007

A week ago Friday we lost a beloved family member. Since she was only a month old, Ebony has been with Shondra. When I married Shondra in 1997, Ebony came with the deal. She was a great cat - always welcoming anyone to our home with meowing, jumping in our laps when she felt we needed to take a break from reading, and purring VERY loudly when she was happy and content.

Ebony, you will be missed.



Todd

Independence Day

Lots going on in our lives at present. I (Todd) accepted a job with MD Anderson last week and then let the Alley know about it this week. Looking at a start date around August 6th. Should be an interesting month. :) This in between times for jobs really sucks. I really want to finish out well, but motivation is tough since I am leaving. On the flipside I have a lot of trepidation about the new job. Will I fit? What changes are going to need to take place? On top of it all, our tenth anniversary is August 2nd, so I'm trying to plan us a get away.

Shondra has been staying busy with a couple of children's shows - "Alice in Wonderland" and "Treasure Island" with Stage Left Productions and a musical called "Quilters" with Town Center Theatre in the Woodlands.

I'm still improvising - although mostly managing rather than performing. I am currently without a team, although I really need to do something to rectify that situation. I'm coaching a new team (an amalgam of summer break university students from Rice, University of Texas, and even University of Oklahoma). They are the Electric Pancakes. It's really a fun group and good to be teaching some longform again. Charges the batteries. We also have a new team we are forming from some local auditions. A group of 11 which I will be leading through some workshops for the next few weeks and then passing on to one of my improv colleagues for coaching.

Happy birthday USA!

Hair, or the lack thereof

Last night, I finally got tired of the wispy stuff on top and hacked it off. Now I have more hair on my chin than my head. Well, longer hair on my chin than my head anyway. Shondra was helpful... "What happened?" was her quote.

Check out the new Todd.



Todd

Weekly shows at the Mink

Beginning March 4th, Massive began performing weekly on Sunday nights at the Mink. Check out our website for current details: http://massiveimprov.com.

It's really a great space, and our bartender (Natalie, pictured in a lousy photo taken by my cellphone) is really terrific. The vibe of the place is more of a music venue than comedy, but we are hoping to change all that with a little help from Natalie.

Mercilyn Prause is 1!

Shondra and I attended a birthday party for Mercilyn Prause this weekend. Mark and Kim Prause are good friends and it was fun watching Mercilyn enjoy the 10 cent balloons far more than all the other more expensive gifts she was given.


Mark is serious about those party favors.


Mercilyn says, "Thanks for coming to my birthday party!"

Houston Rodeo 2007

Shondra and I went to the rodeo for the first time since we've been in Houston - pathetic, I know since we've been here more than a decade. It was a lot of fun, tons of western-gear booths, BBQ sauce on ice cream, huge Turkey legs for consumption, a big carnival, a livestock show with cows and sheep, and chickens being born.

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That evening we watched some Barrel Racing, Bronc and Bull riding, a chuck wagon race, and a hilarious event called a calf scramble. For the calf scramble they set 40 kids loose on 20 calves. If a kid can catch and wrestle a calf to the ground and put a halter on it, he/she gets to take it home. It was high comedy - all these kids running around trying to tackle calves at least as big as most of the kids.

After all the rodeo events, Gretchen Wilson performed about an hour long concert. She was great, but the accoustics were pretty lousy in the big stadium. On the way out of Reliant Stadium, you could see the lights from the Rodeo Carnival. I snapped a few pics with my phone:

A pic of the Rodeo Carnival - you can some of the tents and the lights from the rides.


The ferris wheel was really pretty from the top floor of the Reliant Stadium. As usual, a picture from a phone doesn't really do it justice.



--
Todd

Improv Weekend

Todd had a big improv show the weekend of Feb. 23 and 24th. We hosted 6 different improv teams from the Houston area and had packed houses on Friday and Saturday night. We had teams from two of the major Universities (Rice and University of Houston), ComedySportz and a couple of other local troupes. And of course Massive performed as well.

<< Todd checks in at the box office while enjoying a Miller High Life.

Now we are performing regularly on Sunday nights at a local bar in town.

The new Borings dot Net!

We are re-purposing this website to be a place for family and friends to be able to post family pics and blab about their current doings. Basically a family blog. If you are interested in posting pics and such, let me know and I'll hook you up with a login.


Todd

It's ON!

Okay, changes to our website were WAY overdue! The last post on our homepage read

"Well, as the year 2002 heads into the home stretch, Shondra and I have finally begun work on this website..."

and that was pretty much the content for the last 4 years. So, now I'm trying to do some revamping and rethinking. I'm doing a lot of planning to make this page simple and easy to update. We'll see how long this content sits on the page...

Todd