Far-famed for well-worn enterprise.

Poetry is really starting to grow on me.

THINGS.

- Just when I think that watergun fights, light saber battles and Beastie Boy Fridays aren't good enough reasons to work here, I found out this morning that they're going to be shutting down the office a few hours early on Tuesday afternoon so we can go see "Transformers" together. On the company dime. I firmly believe that this is what our forefathers fought and died for.

Or at least acquired the rights from far-flung Asian toy companies for.

- Last night was amazing. My family stopped off at luuser's Shove Off To L.A. party and a whole group of us ended up going out to see "Live Free, Die Hard" afterward. I gave Kiki her gifts but not my final "goodbye." That comes tonight. It's one of those things that I've irritatingly drawn out, mostly because I'm having a hard time with the fact that I won't see her (unless I visit in November) for an entire year. But I've said it before and I'll go blue saying it again: there's no one else in my acquaintance who deserves this chance more than she does. She worked hard for this. She earned it. Out of 300 candidates, she was the one who was most qualified and most ready to accept the challenge. Now she's driving three days cross-country to build a new life for herself in Los Angeles. I don't think I've ever met anyone as brave as she is. She's also bringing me back a Hugh.

- Speaking of. I wore my charity tee to the party last night and an old friend from high school commented on it. It turns out that she spent a year in Los Angeles working for Panavision. On Fridays she'd get to visit the FOX lot where they were filming House (this was during the first season). She actually got to tail a couple of the EPs on a few occasions, mingle with the cast (RSL luh-huves the craft services table) and SAT AT HOUSE'S DESK. She met David Shore and a couple of the other higher-ups. She met Hugh and said that she was surprised by his accent (which she described to me as very "thick, deep and English") and that he was very nice but looked gnawed on. Apparently, when the show was first starting out, no one on the crew had any high (I just typed "hugh") hopes for its success and were floating their resumes around the other lots. After it hit -- and hit hard -- they had to scramble to get their resumes back. Hah! The crew is very laid back and cool, according to my friend. If you're anxious around the actors, they spook like zoo animals. I had to stop her in the middle of her story about how they do the stuff with all of the extras -- they all have set points and paths and props and march around like carpenter ants -- to tell her that all of this was like eating a large quantity of cake. You eat one piece, then you figure that you might as well have another, and then that piece seems too good to be true so you slice yourself another one just in case Cakeageddon comes along and you can never eat it again. I was sort of numb listening to her go on so casually about something that features so prominently in my day-to-day life. So yeah. I'm, like, three degrees removed from Hugh Laurie. I like this game more than the one about Kevin Bacon. I like most things more than Kevin Bacon.

- It was Todd's birthday yesterday, too. Happy birthday, whogavemebanana!

- This is mostly for my own amusement, but you're going to endure it anyway. vicodin_rpg turned a year old on Monday, but gameplay didn't officially begin until a year ago today. So, to commemorate the event, I'm going to be posting a THIS DATE IN VICODIN link at the end of all subsequent posts. Or at least as many posts as I can be assed into remembering. Or when something really juicy comes up on a particular date.

Today's link is special because it was the inaugural post -- the flagship of snark between Blair's House and my Cuddy -- and it really set the tone for the rest of the game. Which turned out to be one of the best games I was ever -- and have ever been -- involved in. And when Ami came in with her Wilson? We had a triumvirate so snazzy, so snarky and so damn sexy that you could drip it from a mainline IV. So here's to a year of gameplay, kids. To blouses and bruises; Thai and severed neckties. To a dream. A creative endeavor. A grope in a stairwell. *clink*

THIS DATE IN VICODIN
Who: Cuddy/House
What: Team training, responsibility shucking, and rum
When: Dated 6/28/06
Link: "Are you out of your mind? Don't answer that. I'm liable."