Easter weekend - Murder Mystery and Rockband!
This past weekend started out a little lazy, as I have been sick for a week since the Desert Storm Rally last weekend. But lately Kris and I have been obsessed with playing both Guitar Hero and Rockband. So let me back up a little here…in December, Kris and I were trying to decide whether we wanted to jump in on the GH/Rockband craze - we are admittedly always a little “behind” when it come to this stuff. Well, we hadn’t actually played either game, but I knew my friend Renee’s daughters Lyndsey and Anneli (at the time) had GH 1, 2, 3, and Rocks the 80’s. Since there’s two of them, they also had two guitars. We asked if we could borrow it since we both have Playstation 2, and they graciously let us borrow whatever we wanted - we ended up with their two guitars and GH 1 and 2. They ALSO gave us Singstar and the two microphones they had. So we played Guitar Hero 1 for a week non-stop. We brought one of the guitars to a Christmas cookie-baking party. We couldn’t get enough and finally decided - this is something we have to have. Once Christmas morning arrived, there was a a guitar and game waiting for us under our tree - a wonderful present from the Marciniak side of our family!
Once our friends got back from their Christmas trip to see family in Utah, we were able to give them their games and controllers back. We’ve been playing GH2 on and off when we have time since then. We knew about Rockband the whole time, and certainly wanted to check it out if given the opportunity. Our friends Diane & Eddie had been telling us that they had just bought Rockband back in February, and after our trip out to the Seed 9 Rally (to help them as service crew) we were invited to stay and play Rockband for the very first time! Again, we were hooked. And, a couple weeks ago, Kris and I were able to borrow Rockband ourselves from Lyndsey and Anneli. We had Eddie & Diane and Erik & Amy over for dinner and all played together, then our friend Karen, Vince, and Mick for game night. Unfortunately for us, we only have a PS2 while Eddie & Diane have a PS3 - which has way more interactive features and downloadable content, as well as online gameplay. The huge bummer for this is that the PS2 has all those capabilities too, the game designers just decided to take those features out of the PS2 version for whatever reason.
Ok, so back to Easter weekend. Saturday was a lazy day, both of us relaxing and me especially just trying to get over the cold I’d had for the entire week. We eventually got ready to go out to a murder mystery dinner show, which my parents had bought me tickets to as a birthday present. The show was near the airport in Irvine, so we didn’t have to go very far and actually arrived a bit early. We got to enjoy sitting by the hotel’s pool in a private cabana. Eventually we saw the doors open and went over to go inside. We were told to make up a name and a background story to go with it. We decided to do something fun, and since Kris has been told he looks like Matt Damon, he chose the name Jason Bourne. His background story was that he was a professional race car driver - not too much of a stretch to the imagination! My chosen name was Beth Bourne - since we ARE married after all - and my background was that I was a librarian. Also not too much of a stretch for me to falsify! 
Once inside, we got some drinks, then were told to mingle and suspect anyone wearing a name tag, question everyone! Not too soon after, we were ushered into the dining area, and were seated. We immediately suspected this one woman at our table, who we realized was alone. Her nametag read “Twin Peaks.” She said she was there because her friend told her about it and that she was an actress. She kept asking us if anyone at our table had been to one of these shows before or knew anything about this one, like how long it was supposed to be or whatever. I definitely thought it was suspicious that “her friend” wouldn’t give her any details or that she herself wouldn’t have tried to look up any info before coming to a show that she was supposedly checking out for an acting gig. At one point she became “part of the action,” and she “wanted to do a reading for an upcoming audition.” Her mistake was saying that audition was THAT night, and her big mistake is that she was a really bad actress. She also mentioned that she wanted to talk to someone who was a director, and I was thinking, um, I don’t think that guy is a director in real life. During dessert they gave us about five minutes to actually write down what we’d thought had happened. Kris and I really had no clue, although we make a bunch of connections between the clues - many more than the rest of our table did. It turned out only one person knew who it was, AND had a really good explanation, so she got some gifts. I was bummed that I couldn’t figure it out, but we still both had a really good time. And I have to say, I like this a lot more than the other two shows like it I’ve gone to in the past. One of these was Shear Madness, which was a lot of fun in it’s own right, though it was more of a show with some slight audience participation - and the ending of the show and killer was determined BY the audience. The other show was good too, and lots of fun because it was part of my family’s last trip to Walt Disney World.
On Sunday, we went over to Eddie & Diane’s place in Long Beach, where we’d been invited for Easter dinner. It was so nice to not have to cook again after being sick the whole week, and to spend a holiday with friends - who are Italian to boot! Diane had prepared and cooked a three course meal! We started with salad, bread, lasagna, pepperoni, and meatballs. It was so good we had to hold off on the next course of grilled asparagus, lamb tips, carrots, ham, and mashed potatoes. So in the meantime we played a bit of Rockband on their PS3! It was really cool to see all the differences - we continued a previous game and acquired the tourbus in a very short time - something you don’t get to do in the PS2 version we’d mostly been playing. Kris mostly played the guitar, and occasionally played the drums; I would have done some singing but my voice was gone due to my cold and sore throat, so the only song I could “sing” was Epic, and I instead took a few turns with the guitar myself. I think because Kris and I played Guitar Hero that we’re a lot better with the guitar and bass than anyone else we’ve played with, but it usually works out because Eddie wants to play the drums and Diane only sings. Anyway, we got through a bunch of sets and eventually got to play at what is essentially Madison Square Garden in NYC. We played the very first set of something like 5 songs there, and saw the second session would have been 18 songs - needless to say, late in the night, with only 4 people, one of whom does not have a voice, we decided to hold off on that one. 
Well, we had our second course of dinner, had chocolate torte, tea, and coffee for dessert, played a bit more Rockband and headed home. All in all it was an excellent weekend, despite still having a cold!
Yup - today was my birthday! Kris and I stayed up late to celebrate the official start of my birthday at just after 1 AM on Saturday morning. We slept in a little late afterwards, but then, as promised, Kris made me breakfast in bed. He was planning on making it all special, with pancakes and omlettes and meats and juice, but neither one of us remembered that the last egg we had in the house we had used to make dinner the other night along with the sausage we had in the refrigerator….so it ended up being just pancakes and juice - but it was still really special! Kris brought everything necessary upstairs and on his final trip he revealed the last special mini-chocolate chip-studded heart pancake (that I wanted a lasting memory of)! (And it was kind funny because if you flipped it over it looked like the Mouse!) 
Charlotte shared the happy news about her whirlwind romance and their decision to get married when she returned from a trip to Montana in January. Initially, I was unsure that I would be able to attend, but then my rally friends, Diane and Erik (and their respective spouses) offered up their frequent flyer miles in exchange for us helping them as crew at the Seed 9 rally. I am so grateful to the four of that and making it possible for me to attend my co-worker & friend’s special day.