The GGA Project -- Day #185 "Worth Its Weight in Clay?"

On the hunt for a costume for my friend Denise's Nintendo-themed karaoke birthday party (Happy Birthday, Denise!), I was looking for a respectable thrift store in Fremont.  I wanted to go on my lunch since I am short on time to find this costume, but I wasn't familiar with any thrift stores near my work.


Today's New Activity: Strike Out at Thrift Town


Posing the question to my long-time-Fremont-resident coworker led me to Thrift Town, a large well-stocked spot about 2 miles away.  I've written before about my love/disgust/mostly love relationship with life's second hand peddlers, and there was nothing particularly worthy of comment about this place.


I was looking for a big pink poofy dress that I could wear with a tiara and go as Princess Toadstool (who, it seems, is actually called Princess Peach...which I find strange given that when you rescue her at the end of Super Mario Brothers the game refers to her as Princess Toadstool).


But anyway, I didn't find a suitable dress.  Or a suitable anything really, save this framed (framed!) picture of Clay Aiken from Bop magazine.

At $3.99 I can't tell if this is highway robbery on the part of Thrift Town or a steal on this year's family gag Christmas gift exchange.


And that is all.

The GGA Project -- Day #130 "Slow-Motion Sporting"

There are a lot of good things I could say about the lower East Bay/Tri-City area (Hayward, Union City, Fremont, Newark).  That the area is a hotbed of bangin' nightlife is not one of those things.  In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find a club at all in the area (only The Saddlerack comes to mind).  Bars are almost completely limited to those found in restaurants, and the majority of the standalone bars are dives (dive-evil, not dive-cool).  Given this, I've been wanting to drop by Mojo Lounge, which I'd read decent reviews about on Yelp.  With Monkey away for the night and my friend Kenneth free for the evening, it seemed their Wednesday karoake night was beckoning.


So we complied.


And what to my wondering eyes did appear before me when we entered the bar?  A shuffleboard.  Bam!


Today's New Activity: Cultivating Finesse a la Shuffleboard


Thankfully, Kenneth had already grasped the oh-so-complex rules of the game, so after the 3-second tutorial he gave me we were good to go.  Just a little housekeeping first:

Here's Kenneth sweeping the board of all the sand that'd gathered in clumps after the last round of play.

And here he is covering it all over again with more sand (?).  It made sense when we started though.  The little pucks slid much better and faster on the de-clumped sand cover.

So basically all you do is take turns sending your little puck down the board, trying to get it as far away as possible without having it go off the board.  The opponent tries to get his puck further than yours, because the only person to gain any points in a round is the one who gets his puck the furthest away.

Pretty simple.

This means I win this round!

And this means Kenneth wins.


Crystal clear, right?

The best part is that since we have the same initials, nobody won or lost :P  I think all games should be played in this somebody-won-but-we'll-never-know-who manner!


It was a pretty fun game, especially because it's a game that's not so much about domination or power, but more about aim and the art of developing a gentle touch.  And the clincher was playing with some very very good karaoke as background noise.


Normally I'm super annoyed by good karaoke singers, mostly because it always seems they take themselves way too seriously and it takes all the fun out of laughing at feeble warblers like myself.  But the people at this particular (non-evil) dive were good but cool and un-pretentious, and it helped that they had decent song choices, too. The only exception was the horrible-but-karaoke-required "Summer Lovin'" from Grease.  Ugh!


Anyway, it was a super fun night and I will totally be dragging people up my way to Mojo Lounge soon.  Three cheers for down-to-earth watering holes.

The GGA Project -- Day #52 "Peacock Squared"

Denise, a former coworker of mine, has been going to the same divey bar's karaoke night for like 3 years now.  For years she's been trying to gently coax other friends and coworkers to come along, to only moderate avail.  Who knew all she had to do was make a Facebook event of it and give it a World of Warcraft theme to bring them out in throngs.  The funny thing is, very few of the people who came actually play WoW, but the event-like new status of what is a standard weekly practice seemed to work wonders.


Today's New Activity: Tuesday Night Karaoke at the Peacock Lounge


What made this karaoke a WoW karaoke was that Denise had preselected songs to serve as "quests," just basically daring people to sing whatever they randomly drew from the stack (prizes awarded when quest completed and everything!).  She was flexible though, because first I picked "Summer Nights" from Grease, a song I can't stand, so she let me pick again.  Second pick was "Time Warp" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I just don't know well enough to sing.  Third time was a charm: Loggins and Messina's "Danny's Song."  You might think you don't know this song, since the title isn't very telling, but I promise you, you do:

I'd met David, a new friend-through-friends beforehand for dinner.  Because it was nearby and we were both down for Indian (yum!), we decided on the Peacock Cafe, just to keep consistent with the flashy bird theme of the evening.  The Channa Masala (garbanzo beans in spicy sauce) with naan was very, very good--check the place out if you're in the area!


What I liked about tonight's activity is just the chance to have a fun outlet on a weekday.  People really treasure and often make the most of their weekends, but it is so nice to have an outing in the thick of the weekday rigor-moral, just to break things up and remind you that there is more to life than work and getting ready for work and vegging out after work.  Five days of that can really wear a person down.  And of course, we don't all work 9-5 jobs.  In fact, most of the people I know don't.  But still I think there is a Monday-Friday mentality that is difficult to shake no matter what you do for a living, and when.


I think I'm going to embark on a mid-week outing advocacy campaign.  Oooh, I *like* that idea.  Hump day would be ideal.  Maybe I'll just reserve Wednesday nights for the duration of this project for checking out a new venue--a new fun thing happening somewhere in the area.  Who's down?  Maybe by December I'll have found something worth making a habit of.


Happy rest of the week to you!