The Theater.

Diana and I went to the theater tonight, and saw the play "Proof". It was a surprise for Diana. It turns out she'd seen the play before when she was in New York visiting her sister, but I didn't know this. Oh well. She was pleased to see it again, though.

I noticed a couple of things about the theater:

1) The ushers are almost invariable OLD! Why is this?
2) When we approached the usher at the door, our tickets were in my coat pocket, and my hands were full of programs. I figured I'd just tell the guy our seat numbers. That didn't really fly. I had to fuss around with people waiting behind us to get all my crap together and give him the tickets, just so he could walk us to our seats which we could have found very well on our own. Oh well.

The play was pretty good. Clearly the best part was that the lead was played by Danica McKellar, who's probably best known by most for playing Winnie Cooper on "The Wonder Years". I heard her on the radio on a local morning show talking about the play, being a child actor, being a math whiz, and so forth. It sounds like she's a really smart person, and the way she talked about math reminded me of Diana. She not only was so gifted, but was truly enthusiastic about it, which was fun to listen to. So I bought tickets that very same day.

Winnie Cooper (and therefore Ms. McKellar) was not an insignificant part of my childhood, I don't think. I was roughly the same age as young Kevin, and it was a crazy age where all of a sudden one starts to notice girls and get weird feeilngs in your stomach. Everything was so goddamn nerve-wracking, but in an exhilarating, semi-pubescent sexual-tension sort of way. I'd notice girls, and notice them notice me, but of course each side has to play it cool and not make it obvious that we're noticing each other. And Winnie, while not the literal object of devotion or anything, was the incarnation of every girl I'd ever noticed in That Sort of Way, and all the glorious nervous energy that went along with it.

It was only within the last year or so when I saw a commercial and saw that she was going to be on West Wing that I noticed (ha!) that she'd grown up to be a total babe. Combine that with hearing her on the radio, and hearing how smart she was, and how *wise* she was was very impressive. And I know this sounds cheeseball, and I don't mean it to, but she reminded me of Diana. I don't mean "reminded" like I'd forgotten anything. "Reinfoced" might be a better word. All the things that I was so impressed with about her I've already found in Diana. (Although Diana hasn't been on any critically acclaimed TV shows lately, but who's counting?)

And now, I'm tired. But I just registered for a free poker tournament starting at midnight, and I've discovered a great new computer game called "Savage", which I've been playing around with. It's a fusion of RTS and FPS, which is a really natural fit. Imagine Warcraft II or Age of Empires type RTS, but where the units you command are actual human players rather that NPCs. So, one commander plays the game from "on high", issuing commands to the rest of the team who plays in a FPS style. Pretty cool stuff.