The Opera last night "La Triviata" was amazing. Beautiful. NOW I've seen real opera. If you go to an opera, go to a standard Italian opera. Emotions make the language superfulous, although it's beautiful in it's own right.
I also love every morning I ride in I think how much
I love this city.
30 miles an hour
flying down 2nd Avenue
buildings rising like stoic dreams
on either side of me
concrete pavement smooth and glistening
in the morning rain
making the street lights bounce off
the red and black tires of my bike
streaming along with traffic
down the hill I see
the sun rising over the mountains
off in the distance
outside the framework
of the rising bustling city before me
Showing posts with label opera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opera. Show all posts
Friday, October 16, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Who Knew?
Today is a *sigh* day.
I was warm and cuddly and supremely happy this morning until alarms started going off...I turned my alarm off on the first buzz. There's something about the love of your life swarthed in warm blankets, soft and cuddly beside you and you're dreaming peacefully, sleeping well, happily drifting off into the land of Nod. It was a Herculean effort this morning to leave that nest of sublime. I frequently came back to it after dressing, getting my bag together, and then again and again. It's a crime to take someone away from that. Shame on the world for making me wake up.
I'm learning more AutoCAD tasks at work right now (the drafting program architects use). It is probably THE most difficult program I've ever encountered. Non intuitive. I'm happy to be doing things that have a direct impact on the building when it gets built, but doing these tasks are super time consuming and invariably it makes my brain violently overfried. hehehehe...I got to change the colors of numbers that might be used quite a bit on all of our drawings. I got to pick a color for the mandatory things...and guess what?? It was red :)
On the bright side, we're going to the OPERA! tonight - which makes me SUPER happy!!!!!!!! My 3rd one. Only problem is that I didn't ride in because, well, we're going to the opera and Paul isn't riding back because his headlight's in the shop. So I've bussed in to work and will bus home afterwards with him. We're getting back late too, so I can't work out at all today. Which, ironically enough, really is bugging me. Where is my outlet????!!??? 5 days of doing something consistently and I'm having withdrawals in less than 12 hours. Phghlskfjdffftt.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Operatic Drama
So I sat through about 5 hours of Wagner's Ring Cycle last night. As for an intelligent review of the evening's performance, the set design was fantastic - real horse, fire on the set and the last 10 minutes was an amazing spectacular fluid set changing spectacularness. The singers were quite good, although Brunnhilde was a little lacking in volume - the orchestra drowned her out quite a bit and she shook to produce the vabratto. The sightlines at McCaw hall were great, even in the free cheap seats Susan and I were in. Other than that it was the longest freaking thing I've ever sat through. Enjoyable, but by the end I was exhausted. I ended up bulling my way through it by existing on sugar and caffiene (red bull does give you crazy wings.)
Operas are hillarious. The drama that ensues is ridiclous. For my take on Wagner last night I offer the following:
There was this guy name Siegfried who was raised by a crazy theif dwarf in the middle of the forest. He makes this sword (of which he's a little too attached to I think) and to "test his mettle" goes after this big ass dragon. So he slices and dices and is big-heap-dragon-slayer.
After Siegfried tasted some of the dragon's blood the birds in the forest start talking to him. Yes. He tasted blood and heard birds talking to him. They tell him to take a ring (which will help him rule the world) and a helmet - which is a shiny cloth in the play I saw - and to kill the dwarf. So he grabs the gear, leaves the mounds of gold, goes home and kills the dwarf - at which point the entire male cast goes "hahahahahah! - the dwarf couldn't make the blade but he could feel it. hahahahaha."
Crazy dad-like theif Dwarf is dead and the birds tell Siegfried there's this hot little piece of tail on top of a mountain that's on fire. So he sets out and finds this girl all asleep in armour up at the top of the mountain. So he undresses her, mates with her, and after one night in her bed, she gives him all of her goddess wisdom and strength in trade for being his wife - and they are undyingly in love with eachother.
Seriously.
Anyway, she gives him her horse (which somehow has lived on this fire mountain of barren rock with her for a long time) and she hangs out on the mountain while he goes tra-la-la down the river to meet this trippy family by the Rhine. The younger brother who hasn't got any power (boo-hoo) convinces his older in power brother to drug Siegfried to be in love with their sister and forget about any other woman, (the sister is a decidedly unpretty girl). Anyway, he'll want her SO MUCH that he'll grab the Brunnhilde from the mountain, have the older power brother marry her, and in all this scheming the power poor brother will get the ring and rule the world.
The fat lady with the hat sings at this point, but it's not the end.
So most of this happens, with the aide of the trippy helmet that lets him look like whoever he wants and instintaneouly be wherever he wants just by thinking of it. The power brother drags poor sad weak Brunnhilde down and forces her to be his bride. So everyone is jelous and angry and pissed at everyone else except for Siegfried, who's just happy-ditz-confused.
In the end everyone just about everyone dies - big suprise. Poor power brother kills Siegfried - by this pond where three trippy mermaids try to steal his ring after poor power brother got a wicked bad dream about his daddy. Evil cunning daddy told poor power brother to kill Siegfried. So, of course, that's the way it goes. Crazy-poor-power brother then kills his powerful brother by "sort-of accident" after power brother was all sad that they hurt the "hero". Ugly sister gets all sad Siegfried is dead, so kills herself.
Brunnhilde (the broad that told crazy-poor-power brother how to kill Siegfried) decides she wants to go up in flames with Siegfried on the funeral pyre so the three mermaid chicks can have back the ring stolen from the ashes of her dead body at the bottom of the Rhine. She decides to take her horse with her to burn in the flames.
Oh - and all this brings about the destruction of Valhala.
Oh Operatic Drama, how amusing you are in your woe-is-me-vengence-greed riddled theatre. I do love your music though.
*note the fat lady didn't sing at the end. :(
Operas are hillarious. The drama that ensues is ridiclous. For my take on Wagner last night I offer the following:
There was this guy name Siegfried who was raised by a crazy theif dwarf in the middle of the forest. He makes this sword (of which he's a little too attached to I think) and to "test his mettle" goes after this big ass dragon. So he slices and dices and is big-heap-dragon-slayer.
After Siegfried tasted some of the dragon's blood the birds in the forest start talking to him. Yes. He tasted blood and heard birds talking to him. They tell him to take a ring (which will help him rule the world) and a helmet - which is a shiny cloth in the play I saw - and to kill the dwarf. So he grabs the gear, leaves the mounds of gold, goes home and kills the dwarf - at which point the entire male cast goes "hahahahahah! - the dwarf couldn't make the blade but he could feel it. hahahahaha."
Crazy dad-like theif Dwarf is dead and the birds tell Siegfried there's this hot little piece of tail on top of a mountain that's on fire. So he sets out and finds this girl all asleep in armour up at the top of the mountain. So he undresses her, mates with her, and after one night in her bed, she gives him all of her goddess wisdom and strength in trade for being his wife - and they are undyingly in love with eachother.
Seriously.
Anyway, she gives him her horse (which somehow has lived on this fire mountain of barren rock with her for a long time) and she hangs out on the mountain while he goes tra-la-la down the river to meet this trippy family by the Rhine. The younger brother who hasn't got any power (boo-hoo) convinces his older in power brother to drug Siegfried to be in love with their sister and forget about any other woman, (the sister is a decidedly unpretty girl). Anyway, he'll want her SO MUCH that he'll grab the Brunnhilde from the mountain, have the older power brother marry her, and in all this scheming the power poor brother will get the ring and rule the world.
The fat lady with the hat sings at this point, but it's not the end.
So most of this happens, with the aide of the trippy helmet that lets him look like whoever he wants and instintaneouly be wherever he wants just by thinking of it. The power brother drags poor sad weak Brunnhilde down and forces her to be his bride. So everyone is jelous and angry and pissed at everyone else except for Siegfried, who's just happy-ditz-confused.
In the end everyone just about everyone dies - big suprise. Poor power brother kills Siegfried - by this pond where three trippy mermaids try to steal his ring after poor power brother got a wicked bad dream about his daddy. Evil cunning daddy told poor power brother to kill Siegfried. So, of course, that's the way it goes. Crazy-poor-power brother then kills his powerful brother by "sort-of accident" after power brother was all sad that they hurt the "hero". Ugly sister gets all sad Siegfried is dead, so kills herself.
Brunnhilde (the broad that told crazy-poor-power brother how to kill Siegfried) decides she wants to go up in flames with Siegfried on the funeral pyre so the three mermaid chicks can have back the ring stolen from the ashes of her dead body at the bottom of the Rhine. She decides to take her horse with her to burn in the flames.
Oh - and all this brings about the destruction of Valhala.
Oh Operatic Drama, how amusing you are in your woe-is-me-vengence-greed riddled theatre. I do love your music though.
*note the fat lady didn't sing at the end. :(
Saturday, May 9, 2009
The Naming and my Weekend.
My bike is now fixed - yay!!!!! I rode her in for my commute for the first day on Wednesday. It was quite nice (although raining and very winter like, just a touch warmer). The fatter tires and the violation of a seat need to go. Fat tires (cyclocross training tires) make it SO incredibly slow compared to the road tires I had on Andrew's Kona...which got switched out on Friday....oh...oh...so very nice yes!!! And the seat - I'll just put it this way - there are certain seats out there that are a violation of all that is holy and cut off circulation in places that are really important. The stock seat my Kona came with is one of them. So I switched it out on Thursday it it was much nicer.... although the fit is .... off .... somehow. Getting better with every adjustment, but still more need to be made.
As for naming her, naming her has been very very very difficult. Nothing has quite.... fit. And it has to be right. I've considered a LOT of names: Paul had been calling her - "She-Who-Is-Being-A-Bitch-Right-Now" - true, very true, but not a name. Andrew voted for Naja "strong and stoic". Paul voted for Naava "Pleasant and beautiful" or Nenet "Goddess of the Deep" (found out that was actually a GOD and he was a super minor character, so that was out). I really thought about Nala, which means "Successful or Queen" in African. I mulled over Rowan "red-berry tree". I thought about Phoenix, but it's ...not quite right either. This is driving me nuts that I haven't found her name. I agree with Paul though about naming her requires an "epiphany" moment or a distinct impression with riding her and since she's a lot like Damian and I've not found her fit, and I've been really issue laden physically I haven't got that chance yet...it's got to come soon though, I feel like she's teasing me not letting me know her name.
Yes, naming a bike is this important to me. I never pretended that I wasn't a bit odd. Anyway, enough about the bike.
I went to the Opera on Saturday and had an absolutely AMAZING time. I saw the Marriage of Figero - I will do an in depth post later.
I talked to all my Mom's on Sunday (around 3 and two 1/2's ish I guess - mom who gave birth, step mom married to my dad. Susan-Mom, who was my former mother in law. Then the two 1/2s are Dee (mom who gave birth to me's wife) and Paul's mom, whom I talked to on the phone today and who is wonderfully responsible for the Opera outgoing). I love them all so much for very very different reasons. I do want to express now how wonderfully amazing Susan-Mom is and how I'm so thankful to have her in my life. She's really an amazing person and she is very dear to me. *big hugs to her* - and for all the other mom's who read this, this doesn't mean I love you any less/more, no jealousy! :)
As for how I'm doing with the medication business... doing better with the symptoms that have arose already, dealing with minor new ones now - fatigue, muscle soreness, achy joints. Riding my bike downtown and back yesterday and today (my typical commute) just about took it all out of me. My muscles feel like they do when I've got a really bad flu - achy sore and generally not-doing-much-at-all before I can't go anymore. *Sigh* So I'm really really really slow right now. And tired. But doing really well otherwise.
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