Category Archives: Art, Theatre, & Film

‘Not What We Give, But What We Share’

Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone who came out to the potluck BBQ t!-and-ai731-are-getting-married party last night. Tal, HRH and I truly appreciate your time and energy. The food was wonderful, and the company most excellent. I’m only sorry that I missed a lot of the party due to sitting in the baby’s room trying to get him to/back to sleep, or sitting in my bedroom next to the monitor so that I could hear him if he woke up yet again. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of the guests who wandered in over the course of the evening to hang out with me and bring me drinks and lemon buns. (At one point the entire membership of Invisible was in my bedroom with me, save for the bassist. Of course, the bassist has been in other bedrooms of mine plenty of times, and besides, it was his own getting-married-party going on in the other rooms.)

Ironically enough, Liam woke up at eleven once everyone was gone. Go figure. Maybe it was the cessation of white noise. But apart from the initial rocky two hours of very-hard-to-get-him-to-sleep, he only woke up at eleven and again at five-thirty, each time for about fifteen minutes for soothing, then another five or ten minutes of grumpy complaining alone before falling asleep. That’s an improvement already.

We now have a plethora of hot dog buns in the fridge. No hot dogs, but plenty of buns.

HRH picked up a new barbecue yesterday morning in honour of the event, as we realised that there were between twenty and thirty RSVPs and there was no way that our mini camp BBQ was going to handle that kind of dinner traffic. We’ve been wanting a full-size one for some time, of course, and we found a really great one on sale for just under one hundred dollars, down from its usual price of one-forty-ish. Hurrah!

We also had a wedding rehearsal yesterday, and it’s going to be wonderful. t! poked gentle fun at me for getting choked up when I read one of my lines, but I think I have every right to get teary because it’s one of the lines he read at my own wedding six and a half years ago. The circle is now complete. Or something like that.

Band practice Saturday morning confirmed that the wedding gig will be more of the non-stress event we want it to be. We’ve temporarily removed two of our songs from the set in order to rework and polish them some more before reintroducing them in the fall.

Today: a lovely social afternoon with the ADZO family (once we ascertain the time)!

There Is Another

Fox will release the original unaltered theatrical versions of the first three Star Wars movies on DVD on Sept. 12, despite statements by series creator George Lucas, USA Today reported. […] The individual DVDs will be taken off the market on Dec. 31, a strategy that Disney uses on many of its classic releases.

Yay! And yet, more proof that the Lucasverse can’t stick to a single story.

Whatever. At least we’ll have Lapti Nek back, and Jedi Rocks can be an “it never happened” in this household again.

A New Way To Define ‘Graphic Novel’

Penguin Gives Classics an Alt.Comics Makeover

When [Chris] Ware’s artwork [for Candide], with its whimsical comic-strip rendition of the opening scenes and hand-lettered jacket copy, hit Buckley’s desk, he was almost afraid to show it to his colleagues. But they loved it so much that he decided to do an entire series with other cartoonists and independent comics artists having a go at a Penguin Classic.

Full story here at GalleyCat. They’ve even got Seth doing the cover to the Portable Dorothy Parker.

Gig!

This is just a reminder to local friends that on the evening of Saturday April 22, Random Colour and Invisible take the stage once again to present an evening of very eclectic music played by the enthusiastic (and surprisingly talented!) amateurs.

Random Colour will present a programme of eclectic covers, followed by a short break, and then Invisible will present a longer programme of covers and originals. It’s all a lot of fun, and we’d like to share that fun with you. There is no official cover charge for the evening; the bands pay for the rental of the Paradoxe ourselves in order to host this private evening of musical mayhem for our friends. However, the donation jar we set out last time to help cover the cost of renting the space for the night was so successful that we’ll almost certainly be doing it again. It’s not a club with a bar, so if you want something to eat or drink, alcoholic or not, bring it yourself. There’s a fridge available too.

Doors open at 20:00; no one will be admitted before that time, as the bands have sound checks and warmups to handle. Random Colour will take the stage at 20:30 and the fun will begin!

If you’d like directions or more info, send me an email.

See you there!

Home Again

We’re back! We had a lovely weekend, but the drive is just so incredibly draining for all three of us. Liam’s not a fan of it either, particularly since he’s teething again. The poor kid has his first real teething rash on his cheeks.

When we got home the place felt so wonderful. (Thanks for taking care of it, Tal!) Liam ran around (well, his version of it) and touched everything, toys and furniture and walls; you could just see him saying, “This is mine! This is mine too! This is all my stuff!” Maggie and Nix came right up to him and rubbed against him or let him pet them oh so gently, and he was thrilled to see them, because my parents’ cats are more of the “I’ll sit over here and watch you from a safe distance” or “I’m hiding under the bed till you’re gone” types. And after a moderately belated dinner and a bath, he went right to sleep and slept through till quarter to seven this morning, thank goodness; we were worried that he’d wake up every couple of hours. But he didn’t, and he’s in a wonderful mood today.

We came home with more chocolate than I know what to do with. Well, I do know what to do with it: put it in my sweets tin in my office where it will lurk, waiting for the time when I need it. And it’s all really good chocolate too. Liam got clothes in his Easter basket, although there is one chocolate bunny I will have to eat for him that was presented to him by a fan.

I’m so impressed by how Liam ate while we were away. For dinners, he pretty much shared what we were eating. For example, that first night he had osso bucco and polenta with us, and Sunday night he shared our Easter dinner of roast beef, roasted carrots and potatoes with gravy, plus his own personal hors d’oeuvre of apples and squash sprinkled with cinnamon. He’s discovered the joys of couscous as well. (He did not, however, share the brownies, or the pie, or the chocolate macadamia nut cookies. He did share his grandparents’ Cheerios and a couple of slivers of my fresh strawberries, though.)

We have wonderful pictures of Liam at the farm, and at the warplane heritage museum too. I’ll post them at some point when I have time. This week is already two days gone, and the schedule for the next six days is already set.

True Mailbox Joy!

The coolest thing just happened to me!

HRH brought in the mail and said, “Your strings are here.”

“I didn’t order any strings,” I said. We blinked at one another.

So I opened the package, which was postmarked from Germany.

I filled in an online questionnaire over a month ago about Pirastro strings. (They make the Aricores and Eudoxas I love so much, as well as other nifty kinds I’ve used in the past.) I mentioned I’d love to try a full set of Evah Pirazzi strings, but I couldn’t afford them.

They sent me three new strings to test, absolutely free. That’s about $170 worth of samples.

Now that’s customer care!

Fairies?

I am still mystified as to where my current writing notebook went. Normally I assume things that are missing have been taken to Kitty Wonderland, but it’s always possible that the fairies got it.

Liam’s having a spontaneous day with Grandma, so I get to practice this afternoon. I pretty much memorised one song last night, and now I want to hack away at the second, which involves memorising that dratted Instrumental Bit Formerly Known As The Cello Solo. I want to lock in a decent fingering for it too, because even though the new A string sounds better than the old one, the boom mic I’m now using to support the pickup reproduces the A’s natural brightness a bit too well. I can rework the fingering to avoid the open A string entirely in the IBFKATCS, but this is absolutely the last time I can do it, otherwise I won’t remember the patterns correctly.