| Retail Therapy |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|10:51 am] |
( hipster hat and a swimming suit that could be underwear so you get so decide the NSFW'ishness of it all )
OK, so we made the mistake of dropping by Cheap Trx yesterday. i dont' know what got into me, but i guess after such a stressful week, i was in the mood for retail therapy as i spent far too much money on things i wouldn't normally buy. i mean, really, a hipster hat? But so far, it's been a hit and everybody likes it. The over-priced "italian" swimsuit was a bit much though. And it didn't stop there.
You know those little Lumix cameras that i love for their small size and wide angle lens that i keep breaking? well, i got another one of those. i know i shouldn't, but i did anyway. i picked up my new glasses too...both pairs. That'll be a seperate post so you can see if you were able to guess which pair i got from that post a couple weeks ago.
Wadda y'all know about these memory foam mattresses? Sure, this one isn't a "Temp-R-Pedic", it's a CostCo special. $500 for a queen-size: "Nutra-Temp" or something. And it's a layer of memory foam on top of a layer of some other foam. Sure, they give you a 3'x3' chunk to try on the floor, but you really can't tell from that. Anybody have any insider info? Know of any hotels that have these klnda beds that we can test-drive? Inquiring minds wanna know. |
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| ATTENTION: FIRST WORLD PROBLEM ALERT! |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|08:13 am] |
I went the cupboard to refill the Splenda truck and (gasp!) we were out of normal Splenda. (que 50's horror movie scream here) AND we were out of normal sugar (que 2nd, louder 50's horror movie scream) - - So I had a choice. Coffee with no sweetener or Coffee with brown sugar and I figured - what the hell. ;) and did it.
now I'm walking to the bagel shop with the goddess..... end of first world problem update. |
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| Cheerful ... |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|04:11 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  mellow | ] |
I've been sitting down sipping beer, watching TV, and occasionally watching the antics of a Great Spotted Woodpecker that has been visiting the bird table.
What a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
(Image from Wikimedia Commons) |
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| Perhaps my expectations are too high? |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|11:11 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  aggravated | ] |
Clearly I'm having "issues" with travel planning this weekend ...
If we travel to Chicago we can buy online one day, three day, or seven day CTA passes which are then mailed free of charge to our home address in the UK. These passes remain dormant for up to twelve months and are activated on first use. Fantastic! So easy! No fumbling for cash at the airport ticket machine when jet lagged on arrival. Moreover, the CTA web site is clear, the fare information is easy to understand, and it's a joy to use.
In Boston however, it's a different story. The MBTA has such a range of passes and fare options that it requires a good few minutes to get ones head around it. Apparently the cheapest and easiest way of doing it is to obtain a "Charlie card" which is a smart card which you then load passes or fare value onto. With a bit of digging I also find hidden away on the website a seven day pass. Except you can't buy it online, all the other passes are available online, just not this one. So I then look for locations where one can obtain passes only to find that the airport isn't one of them. So, using the handy web form, I email them to ask them how to get hold of one on arrival. At the bottom of the web form is a check box to say "I accept the privacy policy" along with a link to that policy and because I'm pretty paranoid about such things I clicked on the link to make sure that they weren't subsequently going to spam me daily with offers that weren't relevant to me. Imagine my surprise to find that when I closed the privacy policy window it hadn't actually been displayed in a new window but had re-used the window for the email I was in the middle of creating thus losing all the information and requiring me to enter it all again.
Really? How clueless are these people? The website sucks, there's a myriad of confusing ticket options and prices, and the well hidden seven day tourist passes are not available in the most obvious of tourist travel entry points, the airport.
Somebody needs a serious kicking.
(EDIT: Some more digging has found that I can actually buy the seven day tickets at vending machines which are on every station and in the airport terminals which pleases me. However this information shouldn't require customers to dig around persistently through obscure parts of the web site in order to find it. Somebody still needs a good kicking although it's looking increasingly like the person in charge of the web platform rather than the transport planners) |
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| My Gay Uncle |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|02:02 am] |
I am emailing my new found uncle daily. He is gay, and a generation away from me, and my life as a gay man. He hasn't said much about gay life as he lived it, and I haven't either. He knows I am legally married to John, and thinks it is wonderful. I need to start asking the questions about his life, and compare it with my own life, and then compare all of it to gay life now.
He and I resemble each other. He has a full head of hair, and full beard. He is 18 years older than I, but does not look like a man in his 70's. That's good, just in case I got the same genes. We like some of the same things. He loves "Lost", Edith Piaf, Disco, SciFi, cooking gardening, and the only place we differ is automobiles. He likes them, just not the ones I like.
I have talked with him on the phone twice. His voice is more masculine in tone and delivery than I, and sometimes uses old gayisms, such as "tra la". His Boston accent is similar to mine, less pronounced than the rest of the area, but still evident.
He was a teenager when I was born, and remembers it all. He recalls visiting his sister, my birthmother, several times at the home for unwed mothers near Boston. It was the "elephant in the room", as he describes it. No one mentioned she was pregnant with me. After I was born, she came home, and life went on. Later when pregnant with my sister, he drove her to the hospital when she went into labor. Again, life went on, and nothing was said about giving a second baby up for adoption.
He has thought of those two pregnancies from time to time. He had no idea that my adopted parents also adopted my real sister too. He never imagined that we were together all these years. He certainly never imagined we would come back into his life. He is giving us advice on how, and when to try and contact our birthmother. It's complicated in the details, as he hasn't seen her in years.
He has help answer many questions, and in return, we have answered many questions he has had for 54 years.
So far it's all good, and healthy. He has had my sister over for dinner twice, but not I , as I am on the other side of the country. I can't wait to meet him in person. |
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| Yay for health care. Boo for fashion. |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|11:43 pm] |
Yay that the House passed health care reform.
Boo that Nancy Pelosi didn't have the fashion sense not to wear a pinko Commie outfit when she appeared with the president. Please, something less garish, less loaded, and less Nancy (Reagan).
FAIL, Nancy Pelosi, on the fashion front. But good on you for getting the health care reform passed and past the House!
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| Step mom and child |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|10:56 pm] |
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Apparently the origonal mom couldn't/wouldn't care for the new born. So another Female stepped in. I didn't get a shot of it, but there where some genuine moments of love there...hugs, reassuring taps here and there. Gorillas remind me that we aren't that far along in the evolution tree as we like to think we are. |
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| The Grizzly Sisters. |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|10:51 pm] |
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the grizzly sisters, I found them fascinating. There is a whole lot of sheer predatory power there, and yet you just want to cuddle them. |
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| Why? |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|10:28 pm] |
I was watching the first few minutes of Almost Famous (one of my favorite films) on network tv when I thought why? I have a widescreen full uncut version nearly at arm's length - why not pop that in and save yourself from edited for tv, full screen hell? So without further ado, Almost Famous will be appearing in my livingroom. Jealous? :) 
Posted via LiveJournal.app. |
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| autumn photography |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|11:00 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | madison | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Jo Stafford: Autumn Leaves | ] |
Can’t really tell whether it’s been an unusual autumn, or whether it’s simply that each one is different, following a general repertoire of stages, but unique in specific nuances.
Today it was temperate, in the 60’s, yet most of the trees have lost their leaves. A couple of weeks ago, while I was out picture-taking, some trees still had colorful leaves though the wind and weather was sharp … my hands were red from the cold and I kept reaching for my gloves as I walked along, only to compulsively rip them off again every time I stopped to raise the camera.
Looking through the lens, I found myself rather frustrated because I couldn’t quite get my camera to ‘see’ what I was seeing. But then it occurred to me that I wasn’t necessarily ‘seeing’ at all …I was perceiving, that is, selectively observing the view before me and interpreting it in terms of what I admired about it. The little metal machine in my hand wasn’t ‘seeing’ either … it was simply registering the optical phenomena framed by its lens. And therein lies the conundrum of photography, which is why I suppose we eagerly anticipate how a picture is going to turn out. You’d think there’d be no surprise, but there usually is – sometimes pleasing, sometimes a disappointment. As to frustration, I often try to make the camera register the image the way I ‘see’ it, only to discover that it’s record does not match my response to the view I’m actually looking at.
Nonetheless, whatever the camera does record, teaches us something about the way we perceive the world around us. The lens is maddeningly impartial, yet it can be made to manipulate and distill the view into an image that defines the moment: perhaps in range of palette, or intricacy of form and texture, or unity of atmosphere and light.
The weather just prior to these shots was rainy, windy and chilly… yet in washing clean the leaves, it made the drive to work very beautiful last week: great golden maples (none of which I could capture, as operating steering wheel and camera is not something I can juggle safely), russet oaks, and a shrub I’ve heard called ‘burning bush’ for its remarkable red glow.
The shots following were all taken in my neighborhood. Some color, yes, but also interesting palettes of greys, beiges, taupes, and browns, all emblematic of the fall season in Wisconsin... and how I (and my camera) chanced to look at it.
( More ) |
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| Lioness |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|05:10 pm] |
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Call me a LOL Cat and I will eat your head |
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| Turandot! |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|03:38 pm] |
Today I headed off early in the morning for breakfast with Randy - and then we shared a screening of Puccini's Turandot at a local theater. It's part of the MET in HD series of live simulcasts. The entire thing was amazing. First off - the production values of this particular production are STAGGERING. Entire cities and palaces depicted on stage in excruciating detail. It's worth it for the ticket price (in California, it was $22) just for the behind-the-scenes stuff they showed all the backstage crew dismantling and changing sets between acts. They had interviews with all the principles - and the technical crew - - a particularly charming interview with the propmaster who talked about creating fake severed heads for Turandot and Solemne.
AS for the actual MET production - it was phenomenal - the leads were outstanding but Marina Poplavskaya who played Liu - STOLE THE SHOW. The tragic character of this particular piece - she had all the great opera stage presence, perfect not-too-showy voice - and just beautiful. It was her Met debut - and she has a long career ahead of her.
The audience was either blue hairs or gay guys - (or folks that were combination of both) - and the production had some feed problems and cut out a few times - and every time - the little old ladies let out these gasps like their lives were ruined. These loud disapproving dramatic gasps - which prompted a guy to say at one break in the broadcast "If you don't like it - ask for your money back" (choosing tasteful not to add - "but please shut your pieholes for christsakes." It became very comical with Randy and I getting a large chuckle out of it. Apparently (speaking with other LJers that went) the satellite feeds weren't just an SF occurence.
Even with the technical misshaps? This is world class opera for $22 - with backstage access and HD projection that was like standing on stage in the middle of it all. It was really first-class. Here is the link to check them out - they are running Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Tales of Hoffman) by Jacques Offenbach in December; Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss (with the astounding beautiful and talented Susan Graham in the "trouser role") in January; Bizet's Carmen also in January with Richard Eyre & Barbara Frittoli; Simon Boccanegra by Giuseppe Verdi with none other that Placido Domingo in February; Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas in March and Armida by Gioachino Rossini in May. For more details check their website out by click here.
All in all - a relatively inexpensive way to experience world class opera! (considering you'd have to dress up - and spend $100-200 for this kind of closeness in the big halls... |
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