As I mentioned earlier, I’ve made a kitty litter cake for the Trailer Trash New Years party I’m hosting with Kenz & Brad at their place. Below are some photos. It really is tasty. Chocolate and yellow cake, crushed (and dyed) vanilla sandwich cookies with layers of vanilla pudding, covered with a few melted tootsie rolls. DELISH!
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My throat is scratchy. Really really scratchy. I’m fighting a sore throat because the final three performances of Rudolph are this weekend, and I MUST be well for them. Got to go out with a bang.
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Did I really eat that much over the course of two days? I surely did. I ate, and I ate, and I ate some more while playing Super Mario World, which was beyond a doubt the second best gift I got this year.
Second best?
Well yeah. Being able to be home with my family, enjoy some good conversation, and enjoy the faces as we all opened our gifts. That was the best gift. SO not about the material, but about the feelings and all that warm and fuzzy stuff.
Good times.
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I’m helping to host a trailer trash new years party with some friends, and the laundry list of naughty foods is a mile long. Tippy top of the list is deep fried mac & cheese. I’ve seen a dozen recipes around the internets but I need to decide just which one is right for me. Basically they all involve baked mac & cheese, frozen, breaded and fried. It should be fun, to say the least.
Is it really just a few days until 2008? Where has the year gone?
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Last night Amy picked me up and we headed out to Skokie to see the one-woman show Tea At Five starring Tovah Feldshuh. She was nothing short of brilliant, and I was able to meet her and the knock-out gorgeous playwright Matthew Lombardo.
The play offers two periods of Katharine Hepburn’s life. One set in 1983 right after a car accident, and the other in 1938 as Hepburn is trying to land the lead in Gone With the Wind. The entire show takes place in her family estate at Fenwick.
Lombardo and Feldshuh weave together the stories of Hepburns’ life in a myriad of ways. Stories of Spencer Tracy and their infamous affair come to light (”He grew me up”, she recalls) as well as some dark insights into the way Hepburn became, well, Hepburn.
Tea At Five plays only through this Sunday at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts. Run, don’t walk.
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Last night I hit the Annoyance Theater for Dick O’Day’s Bingo. The picture is of Dick and Rusty Schwimmer. It was truly a lovely event, and the fabulous Carole Ann from The Joans was present to help with the prize selections and the bingo card verification. I won a copy of The Poseidon Adventure and my very own David (of the David and Goliath fame) doll.
Who could ask for more?
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My SmugMug gallery is coming along nicely. I went all the way for Pro, which isn’t cheap, but it’s infinitely customizable. You can always find it via the photos link above.
I won’t be posting to Flickr anymore. And in fact, I think I’ll be killing off my flickr galleries slowly. MANY people have said they want to purchase my photos, and SmugMug will offer a faster more efficient service for that. Plus I can watermark my stuff so people can’t directly take it.
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Holiday parties, Christmas cheer, baking and Japanese. Busier weekend than I anticipated.
It’s been a wild ride this weekend and I got sick which is horrible. Everyone in the cast seems to have the sniffles. We even lost our head Elf Terry this past weekend, and David had to go on for him. Totally fun in every way, but the Elven dance numbers felt spare without Terry on stage. I also felt like I couldn’t hear a lick of music at the shows. Somehow I can hear the opening of all the music numbers, but once they begin the sound drops out. It’s not because I’m sick either ’cause its been that way since the get-go.
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I broke up with my Japanese teacher. She was naturally courteous and happy for me that I am pursuing other things, but as she was leaving she whispered so gently “Peter-san, I will miss you a lot.” I couldn’t even look her in the eye. I bowed as deeply as I could and in the most humble form of Japanese I knew, I thanked her deeply for all her time with me. And then as I shut the door I proceeded to cry like a baby for nearly twenty minutes.
I felt bad. I FEEL bad. I’m all ripped up inside that I won’t be seeing her as regularly as before. Over the last four years she has become such a wonderfully comfortable part of my life and has truly taught me more than anyone else. I don’t just mean the language or the culture. Facing her, talking with her, sharing her wisdom has moved the way I think about the reactions and interactions we experience as people to another level. Kind, warm, and incredibly generous, Mieko Fujii changed my life forever.
Oh christ my eyes are welling up even as I type this.
I plan, each month, to at least have dinner with her. Damn it, I am crying. Here at my desk. At work. I have to stop writing about this now. It’s still too much.
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Weekends don’t seem too long until you add three shows and a million other things. Then they seem like they’re going to take an eternity to get through.
Last night I had some Scrabble & red wine time with some folks. Tons of fun and I mostly came in second place. Particularly fitting since I’d been watching Akeelah and The Bee recently, so words were on my brain.
Tonight, post Rudolph, there’s a party that I must attend. I don’t know how in the world I’m going to make it through everything, but I’m a trooper. Will Trista be there? I hopes she will be up in there…
We’re approaching graduation for guitar classes. In two short weeks will be my last guitar class, and while I thought before I would continue, I’m going to stop taking class. I have tons of material to work on with all the handouts we’ve been given. And the school will be there any time if I want to continue studying. But I’ve learned enough for the moment, and since I don’t have my own guitar (and the goal here was really bouzouki) I’m going to save my coin for Greek classes.
Am I really called at 9:15pm tonight? Oh joy. Here we go.
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I began studying Japanese in early 2004. It’ll be nearly four years since I began and I have to admit, I’m as competent as I want to be at the moment. I can’t read Japanese well, but I’m conversationally pretty good. When I watch Japanese TV, I can understand basically what is going on. I’m not a poet (I know it) but I CAN speak the language and understand when it’s spoken to me.
It’s time I stopped. Seriously, I’m going to quit taking lessons.
Over the last year I’ve been studying Greek pretty mildly. I haven’t been really active, but it’s my own damn fault. There have been other projects I’ve been working on, but somehow, being Greek has crept into my head in a big way. I want to be more Greek. I want to speak beautiful Greek. Although I can understand it at this stage, I’m so rusty that I’d have a hard time trying to have a serious conversation in Greek.
I can ask where the toilet is. I can order food. I can even talk lightly about things in the world. But I am nowhere near as conversational in Greek as I am in Japanese. And that’s pretty sad. I should be able to really speak the language, and at this junction I’m not.
So with a heavy heart I’ll let my teacher know this weekend. *sigh*
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So I was poking around on the Chicago Tribune website as usual and came across this little tidbit:
Merriam-Webster’s Word of ‘07: ‘W00t’
Of all the words that were in the running, w00t won. I must say that I beg to differ, because a word like sardoodledom is far more amusing to say and use. Plus it has a better definition than w00t.
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Hey everyone. Please go vote for my kitteh Oberon.
Oberon on ICanHazCheezburger.com!
I wanna see his name in lights on icanhazcheezburger.com!!
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First, Hmart’s website now offers Korean recipes. Yay!
The weekend was long but good, full of shows, parties, and lots of napping in between. My guitar classes are drawing to a close and I think we’re going to end up playing a medley of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” and “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” for our graduation song.
Only at Old Town would you blend GnR with Nicks & Petty. Delish.
I’m considering taking private lessons from my teacher, but the fees are pretty steep. I don’t know though what my appetite will be after this class, so I need to think about it for a while. I need lots of practice, but it’s just that, practice. I know the theory, my hands just need to catch up with my brain.
Thankfully I’m reclaiming my life bit by bit as the glow of rehearsal fades into the back-drop. I have about a million people to see and a million things to do, but hey, ’tis the season for being rushed around like a chicken with my head cut off right?
One *tiny* quip tho. We’re still getting notes on the show. Um, it’s open. And they are laughing.
‘Nuff said.
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The list was announced just a bit ago I think. So the sites are down…
Gonna keep my eyes open for the nominees tho!!
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It often happens during a disaster that the HAM radio operators are the folks on the scene, ensuring communications are moving around. Local Nets and individuals who participate in emergency disaster planning provide a communications backbone SECOND TO NONE when something goes wrong.
http://www.kptv.com/weatheralert/14776224/detail.html
As I study for my General License (I’m currently a Technician) and become more of a part of the HAM community, I’ll be looking to join the local emergency response teams.
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