This weekend's opera...

The First Emperor by Tan Dun. Um, I might give it another chance some day. Kinda interesting mix of "Western" and Peking opera styles, but also a little boring at times. I mean, yeah, the yin yang master was interesting, but he tended to ramble. Everyone did, for that matter, and then a whole bunch of them die and have to come sing an aria as a ghost at the very end. Oh yay! why couldn't you have been that emotional before now? oh, I'm just cranky today.

so glad I hurried to finish this book.

RTO gave me Dewey for Christmas and I finally got around to reading it this weekend. I know kittehs aren't going to live forever and I was even joking with somebody earlier about how I was pretty sure he's gonna die before it's over, but I still cried a lot.

expanding my canvas

many people where I work have Chik-Fil-A calendars. apparently this years theme is "Bovines in Blue". Anyhoo, I finally had to stop and get a close up look at this month's cow, because I just couldn't figure out who he was supposed to be cause I was pretty sure it wasn't Hitler without a 'stache. And of course I had to explain why I needed to see the cow up close, but that was a couple weeks ago.

So today it hit me, that if I was going to, um, alter a calendar today was my last chance. Didn't want to destroy the collector's value by drawing the moustache on the calendar itself and it would take more time and increase the chances I would get caught. so I took a sharpie to a post it and just happened to cut it to a good size. (I was anticipating having to possibly cut it up a few times) Waited til I heard they were going for a meeting and then applied the post-it and then waited until it was discovered.

Coworker couldn't remember who they'd talked to about the Hitler thing and was also wondering how long it had been there. heh. Thankfully they never asked me cause I would have cracked. Just chuckled as silently as possible whenever they asked anyone about it.

It is too hot to walk the dog.

Everyone tells me, "Yeah, I have to go out at six in the morning, it's bearable then."

um, yeah, it's too hot to walk the dog.

Chess in Concert...

What the?

Wikipedia said "Tim Rice stated in the Concert's Programme that this version of Chess is the "official version", after years of different plot/song combinations."

it su-hUcks.

after perusing the Wikipedia entry, I guess I have the Broadway recording. IMO, they should run with that as is (you'll notice the wiki lists songs that weren't recorded), maybe a little dialogue, but to me the recording made sense without all the extra stuff. and the lyrics aren't as clunky to my ear. (and at this point, the characters were much more sympathetic, ie: svetlana is quite the shrew here.)

anyhoo, had thought about sending the soundtrack to my dad cause he loves the Josh Groban, but this thing is annoying. maybe spring for the Groban version of "Anthem" in itunes cause he knocked that out of the park, but go for the Broadway recording for a story that actually makes sense without too much distraction and IMO better voices.

oh, and One night in Bangkok without the flute solo? what.were.they.thinking?

apparently I missed the memo...

that said we were forming a biker gang at work.

This is from last Thursday and they were quite noisy around lunch time.

I think he's out watching the U.S. Open today...

RTO comments on Eugene Onegin

RTO: That was quite the look he just made.

MK: huh? who?

RTO: The guy with the white hair that's been looking unpleasant the whole time.

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MK: THAT'S IT!?

RTO: it's RUSSIAN!

MK: well, yeah, but still...

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rented this from netflix, it was a 2007 Met HD broadcast(there are a few pictures here). anyhoo, loved, loved, loved the production. The set was spare, but very striking with the lighting and the singing and acting were excellent. Here's a clip of the end of act one. I recommend watching the HQ version if you can. Oh, since there aren't English subtitles, Tatiana sent a letter to Onegin telling him how she feels about him and he's come to tell her he can't return her love.



watching the intermission interview afterwards, Fleming had a handfull of tissues and said this scene always gets to her.

related?

I have been taking quite a few pictures like this one lately


been having a hard time getting the camera to auto-focus. Use to be I could move the camera around till it figured it out, but that's gotten more difficult recently.

so last night as I was transferring pictures, I just happened to look at the lens and I guess the light was finally right so I could see the cracks and large hole in the shutter.

creepy things

What the?

Yep, it's a lizard carcass. been there a week or two now.

I almost stepped on this guy going out to the mailbox a couple weeks ago.

quote o' the night

RTO: My eye is twitching, but no, you jump to the girly-man conclusion, thank you so much.

puppy training update....

so I actually read the little homework page that the instructor gave us and some of their suggestions are slightly different than what she had us do in class. For example, for "leave it" the sheet said to have a treat in your hand and close your hand if the dog tries to eat it, once they get that down you can move on to throwing the treat on the floor. So I did that today and Roxie seems to understand.

The other thing was we'd pretty much given up on ever walking Roxie in a completely calm manner. The instructor had suggested we try an Easy Walk Harness but they haven't had the correct size for Roxie. saw one today at Target and bought it and OMG does it work! it only took a couple of tries for her to figure out that pulling us wasn't going to work. RTO was all, "Look I can use one finger to hold the leash" near the end of our walk.

They make one for kitties, too, but RTO says "No".

homework fun...

apparently "stay" means "run to the sofa" and she has it down cold. No wonder she had a problem with it in class.

oh now I remember...

why I hate cleaning my house. for some reason I seem to have delayed my allergies a day, but today is not fun.

silly puppy tricks....

at tonight's class we worked on "Leave it", "Take it" and "Drop it". for "leave it" we'd drop a treat on the floor tell her to "leave it" and try to distract Roxie with another treat and not pay attention to that other treat until we told her it was okay to "Take it". anyway, something she did at one point reminded me of this(language warning, but most hilarious, sad looking dog evar!).

Anyhoo, she's apparently bored with her treats now or has ADHD. we were the only ones that made it tonight, but she was all over the place. She knows the clicker means treats, but then she would get to RTO and he'd ask her to sit and she'd just turn like, "I don't really feel like doing that right now, there's possibly something interesting in the corner over there"

Hopefully, I'll be better about "doing our homework" this week.

stupid, smart dog.

So, about an hour ago I said, "We probably can't go for a walk tonight because it will be stormy" This line was on the other side of Ft. Worth.




Ever since then, Roxie has been grumbling. We can hear thunder now and see occasional lightning and it is very dark outside, but she's still whining.

Why am I still in the house?

I've been a little... um... slow today.

MK: so, you know it's always fun when you show up a little late for work and the whole company is in the atrium.

RTO: why was everyone in the atrium?

MK: oh, well see, the main boardroom is just off of there and so when they have big meetings they open the folding doors and put chairs out there...

RTO:

MK: and also the COO announced he's retiring today. That's probably what you meant by "Why was everyone in the atrium?"

RTO: yeah.

MK: yeah, I figured it out about halfway through there.

RTO: mm hmmmm.

something I learned last week...

There are serotonin receptors that affect the GI tract. I kinda had already guessed that, but the doctor confirmed it. soooooo, I'm in the process of changing medications. again. Things could get strange the next couple weeks. I'm just sayin.

I'm wondering if there's special chemicals in these...

Target has had these on sale for a couple weeks now. and I passed them up when I was there yesterday and regretting my decision now. But I eat so many when they're here.

note to self...

maybe don't load up on the Ingmar Bergman movies next time RTO's gone. better yet, not even when he's here.

Carlos favorite seat in the house...

if it's close to dinner time you can sometimes see his paw slowly reach for RTO's face. He tries to be all cool like "oh, I'm just stretching, sorry, did I snag your lip?"



if it's not feeding time, he just looks really pleased with himself most of the time.


not sure what happened this night. It's the only time I've seen him like that, but it was crackin' me up.

Hey look! I found the hip castle!

maybe I'll give you a map if you ask nicely...


I blame the lateness and my poor sleep last night...

a day of wonders... or something...

It started with finding the "dog training reward" treats bag empty in the dining room with the ziplock top still sealed and no large holes in it that we could see. I can't imagine that Carlos ate all of them and didn't get sick. He's the only one that would get up on the counter, though. He made have had some help eating them.

Then, at work I was so proud of myself for remembering to change the month on my date stamp that I didn't notice I hadn't changed the number, so several invoices got marked as "Entered June 27th, 2009"

Also at work today, I found out that I couldn't receive email from anyone outside of the company. Three years I've been an employee and they had just never set up my email fully. (I was there just over a year as a temp before that) So, all those vendor type people I talked to lately weren't stupid... possibly.

there was something else, but I've forgotten it. oh well.

and if you squint juuuuust right...

you can see a hawk eating a squirrel outside the Plano Medical Center.


I didn't figure he would let me get too close and apparently my camera phone is not so great for wildlife shots. Anyhoo, I saw him again as I was leaving the parking lot, he flew over my car and I could see the fluffy squirrel tail dangling from his claws.