Well, Reyn ........ if I gave all the details, I'm sure I'd be banned from the forum. :wink: hehehe
And Eva, tis good to see you, also!
I should be around more often, soon.
shewolfnm wrote:Reyn wrote:This post by shewolf!
Damned funny. Hell I howled so much my wife was asking what the heck is it all about.
did she make you wait 15 minutes?
No, it was only a couple of minutes or so. I was
relieved!
justa_babbling_brooke wrote:Well, Reyn ........ if I gave all the details, I'm sure I'd be banned from the forum. :wink: hehehe
And Eva, tis good to see you, also!
I should be around more often, soon.
Well, no we sure wouldn't want that to happen to you!
We're looking forward to seeing
more of you soon! :wink:
[size=7]As soon as she gets out of that hot tub![/size]
Reyn wrote:Eva, have you had "
the Brooke experience", too?
Of course I have. Why else do you think they've sold so many of those things?!
The other day (yesterday?), in the coffeeshop, this cutest little kid... three and a half, he was. Son of that guy who plays in that band I love (or son of his gf, anyway, I dunno). This sweet smart-aleck kid - who is bilingual. First, Zs who runs the place folds him a little paper boat, he, in Hungarian: "but it's a small boat!". Zs, in irrefutable logic: "well, thats because it was a small paper". Little later, kid is carried off home by his mum, while rock musician dad-type stays to talk business. The little boy blows him a kiss and then another one, in between exclaiming, "I love you!". I love you, he calls back, but the kid: "No, I love you, blowing another kiss and a last one. "I love you!"
Adorable... <smiles>
Then there's the other boy about the same age who's always brought in by his mum and who drinks the foam milk from the cappucino - very smart, alert face and always in the best of moods, very sweet little boy, tho the mother always looks very tired; the other day he dropped something on the floor. "Oops", I smile, and he looks up at me all happy, trying that new, never-heard of word on his tongue: "oops" ... "Oops!", he turns around saying it out loud with emphasis, then turning to his mother to attract her attention grinning madly, "oops! oops!".
New words are cool. ;-)
words are cool. and email is cool. i wish i used it more often.
today i was battling statistics again. nothing rocket-scientific, just plain crosstabulations. correlating agreement with statements (scale from fully agree to fully disagree) with nationality... i was cracking my brain for hours, googling, reading up manuals, on how to measure strength of the relaitonship between the two. finally i decided to write an email to my advisor, who's a quantitative research person. i write this elaborate long email, with two attachments - just that alone took me an hour. she replies in less then two minutes, answers in caps, essentially telling me i worry too much about things that are bollocks...
i had to smile, for i remembered how we took her class. four of us - the entire class - spent every saturday in our little run down computer lab, spending 6, 7, 8 hours on homework for this class. usually getting it wrong anyway, but collectively. we became best friends over the semester. adam, hernan, marcela, and i. whenever we would email this professor after hours of agonizing struggle, she'd email back within seconds: "don't do a damn thing more, call me NOW!" or "don't you move, i'm on my way!" and she would come.
that's why i had to grin when i got her email within two minutes, years and years later.
beautiful sunny day today, so we decided to cross the border to watertown, new york via the 1000 island bridge. it's a leisurely drive of about an hour along the st. lawrence river.
came to the u.s. border and waived our canadian passports at the u.s. customs agent. he had a quick look and noticed our german names and birthplaces. so he engaged us in a leisurely chat about germany while the cars were lined up behind us - mostly u.s. cars going back to the u.s. , of course nobody dared to honk ! finally waived us on and wished us "happy shopping" . usually find the u.s. customs agents at our crossing to be a congenial bunch, hope it stays that way. hbg
Attending the premiere performance last night ...
the fellow who sang Renaud was positively giddy at the audience response last night
Quote:Courtesy of Opera Atelier, Toronto's Elgin Theatre is hosting the first North American production of Armide, Jean-Baptiste Lully's masterpiece of French Baroque opera. It only took 319 years.
Despite the lag, audiences will find contemporary resonance in this tale of a Christian knight and a Muslim sorceress, set in 1099, during the First Crusade. "They'll unfortunately recognize each side's insistence that the enemy can only be seen in two dimensions," says Opera Atelier artistic director Marshall Pynkoski.
Armide was inspired by an enormously influential epic poem by Torquato Tasso, which spawned 40 operas and countless other artworks. But Lully's Armide is remarkable for its twist ending. Instead of having the knight Renauld conquer Armide and convert her to Christianity, composer Lully and librettist Philippe Quinault plotted an equally sad fate for both protagonists. That was a radical move in the court of Louis XIV, where Muslims were seen as a joke. "I can't even begin to understand how this got past the court censors," says Pynkoski.
Armide is also extraordinary for depicting characters' psychological development, long before the concept was formalized by Freud or dramatized on Sex and the City.
A turning point comes when Armide (Stephanie Novacek) is poised to slay the sleeping Renauld (Colin Ainsworth), until he stirs and she sees his beautiful face. "To her horror, she realizes she is feeling desire for the first time in her life," says Pynkoski. "She lies to herself in a way that is so innocent and so sad."
"To kill him is too easy," Armide sings. "I will humiliate him by taking him as my lover."
The pre-concert chat, had among other things, a Persian poet who translated parts of the libretto and read it to us in Persian - and an artist who talked about the development of the beautiful writing form of Persia.
http://www.operaatelier.com/home_armide.htm
http://www.operaatelier.com/pdf/3306OC_NewProdNewRoles.pdf
<tossing in a link that references the illuminated miniatures and the calligrapher, and discusses how the company directors addressed the fact that 17th century French audiences would have understood more about the Christian/Muslim culture clashes than most modern audiences>
When i got home this morning at4 am to an nice warm bed.
My husband responding to an SOS and coming home early (yes, I know, a bit pitiful that he's even at work on a Sunday to come home from early, but I takes what I can gets) and watching a very bored sozlet while I sat and drank tea and stopped coughing so much and finished a REALLY good book. ("Family Matters" by Rohinton Mistry.)
Ahhh. Feeling so much better.
sozobe, I'm smiling to hear that you're feeling better and that the sozlet is well enough to be bored instead of being so sick herself.
I got stuff done this morning! And then I had my favorite class, creative movement with the four-year-olds. And then I ran into an old friend from high school who I haven't seen in 12 years! And now I'm listening to the Drama class and it's always fun.
I like Tuesdays.
I did not smile. I screamed with happiness
I finished my temple, well at least three rooms, the important rooms, the main rooms.
My study, to write, and Study. It's exquisite, a replica of a St. Petersburg Greek Study.
Yessssssss
My Library, a replica of The Library of Alexandria, elegant.
My beautiful Courtyard, replica of a real Greek courtyard, with marble statues, marble benches, and white flowers all over.
yesssssss For social occasions, and poetry readings with special friends.
yessssssssssssss
Angelique, you have too much time on your hands.
gustavratzenhofer wrote:Angelique, you have too much time on your hands.
Not enough time in the world for me. I was the third one to finish the assignment. Not bad, I was so scared, and frustrated thinking I was not going to make it. Others are still working on their assignments. Hahahahahahahahahahhah I did it
I'm meeting Ul and JoeFX tomorrow!
congrats, AE!
