Whatta Fiasco

Thanksgiving part one went splendidly. We had dinner with family and friends and a bunch of other people at a cafe in Cottonwood Falls. Some good friends of ours help out with a community potluck there and invited us to join them. Good people, excellent turkey, oyster stuffing, and more pies than you could shake a stick at. Not that many people were shaking sticks. Mostly they were wielding forks to great effect. Aside from a temptation to try too many kinds of pie, it also made it easier to enjoy the day without overeating. And Ms. K. was sweet as can be, even letting complete strangers hold her, something she’s been loath to do of late without strenuous vocal protest. Thanksgiving part two is tomorrow at my parents’ house and should also be good. I haven’t seen them in too long now.

My mother-in-law is doing ok. She went in for her cat scan yesterday morning, but (as expected) it will be next week before we hear anything back on it. In the meantime she’s comfortable, except for apparently coming down with the cold that everyone around here seems to be getting.

I’ve seen a couple of more movies in the past week. Almodovar’s Talk to Her was a creepy, dreamy film with Geraldine Chaplin (Charlie Chaplin’s daughter) playing a dance instructor. It’s too bad I didn’t get to see this one in the theater, but the commentary track is good too.

The Eel, directed by Shohei Imamura and starring Koji Yakusho (Shall We Dansu? and Tampopo) is another sweet, strange film with a generous dose of plot-related violence, odd neighbors, pretty women, blackmail, and an eel. I’ll be continuing to see the rest of Koji Yakusho’s films.

Last night I watched a borrowed copy of Dogma, and was disappointed in the wooden dialog coming from so many A-list actors. Alan Rickman was the only one who managed to consistently sell his character and he didn’t get nearly enough screen time for my taste. Then this morning I watched an early Luc Besson film, Subway, a strange and mostly light-weight film. It was amusing to see how the subtitling and the dubbing diverged wildly at times, but I’d skip this one and watch The Professional instead.

It’s been rather too exciting over the last thirty-six hours or so and precious little of it has involved sleep. Hubby took his mom into the doctor yesterday morning and they did a sonogram and an X-ray. The words were not encouraging but it will be next week before the test results are in so they can decide what to do. After fencing practice last night, hubby and I pulled into the driveway (oh, the silliness of driving back in two cars, but schedules require it) only to have him pop out to tell me he was on his way back to Kansas City to take his mom to the emergency room

As it turns out, it wasn’t as much of an emergency as she had thought, but it as good to get it checked out and now they have a cat scan scheduled for Friday morning. We still won’t have official word until some time next week, but they really need to know what they’re dealing with before they start doing things.

They reassured her, sent her home, and hubby got back at at around five in the morning. I didn’t think we’d be doing Thanksgiving tomorrow, but barring some change in her status overnight, we’ll be going. We’ll just be taking it from there. But because we decided to plan on dinner tomorrow, I made a trip to the grocery store to get supplies for our contribution. Silly me to leave grocery shopping for the night before a holiday. You;ll never see so many people standing in line with disposable aluminum roasting pans!
Life just keeps on going and soon I’ll get my second loaf of bread out of the oven. Have a great holiday.

It’s been busy and there’s been plenty going on, but not a lot to write about. Lisa finally cooked herself a dinner with only the mildest of promptings. It did take some prompting (if you’re hungry, go look in the cabinets and the freezer and find something you’d like to eat), but I’m still counting it as a victory. I’m still waiting for the day when she decides for herself that it makes sense to cook something (other than instant oatmeal), even if it is just a microwave dinner.

A company better known for its tax preparation services spent some unknown but greater than zero sum of money to send me a fancy mailing explaining in detail how they had done a detailed analysis of my mortgage needs. After careful examination they determined that I could save zero dollars each and every month by taking out a zero percent interest loan of zero dollars with zero points from them. It also included a (not a real) check for two-hundred dollars toward closing costs. It was the most amusing junk mail I’ve received (and bothered to read) in quite a long time.

Near holiday plans still haven’t gelled. Max should decide today if he’s going with us on Sunday. Louise will need to decide by sometime tomorrow if we’re going to do the meet part way and swap a kid for the day deal on Thanksgiving proper. I have about zero interest in any holiday spirit right now but it will be nice to see people I haven’t seen in a while.

For this first time in three weeks I got the trash out to the curb before seven-thirty, including the irreparable and undonatable dead clothing from out of Max’s room. This, of course, ensured that the chances of the trash truck coming by before eight were some exceedingly close approximation of zero. Just so long as the trash is gone when I get home, I’ll be happy.

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Here are a (very) few pictures I took with my camera phone back on Veteran’s day.

On Friday night after fencing practice, four of us decided to try someplace different for dinner, since the regular brew house is much too busy (and noisy and smoky) on a Friday night. That’s how we ended up at Governor Stumpy’s. The burgers were greasy but good. The ribs were quite acceptable. And the fried fish wasn’t too greasy at all. Skip the garlic mashed potatoes though. When hubby ordered a Guinness float for dessert, the bartender brought it over himself to find out if it was something we liked or if we were just doing it on a lark. They’re going to remember us there, and we’ll likely be back again on another Friday.

The next afternoon I went to my first Saturday practice since we started them up again. It felt strange to be driving to fencing on a weekend and not be going to a tournament. And it felt strange to have gotten home late the night before, slept in, and then gone back into fencing. But it was a good practice. My legs were still a bit sore from all the footwork I’d done the night before, so I did another full set again. Aside from all the time it takes, I think I’m going to like practicing four times a week.

Then it was after two in the afternoon and we hadn’t had anything to eat all day so we stopped at a chain Mexican grill and I had two fish tacos. Oh my. I’d never had fish tacos before and had been a little doubtful. They were wonderful. Little bits of fried fish hidden under a blanket of spicy sauce, shredded cabbage (not lettuce!) and fresh diced tomato, all wrapped in soft warm corn tortillas. I didn’t even mind the cilantro, they were so good. Next time though, I’ll just order one of them.

After practice we had our first decent session of bridge playing since the week before renfest season started. It’s been too long and it was nice to get back to. Ms. K. thought it was great galloping fun ti sit on my shoulders, bang on my head and pull my hair, for all of about ten minutes. Then it was back to wanting a parent again. But she settled down enough to help us play cards after dinner.

Tonight we had very light snow flurries on our way to Ariadne’s graduation party and on the way home again. And while we were there, me (the not a football fan) got sucked into watching the last few minutes of the Chiefs’ game and saw them win in the last few seconds of the game. I still don’t know what “downs” are and you shouldn’t look for me at Arrowhead stadium, but it was kind of fun to watch. But where was the marching band at half time?

The concert on Thursday night was magnificent. Musica Antigua Köln, a baroque orchestra from Germany, was just splendid. Nobody stands in front to conduct, but there’s no mistaking that Reinhard Goelbel is the director. And you always know when the music is about to start for real because that’s when he pulls his bright red glasses out of his pocket and puts them on. The man has quite a stage presence and looks like he’d be a lot of fun to go out drinking with. Watching them play, it was clear that all of them were having as much fun as the audience was.

Then Nancy Argenta, the soprano, came out in a stunning dark blue velvet drapey thing that practically purred. And her voice was beautiful and the audience was appreciative. It was a nice change form the bel canto Donizetti at the opera earlier this month.

Then Nathalie Stutzman, the contralto, came out, a tall plain woman with broad shoulders, a slight stoop and short dark hair. She as wearing a serious black suit with an amazing curve in the cut of the pockets. When she opened her mouth to sing, there wasn’t anyone else left on the stage with her. The balm of Gilead came pouring out and her body became electric. The two of them sang Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater (which I had never heard before but would like to hear again) as if they were lovers, but Nathalie was my hands down favorite.

The audience for the chamber music was different from that for the opera, which should have been no surprise but was. If anything, it’s slightly older and quite a bit more formal. Maybe it’s because of the smaller venue where everyone sees everyone else, and it’s in a church. Maybe it’s because each concert only has one performance, so all the season ticket holders see each other every time. And I don’t think they do student rush tickets for these. [Whoops, yes they do! And it's quite a good deal too.] Oh, and this audience doesn’t dole out an automatic standing ovation, which I was pleased to see, although they did clap enthusiastically enough to get the singers back out on stage three times before calling it a night.

My dilemma now is that I would really enjoy having season tickets for the Friends of Chamber Music. I’ll have to look into it. I should be able to get a significant discount, but I’ll have to see if the possible schedule conflicts will make it worth it for me. Argh. They participate in the employee share program, which means my employer will pay half the price. And I can do a pick three package for only only a little more than the price of a single ticket and about what I paid for dinner last night. It’s time to check the calendar.

Imagine a foreign language film you can watch without subtitles because there’s so little dialog they didn’t bother subtitling it. Imagine a cross between Fellini and Buster Keaton in wildly shifting shades of monochromatic intercut with full color dreams. Tuvalu wasn’t anything like I had expected but it was also unexpectedly funny. Why didn’t I expect a comedy to be funny? You’re not likely to run across it by accident or at your local video rental place, but it’s a fun film if you get the chance.

I finally figured out the problem with the telephone application I was writing. It ran just fine on the emulator but I couldn’t get it onto the phone. It turns out that the reason I couldn’t find a specific claim that this phone supports MIDP 2.0 is because it doesn’t. Argh. I recompiled under 1.0, ripped out a few features that aren’t compatible, and was able to load it onto the phone with no problem. Now I just have to debug a code problem that causes the application to immediately terminate when loaded on the phone, even though it runs just fine on the emulator. I’m just glad I don’t have to pay by the kilobyte for transferring data to my phone.

Putting away my technological toys, tonight (thanks to Rowan graciously offering me one of her tickets) I’ll be listening to a baroque orchestra. But first I have to figure out what to do for dinner.

On the way home from fencing practice tonight I was listening to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now and they were talking about the expected protests and police response to the FTAA meeting scheduled in Miami this week. Toodling along down the highway and here someone mention the anarchists and I do a mental double take. Anarchists protesting free trade? Welcome to the fun house.

Well, my weekend is finally over. Saturday night I drove to Sioux City, Iowa by myself (Ariadne drove up the night before in order to fence foil Saturday morning and hubby had work that kept him home) to get some sleep before an early start.

The fencing itself went just fine. We had thirteen for the women’s event, five of whom (yours truly included) were left handers. Amazing. And I had a great time, mostly because my fencing brain was engaged more often than not. Best of all, I made it to the first break on my direct elimination bout, gave my opponent fits, and eventually lost fifteen to twelve. A new personal best! And I got there by watching my opponent fencing in pools, talking to her about the problems I saw (she’s been fencing for about eight months less than I have) and then using exactly that same knowledge to get touches on her in DEs. With just a little more patience, I could have beaten her, even though she went on to win the silver medal in the event. I’m looking forward to fencing her again.

After the women’s event I went head and competed in the men’s event as well, with the knowledge that I would get beaten soundly. It was just practice. And then I came within a whisker of beating a very good fencer in a pool bout. It is a strange thing to be celebrating getting beaten, but I was pumped afterward.

That’s how I finished a full day of fencing without having won a single bout but being very happy with my fencing and glad to have been there. There were a few difficult minutes, times I had to talk myself out of being unhappy, but it was a very good day and I had fun. Oh, and I got a ribbon for being the highest finishing unrated fencer in the women’s event.

And I know that I worked harder than usual because this morning I was totally wiped and called in sick. Maybe it was all that fencing with a five hour drive on top of it. Anyhow sleeping in did the trick (and was clearly needed), and then I had a great fencing practice tonight. Hare of the dog? It works for me.

Back to work tomorrow.

How could I not fall in love with a phone that gives me another excuse to write code? Code I can use, if only. If only I could figure out the magic word to make it load. On the phone.

But java is still a three-eyed frog with holes in the knees of its genes.

We finally got to see Matrix Revolutions at the theater. (Maybe a few spoilers below.) But first we took a ride on the sushi train. It’s been much too long since I’d been to Sakura, and even though they don’t put out a lot of nigiri during the week, it’s still good food. Rowan and Ariadne we part of the party and we all had a good time, even if Rowan is still not eating seafood.

After Saturday night’s debacle I was worried about how crazy the theater would be, especially as it took forever to get our bill and escape the restaurant. Needless worry. The four of us nearly doubled the size of the audience in the theater. And all those complaints I’d heard about wooden dialog? Completely warranted. The first thirty minutes (or up until the first action scene) were particularly wretched. Awful, bad. Stinko. The plot was both simplistic and contrived (I don’t buy the trainman at all) and uneven, but it got the job done. I know there was supposed to be (should have been!) a contrast between emotional humans and unemotional machines, but the programs once again showed more emotion than either in this universe. Still, the real stars of the show were the machines. Things whizzing by and ships flying crazy, other things blowing up and being spectacular. All you mecha game fiends out there (that includes you, Jon) should take the time to see this one on the big screen.

Was the philosophy really gone as I had heard.? Well, mostly. Not entirely. This film in particular from the series is well attuned to anyone who’s been reading semiotics. Sign and signifier. And the sons of light and the sons of darkness do their final battle and reach a mythologically satisfactory resolution while tying in the Christ metaphor. You do not defeat your shadow by attacking it directly! And if they hadn’t figured that one out I would have had to track someone down and berate them.