annathepiper | Busy, busy weekend all around! (Reply)

Friday night we had

jessicac, babies Lillian and Moira, and off-LJ-friend Danny over for an evening of pizza and video games. A pleasant time was had by all, and I made sure, since I wasn't involved in the gaming, to wear my Entertaining the Babies necklaces: the queer pride rings (which are jangly and brightly colored) and the ocarina (which makes whistly noises and which was therefore Quite Fascinating to one-year-old Moira, once she got over the whole AIGH SKEERY STRANGER PERSON shyness). It was also charming to watch Moira be quite fascinated by the bright shiny video games all the big people were playing, and she kept trying to help Mommy by pressing buttons on her Wii controller. Hee.

Saturday night we had another hang-out session with Kathryn and Erik and Lillian, only this was dinner at the Pike Place Brewery downtown prior to seeing Carmina Burana at Benaroya Hall. Q was supposed to sing in it but has been fighting off some ick lately and hasn't been up to the singing, but we did have a nice dinner. And Lillian amused us all by making quite the mess of chicken and broccoli bits all over herself, the high chair, and the floor. It is in fact quite astonishing to me how a baby of her tiny size can make that big of a mess. I expect her ability as a Force of Destruction will correspondingly grow as she gets bigger. Especially she's also quite, quite smart.

Carmina Burana, meanwhile, was highly enjoyable. As the opening act we had Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35--featuring Joan Kwuon on violin. Ms. Kwuon did some stunning things with her instrument during the Allegro moderato movement, hitting some jaw-dropping high notes. I had no idea violins could make noises that high. I was quite, quite impressed. And during the main event, I was also quite impressed by baritone Lucas Meachem getting quite cheerfully into his role, by tenor Stanford Olsen hamming it up beautifully in his, and by the purity of the voice of soprano Maureen McKay. Excellent performances all around, and bonus points for the amusing lyrics in general. Half the fun was reading through the translations and comparing notes with

spazzkat and

solarbird after the show. Q had warned us that the translations provided were, shall we say, less blunt than the actual words, and I caught at least one part where that was the case as I said to Dara: "So, those birds in that bit about the springtime? They weren't hopping, were they?" No. No they weren't. ;)

And today, I met up with

mamishka to see Ratatouille. Which, as Pixar films generally are, was charming and funny and all around just generally wonderful. She gave me a lift home afterwards, and we promised to touch bases again later this week so she can finish getting caught up on the last few episodes of the current season of Doctor Who. Me, I watched another Classic Who myself: "Resurrection of the Daleks", a Fifth Doctor story, with Turlough and Tegan. In fact, the last one with Tegan, it turned out. And while I will say that Five came through that story to me as not half bad, he still doesn't hold a candle to Tom Baker for me. But, I need to give him a fairer shake and see a few more of his stories.

I have hopes for a quieter weekend this next weekend, because the one after that will be chock full of GREAT BIG SEA! ^_^

Miles since the 8th: 21.9
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2178.1
Miles out of Isengard: 385.1
Miles to Minas Tirith: 400.9