This past week, minus writing, plus symphony

[annathepiper]

+0: Sunday: Went to go see Shrek 2 with mamishka and solarbird Sunday afternoon, and that was a decent amount of Funny. I have had it said to me that Antonio Banderas completely steals the movie with his voice acting for Puss in Boots. Those who have said this to me are correct. ;)

+1: Monday: Lots of German geeking that day, as previously mentioned. Also got my unemployment claim filed, though it turned out that I confused the web page through which I'm supposed to be able to do this online. It asked me if I'd had any holiday pay for the previous week, and since Volt's supposed to be giving me holiday pay for 7/5, I told it yes. Then it thought I had worked that week, except I hadn't, since 7/5 was down for the last day of my contract. So it told me to actually call in and talk to a representative. Of course, it turns out that that week was going to be my waiting week anyway and I won't get paid for it, so oh well.

Dara and I also went to go talk with a guy about arranging the mortgage for the Kenmore house, and that went thankfully well. Which was what we needed to have happen, after the first guy Dara tried got so lame as to fail to tell us that he was changing companies, for chrissakes.

+2: Tuesday: Got myself out of the house and wandered down to the U Village, mostly for the sake of getting outside and getting some sunshine, but also to bum around Barnes & Noble, have a smoothie and a hot pretzel, and just in general be somewhere besides Inside the House. Tuesday also involved German geeking, and carrying out my civic duty and getting in phone calls to both of my state Senators to get them to vote against the FMA. That was a little scary, but ultimately satisfying.


-/+3: Wednesday: As per my previous post on the topic, that day was all about the adventures in thyroid surgery briefing. Dara and I also went and had lunch on Capitol Hill after, as she had to go to the dentist for a cleaning that afternoon so we thought we'd kill the time. We went to the sushi joint we first went to way back when lyonesse first introduced us to sushi, which was sort of nicely nostalgic, though the place we go to now is better. ;) And we went to the Dilettante after, though Dara had to leave without getting anything as she had to go scamper on over to the dentist. I hung out long enough to eat my Coupe (yum), read more of With Child, and then drove home.

I had a nice chat with my brother's wife that afternoon, after I got back from the aforementioned lunch and dessert and wanted to call and let my brother and his family know about the updates. The most charming parts of that conversation involved hearing little Lydia, Marc and Didi's second youngest child, yelling "HELLO DADDY HELLO DADDY HELLO DADDY HELLO DADDY" in the background. I am informed by her mother that Lydia is absolutely fascinated by the phones, and is furthermore convinced that all phones allow her father to talk to her. She becomes most put out when the phone does not talk to her in Daddy's voice. ;)

Also, I believe it was on Wednesday that I did in fact finish off With Child--though I was chagrined to discover that it is in fact the third book of the Kate Martenelli series and not the second one. Apparently I mistakenly chose that one when trying to buy the second book. Whoops.

-/+4: Thursday: Yesterday, Dara and I started in with trying to sort through our years of accumulated stuff to figure out what we keep and what we pitch, to prepare for the impending move. Most of my activities in this vein involved digging through ancient floppies, some of which were for my Amiga and some of which were for subsequent Windows boxen used both at work and at home, and getting all the old files off of there for burning onto CD. This will be so that I can then bulk-erase all the floppies and get rid of them. If anybody local to Seattle wants a whole pile of floppy disks, Dara and I can help you out with that. It's been pretty funny going through the whole lot of them and looking at some old copies of status reports and stuff that I wrote for work in 1992 and 1993, and a project plan that I wrote in 1996.

More amusingly, I found old mail from the Two Moons wizards email list that goes clear back to 1993. The really sort of darkly funny and simultaneously sad part of this is that even back that far, we were arguing on the staff about stagnation on the game and trying to liven things up. Here's the real kicker: we argued about, and subsequently shot down, a proposal to timejump the game.

Also as per a previous post, yesterday was also about the getting the rejection letter from Tor. But I am at least somewhat satisfied that I did make myself write as well as formulate the plan for what to do next. I am not yet certain whether I will be able to get Faerie Blood back out before we move, though. We've got a LOT of purging of stuff to do, and packing of the stuff we keep.


+++5: Friday: This afternoon, Dara and I teamed up with spazzkat, jiapa, rmd, claudia_, and kathrynt to do sushi at the place we like to go to NOW, mentioned above. Much sushi was consumed; much medical discussion was engaged in, since between my upcoming surgery, Regis' own recent adventures in that area, and Amy's being a senior resident, it seemed like a rather natural direction for the conversation to go. However, the entire point of Regis and Claudia's presence in town was for the performance tonight of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings symphony, in which our very own Kathryn performed! (And which our very own emmacrew would also have been performing if she hadn't been having her own medical adventures this week. Stupid appendix!)

We went to the performance tonight, Dara and Paul and myself, along with wrog. This was my third visit to Benaroya Hall, but there's something extra special about being there and knowing a friend is on stage as part of the performance.

Having happily devoured all three soundtracks from all three of the movies, I was not particularly surprised by any of the music--the newness for me was in this particular arrangement and in that it was being performed by a different set of performers than the ones on the recordings, which are emblazoned into my brain. I kept pleasantly travelling back and forth between appreciating the individuality of this performance and appreciating how they were in fact quite nicely capturing the flavor of the music I have admired in the released recordings and in the films themselves.

Very excellent work by Sissel, the soloist who performed during the latter four movements and who had an amazingly crystalline, clear voice; equal kudos to David Farris, the boy soprano who hit some absolutely stunning notes. I was also impressed by the trumpet work and the percussion... and, of all things, the lighting, which kept changing to reflect the atmosphere of the pieces and to add to the images evoked by them. There was a huge projection screen over the performers, on which lots of conceptual art kept coming up: drawings and watercolors and concept sketches done by Alan Lee and John Howe, and the images and the lighting did a fine job of adding to the flavor of the music. I was particularly visually caught by the leafy filter over green light for the sequences to represent Lorien and Fangorn Forest, and by the lurid fiery reddish-orange wash of light for Moria and the Balrog.

Kathryn warned us, and she was right, that Seattle audiences are very easily prone to giving standing ovations. Tonight was no exception, and though those of us in our group didn't initially stand up I decided I had to because HI Q! THIS IS ME APPRECIATING YOU PERFORMING IN PUBLIC. :D And there was one funny bit where the audience sort of collectively decided to stop clapping and prepare to go home--except NO WAIT, there's Howard Shore coming back out! So we all kind of went "oh okay" and resumed with the applause.

I turned to Dara and chirped, "Isn't this the part where I'm supposed to be shouting GREAT! BIG! SEA!" And she answered, "They didn't play 'Donkey Riding'!" Hee hee hee.

BOY, I wanted to be down there with that orchestra. But there are only a couple of flutists in the Seattle Symphony so they aren't about to need any more any time soon--and Zartouhi Dombourian Eby could easily slay me where I stand with her piccolo. I've got the album she released. She is a wicked good piccolo player. But BOY, I wanted to be down there with that orchestra.

All in all, a quite satisfying close to the week.

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

what's the place to do sushi now? still i heart?

[solarbird]

I Heart is great; there's another place we've been meaning to try for a couple of years(!) now that's supposed to be great as well. And some of the old cheap sushi places are still there and still good, too, like the one in Wallingford. ^_^

Aoki's still has the best futomaki, tho'. Not the best anything else, but the best futomaki goes a long way. ^_^

[annathepiper]

As Dara has already mentioned, yeah. :) We keep making noises every so often about trying other places, but well, they're just GOOD. And what can I say--I'm a creature of habit. ;)