My post of squee
So, the little country bird went to the big city last week, and had a fabulous time!
I went to stay with the lovely aisling_door and her family on Long Island. Such good people. Her dad immediately started treating me like one of the family, including admonitions to "Eat! Eat!", and I got to meet her younger brother and the bulldog. Her mum was at a reunion, but I did get to meet her on Sunday and we hit it off, because the poor woman had the misfortune to ask me about Alan Rickman *snort*. An hour and a half later we were still checking out clips on youtube and chatting merrily away. Oops.
On Friday, I got in late afternoon, and we all went to get pizza and headed back home. Honestly, I was so tired that first evening that I only remember us all in the den eating pie. Om nom nommy pie.
On Saturday (and, indeed, every day I was there) aisling_door 's dad fixed us breakfast. I love breakfast. Honestly, it's probably the quickest way to my heart--well, aside from being Alan Rickman. And later we went to visit a couple of wineries on the Island. I got some yummy Moscato (Italian sparkling wine), a 2009 Gewurztraminer, and some lovely cheese. Then Sunday, we went shopping and hit a couple of places I'd never been to before--a Sephora store and an Ulta. Good times. aisling_door had planned an easy pace, and wisely so.
Monday we went off to the Big City! We tramped around NYC a little, went to The Cloisters (sadly it's closed on Monday, but it did NOT tell us that on the website!). We still got to see the lovely gardens, though.
I confess to quite a weakness for aged stone and trailing ivy.....gorgeous stuff
Then we hit Lush and poked about Grand Central Station. We met up with a bunch of girlies from Page 394 for drinks in Grand Central, and aisling_door 's brother came to meet us and charmed all the ladies. *wicked grin* One of them even asked me where she could "get one of those" LOL
This is certainly not the best pic of any of us, but for this trip, I sort of ignored the camera in favor of the experience; besides, other girlies were snapping photos and I'm sure I'll get hold of them. We stayed with aisling_door 's older brother and set out again Tuesday morning. After a certain amount of drama, we had a fabulous lunch with bellajayd that was rendered imperfect only by time constraints. Then we saw St. Patrick's Cathedral, had a bit of a drink in a pub, and went to stand in line for the Artist's Talk before The Creditors.
The 394 girlies met up with us in line, and I got to meet a couple of folks I've never met before, including the lovely monicarnsg and odense . There was much squee-age and anticipation. And we got FANTASTIC seats for the Artist's Talk--srsly, we were only about 6 rows back. I thought there was going to be a collective heart attack when Mr. Rickman walked out on stage. aisling_door practically had to hold me in my seat when he made an allusion to T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Yup, that's just the kind of nerd I am! The interviewer was god-awful. I suppose it's not fair of me to beat up on him. English was not his native tongue, but he had seen the play and done some research. But really, the first rule of interviewing is NOT to talk over your victim interviewee. The poor man clearly had no idea what he was in for with Mr. Rickman, who can be notoriously difficult to interview because he balks at labels of all sorts. And Mr. Rickman had no intention of giving this guy any help. It was kind of cringe-worthy in parts, but Alan was brilliant. The interviewer only left about 10 minutes for Q&A, which disappointed EVERYONE. But I got up there almost immediately. hehehe. See? I can let go of my Southern manners when I REALLY want something. I got to ask my question and then I gave Mr. Rickman a volume of John Donne's poetry that I had inscribed to him. I was so utterly excited that when I got back to my seat, aisling_door had to remind me to breathe. LOL.
After the Q&A, they had to clear the house, so we all stood about downstairs. I'm afraid I was a bit rude, because I just marched myself over to Mr. Rickman's partner, Ms. Horton and introduced myself, telling her I'm an admirer of hers as well (it's true--I admire her intelligence, her political sense, and how she keeps her calm when nutcases like me show up). She asked if I had been at the talk, and I told her that I asked the question on modernity. We were interrupted at that point, and I decided to make my exit, since I didn't want to be all freaky and just HANG AROUND.
The play itself was great. It's so psychologically distorting and painful, but there are moments of hilarity and a really interesting look at the shifting world of sophistic logic. I don't want to give spoilers in case any of my f-list is inclined to see it, but I think the relationships between the only three characters are so compelling that the play was deeply touching despite the characters' kaleidoscopic suffering. Mr. Rickman said that American audiences laughed more at the play than British audiences. There was a lot that was absurd, and therefore funny, but I also think a certain amount of laughter was generated by the discomfort of the audience. That is, we would hit a particularly harrowing part of the play and the tension built in the audience, then it was let out in a great burst of laughter at the next absurd/funny/unusual thing that was said. All in all, though, the play is a definite recommend. Owen Teale is such a fabulous bastard! He's so good at being such a jerk. I know that's quite the backhanded compliment, but I've always thought of him as playing relative inoffensive characters, though perhaps slightly smarmy ones. He's fantastic here.
After the play I dragged poor freezing aisling_door around to the stage door, and while she was developing hypothermia, I GOT ALAN RICKMAN'S SIGNATURE!!!!! Yes, I'm still touching it every once in a while to make sure it's real. LOL. I was beyond excited, and even the 1 1/2 hour journey back to her place didn't calm me down enough to sleep for a while. :) Yup, so I was too busy autograph hounding to take piccies, but here's one another of the girls took:
See the girl in red overlaid with sheer black carrying the grey bag? Yup, that's me. That is one happy Birdie, let me tell you! My hair looks more blonde in this piccie than I'd realized as well...interesting.
Wednesday, things were still in a rather dream-like state, so it ended up being the PERFECT day for aisling_door to surprise me by taking me to get a facial. It was quite a lovely experience! I've never had one before, and I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I almost fell asleep at one point, but I resisted it because I wanted to be alert for every moment of the experience. Thank you, my dear! (((((hugs)))))
And Thursday I spent getting home. JFK was down to one runway because of severe winds, so my flight was delayed by 3 1/2 hours. Thank heaven for wifi in airports. I finally got home around 3 in the morning and sacked out. When I got up yesterday, I had completely forgotten that there was an awards ceremony for the English Department that afternoon. It was purest chance that I looked at it in the date book. I almost didn't go....my boss found that out and nearly went through the roof. Oops. LOL.
I got the official certificate for the Culbertson Award for outstanding teaching of composition by an A.I. in the last year of her contract. I'm now about 95% sure it's my boss who nominated me. She was presenting the awards, and she prefaced my award with the most wonderful, sweet, happy things. She talked about her own experience working with me, she read a bit from my teaching philosophy, and then she read some of the student comments from my evaluations. I was nearly in tears by the time I walked up there. It was brilliant. Definitely one of the high points of my life.
Ok, I seem to have rambled on excessively here, but I'm just so entirely full of squee that I can't help it.
Oh, and if any of you are friends on my alternate LJ, I'm going to be re-posting this there, so be forewarned....I don't think I can manage another write up :)
I went to stay with the lovely aisling_door and her family on Long Island. Such good people. Her dad immediately started treating me like one of the family, including admonitions to "Eat! Eat!", and I got to meet her younger brother and the bulldog. Her mum was at a reunion, but I did get to meet her on Sunday and we hit it off, because the poor woman had the misfortune to ask me about Alan Rickman *snort*. An hour and a half later we were still checking out clips on youtube and chatting merrily away. Oops.
On Friday, I got in late afternoon, and we all went to get pizza and headed back home. Honestly, I was so tired that first evening that I only remember us all in the den eating pie. Om nom nommy pie.
On Saturday (and, indeed, every day I was there) aisling_door 's dad fixed us breakfast. I love breakfast. Honestly, it's probably the quickest way to my heart--well, aside from being Alan Rickman. And later we went to visit a couple of wineries on the Island. I got some yummy Moscato (Italian sparkling wine), a 2009 Gewurztraminer, and some lovely cheese. Then Sunday, we went shopping and hit a couple of places I'd never been to before--a Sephora store and an Ulta. Good times. aisling_door had planned an easy pace, and wisely so.
Monday we went off to the Big City! We tramped around NYC a little, went to The Cloisters (sadly it's closed on Monday, but it did NOT tell us that on the website!). We still got to see the lovely gardens, though.
I confess to quite a weakness for aged stone and trailing ivy.....gorgeous stuff
Then we hit Lush and poked about Grand Central Station. We met up with a bunch of girlies from Page 394 for drinks in Grand Central, and aisling_door 's brother came to meet us and charmed all the ladies. *wicked grin* One of them even asked me where she could "get one of those" LOL
This is certainly not the best pic of any of us, but for this trip, I sort of ignored the camera in favor of the experience; besides, other girlies were snapping photos and I'm sure I'll get hold of them. We stayed with aisling_door 's older brother and set out again Tuesday morning. After a certain amount of drama, we had a fabulous lunch with bellajayd that was rendered imperfect only by time constraints. Then we saw St. Patrick's Cathedral, had a bit of a drink in a pub, and went to stand in line for the Artist's Talk before The Creditors.
The 394 girlies met up with us in line, and I got to meet a couple of folks I've never met before, including the lovely monicarnsg and odense . There was much squee-age and anticipation. And we got FANTASTIC seats for the Artist's Talk--srsly, we were only about 6 rows back. I thought there was going to be a collective heart attack when Mr. Rickman walked out on stage. aisling_door practically had to hold me in my seat when he made an allusion to T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Yup, that's just the kind of nerd I am! The interviewer was god-awful. I suppose it's not fair of me to beat up on him. English was not his native tongue, but he had seen the play and done some research. But really, the first rule of interviewing is NOT to talk over your victim interviewee. The poor man clearly had no idea what he was in for with Mr. Rickman, who can be notoriously difficult to interview because he balks at labels of all sorts. And Mr. Rickman had no intention of giving this guy any help. It was kind of cringe-worthy in parts, but Alan was brilliant. The interviewer only left about 10 minutes for Q&A, which disappointed EVERYONE. But I got up there almost immediately. hehehe. See? I can let go of my Southern manners when I REALLY want something. I got to ask my question and then I gave Mr. Rickman a volume of John Donne's poetry that I had inscribed to him. I was so utterly excited that when I got back to my seat, aisling_door had to remind me to breathe. LOL.
After the Q&A, they had to clear the house, so we all stood about downstairs. I'm afraid I was a bit rude, because I just marched myself over to Mr. Rickman's partner, Ms. Horton and introduced myself, telling her I'm an admirer of hers as well (it's true--I admire her intelligence, her political sense, and how she keeps her calm when nutcases like me show up). She asked if I had been at the talk, and I told her that I asked the question on modernity. We were interrupted at that point, and I decided to make my exit, since I didn't want to be all freaky and just HANG AROUND.
The play itself was great. It's so psychologically distorting and painful, but there are moments of hilarity and a really interesting look at the shifting world of sophistic logic. I don't want to give spoilers in case any of my f-list is inclined to see it, but I think the relationships between the only three characters are so compelling that the play was deeply touching despite the characters' kaleidoscopic suffering. Mr. Rickman said that American audiences laughed more at the play than British audiences. There was a lot that was absurd, and therefore funny, but I also think a certain amount of laughter was generated by the discomfort of the audience. That is, we would hit a particularly harrowing part of the play and the tension built in the audience, then it was let out in a great burst of laughter at the next absurd/funny/unusual thing that was said. All in all, though, the play is a definite recommend. Owen Teale is such a fabulous bastard! He's so good at being such a jerk. I know that's quite the backhanded compliment, but I've always thought of him as playing relative inoffensive characters, though perhaps slightly smarmy ones. He's fantastic here.
After the play I dragged poor freezing aisling_door around to the stage door, and while she was developing hypothermia, I GOT ALAN RICKMAN'S SIGNATURE!!!!! Yes, I'm still touching it every once in a while to make sure it's real. LOL. I was beyond excited, and even the 1 1/2 hour journey back to her place didn't calm me down enough to sleep for a while. :) Yup, so I was too busy autograph hounding to take piccies, but here's one another of the girls took:
See the girl in red overlaid with sheer black carrying the grey bag? Yup, that's me. That is one happy Birdie, let me tell you! My hair looks more blonde in this piccie than I'd realized as well...interesting.
Wednesday, things were still in a rather dream-like state, so it ended up being the PERFECT day for aisling_door to surprise me by taking me to get a facial. It was quite a lovely experience! I've never had one before, and I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I almost fell asleep at one point, but I resisted it because I wanted to be alert for every moment of the experience. Thank you, my dear! (((((hugs)))))
And Thursday I spent getting home. JFK was down to one runway because of severe winds, so my flight was delayed by 3 1/2 hours. Thank heaven for wifi in airports. I finally got home around 3 in the morning and sacked out. When I got up yesterday, I had completely forgotten that there was an awards ceremony for the English Department that afternoon. It was purest chance that I looked at it in the date book. I almost didn't go....my boss found that out and nearly went through the roof. Oops. LOL.
I got the official certificate for the Culbertson Award for outstanding teaching of composition by an A.I. in the last year of her contract. I'm now about 95% sure it's my boss who nominated me. She was presenting the awards, and she prefaced my award with the most wonderful, sweet, happy things. She talked about her own experience working with me, she read a bit from my teaching philosophy, and then she read some of the student comments from my evaluations. I was nearly in tears by the time I walked up there. It was brilliant. Definitely one of the high points of my life.
Ok, I seem to have rambled on excessively here, but I'm just so entirely full of squee that I can't help it.
Oh, and if any of you are friends on my alternate LJ, I'm going to be re-posting this there, so be forewarned....I don't think I can manage another write up :)