Birds and book, day 21 of 2012 (also Freecycle and opera)
Today Eli and I played ping pong for the first time in several weeks. It was swell, too, but not usually LJ-fodder, not on a night when I've got seeing Verdi's Attila with which to fill columns inches. But, as the avid Imaginary Reader may recall, I got the ping pong table from freecycle. And, of course, the ping pong table is in the basement where, as it happens I have a box of things I set aside some months ago intending them for freecycle. It's not getting any fresher sitting there so I thought that today I'd finally organize myself to list the stuff. And now I understand more fully why I've been putting it off: I have two dozen emails from various people wanting various items and I really don't so much want to deal with it. How am I to determine which of the eleven people who want the apothecary lamp is most deserving? And who would have thought multiple people would want old phones? Oddly, there's only one person interested in the actually useful furnace filters while three people want the battery-operated sifter. Honestly, it just gives me a headache and I'm going to wait to see if I have more responses tomorrow and then, I don't know, draw names from a hat.
As it happens I have a new hat from which to draw names because I purchased a cunning cloche at the McCaw Hall gift shop this evening; it looks like this one but with a different ribbon and flower treatment. It's not like the opera was the sort to inspire one to buy hats but when I find a hat I like, I'm inclined to buy it. Attila didn't so much have costumes that you'd want to wear. The plot was a little so-so as well and I, personally, was disappointed by what seemed a fairly anticlimactic ending but the settings and lighting were pretty darned fabulous. Odabella had a gorgeous and strong voice but Attila tended to be drowned out by the orchestra and, at least by the time he reached the second tier, sounded muddy. My enthusiasm for him wasn't helped any when Eli pointed out that he looked more than a little like Nick Cave, either. (In the photo here he doesn't have the unfortunate facial hair.) Of the men, Foresto seemed to have the best voice (and was the most popular with the audience). There was, to my untutored ear, a huge disconnect between the music and the lyrics regardless of who was singing. The superscript lines read about rape, blood running in the streets, violence, and destruction while the music sounded like it should be about kittens frolicking through fields of daffodils. I'm not telling Mr. Verdi his business, but I'm just as glad not to have been in Italy in the 1840s.
Birds
(Very specific names listed just for alexfandra, just this once)
red-shafted northern flicker, female
Townsend's warbler
yellow-rumped warblers
black-capped chickadees
dark-eyed juncos, Oregon
house sparrows
house finches
song sparrow
golden-crowned sparrows
pine siskin
Bewick's wren
Anna's hummingbird
American crows
European starlings
rock doves (aka pigeons)
Book
Well, I'm between books, aren't I? So instead I offer a photo of the Lenten rose that shrugs its shoulders at snow and ice:
As it happens I have a new hat from which to draw names because I purchased a cunning cloche at the McCaw Hall gift shop this evening; it looks like this one but with a different ribbon and flower treatment. It's not like the opera was the sort to inspire one to buy hats but when I find a hat I like, I'm inclined to buy it. Attila didn't so much have costumes that you'd want to wear. The plot was a little so-so as well and I, personally, was disappointed by what seemed a fairly anticlimactic ending but the settings and lighting were pretty darned fabulous. Odabella had a gorgeous and strong voice but Attila tended to be drowned out by the orchestra and, at least by the time he reached the second tier, sounded muddy. My enthusiasm for him wasn't helped any when Eli pointed out that he looked more than a little like Nick Cave, either. (In the photo here he doesn't have the unfortunate facial hair.) Of the men, Foresto seemed to have the best voice (and was the most popular with the audience). There was, to my untutored ear, a huge disconnect between the music and the lyrics regardless of who was singing. The superscript lines read about rape, blood running in the streets, violence, and destruction while the music sounded like it should be about kittens frolicking through fields of daffodils. I'm not telling Mr. Verdi his business, but I'm just as glad not to have been in Italy in the 1840s.
Birds
(Very specific names listed just for alexfandra, just this once)
red-shafted northern flicker, female
Townsend's warbler
yellow-rumped warblers
black-capped chickadees
dark-eyed juncos, Oregon
house sparrows
house finches
song sparrow
golden-crowned sparrows
pine siskin
Bewick's wren
Anna's hummingbird
American crows
European starlings
rock doves (aka pigeons)
Book
Well, I'm between books, aren't I? So instead I offer a photo of the Lenten rose that shrugs its shoulders at snow and ice: