Busy Weekend and Random Things
Learning stuff (and eating well) (not a weight-loss squib)
Thursday evening I attended the European Sleeps seminar at the Rick Steves Travel Center about finding affordable lodgings in Europe. As I've considered the possibility of going to Europe this year, that's been one of my biggest concerns: finding a way to do it so it doesn't just blow my budget out of the water. I drove up to Edmonds, where the center is located, arriving early to try to avoid rush hour traffic. What that meant was that I had a little time to poke around the charming downtown core and to eat a nice sit-down dinner at a place called Chanterelle. The ambience was like an upscale family restaurant but the food was a couple of notches up from that. I had the chicken in pastry: chicken wrapped in fillo dough with spinach, mushrooms, and goat cheese, with risotto and vegetables. Very tasty indeed. Anyway, then I went to the seminar. It was about an hour, and included information about finding hostels, rentals, social lodging networks (which really isn't my speed), house-swapping (again, not interested), and other ideas. I am most likely, should I travel independently, to look into hostels or, perhaps, rentals. Other options have surfaced over the last few days which means that while this information was good and I fully plan to keep it all in mind, I may not have to use it for a bit. It was worth the time, however, and I'm glad I did it.
Visits and readings
On Friday evening, a big group--too many wonderful people to list all at once--gathered at Costas on the Ave for dinner with papersky before her event at the University Bookstore. Our guest of honor was there first, but I arrived shortly after she, her son and her driver did, and we got to catch up a little before the rest of the gang descended. We had a large, pleasant meal together, and then headed over the store, where a much larger crowd had already assembled to see papersky interviewed by Nancy Pearl. The event was recorded, which means you'll be able to see it on the Seattle Channel (the web site is currently running Nancy Pearl's interview with Tamora Pierce). After the event, I had dessert and a good catch-up with markferrari, then came home and just passed out.
Theater in workshop
On Saturday evening, varina8 and I went to the Book-It Repertory Theater Novel Workshop Series to see readings of two works in progress. For those of you unfamiliar with Book-It, their specialty is adapting novels to the stage, and they have a signature style of adaptation that always makes for interesting, engaging theater. The two books they were working on that evening were "A Little Princess" by Frances Hudgson Burnett and "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb. I fully expect to see the former on the mainstage within the next year or two. The excerpt we saw was pretty fully realized and worked very well. The latter I have some doubts about. It was very dense, telescoping a lot of material; it relied far too heavily on the protagonist as narrator; and it was unrelentingly grim. The author, in introducing the material, promised that the final production would have a soaring, uplifting conclusion, but what we saw just hammered at the characters and the audience in a way that, the more I think about it, the more unpleasant it got. I actually wrote a full critique of the piece to Book-It when I got home. That said, the actress who played the lead gave an intense, completely committed performance--rather astonishing in a workshop environment--and I'm glad I saw her work. But I'm not sure that I could take the play as written for an evening's entertainment. At the same time, having seen this workshop, I'll be curious to see if--and how--the show actually gets produced. And I'll give it this: if the definition of art is that which provokes an emotional response in the audience, it certainly succeeds. But there's no doubt that it's a work in progress and it needs some significant revision.
B&O brunch in a sugar-frosted world
Meteorologists locally had been predicting snow for the weekend, and Sunday morning, the sky delivered. I woke to a sugar-frosted vista out my living room windows. I was, however, bound and determined to make my brunch date and so, clad in warm clothes and new boots, away I headed to B&O Espresso for brunch with SA. We had a perfectly delightful meal. About halfway through, the sky opened up and we decided to stay until the snow let up enough to make driving a little less challenging. We ended up spending about three hours there, what with tea and dessert as the snow fell, talking about movies, books, comics, and writing. When the snow finally tapered off and we left, we tromped over to the nearby Half-Price Books only to discover that it was closed due to the snow. We parted company at that point, I came home and just passed out. I don't know why I was so tired, but the Resistance Was Futile. The rest of the day, once I was awake, was kind of a lost cause. I was groggy and sluggish until bedtime, and so got almost nothing done. Still and all, the morning made up for the afternoon, and I'm pretty much ready for the week.
Away we go . . .
Thursday evening I attended the European Sleeps seminar at the Rick Steves Travel Center about finding affordable lodgings in Europe. As I've considered the possibility of going to Europe this year, that's been one of my biggest concerns: finding a way to do it so it doesn't just blow my budget out of the water. I drove up to Edmonds, where the center is located, arriving early to try to avoid rush hour traffic. What that meant was that I had a little time to poke around the charming downtown core and to eat a nice sit-down dinner at a place called Chanterelle. The ambience was like an upscale family restaurant but the food was a couple of notches up from that. I had the chicken in pastry: chicken wrapped in fillo dough with spinach, mushrooms, and goat cheese, with risotto and vegetables. Very tasty indeed. Anyway, then I went to the seminar. It was about an hour, and included information about finding hostels, rentals, social lodging networks (which really isn't my speed), house-swapping (again, not interested), and other ideas. I am most likely, should I travel independently, to look into hostels or, perhaps, rentals. Other options have surfaced over the last few days which means that while this information was good and I fully plan to keep it all in mind, I may not have to use it for a bit. It was worth the time, however, and I'm glad I did it.
Visits and readings
On Friday evening, a big group--too many wonderful people to list all at once--gathered at Costas on the Ave for dinner with papersky before her event at the University Bookstore. Our guest of honor was there first, but I arrived shortly after she, her son and her driver did, and we got to catch up a little before the rest of the gang descended. We had a large, pleasant meal together, and then headed over the store, where a much larger crowd had already assembled to see papersky interviewed by Nancy Pearl. The event was recorded, which means you'll be able to see it on the Seattle Channel (the web site is currently running Nancy Pearl's interview with Tamora Pierce). After the event, I had dessert and a good catch-up with markferrari, then came home and just passed out.
Theater in workshop
On Saturday evening, varina8 and I went to the Book-It Repertory Theater Novel Workshop Series to see readings of two works in progress. For those of you unfamiliar with Book-It, their specialty is adapting novels to the stage, and they have a signature style of adaptation that always makes for interesting, engaging theater. The two books they were working on that evening were "A Little Princess" by Frances Hudgson Burnett and "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb. I fully expect to see the former on the mainstage within the next year or two. The excerpt we saw was pretty fully realized and worked very well. The latter I have some doubts about. It was very dense, telescoping a lot of material; it relied far too heavily on the protagonist as narrator; and it was unrelentingly grim. The author, in introducing the material, promised that the final production would have a soaring, uplifting conclusion, but what we saw just hammered at the characters and the audience in a way that, the more I think about it, the more unpleasant it got. I actually wrote a full critique of the piece to Book-It when I got home. That said, the actress who played the lead gave an intense, completely committed performance--rather astonishing in a workshop environment--and I'm glad I saw her work. But I'm not sure that I could take the play as written for an evening's entertainment. At the same time, having seen this workshop, I'll be curious to see if--and how--the show actually gets produced. And I'll give it this: if the definition of art is that which provokes an emotional response in the audience, it certainly succeeds. But there's no doubt that it's a work in progress and it needs some significant revision.
B&O brunch in a sugar-frosted world
Meteorologists locally had been predicting snow for the weekend, and Sunday morning, the sky delivered. I woke to a sugar-frosted vista out my living room windows. I was, however, bound and determined to make my brunch date and so, clad in warm clothes and new boots, away I headed to B&O Espresso for brunch with SA. We had a perfectly delightful meal. About halfway through, the sky opened up and we decided to stay until the snow let up enough to make driving a little less challenging. We ended up spending about three hours there, what with tea and dessert as the snow fell, talking about movies, books, comics, and writing. When the snow finally tapered off and we left, we tromped over to the nearby Half-Price Books only to discover that it was closed due to the snow. We parted company at that point, I came home and just passed out. I don't know why I was so tired, but the Resistance Was Futile. The rest of the day, once I was awake, was kind of a lost cause. I was groggy and sluggish until bedtime, and so got almost nothing done. Still and all, the morning made up for the afternoon, and I'm pretty much ready for the week.
Away we go . . .