books: completely unpacked! / Sam / parade / ballet
Today my dad put together my new (and hopefully last) set of bookshelves. So I got to unpack all my boxes of unread books! Now all the books are unpacked. Every book I own!
There were three full boxes of books I haven't read. (Some of them, I've read *part* of, but I haven't finished any of them.) I counted: 109 books, ranging from Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh to the collected works of D.H. Lawrence (which I counted as one book, but if I actually ever read it I'll count the novels individually--that 'if' being fairly slim at the moment). Plus 18 literary journals, both that I picked up this weekend and apparently a bunch that I picked up at AWP in Chicago in 2004. So if I read nothing but books I already own, and kept to my 2006 reading rate, I would still not finish off these shelves for over a year. That's kind of depressing, especially considering how I've been lugging around a lot of these particular books for several years and still haven't read them (Hi, D.H. Lawrence!). I mean, there's kind of a *reason* why I haven't read them yet. For some reason, they're not piquing my interest even though they are books I should read or books that looked really interesting in the store. We'll see. I am kind of broke until I pay off some moving debt, so I shouldn't be buying new books anyway. And a lot of these really do look good.
I dropped Mr. Sam off back at my mom's yesterday. Last night, Mom caught Timmy licking Sam, just like he always did before, and this morning Sam was apparently back to his usual reading-the-newspaper-with-you routine. I think I made the right decision and that Sammy is where he belongs. So now I'm looking for a new friend. Stray Cat Blues is a local cat saving organization, and they have a lot of kitties up on petfinder. Hopefully I'll find somebody nice and affectionate who will be happy in a single-cat household.
Today my mom and I went to the ballet. We took the train downtown. As we came aboveground, I saw all these people and traffic and lights--and suddenly realized we were emerging into the Philadelphia St. Patrick's Day parade. I turned to Mom and said, Holy crap! She of course only saw the flashing lights (a fire truck was going by) and assumed there'd been a murder or something. So the parade was a pleasant surprise all the way around. It was a beautiful day, and we got to walk the parade route all the way to the theater. Fun!
The ballet was Carmina Burana. This is its world premiere run, which is why I'd never heard of it before. And it was so. Fantastic. Really. I absolutely love Carmina anyway, know most of the words, and it was so amazing to see it danced. It was a very modern sort of interpretation--Mom was reminded of Cirque de Soileil. And when you think about it, yeah, professional ballet dancers probably can do most of the stuff the Cirque people do. It was really beautiful, and very well done, and the music was amazing and the costumes were striking. My favorites were these stretchy gauzy things that they were wearing during the Floret Silva and other happy songs; they did some really cool stuff with those. For the dancing, my favorite parts were probably the Fortune Plango, right at the beginning, and also the last two pieces; musically my favorite parts were the baritone solos, the Veni Veni Venias, and Tempus Est Iocundum. And Ave Formosissima made me tear up--the "Blanziflor et Helena" part is so beautiful. That and the finale O Fortuna sounded and looked amazing. The dancers were wearing nude-colored bodysuits so they all looked naked, and it just was really neat looking. Overall, absolutely amazing. I was so impressed and pleased and it was just a wonderful day. And Mom and I are planning to go to their production of Dracula this fall. Yay!
There were three full boxes of books I haven't read. (Some of them, I've read *part* of, but I haven't finished any of them.) I counted: 109 books, ranging from Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh to the collected works of D.H. Lawrence (which I counted as one book, but if I actually ever read it I'll count the novels individually--that 'if' being fairly slim at the moment). Plus 18 literary journals, both that I picked up this weekend and apparently a bunch that I picked up at AWP in Chicago in 2004. So if I read nothing but books I already own, and kept to my 2006 reading rate, I would still not finish off these shelves for over a year. That's kind of depressing, especially considering how I've been lugging around a lot of these particular books for several years and still haven't read them (Hi, D.H. Lawrence!). I mean, there's kind of a *reason* why I haven't read them yet. For some reason, they're not piquing my interest even though they are books I should read or books that looked really interesting in the store. We'll see. I am kind of broke until I pay off some moving debt, so I shouldn't be buying new books anyway. And a lot of these really do look good.
I dropped Mr. Sam off back at my mom's yesterday. Last night, Mom caught Timmy licking Sam, just like he always did before, and this morning Sam was apparently back to his usual reading-the-newspaper-with-you routine. I think I made the right decision and that Sammy is where he belongs. So now I'm looking for a new friend. Stray Cat Blues is a local cat saving organization, and they have a lot of kitties up on petfinder. Hopefully I'll find somebody nice and affectionate who will be happy in a single-cat household.
Today my mom and I went to the ballet. We took the train downtown. As we came aboveground, I saw all these people and traffic and lights--and suddenly realized we were emerging into the Philadelphia St. Patrick's Day parade. I turned to Mom and said, Holy crap! She of course only saw the flashing lights (a fire truck was going by) and assumed there'd been a murder or something. So the parade was a pleasant surprise all the way around. It was a beautiful day, and we got to walk the parade route all the way to the theater. Fun!
The ballet was Carmina Burana. This is its world premiere run, which is why I'd never heard of it before. And it was so. Fantastic. Really. I absolutely love Carmina anyway, know most of the words, and it was so amazing to see it danced. It was a very modern sort of interpretation--Mom was reminded of Cirque de Soileil. And when you think about it, yeah, professional ballet dancers probably can do most of the stuff the Cirque people do. It was really beautiful, and very well done, and the music was amazing and the costumes were striking. My favorites were these stretchy gauzy things that they were wearing during the Floret Silva and other happy songs; they did some really cool stuff with those. For the dancing, my favorite parts were probably the Fortune Plango, right at the beginning, and also the last two pieces; musically my favorite parts were the baritone solos, the Veni Veni Venias, and Tempus Est Iocundum. And Ave Formosissima made me tear up--the "Blanziflor et Helena" part is so beautiful. That and the finale O Fortuna sounded and looked amazing. The dancers were wearing nude-colored bodysuits so they all looked naked, and it just was really neat looking. Overall, absolutely amazing. I was so impressed and pleased and it was just a wonderful day. And Mom and I are planning to go to their production of Dracula this fall. Yay!