Since LiveJournal was taken over by Russians, and almost no one is still there, I’ve been meaning to move the blog for a while. Can you believe, I’ve been blogging 17 years? Argh. Anyway, the plan is to actually migrate that old content here, but there’s no rush – LJ isn’t actually going down any time soon.
Might be scattershot today, as I have somewhat of a deadline. Coffee club this morning, and I have a phone interview this afternoon (yay!).
Last week was unusual – a lot more social than has been the case. Monday, I met up for lunch with an old work friend from two jobs ago. We’d become friendly because, well, not that we had anything in common except our offices being next to each other, but we traded CDs and stuff. He’s a movie buff. Straight, so some of his conversation is him asking touristy things about being gay. He did have an interesting question this time around about whether the gay community was rallying around Pete Buttigieg as a candidate, and I told him, actually, no, we’ve been self-congratulatory about how far we’ve come that we haven’t felt the need to back him just because he’s the gay guy.
(Yeah, not going to go much into politics, but (a) I’m glad the field is winnowing and (b) I’m still irked that Elizabeth Warren is getting ignored. She’s still my choice, as long as she’s in it.)
(and after lunch, I had a dentist appointment, but the problem that we hoped that appointment would fix is still there, so I’ll probably have to go back. Also, the hand I fractured from last year had been fine from about October through Christmas, and then I must have strained it over the holidays because it’s sore and sensitive a lot now. I don’t think I re-fractured it, but I may want to go see my hand doctor again just to get his advice.)
Tuesday I didn’t go skating (I think it was very cold or rainy or something), but I did go into town at night to have dinner with my buddy Marisa so we could then go see Agrippina at the Met. It was fantastic! I love Handel, but haven’t seen many operas of his. To modern audiences, they can seem dull because they are very long and very rigidly structured in a way later operas aren’t. They are essentially a string of arias (one person singing at a time) in ABA format – very few duets, trios, small ensembles or choruses. And that’s a challenge to stage in an interesting way. But this modern-dress staging, complete with coke-sniffing and a very funny scene in a bar, was delightful and the singing was fantastic.
Wednesday, I needed to get out of the house to get out of the way of the cleaning lady, so I decided to check out Lasker Rink at the north end of Central Park. It’s not an obvious choice location-wise for me to go to, but it didn’t take that long to get there and the rink itself isn’t bad at all, much better than the Wohlmann rink at the south end of the park that everyone knows from movies and such. Lasker actually has two rinks side by side, and they were using one for hockey and one for “Asteroids on Ice”, which is what I call it when you have ten thousand little kids ignoring the traffic loop pattern. But it being a somewhat drizzly Wed morning, it was one group of kids all together being supervised, and me and maybe one other local adult. Not bad.
I then met up with another work friend (from my last job, had gotten dumped in the same layoff as me). That was nice, as we got to get caught up on the job search stuff. He is also a tech guy with a Master of Music degree (he’s a pianist) so we had that sort of stuff to talk about as well.
Job search continues apace. I have a phone interview this afternoon that looks promising. I continue to find lots and lots of possible jobs, and apply for several every day. I also turn down opportunities to apply for contract jobs or far-away commute jobs. If nothing happens by April, tho, I may get more picky.
We’re scheduling out our year. Sam and Dad are coming for (separate) visits over the next few weeks. I’ve got performances coming up, too. And we’re renting a house in Cape May in August, that will be nice.
A dear friend of mine whose mom passed away just a few weeks before mine did, got hit doubly this weekend when her dad passed away. She’d set up the same kind of thing Sam and I did with Dad – please email us or whatever every day so we know you’re OK – and on Sunday, he didn’t. She’s down there now trying to get it all together. It’s heartbreaking. We know that sort of thing happens, where the second member of the couple passes away quickly after the first, and he’d been ill. But still, that reality, oof. And I know your thoughts are going there, but I think that is not a likely thing to happen to my dad, who is already starting to get out there and do things in the community that he couldn’t really do while taking care of Mom.
Media consumption. I finally finished Iron Council, which was a slog. I was determined to finish it, though. And I can put down Mieville for a while, although I do have another one on the to-be-read shelf. Going to finish the Scott Turow book next, which is pretty good, even though it’s a little too ‘foreign affairs’y for me.
We saw “Knives Out” and “Frozen 2” this weekend. Knives Out was really good, although as my film reviewer friends said, I wish we had had more of some of the actors. Jamie Lee Curtis, for instance, who was delightful. “Frozen 2” was a mix of really dumb stuff and really cool stuff. I have no interest in Olaf or anything he says or does – I even hate his character design. But much of the movie was beautiful and some of the songs were OK.
Oh, we did finish “Madame Secretary”‘s last season, which featured a one-off appearance by my friend Mark Aldritch, and a recurring appearance by Linda Powell – both W&M theater people from my college days. (I’ve told the story before about how, when Colin Powell became a household name, I realized instantly from his cheekbones that he must be Linda’s dad, which he is.)
And we just have one more episode to go to finish off “The Good Place”. Judging from internet buzz, it’s going to be pretty spectacular. I guess we’re going to tackle Season 3 of “Handmaid’s Tale” next? What’s weird is considering how much buzz seasons 1 and 2 got, I haven’t heard a thing about season 3.
OK, time to get cleaned up.
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