This weekend I had a completely new experience; I went to my first opera. It's one of those things I've been meaning to do for quite awhile, mostly out of curiosity and partly because it just seems like something you should try once in your life. I ended up dragging my sister and brother-in-law with me to see Tosca, put on by the Minnesota Orchestra. (I figured that as music professors, bringing them was my best bet as to someone who would enjoy it!)
It was interesting. I'm glad I went to see an opera once, but based on this experience I would have to say that I definiely prefer musicals. For starters, while I appreciated the screen with some English translations to help me understand what was going on, I found it ended up being similar to watching TV with the closed captioning. I was so busy reading the words that I didn't notice nearly as much of the music or acting. Also, it drove me a little bit nuts when they would continue singing with no captions occasionally! I should have expected it to be depressing, I suppose, but I was still surprised by the complete pessimism of the story!
One of my favorite moments, however, had nothing to do with this particular show. A man sitting next to my sister shared an article he had printed off with her, about mishaps that have happened during other stagings of the opera. Without ruining too much (hopefully), there is a scene in the play when a main character is supposed to jump off a parapet to her death. In the past, apparently there have been a lot of accidents resulting in broken bones, but the article focused more on the funny mishaps. In one staging, they placed a trampoline to break this character's fall, so the dramatic suicide plunge was followed by several re-appearances over the wall. In another, soldier supposedly pursuing this character had simply been told to "exit with the principals" and so all threw themselves off the wall immediately afterwards. While the performance I went to was extremely well done (the music was beautifully done and the staging, while basic, was nice) there was a little bit of me that regretted our performance not going just a little bit wrong, in a similarly funny (and non-traumatic!) way.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Re-thinking my goals
I started the new year with a lot of plans and goals, named so because I hoped that calling them that would make it easier not to just forget them, like I generally do with resolutions.
It didn't work.
My plans for the entire year have changed, putting off a lot of my ideas. Our trip to France and Italy has been postponed until next spring, I've temporarily lost interest in Web programming, and it appears another member beat me to creating a website for my hometown church. I tried malva pudding...not the same as I remember. And the difficult part is that it's such an incredibly rich dessert, I have a hard time convinving anyone to eat my almosts. However, my garden is doing well (I've eaten a few veggies out of it, as well as a lot of raspberries) and the other website I was planning is out there at least in its first stages. It still needs some tweaking, some more content and some extra features like email, but it's more progress than I make on a lot of new years goals!
It's a little over halfway through the year--I figure it's time to set some new goals. Achievable ones, and ones that will keep the experiments and adventures going.
It didn't work.
My plans for the entire year have changed, putting off a lot of my ideas. Our trip to France and Italy has been postponed until next spring, I've temporarily lost interest in Web programming, and it appears another member beat me to creating a website for my hometown church. I tried malva pudding...not the same as I remember. And the difficult part is that it's such an incredibly rich dessert, I have a hard time convinving anyone to eat my almosts. However, my garden is doing well (I've eaten a few veggies out of it, as well as a lot of raspberries) and the other website I was planning is out there at least in its first stages. It still needs some tweaking, some more content and some extra features like email, but it's more progress than I make on a lot of new years goals!
It's a little over halfway through the year--I figure it's time to set some new goals. Achievable ones, and ones that will keep the experiments and adventures going.
- If my feet heal in time, run a 5K
- Read all the Sandman books or Les Miserables (bucket list items)
- Get down the basics of canning, and make a batch of something (jam, jelly, apple butter...not sure yet!)
- Go to a waterpark
- Go canoing or kayaking
- Go camping
- Start thinking seriously about writing fiction again. Maybe even come up with an outline for something.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Some food experiments: Grilling and sweet potato burritos
Since I found the list of 101 ideas for the grill, I've been experimenting with different grilled foods. My results: grilled asparagus, great, but don't overcook it. Grilled watermelon, not great. But my parents' dog Amos really, really liked that one--probably something about the bratwurst flavor that was infused in the watermelon after grilling. In fact, Amos liked it so much that he scarfed down all his food for the first time since I got here, with minimal coaxing! Grilled avacado is ok, but it didn't add a lot to the normal avacado flavor. Grilled peppers, very good. All in all, my favorite grill experiment so far is definitely the asparagus. I just tossed it in olive oil with sea salt (since my parents don't have kosher salt and I was house-sitting during this particular experiment) and a little bit of pepper, and grilled it for probably less than 5 minutes. The coals were super hot from the chimney starter (I'm not ready for gas or the green egg grill yet...they seem much more likely to blow up in my face when I don't know which buttons to hit) so the stalks directly over the coals were already burnt by that point.
My other experiment for the week was sweet potato burritos. I was very skeptical about these, even though they are labeled "addictive." I'm very picky about how I like sweet potatoes, and I wasn't entirely sure about the idea of a burrito essentially completely filled with smooshy food. I decided to take my chances since all the reviews were so positive, and I'm glad I did. I made all the fillings from scratch (no canned sweet potatoes or refried beans) since I heard that made a difference, and they were delicious. My cautions--they are best when you make sure the beans and the sweet potatoes are mixed well inside the tortilla, to make sure you're not getting a full bite of sweet potatoes and another full bite of beans. Make sure you have enough cheese, as the sharpness balances out the rest of the flavors. And, if you're using the smaller tortillas, make a few of these! They're good enough to eat several of and not as filling as they look. These are vegetarian, but I think you could easily add shredded pork or chicken to them if you wanted.
My other experiment for the week was sweet potato burritos. I was very skeptical about these, even though they are labeled "addictive." I'm very picky about how I like sweet potatoes, and I wasn't entirely sure about the idea of a burrito essentially completely filled with smooshy food. I decided to take my chances since all the reviews were so positive, and I'm glad I did. I made all the fillings from scratch (no canned sweet potatoes or refried beans) since I heard that made a difference, and they were delicious. My cautions--they are best when you make sure the beans and the sweet potatoes are mixed well inside the tortilla, to make sure you're not getting a full bite of sweet potatoes and another full bite of beans. Make sure you have enough cheese, as the sharpness balances out the rest of the flavors. And, if you're using the smaller tortillas, make a few of these! They're good enough to eat several of and not as filling as they look. These are vegetarian, but I think you could easily add shredded pork or chicken to them if you wanted.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Back into the swing of things--Books: Shadow of the Silk Road
I'm starting to realize how much more of a winter project this blog is for me. IN the winter, I'm generally bored from continually staying inside and bummed about not seeing the sun. Also, just about every winter I go through a funk where I forget that I'm just upset because it's thirty below outside and I only get to see the sun through windows, and decide that there's some normal part of my life that needs to change and I'll be as happy as I am when I'm swimming outside in the summer. This winter, my funk produced this blog. While it's certainly still a good project, I'm noticing that my dedication to having adventures is dulled significantly when I can substitute an evening of grilling and swimming in the pool, or trying to see if my foot has healed enough to take the dog for a walk, or really anything else outside. And for the most part, that is what I've been doing for the last 2 weeks--really, the last two months. I've stopped buying groceries for the week, because if it's a nice week most of them just sit there as I make emergency trips to the store for brats or steaks and corn or some other new grilling food. (Speaking of which--I found this blog this week, which I'm highly enjoying and also has a link to 101 ideas for grilling. Good, easy ideas. Yum.)
This week I've been doing ok for little experiments--I made a new vegetarian recipe that turned out great and finally finished a book I've had out from the library for a few months now. (I'll post that tomorrow--hopefully breaking things up will keep me going!)
I got Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron probably 6 weeks to 2 months ago from the library, and it has really taken me that long to finish it. The book is extremely well written and I think it has a fantastic premise--the author begins in China and follows the old silk road back to Antioch. He is entirely by himself, does not speak the language of every country he passes through (although he does speak both Mandarin and Russian, which get him by in quite a lot of countries) doesn't have a plan beyond which cities he intends to stop in, and even spends a decent amount of the way hitchhiking. It's the sort of adventure that is great to read about because I know I could never do it, especially through the territory he covers--through China and Mongolia, perhaps, but he also moves through Afghanistan and Iran.
This book has a well-written travel story, showing you not only the sights that the author sees but the people he speaks to and the way they look at the world. Although we are entangled in so may of the countries he travels to, this book shows me how little I really knew about the history and the way people think in many of these countries. For so much of it, we only see the propaganda put out by one government or another (or by immigrants who have chosen to leave that country, and so probably have very different viewpoints than those who chose to stay), and never really get the opportunity to speak to an Iranian or an Afghani who chooses to stay in their country. My biggest issue with this book was probably my interest level. Depending on the chapter and my level of interest in where the author was, I either couldn't put the book down or I'd put it down for a week or two at a time. I'm glad I read the book, even the parts that interested me less, but it's a book that you might need some time to go through unless you're interested in everywhere between China and Turkey.
Unfortunately, after taking so long to finish this book I now have a backlog of requests that have come in that the library to sift through. So, expect quite a few more book posts coming up!
This week I've been doing ok for little experiments--I made a new vegetarian recipe that turned out great and finally finished a book I've had out from the library for a few months now. (I'll post that tomorrow--hopefully breaking things up will keep me going!)
I got Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron probably 6 weeks to 2 months ago from the library, and it has really taken me that long to finish it. The book is extremely well written and I think it has a fantastic premise--the author begins in China and follows the old silk road back to Antioch. He is entirely by himself, does not speak the language of every country he passes through (although he does speak both Mandarin and Russian, which get him by in quite a lot of countries) doesn't have a plan beyond which cities he intends to stop in, and even spends a decent amount of the way hitchhiking. It's the sort of adventure that is great to read about because I know I could never do it, especially through the territory he covers--through China and Mongolia, perhaps, but he also moves through Afghanistan and Iran.
This book has a well-written travel story, showing you not only the sights that the author sees but the people he speaks to and the way they look at the world. Although we are entangled in so may of the countries he travels to, this book shows me how little I really knew about the history and the way people think in many of these countries. For so much of it, we only see the propaganda put out by one government or another (or by immigrants who have chosen to leave that country, and so probably have very different viewpoints than those who chose to stay), and never really get the opportunity to speak to an Iranian or an Afghani who chooses to stay in their country. My biggest issue with this book was probably my interest level. Depending on the chapter and my level of interest in where the author was, I either couldn't put the book down or I'd put it down for a week or two at a time. I'm glad I read the book, even the parts that interested me less, but it's a book that you might need some time to go through unless you're interested in everywhere between China and Turkey.
Unfortunately, after taking so long to finish this book I now have a backlog of requests that have come in that the library to sift through. So, expect quite a few more book posts coming up!
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