Missives from the Birdcage

New days dawning

Mr. P has graduated! Yay! I'm so very, very proud of him. He graduated, on time, with honors (magna cum laude, suckers!), while working, teaching, having shows, and making art. *And* the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts recently purchased one of his pieces from Flight Patterns for their collection.

Yay!

We moved to Richmond almost five years ago with the plan that Mr. P would be going to school. (There is a long, amusing story associated with the series of oblivious decisions we made in association with this. The take home lesson of which is that there are times when the universe rewards you for being oblivious). Now that he has completed that mission, wheels are in motion to send us on to the next chapter, new adventures, and a whole new part of the country. Details soon, but let us just say that it is perhaps a good thing that my years in grad school got me used to lake effect snow.

Taking a shine to it

Tonight was date night a chez nous, and I took Mr. P for Indian food at a place on the West End. The food was pretty good, we had a lovely time. In the parking lot Mr. P was getting text messages from friends at the 1708 charity auction, so we were sitting in the car while the texting was going back and forth. Parked in front of us was a ginormous pick up truck with a built in tool box across the bed of the truck just behind the cab. A guy appears, clearly the owner of the truck, and he is, shall we say, to type.... big hoss, shaved head, serious accent. He is being followed by a couple, the guy looking like a shrunken version of the truck owner, but stuffed into taking-someone-on-a-date clothes. The woman had big, blonde hair, too much makeup (if I can see it in a dark parking lot twenty feet away, that's too much), and a much too tight black dress that had ruffles and sparkly things on it. As the bald fellow comes into view he says,

Gonna get drunk tonight! whooo-hoo!

Mr. P and I look at each other. The three of them look only a little younger than us. Then, Big Hoss opens up the tool box and reaches in. And pulls out.... a mason jar full of moonshine. Seriously.  He hands it to the woman, who takes a swig, sucks her breath in loudly and then waves her hands in front of her like she's trying to dry just-painted fingernails. We decide we need to get out of there before any of them joins us on the road.

Thank you for playing, no really, there's a reason why that stereotype exists.

Of Opera and Travel

We went to the opera last night. I got season tickets, which is why we keep going to the opera. I can assure it that it is not because of Mr. P's enduring love of Verdi. Indeed, accompanying me to the opera is an example of Mr. P's five-star-ness as a husband.

That said, even he enjoyed seeing The Mikado.

In part because it's Gilbert and Sullivan, and G & S operas are funny. The sets were interesting (still not spectacular, but perfectly servicable and not weird and distracting a la Aida). The costumes were interesting (see comment above re: sets). But also? The guy who played Ko-Ko was hi-larious. The performances of Pooh-Bah and The Mikado were also really good. The rewrite on the list of those whom Ko-Ko would execute was great (hipsters in their skinny jeans with fake fedoras. Right on, brother).

Meanwhile, I got my new passport.

I don't know when this happened, but the new ones are hiiiiiiiiiiiideous. What the hell? Every page has the most hackeneyed, cheesy, pathetically boring and so stereotypical as to be its own characiture picture of "America" on it. When did this happen? Can I get one without the ugly illustrations? It's like the passport Team America would have designed.

And, they don't send your old one back anymore. I asked. (* see update below) I got my last passport in Phnom Penh. My previous one still had about six years left on it, but the lamination came loose and I could pull the picture out. I didn't really think too much about it until 9/11. I was in Chiang Mai on 9/11, visiting a friend who was there to do dissertation research. I managed to get back into Cambodia, but thought that I needed to get that sorted because lots of places were going to be on security lock down. I remembered being really aggrivated that I'd just gotten a new six month Cambodian visa put into that passport and I was going to have to get a new one. In the picture I'm wearing a burgandy button up shirt I'd had made in Hoi An the year before and there are two stitches on my right cheek where the German dermotologist at the international clinic in Phnom Penh had just removed a mole. I had to wait in line at the consulate behind a pile of Americans trying to finalize the adoptions of Cambodian children.

The pages of that passport were filled with Cambodian and Vietnamese visas. There was page after page of entry and exit stamps marking my travels-- flights from Pochentong, arrivals at Bangkok International, motorcycle trips where I crossed out of Vietnam and into Cambodia at Bavet, once, twice, half a dozen times. A stamp at Poipet when I left Cambodia on a motorcycle for the last time, on my way to the Lao border and the untimely, car accident induced demise of my beloved bike and my own shocking survival. Stamps for Paris, Marseille, Paris again. And again. Trips to London. A trip to Spain for a wedding and a zip up the Costa Brava. A couple of weeks in Ecuador.

In a shredder somewhere, I'd imagine.

Also, as Mr. P pointed out, my new passport smells like a new car. Seriously. Which I guess means it's off-gassing. Awesome.

UPDATE: My old passport arrived in the mail today. Yay! I've got Bavet back! Thank you, State Department.

Slip Sliding Away

What would a week without a deadline look like? If you find out, let me know.... SuperStats midterm was the highlight... or lowlight... or maybe just the what-the-hell-is-this-asking-me?-light of last week. So to get past that I used my, ahem, free time (read: time I stole away from other things) this weekend on a project. A craftycrafty project. Mwahahahahahaha!

I made slippers.

I am an inconsistent knitter/crocheter. One of my big problems is patterns. I feel about patterns like I feel about recipes. Which is to say that I can only adhere but so closely to them. Then I start questioning them, then I either make adjustments, or I lose track of where I am in the pattern... This is why I am a pretty good cook, but not a particularly good baker (baking requiring the precision of chemistry, cooking less so). This is also why I've never managed to make a sweater.

So I looked up slipper patterns. I disliked many of them. I tried to follow one, managed to crochet a slipper toe that was large enough to use a sling for the cat, thought about it for a while, and then just decided that I could probably just visualize what needed to be done. Et viola! Slippers!

They were pretty easy, actually, and quick once I'd figured out the sizing. And Mary-Jane-y! Which none of the patterns I saw were, but who doesn't love MaryJanes?

a-ha!

I know, I know, everyone has seen it already...

 

And yet. There are several points of awesomeness here. You know, besides the Take on me in jaunty accordion style.

1. The camera is crooked. It is like watching the happiest band of the Titanic play on while the deck lists to starboard.

2. Those plastic sunflowers.

3. They are dressed like a Depression era Salvation Army band.

4. That ginormous landscape painting in the background.

5. So jaunty!

No comment necessary. Right?

 

That's right. Llamallamallamallamallamallamallamallamallama....

Kick in the Pants

Apparently, the economy is having an impact all around. There was still shooting last night, but it was nothing like last year. I guess ammo is an expensive luxury no one can really afford in this economy. We both commented this morning that it sounded like fewer people shooting, and less being shot by those who did.

Well, I hope it was enough to scare 2011 away for good, because I, for one, really don't want to see it come back. Here's a kick in the pants for you, 2011! And don't come back!

Honey bun

Well, most of the deadlines have been wrapped up (there's a couple of stragglers, but what can you do?), so I've let out a biiiiiiiiig sigh this weekend. As soon as the new year opens I'm back on the treadmill set to high, but I have a couple of weeks of visiting family and reading novels and maybe even knitting something, in store....

Mr. P's birthday was this last weekend, so I took him out to dinner at his favorite local restaurant. (They still haven't sorted out their seating issues, but the food is purdy darn good. And who can resist tater tots?). I attempted to surprise him with his birthday gift, but was foiled by logistical issues. I got him storage for his tools, but when the larger of the two chests (this one) came out on the palate I knew it wasn't going to fit in my car by itself, never mind with the second one. So I had to call Mr. P to come to the store to pick up his own gift. Not exactly the surprise I was going for....

I also took him to see the musical South Pacific. It had gotten a pretty good review in the New Yorker a while ago, and I must admit that I love the movie. (Yes, yes, it trades in all sorts of uncomfortable and icky stereotypes. But still. How can you resist 101 pounds of fun?)

 

Wellllll.... the ensemble numbers were good. And the guy who played Billis (though younger than he should have been) was funny. All the singing was good. But the leads for the traveling show.... Uhm.... let's just say that we know why they are in the traveling show.They both sang well, but they both had some major accent issues that were totally distracting. Nellie kept claiming to be from Arkansas, but she was sliding all over the eastern seaboard every time she opened her mouth. She was one part New Jersey and one part Scarlett O'Hara. And zero parts Little Rock. I might have been able to live with the Scarlett O'Hara thing (okay, maybe not, but it wouldn't have been quite so bad) if she'd managed to just stick with it. Every time she spoke it was a little shocking. (She was fine when she was singing).

But she wasn't half as distracting as Emile. He is supposed to be French, but before he'd finished his first sentence I was thinking, "He sounds.... Argentinian. Or Chilean....." And then I thought, wait, he sounds like....

 

And trust me.... that isn't good. During the intermission we looked in the playbill and discovered that the actor is from Uruguay. Mr. P thought he looked and sounded like Dracula, which puts a whole new spin on things (Emile does say he had to leave France because he'd killed a man.....).

We finished up the weekend by watching an absolutely terrible, I mean mind-blowingly-bad, movie, and eating red velvet birthday cake. Yeay, Mr. P! Happy Birthday, Love!

My precious

I just got an email that some neato fat quarters I ordered aaaaaaaaages ago are finally coming. I might even be able to enjoy them if I survive this weekend and the imminent deadlines.

Skips

I've been totally obsessing over having a pair of shoes made for months. I found this woman on etsy a couple of years ago and have been coveting a pair of skips from her ever since. I mean, are these not the cutest things ever?

She makes heaps of things, and admittedly, I'm not so much into the pointy toe end of the spectrum, but these? I lovelovelove the two on top. Love. LOVE.

But as with things like this, it's tough to get into the queue to have them made. I check her site often, hoping that exactly the pair I want will pop up in my size, in the color I'm looking for. Thus far, it hasn't happened, though it's been close a couple of times. I've been right on the verge of buying more than once, thinking, well, Toffee is close to Marmite, right? (It totally isn't). And then I catch myself at the last minute, telling myself, no, no, I'll try to get into the bespoke queue. But, you know, she's a one woman operation, and you can only make so many shoes a month, so she only takes so many orders. I sat, poised, at my computer at the start of the month, waiting for the queue to open, and...... denied. I was suddenly transported back to my youth, obsessively calling over and over and over, hoping to sneak into ticketmaster's phone lines to pick up those seats to see U2. I never did get to see them.

Part of my obsession with these shoes is that the internets make it possible for me to be looking at them at 3am when insomnia takes over. And they are not the only pair of bespoke shoes over which I obsess. These, for example, I covet deeply. And part of it is that I have wanted, for many many many years, to learn how to make shoes. Where does one pick up this skill? I remember going to a shop on Ludlow Street in the city, years ago (years after I'd lived on the street, but around the time when it started to become a hipster paradise), and there was a woman there who would make bespoke shoes. She was in the back shaping stacked leather heels on a gorgeous pair of shoes, and it suddenly occured to me that learning to make shoes was a possiblity that existed in the universe. I've just never been able to figure out where, exactly.

Of course, even if I were to find a place to learn this skill, I'm sure it would take years and years to figure out how to make anything cute and wearable. So I'm back to trying to get into the bespoke queue.