Mishaps and other haps

This month has disappeared so fast!

Quick bullets from this week:

– Joe arrived back in Madison on Monday evening from his semester in Sri Lanka. He is staying with us for the summer. Michael worked from home on Thursday so that he could spend some time with his brother. It’s great to have Joe around!

– Michael, Joe and I went to visit Matt yesterday in Chicago. Matt’s nephew and sister were visiting, so we met them at the Shedd Aquarium, went back to Matt’s for games for a while, and had dinner at Ron of Japan. A good time was had by all!

– It looks like Michael’s Friday night game will be put on hold for a while and Guffey will run a short game on Fridays this summer.

– Michael and I have been using our Google calendars to schedule summer events and a lot of the weekends are filling up with fun activities I love summer!

This afternoon we are doing some wedding planning with Althea. We expect to hang out with the Guffeys (definitely Liz and probably Matt) this afternoon/evening. They just returned from a scuba trip to the Netherland Antilles last week– hope the photos are ready for viewing. Good times with friends and family!

We’ve been having a great Memorial Day weekend so far.

Michael left work early on Friday (his company has “summer hours” every other Friday through Labor Day), so he drove to Chicago to pick up Matt and his computer. They were back at our place around 9 and the three of us went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse.

Saturday morning we got up by 8:30/9. I finished making a dessert (“Death by Chocolate”, a recipe from co-worker Tammy) and we headed out to the Carpe Diem party at Token Creek park. The first family Carpe Diem party was held one year after Michael’s mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The past couple of years we’ve had a cookout at our place and a wedding (Maretta and Kyle’s) to attend, so this has been the first time we’ve been back to Token Creek park. However, I think it’s going to be a family tradition. It’s a good excuse to see extended family, such as some of Michael and his siblings’ cousins and their families, and friends of the family that we don’t see too often (as well as people we see fairly frequently)!

The party was fun and we had company at our house afterwards– Maretta and Kyle who are down from the Twin Cities for the weekend and Josh and Betsy. Josh has just received word that he will be getting a job offer from the company he applied with about three months ago, so it looks like he and Betsy will be shopping for a house in or near Red Wing, MN.

Today we slept in. It’s a gorgeous day. I ran some errands in the afternoon and the guys have been playing video games. Cats are snoozing. Laundry probably needs to be done, but I think I will wait until later or tomorrow

EDIT: My mom went home from the hospital on Tuesday and saw her family doctor on Friday. She will be seeing a cardiologist and another specialist and they will run some tests to determine whether she will need further treatment beyond a new medication to take that should help control occurrences of the irregular beat.

I have a few thoughts on my mind tonight. First and foremost is that my mother went into the hospital this morning and is staying overnight. My dad called after work to tell me and she seems to be doing fine now. She has had occasional heart palpitations as long as I can remember, but this morning her heart started racing and it did not stop on its own as it usually does. She will be undergoing some tests and talking to a cardiologist. They did say definitively that it was not a heart attack.

Apart from that, it has been a very calm Monday. I stayed a little late at work to play catch-up. I was out of the office a couple of days last week and we had some technical problems at the end of the week.

I made marinara sauce and tortellini for dinner tonight and Michael helped me clean the house. It’s good to have time to cook (and even clean) again! Matt will be visiting this weekend and Joe will be arriving next Monday night to stay with us for the summer. The rest of the week is looking fairly full, so I thought we should get the cleaning done while we had an evening free.

Opera performances over the weekend went smoothly and everyone I talked to who watched it had good things to say. I had a great time and it was fun meeting and working with new people. I hope I have the opportunity to do it again!

Faust is coming along. We had a few complete or fairly complete run-throughs last week. I had Wednesday night off, so I was able to be around for our Wednesday night game. That should also be true this week.

Yesterday was also a day off, so Michael and I went to the Farmer’s Market and ran errands together during the morning and early afternoon. I caught up on laundry. We took it easy at home for a bit in the afternoon, then babysat last night for Andrew and Sylvie. Bryan and Althea sent us home with some delicious desserts from Monty’s Blue Plate Diner that we enjoyed as we caught up on the last four episodes (EVER!) of Scrubs. It was pretty late (12:30, I would wager) when we crashed, so we slept in this morning.

Tonight, Faust rehearsals move to the Overture Center. We have a full run-through tonight with piano tech. Tomorrow night is our first dress rehearsal (with piano) and Tuesday night we have our first dress rehearsal with the orchestra. During the day on Wednesday we have a second orchestra dress rehearsal with student and adult guests (it’s a ticketed event). Thursday night is dark (Michael and I are going to have our date night back for the first week in a couple!).

PERFORMANCES are Friday night, 8 PM and Sunday (2:30 PM, I believe). If anyone out there is considering buying tickets, email me and I will send you the information for our friends and family discount. I believe tickets are still available at this time, although I think the cheaper seats are sold out based on what Michael told me when he looked.

I’ve had a lot of fun doing this. Being a super works out perfectly for people who work a regular daytime job. It’s short and quick (about 3 weeks of commitment) and a nice break from regular routines and activities. The only time I am taking off from my job for the opera is this coming Wednesday, since that’s a daytime performance. It has really accommodated my work schedule well, otherwise. I’m planning to keep my name on the “call list” for extras. Opera veterans I have talked to say they have been called maybe once a year or so for shows.  I highly recommend it for anyone who needs a change of pace, is a fan of theatre, or who just wants to step out of his/her box or normal social circle a little!

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers out there, including mine.

You are all loved and appreciated!

For me, an unintended consequence of opera rehearsal has been an increase in reading time. During the first week of rehearsals we were pretty busy learning the staging for each scene, but now we push through a large chunk of the opera each night. Part of the opera experience has been meeting and talking to new people from different walks of life, but we are also expected to be silent while others are rehearsing. “Quiet work” is strongly encouraged.

As a result, my library books are being read before they are due (for once)! I am especially enjoying Barbara Kingsolver’s non-fiction. Maybe I will eventually get around to reading her fiction, which people have been recommending to me for years. What can I say? I enjoy non-fiction and have a hard time reading novels

This was never a problem for me until grad school. At some point I decided that non-fiction was more practical and interesting than the plight of fictional characters and since then I have had a real problem sinking into and enjoying “literature” or even a quick-read piece of fiction. There are some exceptions to the rule, but it’s a little embarrassing how many books I have started and stopped. I have trouble staying interested. Fictional characters often seem flat and lifeless– maybe I don’t give them enough time to develop?

In any case, at least I am indulging in some fascinating non-fiction right now. I need to schedule some time in my life for reading beyond this opera. Why do I feel like there are so many hobbies I could say that for?

After writing the text above, I came across this oh-so-fitting (or justifying– Michael says I “justify” things a lot) passage in Kingsolver’s essay “What Good is a Story?”:

I’m patient with most corners of my life, but put a book in my hands and suddenly I remind myself of a harrowing dating-game shark, long in the tooth and looking for love right now, thank you, get out of my way if you’re just going to waste my time and don’t really want kids or a long-term commitment. I give a novel thirty pages and if it’s not by that point talking to me of till-death-do-us-part, then sorry, buster, this date’s over. I’ve chucked many half-finished books into the donation box.

Michael helped me move my blog to its new home this weekend. Please note the new URL. I will keep defaultlisa.net, but one day it may be something else.

EDIT: Michael asked me to post the web address of our new joint blog, also: http://blog.babler.us/

It has been an interesting first week of rehearsals as an extra for Faust.  I’m a newbie, but most of the other supers I have talked to are veterans.  I’m not sure how they all first came into contact with Madison Opera, but I guess once you’re on the list and show that you are reliable and capable, you can expect that you might be asked back to participate in later shows down the road, as needed.

If you have an interest in this sort of thing, you might contact the Madison Opera.  I am sure they would be particularly interested in having a larger list of males to choose from.  It’s not a paid job, but it’s fun and there are a few perks.

The chorus and principals (lead roles) have been rehearsing the music for quite a while, probably months.  The main part of the performance is (of course) the music, and the story is built around it.  I guess an opera is a little different from both musicals and plays in this way.  Music is forefront and really is the dialogue. Staging is at the discretion of the director.

After three rehearsals this week, I have been placed into three scenes.  I play a nun in two scenes and a statue in another scene.  I have another rehearsal tomorrow and will be going to my costume fitting on Sunday morning.  The two main performances are two weeks away.  It’s a quick, fast trip into dramatic theatre.

Since rehearsals started, I worked less overtime this week, but work is the other element that has been sapping up my free time (and blogging time) lately.  However, it has been paying off in some ways.  I received a decent performance-based raise at the end of March.  Unexpectedly, my manager called me into her office to give me a second raise a week or two ago.  I think I failed to blog about that when it happened.

I was very surprised, but I have really been putting my nose to the grindstone for the past nine months or so.  It’s nice to receive monetary recognition for that.  A raise is really the best kind of recognition at work (well, a promotion is a little better, I guess, and usually includes a raise).

In other news, it sounds like Joe will be spending the summer with us and will arrive in town about a week after the opera ends.  If foaming at the mouth was a sign of excitement, I would say that Michael is foaming at the mouth.  Or maybe he just has rabies.

OK, it’s going to be a good summer I think