Wow! I just saw Eddie Izzard! With my two favourite people in the world! And he was right there and everything, just thirty-two million billion yards away on the stage, and if I squinted I could see his facial expressions! And it was awesome and wonderful!

I also just opened a kitchen cabinet door and had a shot glass fall out into the sink and hit a mug there and smash into lots of little pieces, but if a flying splinter had nicked my jugular and I were lying on my kitchen floor slowly bleeding to death, I’d still be happy, because I just saw Eddie Izzard.

(Eddie, baby, if you don’t remember where to send the check, my address is linked from my userinfo.)

Another lovely weekend with plumtreeblossom. On Saturday we went to a sheepshearing festival¹ in Waltham with teratomarty and trouble4hire (big thanks to them for posting about it!) and had a lovely time. It was great hanging out with them, and great doing country-fair things within easy reach of Boston. (I drove, but the festival venue is bus-accessible.) While there, we bumped into mrpet and, lady_anemone. Anyway, after the festival, which was huge amounts of fun, the six of us wandered Moody Street and then had yummy tapas for dinner before plumtreeblossom and I went back to my house, where we watched the first two-thirds of Lust, Caution.

On Sunday, we went to a Poly Boston dim sum organized by a wonderful person whose LJ name, if he has one, I don't know. We had a wonderful, wonderful time. Thanks so much to the organizer!

Last night was the monthly Poly Boston dinner at Bertucci's (the first one in a while plumtreeblossom's been able to make it to, because of theater commitments), and tonight plumtreeblossom, cathijosephine, and I get to go see Eddie Izzard perform! Life is incredibly full and fun.

And this coming weekend plumtreeblossom and I are finally making a trip to New York City.

Whee!

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¹ Sadly, the venue has already taken down the web page about it. If you are luckier than usual, I will eventually get around to posting some pictures, though. Because, you know, you all appreciated the Topsfield Fair pictures and the pictures of our trip to DC to meet bcat1 and spacechicken so much.²
² That I haven’t posted yet. Those pictures.

Well, I had a bad cold towards the end of last week, and I took Friday off from work (and slept for most of it, which was glorious). But I was better by Saturday (sleeping late Saturday as well), and Saturday night I went to see plumtreeblossom and many other wonderful people at the closing night of Much Ado About Nothing at Theatre@First. The performance was great (as opening night had been), and a lovely bonus was bumping into minerva42 and getting to catch up a bit. (See my earlier post for more about the performance.)

Afterwards, I helped strike, which was lots of fun but took longer than I had expected (given the extremely minimal set) because Theatre@First needed to clear everything out of the prop closet so the church could do some remodelling. I enjoy doing stuff like that where I can just look around and find some mindless task that somebody else will have to do if I don’t do it. I think I wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much if I were one of the people trying to keep track of all the tasks, mindless and difficult, and making sure they all get done efficiently in the proper order by the proper people.

And after strike, I joined plumtreeblossom at the wonderful cast party at heliopsis’ house. It was a great party with yummy food and munchies and delightful people. Did I mention it was at heliopsis’ house? It was at heliopsis’ house. This is of note because ① heliopsis is a total sweetheart and ② a gracious and welcoming host who ③ throws a kickass party and his house is gorgeous and just perfectly laid out for that sort of party. (I understand that surrealestate sold it to him. Way to go, surrealestate! You need to sell houses to more people whose parties I go to!) He’s also ④ a spectacular cook, by the way.

At some point during the party, heliopsis put on the Kenneth Branagh version of Much Ado (which I had watched with plumtreeblossom a few weeks ago) and we all sat around and watched and compared performances. We had to stay through plumtreeblossom’s lines, of course, but she and I were pretty tired by this point, and by the time we said our goodbyes and made our way to her place (just a few blocks away) and got ready for bed it was something like 3:00am. Whee!

We slept late (for plumtreeblossom, not really for me), and Sunday morning we hustled out of the house and got on the road to try to find the Gideon Freudmann concert in Vermont. Now, I had spaced on the fact that we were doing that until Saturday afternoon (I blame several days of a cold), and had scrambled to find and print out directions when I was leaving for the show Saturday night, and, long story short, I was not clear on the directions, I did not have my GPS with me, and I knew we were cutting it close on the timing even if everything went perfectly. Only everything didn’t go perfectly; the Google Maps directions I had printed out had some turns (or forks) onto streets which did not have street signs, and in at least one case probably looked more like a long driveway than a street (unless I really wasn’t in even approximately the right place to start with). So anyway, there was much driving back and forth trying to figure out where our turn was, and after about 40min of this I decided even if we got back on track the concert would be mostly over by the time we got there, so we turned around and looked for food.

We drove around for a while in White River Junction looking in vain for something that was both more upscale than a slice of pizza and open at 7pm on a Sunday, but plumtreeblossom found a Chinese buffet just as we were getting back on the highway, and we had a very satisfying meal there.

Only after the meal I got on the wrong highway. And I didn’t notice I was on 91 instead of [EDIT: 89] until we were almost to Northampton, which added at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half to our return trip. plumtreeblossom was very sweet about it, but remember that we’d been up till 3:00am the previous night — she was very tired and wanted to be home in bed. I felt bad about that. But most of the drive was delightful and sunny and I got to spend almost the entire day with my hand on her knee, so as far as I am concerned it was a win.

Next Sunday plumtreeblossom and I are making a long road-trip up to Lincoln, Vermont, to hear a concert by Gideon Freudmann (warning: unobtrusive background music), a whimsical electric cellist that minerva42 and underwatercolor introduced me to on a visit a while back. (Big thanks to them for that!) He also has a bunch of concerts in Connecticut on this visit out east (and some private concerts in schools in the Boston area, even) and one in Western Mass, but this was the only one I’m sure I can make it to, and it’s a great excuse for a drive.

I mention this in case any of my more northerly friends might want to go (it’s almost a four-hour drive from Boston) or in case I can hook any of you on Gideon Freudmann’s music. (Alas, I can’t give anybody a ride; the drive is going to be date-time.)

Here’s his calendar of upcoming gigs.

On Wednesday there was another in the nifty new series of monthly davis_square gatherings that anomie666 has been organizing. I got to see surrealestate, which is always delightful, and meet some nice new people, but plumtreeblossom couldn’t make it due to rehearsal. But I did get to see her afterwards, so we had a nice little mini-date in the middle of the week.

I think it was Thursday that cathijosephine and I went out for Mexican food and margaritas in Quincy, and we had a great time and got to do some catching up.

Friday I (and cathijosephine) went to see plumtreeblossom and lots and lots of our other friends in Theatre@First’s performance of Much Ado About Nothing. It was great! I later heard somebody who’s been watching Theatre@First’s performances since they started say that this was their best performance, and I can believe it. It was done more-or-less in the round, with no stage (so the actors or at or just below the level of the audience), and with a very very minimal set and costuming. When plumtreeblossom described it to me before I saw it I confess I was a bit dubious, but wow, it really worked. All the performances were fine, most of them were good, and some of them were really good. The play flowed well, the comedic timing was good, the blocking was great (and funny), the lines were clear and delivered in a way that made the Elizabethan language very easy to follow, and I just had a great time, and so did the rest of the audience. I’m looking forward to going back on [EDIT:] closing night on Saturday, and if you get a chance (those of you who are local) and you like Shakespeare’s comedies, you should try to see one of their remaining performances.

After the show I had another lovely date with my favourite character actor. (plumtreeblossom played one of the watchmen, in drag, and did a great job! She didn’t have many lines, but she had some pretty awesome body language. I also have to mention that I had a hard time believing the person playing one of the bad guys was actually dietrich, and I kept looking at the program and trying to figure out what other character that could be!) We had a great time and stayed up far, far too late.

Sunday morning we went out for yummy brunch at Johnny D’s with a bunch of the cast and crew — yummy but slow; they were very crowded — and had a delightful time. I walked back to the church where plumtreeblossom had her call for the Sunday matinée, and as a delightful bonus bumped into docorion and mud_puppy, whom I hadn’t seen in far too long.

I had a not as productive as planned but still pretty good Sunday evening (got some laundry done, at least).

Today after work I went over to see cathijosephine and bring her some snacks, because she wasn’t feeling well. Got to overhear half of a phone call with the delightful and dearly missed ragingamazon, and got lots of kitty snuggles with Chickenfinger, who has turned into the sweetest little mellow kitty. (Poor dear used to live with two huge and playful dogs, and it’s taken her a while to recover.)

And now I’m at home and I get to go to sleep. Yay!

Having a lovely date with plumtreeblossom, who’s out having a smoke. First I fixed her intarwebs, then we had yummy Mexican food in Quincy, and we just finished watching French Twist (and incidentally consuming a somewhat surprising quantity of alcohol — I just bought that bottle!). Life is good.

And tomorrow’s yummy brunch at Doyle’s! Life continues to be good!

So I just watched Dil Se (warning: spoilers in link) with darxus and cathijosephine. It has to be the weirdest and most disturbing Bollywood movie I’ve seen so far. I liked the latter part, when all the brutality was the focus of the film and no longer just background for a typical fluffy Bollywood romance, better than the former part.

Basically, it was half Bollywood musical and half Shakespearean tragedy. I’m glad I saw it, but I wouldn’t exactly say I enjoyed it.

The company (two humans and a cute cute kitty!) and food (kind of a cross between pancakes with a side of ham and an omelette) were excellent, though.

(Sorry no Rabbit Hole Day post this year; I don’t have enough brain cells to be creative right now. You get the following by virtue of the fact that most of it was written yesterday on the T.)

So last long weekend was Arisia, and I haven’t stopped having fun since. On Tuesday, I ended up at dinner at the Cambridge location of Addis Red Sea with cathijosephine, ragingamazon, and a bunch of other people in what was sort of an impromptu farewell dinner for ragingamazon. I had never tried their new location, and I hadn’t had Ethiopian food since Meskerem in DC with plumtreeblossom, bcat1, and spacechicken. It was the yum, and the company was lots of fun.

On Wednesday, plumtreeblossom and I went to a gathering at The Burren for members of the davis_square community. The bar gave us free food, and they certainly recouped their investment; there were about 30 or 35 of us there. There were lots of Theatre@First people there, among them the wonderful surrealestate (f/k/a pheromone) and joyeous, but there were also a lot of people we hadn’t met in person, and a lot of people we (especially I) didn’t know at all. It was a great time.

( A few more days, cut for length. )

As I was telling jadia over dinner yesterday, as a child I was an introvert, more or less out of necessity since I was sick a lot (and therefore out of school a lot, and often unable to run and play with other kids). Clearly I am no longer an introvert, but it’s only been in the past few years that my mental image of myself has caught up to reality. I used to think, “Hah, hah! I’ve got everybody fooled; they think I’m an extrovert, just because I get energized by spending lots and lots of time with other people!” and it was only fairly recently that I realized that everybody who thought I was an extrovert was actually right. (I am, though, an extrovert who needs a lot of quiet alone time.) Anyway, if I had lingering doubts, this past week should lay them to rest.

Awesome weekend at Arisia and other places with plumtreeblossom. Much seeing of old friends I don’t get to see very often. Car mishegas — my car is currently in the shop having the muffler reattached. Loved plumtreeblossom and joyeous’ performance in this year’s Red Shift.

Completely aside from all the fun things going on in the vicinity, I find just being in a hotel relaxing and refreshing. plumtreeblossom and I are thinking of doing occasional little mini-vacations close to home, where we don’t really go anywhere special, but find a hotel in the general Eastern Massachusetts area and have a night or two in a room that somebody else cleans, with a really soft bed and a big bathtub and no piles of stuff that needs to get done nearby.

The good: plumtreeblossom and I got to go see The Golden Compass last night. I found it really really compressed compared to the rather thoughtfully-paced book it’s based on, but I loved it. Lyra’s Oxford was much as I had imagined it, and Iorik and Lee were plucked right out of my head. The world was a bit more steampunky than in the book, but I didn’t mind that. The acting was good. I’m so glad I saw it. And I’m very glad that plumtreeblossom enjoyed it, too, not having read the book. (She’s excited to read the series now.) And, barring production problems, there are two more movies to look forward to!

We had an unplanned intermission when there was a fire alarm and the building was evacuated, but when we started to see people streaming back into the building as we were walking towards the T we decided to go back in and see what was up, and since it had only been 10min or so since the alarm, they resumed all the movies. We saw some smoke or steam coming from a nearby building; I presume that’s what the alarm was about, but I’m not sure. The Religious Right is up in arms about this movie — as well they should be; the books are delightfully subversive —, so plumtreeblossom’s first thought was a bomb threat.

More recent good stuff include dinner with plumtreeblossom at The Cheesecake Factory near my work on Wednesday, pasta and interesting liqueurs with cathijosephine on Thursday, and brunch at Johnny D’s this morning (with live jazz guitar).

The bad: I have a bad cold. I had hoped it would just be a mild day-or-so, but I feel really crummy today. I am probably going to go to bed soon. (I really hope plumtreeblossom doesn’t come down with this, but that seems pretty implausible.) On the other hand, I have the weekend to rest. On the other other hand, I had planned on doing a lot of work on the house this weekend, and instead I’m mostly going to be resting and trying to get better.

Net balance is quite good, though.