Liz and I took a well-deserved three-day weekend trip to Ann Arbor to celebrate our anniversary a little early. It's hard to believe that six years of marriage have gone rocketing by so quickly!

Friday night we enjoyed a good wander around downtown Ann Arbor, discovered, to the peril of my credit cards, the Vault of Midnight, got a head start on our Christmas shopping, and met up with Kevin Dangoor and Mark Ramm at the Arbor Brewing Company, where a good time was had by all.

Saturday, after a spot of brunch and shopping (and discovering the hypnotic terror that is "Powerpuff Girls Z"), the main attraction began: a series of RSC shows featuring Patrick Stewart. First up was Julius Caesar, not featuring Patrick Stewart, but instead featuring buckets of blood, dogs of war, signs and portents, and all similar manner of treacherous goodness. We paused for a jaunt over to Vinology for dinner, followed by a quick bit of dessert at La Dolce Vita, then it was back to the theatre for Antony and Cleopatra, where I had a bit of a chuckle over Patrick Stewart's wig--I don't think I've ever seen him have that much hair before, unless you count the space-mullet he sported in Dune. This morning, we brunched again, then took in the third and final round, The Tempest, which had been done up as a rather cinematic affair in a barren land north of the Arctic circle, somewhere between King Kong and Neil Gaiman.

As expected, Patrick Stewart was thoroughly at home on the stage, and did not disappoint, in energy, in subtlety, in getting just the right nuance. And though he chewed a bit of scenery, he should be commended for making sure that his fellow players get chances to shine in their own right. We were especially impressed with Cleopatra, whose performance utterly defied words as it cascaded from girlish delight to bitter jealousy and rage, into despair, and finally, tragic, dignified resolve. Bravo!

And, just like that, the time has gone and now we're home again, making preparations to do battle with the week ahead. Oh, yes, there are still tickets available for some shows, if you find yourself of a mind to go. Even if your seats aren't the greatest, you won't regret it.

Liz and I manged to almost completely forget that MacHomer is playing this week at the Hanna Theatre. Luckily, we managed to remember in time to get tickets for this evening's show, which played to a surprisingly packed audience. If you enjoy "The Simpsons" and have read or seen "the Scottish play" at least once, you will probably get a sizeable kick out of this... Most of his voices are dead on--pretty much any character that wasn't Bart, Lisa, or (alas!) Homer was perfect. The whole thing is nicely integrated with a music and video track that really adds to the production--there are a lot of characters to keep track of, and there are some cute visual jokes. The ending is, as one might expect from a Shakespearean tragedy, pretty grim, so the audience receives as a bonus feature Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" as performed by 25 of rock's "most annoying voices."

We preceded the show with a bit of wine and food at Vinea, a fairly new place just down the block from Playhouse Square. I quite enjoyed the spinach salad (I have a weakness for cranberries and blue cheese) and was significantly awed by the "Italian Plate" appetizer which, after claiming in the menu to have a couple of cheeses, a couple of Italian meats, a loaf of bread for dipping in olive oil, and some olives, ended up being enough food for a modest paramilitary outfit, if not a small army. There was enough left over to make more than a full plate of the same thing at any other restaurant, and that's when the guilt really started to kick in--certainly there are some starving children who could use some sopresetta and smoked gouda?

All in all, it's been a better-than-typical Tuesday evening--which I think will get rounded out with the last chapter of Anansi Boys. Cheers!

So, I've been meaning to catch up on things since last week, and just too busy and burned out to get around to it. I figure it's about time, so here's a little bit about our Turkey Day weekend.
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BEGIN MISSION REPORT

SATURDAY, 11-08-2003

0829: Clean, dressed, packed, breakfast made and eaten. Operation: Super-Secret Ninja Early Anniversary Celebration is a GO!

1416: Morning beautification phase complete. Massage and facial treatments for Agents M and L; special eyebrow, hair, and toe glamorization applied to Agent L; aerodynamic dorsal modifications to Agent M successful, minimal damage incurred. Funds transfer and vehicle refueling complete. Will begin next phase of operations once Agent L's naptime is done.

1645: Checked into the Intercontinental Hotel. Dressed to kill. Dining phase to commence in 15 minutes, a multi-course gastronomic assault at Classics. Take no prisoners.

1909: Dining phase complete. Achieved the following mission objectives:

• Amuse bouche: cucumber with parma ham, puff pastry with parmesan cheese


• Wine: 1992 Signature pinot noir -- fruity, silky, marvelous


• Bread: olive, whole-grain, raisin-walnut


• Amuse bouche: crab meat gelee topped with salmon, creme fresch, Iranian beluga caviar


• Agent M - appetizer: foie gras marinated in sauterne, served with apple marmalade, miniature greens, and warm toast


• Agent L - appetizer: Charlotte gelee of blue crab


• Agent M - salad: balsamic-glazed quail with roasted red pepper and greens


• Agent L - salad: white truffles with porcini mushrooms and greens


• Agent M - main course: long-bone veal chop, scallopped potatoes, chantrelle mushrooms, and mixed steamed vegetables


• Agent L - main course: sea bass with tomato confit


• Amuse bouche: Absolut lemon sorbet in flower-shaped shortbread cookie with raspberry sauce


• Dessert: bananas Foster, accompanied by assorted miniature desserts

</code>

1947: Mission vehicle stowed securely at Playhouse Square Center parking lot. Tickets obtained, surprise sprung -- Agent L is treated to a night at the ballet.

2355: Cultural phase complete to the satisfaction of all parties. Returned to staging location at Intercontinental Hotel for mission debriefing over wine and chocolates.

SUNDAY 11-09-2003

1000: Post-mission wrap-up operations begin.

1130: Tear-down of staging location and packing of mission supplies complete.

1202: Emergency ration stop at Brendan O'Neills for brunch.

1305: All agents successfully returned to base -- MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

END MISSION REPORT

For the record, lazy weekends pretty much rule.

Friday night we watched Bowling for Columbine, which simply has to be seen to be believed. It's scathingly funny and incredibly depressing at the same time. Brilliant.

Saturday we slept super-late, which felt great. We went out for lunch, which turned out to be a disappointment, but the day was glorious, so the nice drive made up for the lackluster meal. After watching a little bit of "Monk" that had been TiVoed, Liz napped while I tried to read The Silmarillion and ended up napping. (I'm at a part where it goes for a LONG time without a break, and is really difficult.) Eventually, we woke up, and in a fit of being the most incredible woman in the universe, Liz insisted that we go to the local record store to see if they had broken the street date on The Two Towers. Alas, they hadn't, but she let me buy some records anyway, so I came away from it with the new Moby Jam for the Ladies single, the new Blues Traveler CD, and the new A3 CD. When we got back, it was time to make dinner, which turned out to be delicious tuna kabobs and a sauteed spinach and garlic salad. We then watched Read or Die, a fun little OAV anime series that we both enjoyed. Once that finished, we realized we needed to run for groceries, so we took a fun-filled late-night grocery trip. We had to go back to the store fairly promptly, though, as one of the nice bottles of wine that we picked up had torn straight through both the paper and plastic bags as soon as it was picked up, shooting straight to the concrete floor of our garage, where it shattered and spilled its contents like a wounded soldier. The manager said that she could only give us a replacement bottle, which was fine with us since it was exactly what we wanted. Given the choice between tasty wine and my money back, I'm going with the bottle of wine any day -- I was going to spend the money on it anyway! We finished the night with Neil Gaiman's new story book, The Wolves in the Walls, with which I am utterly delighted.

This morning, we popped out of bed bright and early for a stirring six-mile bike ride. I was invigorated for awhile, but somewhere on the return portion of our jaunt, that vigor turned into a Jello-like lethargy, and the day has been fairly relaxed since then. Liz made an excellent cheesy fritata and Canadian bacon breakfast that we both wolfed down. She's napped off and on, with a trip to the other grocery store in between, and is now downstairs knitting, while I am all arts-and-crafty upstairs. A few weeks ago, we picked up some collage picture frames from Joanne Etc., and I've finally gotten around to making the necessary measurements and Photoshop templates to allow me to start printing up some goodies. I've just completed printing a bunch of photos from our Alaska vacation, and will get the first collage all assembled and hung tonight. I figure I'll do one for each major trip that Liz and I have been on together: Italy, Alaska, Hawaii, and San Francisco/Napa. I'm not sure what all dinner is going to involve, but I do know it has to do with a flank steak that's currently soaking in a merlot mixture, so I suspect it's going to be pretty tasty. The rest of the evening should be pretty laid-back as well; though there's some laundry to complete, it's a fairly zen process and kind of relaxing.

I wish I could say the same for the coming work week -- the only upside of which is that I get my The Two Towers and Stitch: the Movie DVD's on Tuesday. Ah, well... Work is what pays for the DVD habit, so I guess it's a necessary evil.

Also, I really should write sometime about the trip to Stratford last week, what with all the good food, good plays, and huge power blackouts that were involved. It really was quite the adventure! Now, where did I leave my motivation...?

In general, there's been a general lack of bubblegum, and a corresponding abundance of ass-kicking this week:

• Drove to Columbus with Liz last weekend
  
• Had an awesome dinner at Martini's in Columbus. I was pleasantly surprised to see a Vino Nobile de Montepulciano on the wine list, and the server was extremely happy that I knew what it was without her having to recommend it to me. It went perfectly with what has to be the best filet mignon I've had in forever!
  
• Cirque du Soleil was fun, although the little 8-year-old contortionist girl scared me.
  
• Found a nice, light sport coat in my size, as well as nice, lightweight pants to go with it. And two new ties. And a shirt. And a couple pairs of very nice, comfortable shoes, which were way, way too expensive, but so far seem to be worth it.
  
• We have curtain rods for our bedroom too! Now to sort out a treatmenty-sort-of-hangy-thing for them...
  
• Cranked out two projects this week at work that both involved some tricky ninja magic design and coding. I had to speed up the work a bit in order to clear my schedule for my next huge projects, which look like they are starting sooner rather than later. But they both work, and that just plain rocks!
  
• I got my mid-year review yesterday, and it was really quite good.
  
• I found out during my review that one of the things I worked on this spring might get a patent. Not that I like the concept of software patents (in fact, I quite hate them and think they are the scourge of our industry), but I have to admit that in a dirty sort of way, it'll be kind of cool to have one.
  
• I have finally got most of the printing done for the back-log of mix CD's (converted from old mix-tape playlists) that I owe my friend Cathe. I need to get some more labels, and get the tricky mix done, and then I can finally be done with the favor that I started on almost a year ago.
  
• I got an old filling replaced this morning with a spiffy tooth-colored one. It feels a little weird, but it looks great, and I took it like a champ.
  
• I spent today working from home so that we could get the new carpet installed in the bedroom! It's super-soft, and definitely the best carpet in the house now... Whee!
  
• I've been listening to good music all day while I work. Yay!
  
• Hey, it's like, the weekend and stuff! ROCK!!!
  

Okay, time to go annoy Liz with how bouncy I am. ;-) Peace.

Breakin' down the good stuff, old-school list-style for your reading enjoyment:

• It's the weekend, yay!!
  
• Liz is doing a LOT better, yay!!
  
• The painters showed up and put our new shutters on the house, yay!!
  
• Electrician dude fixed the one GFI outlet that was giving me troubles and replaced the one in the half bath for me, yay!!
  
• We're packed and ready to head to Columbus to see Cirque du Soleil, yay!!
  
• We'll stop at The Great Indoors on the way back and look for curtain rods (and maybe even curtainy things) for the master bedroom, yay!!
  
• If I'm good, I might get to go to the Apple Store to drool, yay!!
  

Hope everyone has a good weekend; I certainly plan to.

There is next-to-nothing happening at work right now, so... ( it's time to get caught up and talk about the weekend in Ann Arbor! )

Yay, it's my first live post from somewhere other than Cleveland -- hooray for laptops and wireless LANs! We're currently in Ann Arbor at Andy & Lauren's house. We drove up last night, and will probably stay tonight as well. I let Liz drive my car, since I was feeling like crap after my work week. It's always weird for me to be in the passenger seat of my own car; very strange. We crashed last night in what is certainly the warmest room in the house (since everything else feels pretty cold this morning!). Slept well. This afternoon we will see the RSC perform Coriolanus, which should be pretty cool. After that, I don't know... Maybe some tasty dinner, maybe a little visit to The Oasis, maybe driving back to Cleveland depending on what the weather wants to do.

Okay, here's the story of our trip to Stratford!

I wonder how long this post will take....
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...Whew! Only an hour and forty-five minutes!

Because I have to go back to work in the morning.

We are returned from Stratford; details to follow when I am awake enough.

Since I haven't posted in a couple of days, here's the recap on the weekend.

• Friday night we watched Ran -- What an incredible movie, on an incredibly bad DVD (hard subtitles, crappy transfer, and if you opt to just play the movie, you can't do any chapter jumping, and it won't tell you how far into the film you are or how much remains). I will have to replace my copy with the new remastered version that is out this month. Still, excellent movie, even though the end is overwhelmingly depressing.
  
  
• Saturday during the day -- we finally found a console table for our foyer! The proper combination of style, finish, presence of a drawer, and not-stupid-lookingness finally crossed our path. So, in six to eight weeks, it's another piece of furniture (collect them all), hooray!!
  
  
• Saturday evening -- we ate dinner at The Harp, an Irish restaurant sort of thing. I gorged myself on their steak boxty (mmm), and to everyone's surprise (and my eventual dismay) I ate the whole thing. Tasty! There were enough other things that I was having a hard time choosing between that I think I will definitely be back (albeit with slightly less gluttony I should hope). After that, all in attendance whisked away to pick up tickets for...
  
  
• Saturday night -- we caught the second ever showing of Blue Sky Transmission, a play based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, over at Cleveland Public Theatre. Our friend Patricia was one of the writers who collaborated on this ambitious project. Heather and her husband Bob came all the way from Deerfield with a friend from Austria, and Jules and her mom came along, so it was all a great big to-do. The play itself was interesting, though way too avant garde for me. But there were moments that utterly capitvated me, and for those I am thankful.
  
  
• Sunday -- Vengeance of the Boxty! I tried to get some programming done, but failed utterly, and mostly spent the day moping about feeling like I was going to be horribly, explosively ill. We had a nice Italian dinner, though, to go with the premiere of the Sopranos. I don't know about the rest of you, but I didn't really feel like that episode was worth the wait. Oh well. Hopefully this season gets better at some point (hopefully soon).
  
  
• Monday -- back to work, back to that soul-crushing feeling of "I'm never going to get it done in time, I'm doomed, doomed, dooooooomed!!!" I like my new folding screen thing, though. It definitely does help to wallow in despair without having to be distracted by passers-by and other office ilk.
  

In the mean time, I continue to tinker on mix CD's and try to ignore work while I'm not there.

The good news is, it's a short week for me. We leave Thursday morning for Stratford, Ontario, to attend the Shakespeare Festival. Let's hear it for tragedies, huzzah!!

I'm terribly optimistic about my workload, can't you tell?

I have been bad and not working late into the night as I had planned.

I have been bad and not worked on weekends as I had planned.

This is going to have to change soon since I get so damnably little done whilst I am actually in the office. It's just too damned distracting.

I bought a three-panel folding screen type thing tonight; hopefully that will cut down on some of the visual distraction brought about by only having 3 cube walls. You should have seen us trying to get it into the back of my Jetta, though... *chuckle* It was the first time I'd ever had to move the rear seats around, and it was quite a "learning experience".

gieves is en route to return my CD's that she borrowed for her excellent 9/11 memorial show (oh, there she is now -- hi!).

Must dash -- dinner is almost done, and then it's movie time -- tonight's feature is Ran, Kurosawa's feudal Japan retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear. Kind of heavy for a Friday night, I know, but we're going to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival next weekend to see Lear and all three parts of the War of the Roses (Henry VI 1 & 2, Richard III). Yeah, it'll be a real pick-me-up weekend. :-)