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Wednesday, September 13th, 2006
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In the spirit of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) llamaeyes's new word series:
My new letter of the day: "eth". As in, how do you spell the name "Kathy"? K-A-Eth-Y. Uh huh.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006
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Wednesday, August 9th, 2006
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So my play is over... if I would have been thinking, I'd have posted a message about it here *beforehand*, but oh well. (I seem to forget about LJ for periods of about two months at a time).
Anyway, it went very well. We had six performances (seven if you count the press preview), and our improvement over the course of the run was pretty remarkable -- noted by R., who saw both the press preview and the final night. And I got to play a slightly insane boyfriend, which was *damn* fun. It was a fun theater group to play with; not really any divas, good camaraderie, and a good mix thematically of the four one-acts.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, August 8th, 2006
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This may sound like an odd offer, but what the heck: because of the suddenly massive amount of frequent flying I've been doing recently, I've had the opportunity to become an elite member on United... and one of my perks is to be able to confer semi-elite status on someone else. (See here.) Probably the biggest benefit is free access to "economy plus", which is like economy class but with an extra 5 inches of legroom, which actually makes a really big difference. So, is there anyone out there who anticipates flying on United the any time during the rest of this year or 2007, and wants to be nominated for this?
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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*Finally* leaving for Spain, in half an hour. The rest of the jaunt through Europe didn't end up happening, but c'est la vie. (Oh, wait, not going to France now. Must think in Spanish. Yay.)
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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So it looks possible (dare I say even "likely"?) that I'll have to give a work presentation in London on a Friday, followed by one in Paris on a Monday. This prompts the very important question: in which city should I spend the weekend? Ah, the decisions that life forces upon one...
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, June 7th, 2006
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For absolutely no reason whatsoever, I made a list of all the airports that I've been in. To count it, I had to have been on a flight that either departed or arrived at it; connecting at it counts, but just dropping off a friend at it doesn't.
In case anyone happens to be curious about where a code refers to, check this very useful site.
Wow, 8 from California...
International
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MEX
TLV
FRA
MUC
LHR
LGW
FCO
PEK
NRT
TAO
BCN (as of July)
Domestic
--------
SFO
SJC
OAK
SMF
SBA
LAX
BUR
SAN
PDX
RDM
SEA
DEN
COS
SLC
LAS
ABQ
PHX
DFW
IAH
AUS
MSP
ORD (as of July -- hard to believe I haven't been there yet)
DTW
ATL
TPA
MCO
GNV
CLT
IAD
DCA
PHL
JFK
LGA
EWR
BOS
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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I just got cast in a one-act play, my first actual non-musical theater role. (And my first theater role at all since I did Bye Bye Birdie almost three years ago by now.) I'm highly excited about this -- it'll be great to be back on stage again. And the whole concept of actual dramatic acting, as opposed to G&S farce, should be a fascinating change.
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Comments: Read 12 or Add Your Own.
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This has been a past week or so in which I've been doing athletically active things, which is very excellent. Starting with Bay to Breakers last Sunday (yes, lots of alcohol was consumed, but it *was* an 8-mile walk), then some DDR during the week (which had been sadly neglected for a few months), then I biked to work on Friday for on the third time ever, and today R. and I took the kayak out onto the lagoon. Maybe I'll even get back into shape, eventually...
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, April 26th, 2006
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I'm too lazy to go into *that* much detail. But the trip was something like this:
Travel:
Leave San Francisco on Friday evening, get to Munich on Saturday evening. (And let me say that Lufthansa's A340-600 is a very nice plane to be on, if you have to spend 10 hours in coach.) Leave Munich, get to Frankfurt. Meet up with R. in the Frankfurt airport. Together now, fly from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv (landing at 4am on Sunday morning).
Day 1: stumble via taxi to a Tel Aviv hotel. Sleep past noon. Walk around Dizengoff Center for a few hours, struggling to keep our eyes open; saw a mall movie theater with a sign for "Har Brokeback" (aka "Brokeback Mountain" in Hebrew). Took a taxi to my sister's apartment in a Tel Aviv suburb (Petach Tikvah). Went out for a good shish kebab dinner with my sister and her husband.
Day 2: R. and I rent a car. Stress about driving among Israeli drivers until I realize that lane lines are really only informal suggestions. Drive to Caesarea, site of ancient Roman and medieval ruins on the coast. Bask in the beautiful sun and beach, and picnic on the ruincs. Drive to Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee (or rather, Tveria, on the Kinneret). Wander around a bit.
Day 3: Plans to go white-water rafting or kayaking on the Jordan River are foiled by drizzle. Drive to Safed (Tzfat) for the day; go window-shopping for art, including finding an awesome sculpture that I'd totally buy if I had $8,000 to spare. R. buys an absolutely beautiful kiddush cup. Return to Tiberias; end day by going to the hot springs.
Day 4: We drive to Jerusalem, return rental car. Stash belongings with some very hospitable friends of R. Have awesome shwarma. Go shopping, including nearly cleaning out one pottery store just off Ben-Yehuda street. (OK, not really, but I did buy about 5 different pieces of one amazing artist's stuff.) Have the world's best rugalach (Marzipan bakery, for those in the know).
Day 5: We tour the Israeli Supreme Court (beautiful architecture) in Jerusalem. See the daughter of an old friend of R.'s. Go hang out with the very fun family of a cousin of a Berkeley classmate of mine.
Day 6: Take the bus back to my sister's. My sister, R., and I go to tour a winery in Zichron Yaakov; including getting slightly tipsy at the wine-tasting at the end. Return home, have Shabbat dinner with her family.
Day 7: Shabbat; lots of sleeping and lounging around, and walking around outside. In evening, R. and I go with my sister and brother-in-law to a chocolate shop/restuarant in Herzaliyya, where we decide to dispense with the main course and go right to the hot chocolate and various chocolate-related desserts.
Day 8: Go to a company meeting of my sister's work, a pre-passover celebration and breakfast. She, R., and I then go to Jaffa (Yafo) and wander around, including checking out overpriced art shops. Return home for a nap; after which R., I, and my sister's father-in-law go to "Mini-Israel", a very cool model-train-scale model of the major parts of the entire country.
Day 9: R. leaves to go back to the US at 6am. I take the bus to Jerusalem for the day; spend the day at the Israel Museum (including the Shrine of the Book and the Dead Sea Scrolls) and then in the old city.
Day 10: Wander around the suburb where my sister lives in the morning. She then takes the afternoon off from work, and she and I go to a very good art fair in downtown Tel Aviv, including (of course) more fun shopping. For dinner, she, her husband, and I go to our last pre-passover dining experience at a restaurant in Hertzaliyya that's a hilariously accurate ripoff of TGIF's.
Day 11: Go shopping with my sister for last-minute passover supplies. First seder that night with her husband's family.
Day 12: It's a holiday, so sleeping in happens. My sister, her husband, and I go to the beach in Hertzaliyya; it's an absolutely beautiful day, so frisbee-playing and wading in the water occurs. Also stop by a large park in Tel Aviv (the beach was nicer). In evening, go out to a movie with my sister (Inside Man), mostly in order to stay awake, because...
Day 13: ...I leave for the airport at 2am. Fly from Tel Aviv to Frankfurt. Fly from Frankfurt to Portland (finding out my luggage was still in Frankfurt, but it did show up the next day). Miss my Portland-San Francisco flight, so I get to fly from Portland to Redmond, OR to San Francisco. And then sleep. :-)
Whew. OK, that was longer than I was expecting. Anyway, a selection of photos follows, friend-protected (so if you're not and you want to see 'em, email me.)
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Saturday, April 15th, 2006
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I'm back from Israel. (My luggage is still in Frankfurt for the moment, but c'est la vie.) Longer post, possibly with photos, coming soon (after I unpack a bit).
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, March 28th, 2006
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I saw Dirty Rotten Scoundrels this evening for half-price. :) Too bad there's no equivalent of the TKTS booth in San Francisco; it's awesome. I had to choose between several very excellent sounding options, including Hairspray, Bridge and Tunnel (recommended by R), Sweeney Todd, seeing Avenue Q again, and possibly others that I'm blanking on. Of course, my top two choices (Wicked and Spamalot) are still so popular that no tickets are available through the TKTS booth; c'est la vie.
The show itself was pretty good, if not stellar -- none of the songs got stuck in my head, which is one of my primary measures of Broadway musical quality. The performances were really good, though; one of the two male leads was Jonathan Pryce, who was awesome. I also recognized Joanna Gleason from a several-episodes role she had on West Wing. :)
While in the Times Square neighborhood, I bought a "selections from the vocal score" book for Wonderful Town, which is an extremely exciting purchase. (For anyone who reads this and isn't familiar with it, it's an absolutely awesome show that I saw about two years ago, but has unfortunately since closed.) I'm totally psyched about using one of the songs from that for my next musical audition.
It was also quite excellent to see both bookwormpride and a high-school friend (and her husband) while I've been here.
7am flight back to California tomorrow morning, which means leaving my hotel at around 5:20, which means getting up at 4:30. You have no idea how excited I am about that fact. (Uh huh.)
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Comments: Read 10 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, March 25th, 2006
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This just about starts my road-warrior-ness. Tomorrow morning I leave for New York, then after I return I'm back for about 50 hours before leaving for Israel, and then after I get back, I have an entire week in California before leaving for Spain. It's a good thing I like travelling. (I guess it also doesn't hurt that I'm going to fun and interesting places; if I were going to Omaha and Des Moines, I might be less excited.)
At the moment, I'm highly psyched about seeing my NYC area friends (or at least some of them; I know I'm dissing a few because I don't have enough nights to have dinners with all of them on this trip). Yay for east coast friends!
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, January 29th, 2006
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I went biking today with R., seltsame, and a friend of the latter. Well, three of us biked, and we tried to teach R. how to ride. I normally consider myself a good teacher, but I had absolutely no idea how to teach her to ride a bicycle; I just don't have the physical vocabulary to convey what to do. I wonder if it's intrinsically more difficult (or easier?) to learn how to ride at ~30 as opposed to ~8.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, January 28th, 2006
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Random thought about Hamas' victory in Palestine... I sort-of think that it won't be as bad for Israel as conventional wisdom might indicate. It seems to me that one of the biggest problems over the past several years was that you had the Palestinian Authority theoretically negotiating with Israel while terrorist groups attacked at the same time; and the PA just threw up their hands and said "sorry, nothing we can do, we can't control them!" But now, you have the terrorist group actually in charge of the government. That means they no longer have that deniability of being able to pretend to be diplomatic on the one hand while giving a long leash to terrorists on the other. Furthermore, from the perspective of Israeli response, there's a big difference between responding to individual terrorist attacks, and responding to attacks by what is essentially a state's government. That sounds more like a state of war, and it seems that the international community would probably be more accepting of convential war responses.
Basically, Hamas can no longer hide behind the PA and pop up when they want to; they *are* the PA now. So either they're going to have to start backing down from terrorism, or they'll probably find it's a lot more difficult to pull off, and has much bigger consequences, than before.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, September 14th, 2005
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Oy, Google strikes again: http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch. I'm noticing that at least one entry of mine that was originally world-readable but was changed to friends-only about four months ago was indexed and shows up in search results (which means the first few lines of it show up); that doesn't thrill me.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, August 18th, 2005
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Saturday, August 13th, 2005
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Does anyone have a costco membership? I'd like to get one, but as opposed to just walking in and signing up, I understand that if an existing member "sponsors" me, both the member and I get $10. Any volunteers?
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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I want to go see it (http://www.bestofbroadway-sf.com/orpheumwicked05.html). Anyone around the bay area want to join me?
Theoretically, I'm thinking something like Thursday the 18th or 25th at 8pm, $35 for balcony tickets. Alternatively, there's the $25 front row lottery (2 tickets per person), if people are willing to go up to the theater in the afternoon (though I'd have to meet up after the fact).
Anyway, so, any takers?
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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