Work is fairly unmentionable; I pulled a few 12-hour days last week, which I should probably stop doing if I’m going to be the only one (as usual) trying to put in the extra effort to keep the project on schedule. Hah. I am Jack’s insane work ethic.

Far more mentionable is the weekend that just whooshed by in a bizarre combination of gosh-that-went-too-fast and cheerful, languid laziness.

Friday started out with one of the few rare instances in which I am proven right, but I was unfortunately too right. I don’t know crap about cars, but I’ve listened to enough “Car Talk” to recognize the clicking sound that Liz’s car was making every time she turned left as her CV boot. I felt somewhat vindicated when the issue turned out, indeed, to be her driver’s-side CV boot, but as it happens I am karma’s bitch–she needed to get both of them replaced. Somehow the old “why buy one when you can have two for twice the price” philosophy doesn’t really feel so great in practice. Not the most auspicious start to the day, and it’d come at the end of a week far too long.

Liz quickly turned the tables on my week, though, starting with dinner at Nemo. We sat in the tiny little “Lover’s Lane” nook, an odd little space barely large enough for a two-top table, and strangely, delightfully echoey. We had a great conversation, luxuriated in the sensations of food and wine (my Sangiovese was utterly fabulous with rack of lamb and mushroom risotto), and enjoyed the tumult of rain, thunder, and lightning outside.

We spent Friday night, Saturday night, and half of Sunday parked in front of the TV, breezing efficiently through the final season of “Six Feet Under” on DVD, a sudden arrival on seven-day loan from the library. The season had some weak spots, but overall it was a fitting conclusion to a great show, and a nice farewell to characters that have managed to become like family. It’s definitely worth your time if you haven’t seen it; if you can put up with the ever-present background morbidity, it’s quite interesting, often hilarious, and surprisingly uplifting.

Much of Saturday managed to be simultaneously relaxing and off-kilter. Now, Liz and I had laid out a moderately elaborate plan for Saturday, consisting of all of our necessary and desired weekend errands in the proper order of timing and fuel economy, but the cats managed to completely throw it into disarray by nine o’clock in the morning as Julia came bounding up onto the bathroom counter, leaving a path of bloody pawprints in her wake. Realizing what was going on came in little quanta of sudden understanding: there is a cat here; there is something on the counter; the something on the counter is blood; the blood is from the cat; the cat is bleeding; oh crap oh crap the cat is bleeding all over; what has the cat done now? Liz was a shower and full set of clothes ahead of me, so after we corralled Julia in the bathroom to assess the damage and clean up her wounded paw, Liz and Julia zoomed off to the vet while I stayed behind to get dressed, look for more blood, and be someone for Valentine, the likely culprit, to howl confusedly at. Luckily, the bleeding–caused by a puncture wound to one of the pads on her left hind paw, either claw or fang–had stopped fairly quickly, and no stitches were required. The patient returned home promptly, along with a prescription for a week’s worth of liquid antibiotics. The details of administering liquid meds–specifically pink liquid–to a fussy cat are best left to the imagination, but suffice it to say that Liz is now down one white shirt, and we had to add a trip to the dry cleaner to our Saturday agenda.

But! Our bloody cat had the good taste to get hurt, get better, and get home in time to let us get to our 10:30 appointment to peruse tile flooring options for the laundry room (a moderately long story in its own right that I won’t get into here). From there, though, all of our errands seemed to start getting out of order, and the flow wasn’t working, which unfortunately makes me a tiny bit fussy, even though I got a bunch of CD’s from the library, got a haircut, and spent some nice time wandering around shops in Rocky River with Liz.

What really got to me was Liz’s suddenly-announced, last-minute need to be on a conference call at two PM, right in the middle of when we were supposed to be tasting wine and getting groceries. Which then got rescheduled to three, allowing us to stop by Grady’s to taste wine and nosh on little wine-friendly nibbles. But the vital trip to the grocery store had to be deferred. I sat upstairs and listened to music while Liz waited for her call. The cats hung out with me in the open window, relishing the fresh spring air and staring greedily at passing birds. When three o’clock came and went, I went downstairs to harass Liz about this call–shouldn’t she call in or something?–and, rebuffed, I retreated back to the office to sulk and ponder whether we’d ever attend to the rest of our errands while I listened to Jethro Tull and Peter Gabriel. Slowly, there came a deep rumble, as the biggest semi I’ve ever seen trundled cautiously around the corner. Great, I thought, who’s the asshole driving a giant truck through our neighborhood and ruining this perfect spring day? The truck pulled a little further around the corner, and I was able to see the Room and Board logo on the trailer. Liz and I had spent a day in downtown Chicago last winter trying to find a leather chair for me that was up to Baby Bear’s “just right” standards, and had after several hours succeeded in filing an excellent candidate away in my permanent wish list. Swell. Somebody’s getting awesome furniture and it’s not me. I’m never going to get my chair.

Right about then, a lot of things happened at once. First, the truck whuffed and sighed to a stop directly across from our driveway. Valentine and I shared a dumbstruck moment of incomprehension; according to Liz, the look on my face was priceless. Liz closed the office door to keep the cat contained. And then, to my complete and utter astonishment, the delivery guys started unloading my chair, while, by complete coincidence, the Peter Gabriel CD I’d picked up at the library blasted out “Shock the Monkey.”

After assessing that all was well and functional in the land of new things that recline, we did a quick furniture rearrangement in the living room, and since then I’ve been taking every opportunity available to test out my new manly man chair. I’ve covered one of the really long chapters of Head First Design Patterns; I’ve chilled with the iPod; I’ve enjoyed sitting by the open window with the cats; I’ve sipped wine and listened to Pink Floyd; I’ve passed out and drooled on myself; I’ve (now) blogged. So far, it has passed all of the important tests with flying colors. Well, almost all–the cats are still a bit scared of it, but I expect that with time they’ll show it the same indifference that they usually show me.

So, yes, Liz’s “conference call” was a lie, a ruse, a deception, a clever means to have me home so that she could see my reaction, and I completely, totally, thoroughly fell for it. In a way, that makes it all the sweeter. (Right?) In case I haven’t correctly sung the praises of Liz lately, let me declare here that I totally love my wife, that she knows exactly how to spoil me, and that she is damn good at being awesome. My silly manly man chair is beyond excellent, unneeded, and unexpected. Thanks, hon!

Other than that, life is quiet here; lots of work, lots of studying, and as mu
ch slacking and irresponsibility as we can get away with. Gotta keep things in perspective, after all.

Liz had to work for most of Saturday, so I used the time to knock a bunch of things off my to-do list, including a trip to the library to refresh my influx of new music, and a half-day of being able to work in peace in the office. Saturday night, she took me to Grovewood Tavern for dinner, which was utterly fabulous (I had the “Quackitori”, seared duck breast yakitori style, and I highly recommend it, especially paired with the Parallel 45 Cotes du Rhone). After dinner, we hit the Velvet Tango Room for post-dinner cocktails, where I was introduced to the shimmering delight that is the French 75. I totally dig VTR’s vibe, and I got an especially geeky thrill from recognizing Winchester ‘73 playing on the TV by the bar. VTR is a bit pricey, but the experience–especially on the weekend, where your lady friend gets a perfect rose–is worth it.

On Sunday I managed to get more stuff on my list done, and then we hit the local movie theatre for a matinee of Thank You For Smoking, a cheerfully subversive little movie that anyone with two brain cells and a sense of humor should see as soon as possible. Seriously–run, don’t walk; it’s that good. My only issue was with the quality of the audience, as we seemed to be seated directly in front of, next to, and behind people who insisted on sharing their running commentary, explaining jokes to each other, and so forth. Sorry, folks, but if I wanted the commentary track, I’d buy the DVD, and you wouldn’t be part of it. Though it was almost worth it to hear the person next to me try to explain a joke and then, verbally, loudly, not get it… (Seriously, she didn’t understand why it might be funny that the firearms lobbyist set off the metal detector at a security checkpoint. “Must be something metal,” my next-door Ebert observed.)

Monday marked a return to workplace madness, but it ended early as Liz and I had picked up tickets to see K.T. Tunstall at the House of Blues. It was a pretty much spur-of-the-moment decision a couple of weeks ago when I realized that she was in town. I admit, I’m a total poseur, and it took her solo appearance on NBC’s “Today” show for her to arrive on my musical radar… I wasn’t sure what to expect from seeing her live, but I figured I wouldn’t be disappointed, and the ticket price was pretty fair, so I figured there were worse ways to spend a Monday night. We had a nice dinner at the HOB (assisted in part by a small parade of happy-hour mixed drinks), and then proceeded to be completely blown away by her live performance. She’s touring with a band to back her up, which helps fill out her sound nicely, and there were particularly nice bits featuring various band members soloing on drums, keyboards, trumpet, guitars, and cello. Mellower tracks had a nice dash of psychadelia that reminded me of early Pink Floyd, while the more raucus, upbeat numbers struck me as the perfect soundtrack for blasting down a desert highway, windows down and stereo cranked. In short, even if she’s getting mainstream radio (and worse, grocery store!) airplay, K.T. is the real deal, and you should check her out, especially live. Seriously good times.

I’ve graduated from being assigned weird shifts for monitoring the farm during Val to being on call 24×7 for the duration; I’m not sure if this is an improvement or not, but it allowed me to attend the Lord of the Rings symphony on Saturday night. Liz and I met up with friends for dinner at the Severance Hall restaurant (tasty, though I had the world’s dullest steak knife) and then marvelled at how tight the symphony had gotten since we’d first heard it. The Cleveland Orchestra brought their “A game” and really rocked my socks; I got all weepy-eyed in all the right places. Beautiful, and a great early Valentine’s gift to ourselves!

I spent a bit of time today fixing up some geeky things that have been bothering me. I twiddled pirnat.com’s CSS a bit to be better behaved in IE, moved my IE-specifc hacks into a separate stylesheet to help get me ready for IE 7. And I finally managed to hunt down the bug in feedparser.py that was causing it to mangle content so badly (any “<br />” ended up getting doubled twice by its “cleanup” routines, and some bits of nearby text and other tags would get similarly repeated). I filed a bug with a very simple patch, so hopefully it’ll get folded into the main release at some point, so no one else will have to suffer. It’s amazing how different <(\S+?)\s*?/> (bad) and <([^\s>]+?)\s*?/> (good) can be.

Other than that, nothing exciting (other than watching the Canadian women’s hockey team annihilate pretty much everything in their path). At this point, I’m just hoping to survive the next two days!

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!

Friday: Post-launch drinking festivities with co-workers (yay, the new AOL Greetings site is live!) blurred pleasantly into dinner and beverages of various and sundry natures with aquamindy, reasie, oogby, and trenchcloak, followed by a couple of rounds of Apples to Apples back at our place. Lots of fun all around.

Saturday: Slept in, got a haircut, did some errands, and drove down to the West Point Market in Akron to aquire cheese and similar tasty comestibles. Had a lovely movie night with equally lovely aquamindy: a nice Barbaresco, cheeses, olives, bread, grapes, and Spartacus. Liz decided the evening required some bubbly to achieve completeness, and so it was that I had an excellent Saturday night…

…And a mostly non-existant Sunday: Slept until about twelve-thirty, took some Advil, ate some bread, drank some orange juice, and went back to sleep. By six PM, I was starting to feel human again, so I got cleaned up and we dashed off downtown for the Indians game; work had rewarded me with a pair of tickets, and on a perfect day like yesterday, such an opportunity was not to be ignored. We had good seats, the weather was amazing, the crowd was excited (once the dreaded “wave” got started, it went fully around the ballpark six or seven times before dying out), and the Tribe played like the good ol’ days–the final score was 12 to 4. A great way to cap off a relaxing, fun weekend.

aquamindy

The event was held at M. Bistro in Westlake; I nibbled on the adequate hors d’oeuvres and sipped a decent Pinot Grigiot, then chose the stuffed chicken which was delicious with a glass of anonymous Chianti. Mayor Clough, seated across the table, unfortunately didn’t fare so well; his medium-rare steak arrived well-done, and the replacement steak had only been briefly seared and looked as if it might walk off the plate and moo at us. I hope he had a snack or something when he got home, because they never even bothered to bring him anything else once steak number two was whisked away uneaten, and no one offered dessert to anyone at our table. We also ended up waiting about an hour for our check, so it turned into a surprisingly long evening for everyone.

Still, a good time was had by all. And I’m super-proud of my spiffy wife!

Tonight will make two date nights in a row, as we have tickets for Allah Made Me Funny.

aquamindy

This morning I slept in like I haven’t slept in in ages… Fabulous! At some point Liz put on the TV, and I was dimly aware of A Mighty Wind, and was strangely confused when it turned into Eight Crazy Nights. (Turns out I’d slipped back into sleepy-land for a couple hours… nice.)

Helped Liz with some database stuff for her new job, then played a bit of TDSWG. I’m at the broken-down undersea base where things have gone horribly, horribly awry. Loving it. Totally creepy and atmospheric. And it’s fun running around on the sea floor zapping overgrown sharks.

Fabulous turkey feast at Mandy and Don’s house in Cleveland Heights. Excellent bird, nummy stuffing, mashed potatoes, broccoli, glazed carrots, perfect gravy, and (best of all) cranberry sauce from the can! Truly, a fine meal!

Rushed downtown after dinner to see Doc Opera 2004, featuring the irrepressible Angie, a longtime college friend. The show was fun, but unfortunately the sound mix was quite poor, so the band totally drowned out all singing, which was a real shame.

Despite the miserable icy dampness of the weather, everyone came out west and visited with us for a light dessert of cheeses, fruits, and dessert wines. We had a Australian botrytis Chardonnay and a New Zealand Riesling Icewine, both tasty. Had a nice time chatting with Angie’s parents and sister (whom I’d somehow managed to never meet for years and years and years), as well as chilling with Mandy and Don, gieves and darlox, and Mindy and her beau, Mark. Mandy and Don escaped the evening without hand-me-downs, but others were not so fortunate. Angie’s sister gets to borrow my Escaflowne tapes indefinitely (no need for tapes anymore since I have it all on DVD), Jim and Genevieve will take our kitchenette table and chairs once our kitchen starts to be torn apart, and Mark is the proud winner of our old vacuum, the Electrolux Discovery II (which is what I would think the love child of an upright vacuum and a Commodore 64 might look like).

And now, to bed, to sleep! I am muchly tired, and have a long, grueling day of TDSWG ahead of me. This Jedi needs some beauty sleep…

Sometime last fall, I bouncily reported to my wife that the Columbus Orchestra would be performing Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings Symphony: Six Movements for Orchestra and Chorus in March, and would she at all be interested in possibly maybe going. At the time, she shrugged and said sure, and I ordered tickets online just as lickety-split quick as I could.

Fast forward to this weekend. It turned out that Columbus would have the honor of hosting the US premiere of the symphony. Oh, excitement!

We both took Friday off from work so that we could sleep in, pack some overnight things, and have a leisurely drive down to Columbus. Stopped briefly along the way to feed my addiction for Mephisto shoes (damn comfy, and a good outlet for a portion of my bonus), then got settled in at the Capitol Square Hyatt for a brief rest.

We got appropriately spiffed-up and embarked on our journey.

Dinner was a handful of blocks away at Mitchell’s Steakhouse, which is located in a former bank. An enormous space, with huge, ornately decorated ceilings, it still manages to feel intimate. The food was delicious, the wine we selected Langtry’s 1998 Meritage) was a fabulous match, and the service was great (I was amazed by the fact that our waitress took the vastly over-charred creme brulee off of our bill even though we’d eaten almost all of it, and hadn’t asked for it to be sent back or anything).

Our destination for the performance was the Ohio Theatre, conveniently located right next to the Hyatt. It’s truly a beautiful location, absolutely lovely at every square inch. I was somewhat alarmed as we were shown to our seats; I remembered I had purchased loge tickets all those months and months ago, but I’d never actually bothered to work out where we’d be sitting. Well. Surprise! We were in the very first row of the loge, just a few seats to the right of center. I honestly could not have asked for a better location. Wow! And, hey, I asked, what might be the deal with the three screens with the tengwar glyphs on them? I hadn’t heard about any kind of video accompaniment. Double wow! As the musicians (three choirs and a full orchestra!) started to file in and warm up, I started to really geek out with anticipation.

I can’t even begin to describe how much I loved the performance. Shore’s Rings music has a way of completely captivating me. And, I’ll be honest, there are certain places in the score so achingly beautiful that I can’t help but get quite teary-eyed. All the while, music was matched with projected video of sketches by artist John Howe, which in themselves were stunning. The video was fairly straightforward, with lots of “Ken Burns Effect,” but quite powerful with the music, really tapping directly into the imagination. The balrog and the destruction of Mordor were particularly powerful sequences when paired with the video. It was really a tremendous, amazing honor to be present; the audience’s standing ovation at the end went on and on and on and on… Shore seemed quite overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and appreciation. (I half expected him to good-naturedly shoo us out as I’ve seen John Williams do, but it didn’t happen; I don’t think he’s quite so used to this kind of “rock star” treatment yet.)

Okay, so there were a couple of nits that I’ll pick. The soloist from the children’s choir was decent, but not quite up to snuff, and certainly no Edward Ross, so the vocal portion of “The Breaking of the Fellowship” was not quite as exquisite as I would have liked it. On the other hand, I was impressed by the female soloist who sang in the movements from The Two Towers and The Return of the King–she had a LOT of different material to cover, and acquitted herself quite well. (She had to sing the Emiliana Torrini “Gollum’s Song,” had to try to fill Annie Lennox’s shoes for “Into the West,” had all of Ben Del Maestro’s material from both Towers and King… Impressive!)

My only other nit is just from the perspective of wishing certain things hadn’t been cut in order to fit the symphony into a comfortable length of time. For the most part, I had no problems with what was omitted, or how transitions were constructed, but I really wanted to hear the “Shelob’s Lair” music, because I love how much of a tripped-out Bernard Herrman homage it is, all kinds of creepy and wild and tumultuous and perfect for Shelob.

But, like I said, it was a tremendous evening, and I loved it.

In case you were really curious, here’s what makes up the symphony:

• The Fellowship of the Ring
  Movement One
  • The Prophecy
  • Concerning Hobbits
  • The Shadow of the Past
  • A Short Cut to Mushrooms
  • The Old Forest
  • A Knife in the Dark
• Movement Two
  • Many Meetings
  • The Ring Goes South
  • A Journey in the Dark
  • The Bridge of Khazad-dûm
  • Lothlórien
  • Gandalf’s Lament
  • Farewell to Lórien
  • The Great River
  • The Breaking of the Fellowship
• Intermission
• The Two Towers
  Movement Three
  • Foundations of Stone
  • The Taming of Smeagol
  • The Riders of Rohan
  • The Black Gate is Closed
  • Evenstar
  • The White Rider
  • Treebeard
  • The Forbidden Pool
• Movement Four
  • The Hornburg
  • Forth Eorlingas
  • Isengard Unleashed
  • Gollum’s Song
• The Return of the King
  Movement Five
  • Hope and Memory
  • The White Tree
  • The Steward of Gondor
  • Cirith Ungol
  • Anduril
• Movement Six
  • The End of All Things
  • The Return of the King
  • The Grey Havens
  • Into the West

Today we had some quickie errands to take care of in Columbus, had lunch at The Ocean Club, another of Cameron Mitchell’s restaurants. The food was delightful and I must now publicly declare my passionate love for the decor! Every inch is organic, elegant, underwater, cool! I will definitely be back, and you should check it out too.

Along the way back home, we also stopped at Grandpa’s Cheese Barn, because, well, with a name like “Cheese Barn,” it has to be worth checking out. It made a nice excuse to get out of the car for a bit, and didn’t disappoint. The cheese and other things out for sampling were quite tasty. Grandpa’s also features a deli, various meats and smoked dead things, über-quaint kitchy gifts, home made ice cream, and fudge. We escaped with minimal damages, only a block of cranberry cheese, the best seventy-five-cent chocolate chip cookie in the universe, and a bottle of water. (The whiskey cheese was also tempting, but I was able to resist it.)

And thus we are returned, grateful for the journey, but glad to be home.

• Thursday, I managed to score tickets to the Cleveland “Trilogy Tuesday” showing of all three Lord of the Rings films. w00t!! I’m so giddy about it, I feel like a geeky little eleven-year-old! In other LotR geek news, I also have tickets to see Howard Shore in Columbus in March, conducting an assortment of LotR film music.
• Saw Kill Bill v.1 on Friday night with Liz. Aside from being one of the most singularly violent films I’ve ever seen, it’s also one hell of a picture. I know I didn’t catch most of the film geek in-jokes, but I did recognize a few things, like the Bernard Herrmann music, the Wilhelm Scream, a couple bits that reminded me of Kurosawa, and a nice reference to Wings of Eagles regarding Uma’s toes. Well worth a look-see, this goes onto my list of necessary DVD’s. “Volume 2″ can’t come too soon!
• Saturday, Liz walked in the Race for the Cure. I had originally meant to go root for her, but ended up getting permission to go back to sleep. So she got a nice walk on a gorgeous day for a good cause, and I got some much-needed beauty rest.
• Saturday afternoon, Liz took me to the zoo. (No, she wasn’t going to donate me.) The weather was amazing, and it was really nice to get out and enjoy it. We saw all sorts of zoo critters, including sleepy tigers (my, how those little guys have grown!), sleepy camels (phew, the stench!), and surprisingly un-sleepy wolves.
• Saturday night we grilled up some tasty dinner and enjoyed it with a pinot noir-based vin gris (yum!) from our visit to Napa, then rounded out the evening with Godfather Part 2.
• Sunday we went to “Say Yes to Cleveland”, a little networking shin-dig before the Browns game. It was okay, and the band was pretty decent, and the sun eventually came out, so it turned out all right. We had a nice lunch at Aladdin’s, then spent the rest of the day relaxing at home. Nice!
• Okay, it’s not the weekend, but tonight we’re going to see Stephen Hawking at Severance Hall. I know, wild times!

That said, I definitely could use one or two more days of weekend. Or a vacation. Or something.