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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) howeird | |
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Really only did two things today, but both were major. Ye Older Towne Band had its first concert of the year, attendance was less than it might have been, but there was so much else going on, and we'll be back the last Sunday of every month through September. I got there way early and snagged my favorite parking spot - the closest one to the park without being actually in the park - I save those for the handicapped and those whose instruments are too big to carry that far. And there are usually picnickers who are already there. It was chilly and windy. The wind makes it awkward - we bring clothespins but if a piece is 3 or 4 pages, there's no good way to clip it to the music folder without having to flip it over at some point. Which means missing a few measures of music. It was a shorter concert than we usually do too, so my lip is not as demolished as it might have been. And we played a lot of pieces in which baritones had the melody, which I like. Stopped at a produce stand on the way home and scored some nice looking 49¢/lb bananas and 89¢/lb red delicious apples. And half a dozen big 6/$1 limes. Next stop was Lucky's. originally just for sourdough slices to go with the goat cheese I bought a few days ago, but decided to pick up some microwave frozen entrees too, which meant no Starbucks stop. Home, had an early dinner, toyed with the idea of going into the city to see the Golden Gate Bridge fireworks, but the news pointed out that there was really no way to get there - the major bus lines were not running, and there was no parking. Tried the goat cheese on the sourdough slices - the cheese was bland and will be recycled, the sourdough slices appear to have been mislabeled, they taste like plain baguette slices. :-( At about 6:15 I realized if I was going to make it to the show in Saratoga, I had best leave now. Got to the theater at 20 till 7, house manager was my theater son Ed, whose wife was in the show. Box office lady gave me the senior discount even though I'm not their official senior age. This was a special show, one performance only, local actor/director/playwright/song writer Ted Kopulos's Out Of My Trunk, Out Of My Mind - Four Sure. The 4th time in 10 years that he has pulled out some stuff he wrote, found a cast to perform it and made it into a concert-plus. He's an amazing director, and many of the numbers were thoroughly staged. Everyone in the show (10 of them) are excellent musical theater performers, and with one exception were well-rehearsed. Bob Sunshine was the accompanist, I am always blown away by his keyboard skilz. Many of the numbers are Broadway-worthy, a couple should have stayed in the trunk. All of them were brilliantly performed. I had been onstage with four of the cast, worked backstage with two more, and would have been cast in the last show Ted directed for Sunnyvale except tech week was my nephew's wedding. Oh yeah, and they also changed which show they did. And there was some very confusing theater people drama. ( cut for boring speculation )I hope the finale, Now, finds its way to YouTube. Ted wrote a musical called It's Your Year, Charlie Brown for the opening of the Charles Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa, and this was the finale for that. Home in time to watch the last half of the Golden Gate Bridge fireworks, but my internet signal decided to crap out on me (no one was showing it live, it was streaming or nothing). Meanwhile, a mile away Great America's fireworks sounded like they were in our BBQ area. Got email from the art show director for the next Worldcon (in Chicago) inviting me to participate. I won't be going to the convention, but I do have a supporting membership which is good enough to be in the art show, but it would mean having the photos matted and paying a $25 fee to have them hung. It sounds like they are doing the U-shaped display which is horrible for the size prints I do, and difficult to light. And they are restricting mail-ins to 2 panels, when a U is 3 panels. Stupid. Not sure if I want to do that. Plans for tomorrow: Many choices. I could catch the death throes of BayCon, but that would be depressing. Maybe there's still some jazz worth going to see in Sacto. Fireworks again at GA? I'll have to check. Hmm. their web site doesn't mention tonight's. Strange. Tags: band, review, theater, theater drama
Source of babble:: Home
Tone of babble:  annoyed
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thnidu | |
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By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated PressSaturday, May 26, 2012 7:55 PM EDT VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican's investigation into the source of leaked documents has yielded its first target with the arrest of the pope's butler, but the investigation is continuing into a scandal that has embarrassed the Holy See by revealing evidence of internal power struggles, intrigue and corruption in the highest levels of the Catholic Church governance. The detention of butler Paolo Gabriele, one of the few members of the papal household, capped one of the most convulsive weeks in recent Vatican history and threw the Holy See into chaos as it enters a critical phase in its efforts to show the world it's serious about complying with international norms on financial transparency. The tumult began with the publication last weekend of a book of leaked Vatican documents including correspondence, notes and memos to the pope and his private secretary. It peaked with the inglorious ouster on Thursday of the president of the Vatican bank. And it concluded with confirmation Saturday that Pope Benedict XVI's own butler was the alleged mole feeding documents to Italian journalists in an apparent bid to discredit the pontiff's No. 2. "If you wrote this in fiction you wouldn't believe it," said Carl Anderson, a member of the board of the Vatican bank which contributed to the whirlwind with its no-confidence vote in its president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. "No editor would let you put it in a novel." The bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, issued a scathing denunciation of Gotti Tedeschi in a memorandum obtained Saturday by The Associated Press. In it the bank, or IOR by its Italian initials, explained its reasons for ousting Gotti Tedeschi: he routinely missed board meetings, failed to do his job, failed to defend the bank, polarized its personnel and displayed "progressively erratic personal behavior." [click headline for full story] Tags: news
Source of babble:: home
Tone of babble:  shocked! shocked, I tell you!
Soundtrack of babble: some drinking song, mashed up w a Hanukkah song
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ericcoleman | |
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What a day. Lizzie, Jared, WSPA-3 and I went to the Ren Faire in the Amanas early in the day. Spent many hours out in the hot sun. Came back to Ames and headed straight out to the pool, where I swam 200 meters, much to my amazement. So that is both of the first two days of the season we have made it to the pool. Weather permitting we will make it there tomorrow as well. Came back home and grilled. After that was all finished and Lizzie sent off to bed (she has to work tomorrow, hey it's double time) I left the kids to watch TV and headed to The Space to play a few songs. Nate (Ames promoter at large and the center of the music scene here nowadays) and Will (one of the Sunday Boys at Boheme from years back) asked for specific songs. Honestly I had no idea if I could play them. I started with Crank Generation ... yeah ... Crank Generation. I made it through. The only pain was due to lack of practice. My wrists were just fine. Then Nate asked for Bang My Bald Spot, and Will asked for WYSIWYG. Nate, thank you. I needed this. I didn't know if I could play like that anymore. The answer is I can, not for as long at the moment, but I can. So a quick, intense 3 song set that ran only about 20 minutes. Yeah. I digressed very little ... for me. It felt so good. Now off for a quick shower and then to bed. Tags: grill, ren faire, set list, the space
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thnidu | |
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It appeared in place of the intended bullet when I opened the .doc file of the minutes of a neighborhood association, attached to Yahoo email from one of the officers of the group. I'm using gmail in Firefox 12.0 under Mac OS X 10.7.4. I asked him about it. He replied
Thanks for the comment and the feedback. You are the only one so far. The symbol for a bulleted list is a dot: ∙It show up well in Microsoft Word on my Windows computer.
Well, I know a bullet, the big one • as well as the small one ∙ (aka centered dot). But I don't know this thing or how it got in there. It reminds me of some hechshers I've seen, like  (K for Kosher, V H for Va'ad Harabbonim, Council of Rabbis; from the Rabbinical Council of New England)but I don't see it on the site where I found the image of this one. Tags: geek
Soundtrack of babble: Sonny Curtis, Leaving the Straight Life Behind, in head
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filklore_on_lj | |
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Really pleased to see that "The Fades" was awarded that Bafta for Best Drama Series. Perhaps now the BBC will stop faffing about and commission a second series. In other news, Stevan Moffat was awarded the Dennis Potter Special Award; and although Andrew Scott won the Supporting Actor award for his role as Moriarty in "Sherlock" (beating co-star Martin Freeman), Benedict Cumberbatch lost out to Dominic West for his role as Fred West in "Appropriate Adult". Which I think is fair enough, actually. I felt the awards were somewhat spoilt by the presenters' attempts at humour, which too often fell flat - Jenny Agutter and Alexander Armstrong were particularly embarassing. However, some of them were on form - funniest line (for me) of the whole show was from actor Rupert Penry Jones, presenting the Best Actress in a Leading Role award (won by Emily Watson, also for "Appropriate Adult"): "One of the main things that made me want to become an actor, and the best reason for being an actor, is... actresses." Unlike most of his colleagues, he delivered the joke completely straightfaced, timed it perfectly and didn't overstress the punchline. Then he smiled, and the audience realised that was it, and gave him the biggest (or at least the most-deserved) laugh of the evening. Tags: tv
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hrrunka | |
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Things have warmed up. Monday was warmer, but still rather grey. Tuesday and Wednesday started somewhat misty, but turned sunny. Since Thursday the sun's been shining pretty much from dawn til dusk. Mind, I know that in part because I've been awake around sunrise on more than one occasion. However, being awake from before dawn to after dusk doesn't improve one's sense of restedness... Along the way a few things got done. The lawn got mown on Wednesday (and it needed it despite having been mown not that long ago). On Thursday evening there was an astronomical society meeting (and we weren't locked out, which made a change from last month). On Friday there was gaming. We played Jamaica, and I think Phil won. On Saturday I spent a fair part of the morning in the garden, until it got too hot. I then had a shower, sat down, and concluded I was out of energy for further excursions. I spent the afternoon and evening mostly trying to get the old laptop and a new version of its operating system to play nicely. It seems that something significant has changed, either in the program I use when tracking balloons, or in Xorg, or in the linux kernel (or possibly some combination of those) which leaves the balloon tracking program just not quite able to keep up. A little frustrating, as there were a couple of interesting flights on Saturday, but also fairly educational. This morning I was again awake at sunrise. I did manage to get a bit more sleep between about 6:30am and 9am when a neighbour rang my doorbell. Probably just as well, mind, as I was able to have breakfast, enjoy the morning radio Net, and get some shopping done before the day got too hot. At around 3:45pm I headed for Heathrow to meet my mother off her flight from Nairobi. The M25 wasn't too bad either way, and we were home just before 7pm. I expect the next few weeks will not follow my normal pattern...
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Last babble 
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