This Side of Lost

When I sit down and try to check my e-mail, somehow it's two hours later and I find myself looking at a website about a man who calls a payphone in the middle of the Mojave Desert for kicks, and I'm wondering how I managed to get there from an e-mail from a librarian listserv. The wonder of the Internet, ladies and gentlemen.

My Internet life is spiraling out of control. I haven't gone through my e-mail inbox in three days. I haven't checked all my usual sites in forever, it seems. And I haven't updated this site, though I said I would. Sigh. A lot of things have been pressing for my attention, I guess.

It occurred to me early last week that next week (well, this week now) is Thanksgiving and I wondered where the semester went. It seems to have flown by even more than those in the past have. I think this is because I go to work more than I go to class and work never really changes, and my classes haven't felt like they've had much for direction or a destination until recently. Well, they do, now, and the destination isn't that far away. Yikes. So I may be updating even less frequently (if that's even possible).

My choir concert went well. The solo went fine, although I biffed a few words -- but I covered it up well, which I think is the sign of a decent performer. So there. Many thanks to Kate Molyneux and Samantha's uncle Jim who came out for it. For my next act... it's The Messiah! Woo. At least that will be easy. And you can sing along!

Speaking of singing, we've been privy to some more lovely singing. We saw Marc Broussard a couple weeks ago (you may have heard his single "Home" on the radio), which was great fun, as he seems to enjoy singing as much as everyone there enjoyed listening. We also saw the third opera of the season on Friday -- Benjamin Britten's adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. We were expecting a more faithful adaptation than the last one we saw, and we did get that, although both Samantha and I are quite familiar with this play, so we has fully-formed ideas about how it should be presented, and those didn't always go well with what we saw. Oberon as a counter-tenor? Can't say I really agree with that one. And Britten's music seems to suffer from modern opera syndrome (a lack of definable melodies, "creative" orchestration, etc). All-in-all, though, the source material is too strong for all these things to bring it down, and we found ourselves enjoying it by the end, almost despite ourselves.

What else is new...

• I have, against my better judgment, started reading Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series again. I'm on the third one right now. Fascinating thing about these books -- there's, like, eleven of them, and everyone seems to have read some of them, but very few have read them all. I think I only know one person who has. Ah well... the Wheel weaves as it will...
• We saw the new Harry Potter movie. At midnight. Hee. It was fabulous. We were dead the next day.
• Yesterday we took a whirlwind shopping trip to Indianapolis. We didn't find a whole lot, but we learned a little bit more about where to go, so we will be more successful next time. If you have good gift ideas for us, now's the time to make suggestions. :)

So it's a short week this week. We will be celebrating Thanksgiving with two other couples from SLIS -- four of whom are vegetarians. Which weirded me out a little at first, until I realized that sweet potatoes are much more important to my Turkey Day than turkey. Mmmmmmm, sweet potatoes. May you have a yummy one too. Talk with y'all soon -- peace!