RSS is a good thing, make no mistake. But when one is subscribed to over 60 feeds, they tend to add up quickly. And I pretty much spend all day at work on the computer anyway, so going home and wading through all that isn't my idea of fun, if I don't want a headache. Add to that a two week vacation, and you can understand how it's been a while since the old Google Reader was at zero new items. Now that it is, I suddenly have the motivation to post. Strange.
Your True Internet Weirdness™ for the day: a beatboxing flute player. Who has zero talent. Really. No, not really.
The rest of this post will be broken up into categories of things done/experienced before our trip. That will come later.
Visitors
We've had a short spurt of visitors to our fair region recently:
- Bob and Mike. Samantha's friend Bob has a friend Mike who wanted to run the marathon in San Diego, so Bob came along, so we went to San Diego to see them. In addition to the tourist stuff below, we had a good time finding restaurants and navigating the questionable public transit.
- Jon, a friend of ours from Bloomington was here for a conference and graced us with his presence for much of the day Sunday.
- Ian, a friend of Samantha's from college was also in town for a relative's graduation and we spend some time with him before he continued his Californian tour. The line of the day: "Donovan's a mortician??"
Food
- The Valley Greek Festival was over Memorial Day weekend. While there were things besides food involved (tour of the church, dancing, merchandise), the food was the high point. We had moussaka, spanikopita, dolmathes, and a variety of pastries that were all just fantastic. It was pricey but well worth it. So, so good.
- Sprinkles. We patronized this Beverly Hills institution with Jon. Despite the 20 minute wait, we had a good time. I had the red velvet and the black-and-white. The former was excellent, the latter not so much. I'll try something different next time.
- Chao Krung, Thai restaurant. Another Jon excursion -- and Lindsay came along too. Excellent pad thai. Yes, I had pad thai at a Thai restaurant. I always have pad thai at Thai restaurants. Remind me to tell you my barometer theory of ethnic restaurants.
Touristy Stuff
- San Diego Maritime Museum. We went with Bob and Mike in San Diego (obviously). This was how we spent much of our afternoon, and it was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. We crawled around in a Soviet submarine, for instance. Khorosho!
- The Getty Center is an art museum set high in the Santa Monica mountains above west LA. It's a must-see in Los Angeles, and we hadn't been there yet, so we took advantage of a visiting tourist (Jon) to make the trek up the Santa Monica mountains (err, I mean, jump in the nifty monorail and glide up the hill). It's a beautiful place. We saw the Painted Menagerie exhibit, the Medieval Beasts illuminated manuscripts exhibit, among other things. Very cool.
Choir Stuff
- Samantha and I ended our brief, tumultuous relationship with the Angeles Chorale on June 9th, with our last concert. Weird stuff. The Brahms was okay. We're mostly just glad not to be there anymore. We'll be keeping in touch with certain cool folks though.
- I've gotten my list of confirmed gigs with the Master Chorale next season. Drop me a line if you want more details.
- I'm still looking for a regularly rehearsing choir for next season. Not much luck yet. I've heard good things about the Occidental Chorale, but it looks like another massive choir with lots of orchestra rep. I was hoping for a small group with more a cappella literature, but that may not be in the cards. Oh, the life of a choral snob...
That's all the news before our trip. Back with more on that next week!