I don't think I've ver gone three weeks without writing before (no doubt someone will correct me if I'm wrong). I'm sorry, guys, life just got away from me. No, that would be nice, but not exactly true. I just have not been in a great head space, and wasn't in the mood to write. All that has changed, at least for the moment, so here goes.
I left you, I think, with a memorial celebration. I was followed two days later by another, this one for colleague Lorne, who was suffering from some disease, whose name I could never get in my head, a combination of ALS, Alzheimers and Parkinsons, even more hideous in the aggregate than they are individually, if you can believe it. We all watched him deteriorate up close and personal, first in the office - just small slips - then in his home, and finally in a care facility. He finally refused food and medication (good on 'im), and died two days later. He was 60.
But the Celebration of Life was just that (it so often isn't). His brothers and sisters were there, and many, many colleagues past and present. We talked and laughed and remembered Lorne, without the wheelchair or the feeding tube or the breathing apparatus. In other words, we had a party.
Some us hasn't seen each other for a long time, so we enjoyed the reunion part of it as well. (The only thing missing was food. The sexist among us - not me, heaven forfend - noted that if a woman had planned the event, there would have been food.) Lorne would have loved it.
Well, hopefully, that's enough death and dying for a while. On to other things. 1913 is the 100th anniversary of the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and our orchestra was having a mini-Stravinsky festival. The symphony has rush tickets (for those of you not old enough to know, that means last minute tickets for cheap, in this case, $20 instead of $88.) so I trotted off downtown and scored, two Mondays in a row.
(Did you guys catch what just happened there? I scanned something to the blog And yes, I know you can't read it, but this is a work in progress. And I am trying! For someone whe is as technologically challenged as I, well, it will take some time - bear with me. )
Anyway, the concerts were great. The Rimsky Korsakov was included because he was Stravinsky's piano teacher, the Tchaikovsky because of his influence on Stravinsky. The Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto has to be one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever, and I have gotten rather fond of Stravinsky in my old age - it is hard to believe that the Rite of Spring caused riots at its premier (although there is some talk that those were orchestrated for publicity value - if so, it certainly worked.) Anyway, two great concerts, and a little out of my normal circuit of events!
So, the above is a memorial to my good deed of the week. I went out to eat! No, really. A restaurant opened recently in the Downtown East Side, which is our version of - well, name any Skid Row that you can think of and multiply by 10. And yes, it is that bad. Anyway, there is some gentrification around the edges - it is, after all, 10 minutes from downtown Vancouver, and the local residents were picketing the restaurant - Pidgin by name - trying to put a padlock on the door, generally causing mayhem, all in the name of preventing gentrifiation. (Yes, god forbid there should be something that doesn't smell of pee or have used syringes on the ground!) Speaking of not being able to pay for that kind of advertising - following the newspaper article, I had to brave the neighborhood and show my support. It is a lovely restaurant, and quite well attended, I might add. A little too fusion for my taste - I generally prefer to be able to read my menus without a translator - but all in all not too much of a sacrifice for a good cause. And I can highly recommend their bourbon with honey ginger infusion!
That excursion was followed a few days later by more normal (for those of us in Vancouver anyway) fare, dim sum on Sunday with the usual cast of characters.
...and yours truly
However, our dim sum place is now famous. For those of you who read the Sunday New York Times, in their travel section two weeks ago, they did "36 Hours in Vancouver" and Fisherman's Terrace in the Aberdeen Mall was listed as the favoured dim sum place! (Yes, someday I will figure out how to put a link to the article into the blog. For now, you can look it up!) And they picked all my favourite dishes too, including chicken knees - which the girls never let me order, for some reason!)
The week was otherwise rounded out by bridge with the boys (Tuesday, kitchen bridge) and at the club in White Rock with Robin on Thursday (duplicate), where we came in second overall and actually made some masterpoints (Yeah for us!).
And, in the interest of full disclosure, one little bitty mishap. I had on my calendar that I was to meet Tom for dinner and for Hamlet at Bard on the Beach on Thursday night. Well. I got there early (as I almost always do) to snag a good parking space for a quick exit. Okay that was good. Then I went to the box office to pick up the tickets before meeting Tom at the chosen restaurant. Where the lady at the box office looked at me like I was speaking swahili and told me my tickets for Hamlet were for the 30th of July, and I could change them, of course, but they were sold out for that night.
Oops. Luckily, I was there early enough so that I could call and save Tom the long trek in from the North Shore. Considering the state of my calendar, it is a wonder that I don't do that more often, but still...
Well, on to more opportunities to screw up my schedule!
Tuesday night, I headed down to Seattle (for those of you who are paying attention, they have now put in a temporary bridge over the Skagit, so it wasn't a nightmare trip) after work, and had - guess what, Chinese! - dinner with friend Mariah and Mar, and Art and Wally who are escaping the Palm Springs head in the Pacific North West . It was good to see everyone again, particularly Wally, who scared us all recently by having a heart attack (from which he is, thankfully, recovered, left only with a pocket full of pills and the will to make life style changes).
This was all in aid of sleeping over at Mariah's and getting her to drive me to the airport on Wednesday (cheap flight from Seattle to Oakland, don't you know) to head down to a weekend (long weekend, I'll grant you) in San Francisco.
Where I arrive on Wednesday noon, safe and sound. And that is as good a place as any to stop. There's too much more to finish before I head off to my next adventure, so I will try to get caught up tomorrow - it has been an action packed 4 days.
So there you have it, all the news that's fit to print and some that ain't!
I left you, I think, with a memorial celebration. I was followed two days later by another, this one for colleague Lorne, who was suffering from some disease, whose name I could never get in my head, a combination of ALS, Alzheimers and Parkinsons, even more hideous in the aggregate than they are individually, if you can believe it. We all watched him deteriorate up close and personal, first in the office - just small slips - then in his home, and finally in a care facility. He finally refused food and medication (good on 'im), and died two days later. He was 60.
But the Celebration of Life was just that (it so often isn't). His brothers and sisters were there, and many, many colleagues past and present. We talked and laughed and remembered Lorne, without the wheelchair or the feeding tube or the breathing apparatus. In other words, we had a party.
Well, hopefully, that's enough death and dying for a while. On to other things. 1913 is the 100th anniversary of the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and our orchestra was having a mini-Stravinsky festival. The symphony has rush tickets (for those of you not old enough to know, that means last minute tickets for cheap, in this case, $20 instead of $88.) so I trotted off downtown and scored, two Mondays in a row.
(Did you guys catch what just happened there? I scanned something to the blog And yes, I know you can't read it, but this is a work in progress. And I am trying! For someone whe is as technologically challenged as I, well, it will take some time - bear with me. )
Anyway, the concerts were great. The Rimsky Korsakov was included because he was Stravinsky's piano teacher, the Tchaikovsky because of his influence on Stravinsky. The Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto has to be one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever, and I have gotten rather fond of Stravinsky in my old age - it is hard to believe that the Rite of Spring caused riots at its premier (although there is some talk that those were orchestrated for publicity value - if so, it certainly worked.) Anyway, two great concerts, and a little out of my normal circuit of events!
So, the above is a memorial to my good deed of the week. I went out to eat! No, really. A restaurant opened recently in the Downtown East Side, which is our version of - well, name any Skid Row that you can think of and multiply by 10. And yes, it is that bad. Anyway, there is some gentrification around the edges - it is, after all, 10 minutes from downtown Vancouver, and the local residents were picketing the restaurant - Pidgin by name - trying to put a padlock on the door, generally causing mayhem, all in the name of preventing gentrifiation. (Yes, god forbid there should be something that doesn't smell of pee or have used syringes on the ground!) Speaking of not being able to pay for that kind of advertising - following the newspaper article, I had to brave the neighborhood and show my support. It is a lovely restaurant, and quite well attended, I might add. A little too fusion for my taste - I generally prefer to be able to read my menus without a translator - but all in all not too much of a sacrifice for a good cause. And I can highly recommend their bourbon with honey ginger infusion!
That excursion was followed a few days later by more normal (for those of us in Vancouver anyway) fare, dim sum on Sunday with the usual cast of characters.
Sheila, Joyce and Alisha
...and yours truly
However, our dim sum place is now famous. For those of you who read the Sunday New York Times, in their travel section two weeks ago, they did "36 Hours in Vancouver" and Fisherman's Terrace in the Aberdeen Mall was listed as the favoured dim sum place! (Yes, someday I will figure out how to put a link to the article into the blog. For now, you can look it up!) And they picked all my favourite dishes too, including chicken knees - which the girls never let me order, for some reason!)
The week was otherwise rounded out by bridge with the boys (Tuesday, kitchen bridge) and at the club in White Rock with Robin on Thursday (duplicate), where we came in second overall and actually made some masterpoints (Yeah for us!).
And, in the interest of full disclosure, one little bitty mishap. I had on my calendar that I was to meet Tom for dinner and for Hamlet at Bard on the Beach on Thursday night. Well. I got there early (as I almost always do) to snag a good parking space for a quick exit. Okay that was good. Then I went to the box office to pick up the tickets before meeting Tom at the chosen restaurant. Where the lady at the box office looked at me like I was speaking swahili and told me my tickets for Hamlet were for the 30th of July, and I could change them, of course, but they were sold out for that night.
Oops. Luckily, I was there early enough so that I could call and save Tom the long trek in from the North Shore. Considering the state of my calendar, it is a wonder that I don't do that more often, but still...
Well, on to more opportunities to screw up my schedule!
Tuesday night, I headed down to Seattle (for those of you who are paying attention, they have now put in a temporary bridge over the Skagit, so it wasn't a nightmare trip) after work, and had - guess what, Chinese! - dinner with friend Mariah and Mar, and Art and Wally who are escaping the Palm Springs head in the Pacific North West . It was good to see everyone again, particularly Wally, who scared us all recently by having a heart attack (from which he is, thankfully, recovered, left only with a pocket full of pills and the will to make life style changes).
This was all in aid of sleeping over at Mariah's and getting her to drive me to the airport on Wednesday (cheap flight from Seattle to Oakland, don't you know) to head down to a weekend (long weekend, I'll grant you) in San Francisco.
Where I arrive on Wednesday noon, safe and sound. And that is as good a place as any to stop. There's too much more to finish before I head off to my next adventure, so I will try to get caught up tomorrow - it has been an action packed 4 days.
So there you have it, all the news that's fit to print and some that ain't!
