Posts in category "Daily Life"

Christmas Swag

In terms of presents, the Christmas sea­son has been good to me. Even though I decid­ed not to do gifts for any­one this year, that does­n’t stop peo­ple from buy­ing me things. Along with a Mexx gift cer­tifi­cate, Eagle vs. Shark on DVD, and an elec­tric hot rod that I can build, I got some great gifts.

Christmas stocking

My first Christmas stock­ing since leav­ing home. I used to have a stock­ing that my grand­moth­er knit back when I was one (if I remem­ber cor­rect­ly), which had my name on it, and Santa bend­ing over putting some­thing down, but look­ing at the view­er as if he was caught in the act of deliv­er­ing presents.

Instead of a star or angel on top of the tree, it would be my stock­ing. Since my grand­moth­er was very much Chinese and not born into this cul­ture, I always imag­ined her say­ing, “Silly white peo­ple and their sil­ly myth­i­cal fat peo­ple”, while knit­ting it.

Continue read­ing “Christmas Swag”…

An Opera at The Met

When I watched Moonstruck in my uni­ver­si­ty “Music in the Movies” class, we stud­ied a scene where Ronny Cammareri (Nicholas Cage’s char­ac­ter) has a date with Loretta Castorini (played by Cher) at the Metropolitan Opera. She takes off her coat, and he says, “Thank you…You know it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Opera”.

In his face, you see that he’s not talk­ing just about the opera. After los­ing his hand and fiancée, he’s at the Met, arguably the most pres­ti­gious opera house in the world, with a beau­ti­ful woman in a black dress, and he’s missed this.

Even in the screen­play, there are set direc­tions for the scene when they arrive:

CROWDS OF PEOPLE in beau­ti­ful clothes fill the plaza cre­at­ed by the three great build­ings. A glo­ri­ous foun­tain filled with lights forms the cen­ter­piece. Behind the foun­tain, grand and splen­did­ly lit, is the mag­i­cal Metropolitan Opera House.

Ever since, The Met has been this place I’ve dreamed of attend­ing. Unfortunately, it’s in New York, and decent seats can cost over $100.

Orfeo ed Euridice

So when my local movie the­atre start­ed offer­ing live HD broad­casts of per­for­mances there, I decid­ed I should go. To ful­fill a dream in spir­it, if not in the flesh.

Continue read­ing “An Opera at The Met”…

Got My House Back

House stippling

The house is final­ly back to its’ for­mer glo­ry. The exhaust pipes to my water heater and fur­nace have been replaced, the holes in the ceil­ings have been patched up, sand­ed, stip­pled, and paint­ed.

This means a few things of sig­nif­i­cance:

  • I get to dress based on mood again. I would come home and hang my clothes off the ban­is­ter, then put the same clothes on in the morn­ing, because my clos­et doors would be taped shut to pre­vent dust and errant paint/stipple from get­ting in there.
  • I get to sleep in my bed again. The entire bed­room was a mess, so I had been sleep­ing on the couch for almost three weeks. It felt weird to go back to a big mat­tress, like I was sleep­ing on some sort of unlim­it­ed sur­face area.
  • I get to use my photo/Tai Chi stu­dio. Almost all my fur­ni­ture was moved to the guest room. I haven’t been able to prac­tice my Tai Chi, or take pic­tures of things against a drop sheet.
  • I have the use of my main com­put­er. Playing games on a lap­top screen does­n’t cut it when you’re used to three 24″ mon­i­tors, and music sounds the way it’s sup­posed to when you have a decent sub­woofer.
  • No more time off work. I’m lucky in that I have such a short com­mute, but being there dur­ing con­struc­tion still meant that I lost two days of pay.

I spent most of the week­end wip­ing dust of every­thing down­stairs — walls, mir­rors, dec­o­ra­tions, counter tops. The splat­ters of paint were tak­en care of with a bot­tle of Varsol and a Q‑tip. A few paint touch-ups were need­ed too, but noth­ing too bad. Then the house got an over­all clean­ing, to get rid of the evi­dence of mud­dy boots, dirt, and ran­dom pieces of garbage brought in dur­ing the whole process.

My back and feet are still sore from rush­ing to get every­thing done, but it was oh so worth it to have the cozy com­fort of my house again.

Documentary Night

Picking vinyl

Thumbnail: Banister kitty
Thumbnail: CD rack
Thumbnail: Playing Wii
Thumbnail: Tree piece
Thumbnail: Stealing kitty
 

A cam­era to mask my shy­ness, a lens to hide behind.

At Audra and Jesse’s I felt like I was back in uni­ver­si­ty. Meeting peo­ple, learn­ing names, throw­ing in for some piz­za. Except this time, I was­n’t being dragged, kick­ing and scream­ing to the par­ty. Maybe I was just feel­ing social, because I had­n’t seen my own friends in so long.

I learned that play­ing Punch Out on the Wii is as nat­ur­al to you as it was back when you were in your room back in ele­men­tary school, cry­ing because you were no one’s best friend. That watch­ing Air Guitar Nation — when it’s hard to tell how seri­ous­ly the con­tes­tants take them­selves — is much more enjoy­able with sar­cas­tic com­ments applied lib­er­al­ly from the audi­ence.

I want to know these peo­ple.

I want to find out what dri­ves them. I want to know why they cre­ate, why they’ve cho­sen their medi­ums. Why they hang out togeth­er. Why they stud­ied what they stud­ied. Why they have the jobs they do.

They’re well-read, edu­cat­ed, opin­ion­at­ed, cos­mopoli­tan. I felt some­what out of place. Topics of con­ver­sa­tion weren’t even close to my inter­ests. Concerts aren’t my scene. Politics con­fuse me. Things are hap­pen­ing to oth­er friends I’ve nev­er met. But when there’s this much to learn, lis­ten­ing is just as good as tak­ing part.

It was past mid­night by the time I got home, but I had hard time falling asleep. My brain was buzzing, try­ing to take in every­thing I had just expe­ri­enced.

Tai Chi Deadline

I’ve start­ed learn­ing large san shou in my Tai Chi class. While it’s fun to be prac­tic­ing anoth­er inter­ac­tive form of the Yang style, it’s also a lit­tle scary to be learn­ing some­thing new as my teacher nears retire­ment (when he reach­es 60 in four years). I’m start­ing to wor­ry that I won’t reach a lev­el where I can prac­tice effec­tive­ly on my own before his time is up.

At 2 class­es a week, 52 weeks a year, and 4 years left to go, we can expect rough­ly 416 class­es total; every class is worth 0.24% of a very lim­it­ed resource.

A class­mate once told me that his com­ing retire­ment is a good thing. We’ll be forced to go else­where to expand our knowl­edge of Tai Chi, because we reach cer­tain lim­i­ta­tions when prac­tic­ing with the same part­ners, skill lev­els, part­ners, styles, body types, and even teach­ers. While I under­stand his rea­son­ing, it doesn’t change the fact that I may not be able to con­tin­ue learn­ing what I know now, if anoth­er teacher doesn’t offer the same cur­ricu­lum.

Added to this is the fact that mar­tial Tai Chi teach­ers are hard to find in a city as small as this. Good teach­ers, espe­cial­ly ones suit­ed to your learn­ing style, with the right bal­ance of patience and dis­ci­pline, are even less com­mon.

It makes me won­der where I’ll be with my Tai Chi progress in four years.