So, lessee, it's been a short week for me, since I was out of town on Monday. Tuesday night I stayed out too late to see if the Royal Court's "Cock" was as good as everyone says; the next night I was off to Sadler's Wells with mabel_morgan to see Carlos Acosta (link is my review). My favorite part of the night was hanging out with her, really; she is such good company and has really clear insight into human nature.

Last night was "stay at home and catch up" night. I left work super early (5:10), came home, cleaned, and roasted a chicken. The house looks ... a wreck still, so I'll be doing Wash Rinse & Repeat before the cocktail party tonight. Meanwhile, J's show opens tonight at the King's Head, so anyone who likes Charles' Dickens, perhaps you should get down there and check it out. They did a nice recovery from having their ceiling collapse on Sunday.

My boss has been gone this week so it's been oddly quiet and productive at work. I want to write about it but it seems like I have hardly any time to be online anymore, especially since blogging is banned at work. (I can do it from my phone but it's really an effort.) I did get asked to present at the local QA conference, though it's only a book review - but still, I'm excited about it. All the way in March ... and it's on my calendar.

I've also got an idea about what I want to do about the Ozu festival at the BFI. If any of you like 1920s-1960s Japanese cinema, let me know, and maybe we can see about going together.

Wow! The last act of the Diaghilev tribute I saw in October has been judged so offensive that the BBC won't show it. I am so amused. Here are some quotes:

The BBC has abandoned plans to screen a ballet featuring a deformed Pope who rapes nuns which it had announced as one of the highlights of its Christmas schedule. [I don't know, it would be a highlight of a sort to be sure.]

and

.... the de Frutos sequence climaxes in what has been described as “the most graphic scenes of sex and violence seen on the dance stage”. [This seems like a bit of an exaggeration. Maybe they don't see much modern performance.]

and

De Frutos believes his work would have met with Diaghilev’s approval. He said: “He wasn’t bothered by political correctness. Those were the glory days when people would sleep with you to get a job. And some of the best slept with Diaghilev.”

On my side, the piece was difficult to sit through. On the other hand, I felt like I was watching history being made, and now even more so. It was memorable. It was enthusiastically offensive. It was the baddicle. In some ways, it achieved what it set out to do so very well that I think it put many other merely limp works to shame.

Last night we had a great night at Sadler's Wells watching Birmingham Royal Ballet's Cyrano. It was really just insanely fun - I mean, sword fights and a baguette dance in a bakery and even a full-on battle scene! The dancing was good and the dancers totally won me over with their acting - I got sniffly twice. Anyway, the link above is my full review, and if you're even the least bit interested, I've included a link for half priced tickets in the review.

So Monday night was work then Habit of Art at the National Theater (the new play by Alan Bennett); last night was work then Birmingham Royal Ballet's "Quantum Leaps" program at Sadler's Wells. Man, I love the shows, but the writeups (which is what the links go to) are proving really difficult to do now that I have to (gulp) actually do work while I'm at work. I was even writing up "Habit of Art" while I was at the (2nd) intermission for the ballet last night.

Fortunately, tonight finds me at home, where I've just served bathtubgin and lovelybug my pasta with pesto and new potatoes (and cream) that seems so well suited for cold nights (double carb goodness!). I added some kale and squash to make it a little more healthy, then made a flan to ruin the overall effect. Now I'm so full my stomach kind of hurts. God, pesto just makes it impossible to really get my head wrapped around what a portion size should be. Anyway, it's now after 10:30, and I'm going to take my gut and go to sleep. More ballet tomorrow and then again Friday - sleep is for the lazy, I say!

Well, I gotta say, what with working 8:30-6 and eating at my computer so I can read more emails, this job is making it damned hard to keep up with writing about the shows I see, much less having the energy to actually make it in the theater in the first place. Still, I've finished my review of the ballet Mayerling which we saw last night (for 20 quid each courtesy of the Sun), and yesterday's lunch I devoted to writing my Annie Get Your Gun review. I've been shamed in my writing this week both by the West End Whinger's Annie review and Clement Crisp's review of the Scottish Ballet. The Whingers spent far more time being brilliantly funny about what was wrong with Annie; Crisp just shatters me with his concise, perfect words that capture so much better than I can what was happening. I mean, basically, he and I felt the same way about the show, but he expressed it like a Japanese bento box and my review was like country fried steak and gravy ... from the cafeteria.

*sigh*

Anyway, I continue enjoying work, and today I think I made a friend with a guy who's a test manager in a sister company. But mostly I still have too much to do and not enough time in the day and just getting enough sleep is a bit of a challenge. And I'm totally disappointed that this country doesn't have brownies that come and clean your house for a bowl of milk, cause I sure as hell could use some right now and there is plenty of things for the to dig into in the kitchen right now. That said ... must have bed now. varina8 arrives tomorrow and I will need to be perky for the next ten days. Aaargh!

Dammit, I'm sitting here, two computers fired up, reading the slide show and the original printed article that are the inspiration for the presentation I'm giving tomorrow at the office 2 hours north of London, and I totally don't want to work on it at all. I've napped, I've had a late lunch, and now I'm into serious procrastination mode as I've fired up LJ. Wow, look, I didn't read it for two whole days! Maybe I can find a cheap flight to India for Christmas, that's how I should be spending my time.

I also want to write up "Enron: the Musical," about which I'll say, not much of a musical but wow, a lightsaber fight! I managed to get my review of the Scottish ballet (not a euphemism for Macbeth, I promise) done yesterday through a combination of 1) highly portable laptop with unfortunately undercharged battery and 2) my phone but I don't consider that ideal as I like to be able to put links and such in my reviews and if you can't connect to the web while you're writing this doesn't tend to happen. Still, Enron must wait until later. But why WHY did I say I'd go do this talk tomorrow? AARGH MANAGERIAL DOOOOOOM.

Most of yesterday was spent at the BCS quarterly testing conference near Regent's Park. Good news was that I had seen the first speaker and was able to get some desperately needed extra sleep in the morning. Better news was that the last speaker, Fiona Charles, gave a great talk ("Soft Skills for Testers") that wasn't just useful to share with the other QA people at my office but also directly relevant to my new position. She recommended a book, "Games Mother Never Taught You," that I need to pick up ASAP as I need help dealing with office politics.

Then it was off to Wahaca for dinner and then to the Linbury space at the Royal Opera House to see The Goldberg Variations danced (my review here). Fortunately the piece just involved playing the music straight through (mostly) so I was only out until about 9 and made it back home by 10 PM. I'm afraid with as early as I'm getting up for work, short shows on weeknights is the best I can do. Lots of these coming up, though: tonight is An Inspector Calls, 1:45 from curtain up to end of show. Of course, I'll have to write my review up afterwards, but if I remember to bring the Eee I should be able to manage it with a minimum of lost sleep.

It's a muggy and unpleasant day today, though the office ACs managed to keep it at around 78 or so, which I can work in. I helped by dressing in linen. Unfortunately my much loved linen capris suffered some sort of catastrophic structural failure along the lines of Galloping Gertie the bridge - I can only imagine that my "wardrobe malfunction" was narrowly averted by the fact that they were lined. I guess I got four years of wear out of them.

Best part of my day so far was my field trip to St. Paul's cathedral to watch English National Ballet's School and the Central School of Ballet perform on the steps in front of the building. It was sticky outside but somehow the dancers did not pass out in the heat. I live tweeted it like a lunatic (for once I could type without worrying about irritating other people and take pictures knowing it was legal) and basically enjoyed myself quite a bit, in part because it felt a lot like playing hooky. Even better, as I was heading back to the Tube, I saw lovelybug, and I think we'll watch tomorrow's performance together.

Other things that distracted me today: four books arrived from Amazon; I'm wanting to find a hotel I can afford near Olbia so I can take a weekend holiday there that doesn't break the bank (the £80 RT fare is very attractive); and I won some very cute plate on Ebay that I need to go pay for now. And Annie Get Your Gun is looking on for October 5th and my trip to Penzance is completely sorted. So there are things to look forward to.

Speaking of which: this quote, a key element of a gorgeous illustrated article in the New York Times, is really wonderful:

"Time wastes too fast : every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen ; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more -- every thing presses on -- whilst thou are twisting that lock, -- see! it grows grey ; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make. --"

Now we're off to, um, kill some time before dinner, as we're meeting some people in Soho at some nice Italian joint in two hours - their treat. I think pre-show gelato and even Pimms is called for here.

Man, the last two evenings have been a whirlwind of activity - two really awesome nights of ballet, one in celebration of our anniversary, one just regular old same-old, same-old (except all new works in an intimate environment so ROCK). Now that I'm taking the reviewing thing more seriously, though, every show I see means a pile of work as I attempt to assemble my thoughts into something coherent.

I've managed to write up last night's highly enjoyable New Works at the Linbury, but meanwhile Giselle is still languishing on the shelf! These guys at work better start getting some stuff to me - I don't want to have spare time, I want to be getting things done, but there's a clog in the pipeline. Maybe I'll just scoot my way over to the gym early and get some exercising in while there's nothing awaiting my attention.

Also, this recipe for gomen is making me drool over the thought of Ethiopian food.

Last night I spent a whole lot of time fretting about my brother being laid off from Microsoft. I have a lot of questions to ask him, but time differences mean they'll have to wait for this weekend. I've been keeping my ear to the ground about QA jobs in Seattle for eight years now and the market is soft, no two ways about it. With Washington Mutual having left the city, the employment market is even softer, and Boeing isn't doing anything to help. That leaves ... Starbucks, Getty, Adobe, Google? Then it's all of the smaller places. *sigh*

My "big" plan last night was to sit down with wechsler to a dinner of roast chicken and mashed potatoes, but the shops didn't have any pre-roasted chickens and I didn't have the time to do it. So it was Thai food. It was J's last night of French class so from her on out I expect my Tuesdays will be much more varied.

I also spent a little more time working on my review of the ballet we went to Monday. Three more shows this week - I expect I'm going to be worn out by the time it's all done.

For those of you who read my reviews, I've written up Birmingham Royal Ballet's Mixed Bill that I saw last night with wechsler, includnig the extraordinarily cute and fun "Still Life at the Penguin Cafe." I'm sure they didn't create that ballet especially for Furries but one wonders to what extent they are aware of the interest it might have raised in certain communities. I, for one, found it hard to ignore!

It's been a very quiet day at work, but in keeping with how QA goes I'm going to be slammed the next two days and most of next week.

Tonight J and I are off to the ballet (ROH this time), or perhaps I should say the opera, as we're going to see Wayne Macgregor's Dido and Aeneas. It's actually two operas, with Acis and Galatea (which I haven't seen before) and dance choreographed for the opera. We'll see how I hold up at intermission - I'm just really tired tonight and kind of unmotivated, though I don't want to miss this show. I wonder how much tea I'd need to have to really make a difference ...

Hmm, my throat appears to be swelling, which is not a bad sign. Hopefully I can fight this off like I have the others but my luck has really be running rather too well for me to feel confident about it. Still, my fingers are crossed!

This was a very slack day due to us staying up very late last night. I was up earliest at 11, but it wasn't even until 2 that we went and had brunch up the street (Sotto Voce). Then we puttered around on a long loop to the flea market up the street and then finally to my brother in law's old apartment, where, yes indeed, the sweater I'd won off of Ebay three weeks ago was sitting waiting for me. It was an incredibly mild day, in the low sixties, but we weren't inspired to do a walk in the park because of the threatening rain and the fact it was so late in the day it was getting dark by the time we'd got the sweater.

I showed a tiny degree of ambition by deciding to make pasta alla norma for dinner tonight (along with my fabulous sous chef shadowdaddy), inspired to some extent by the salted ricotta for sale at the great Italian grocery store up the street (Rosso's, I think it is). After we were finished and the plates were cleared away, we played Rock Band, which is fun but silly. Then folks called it a night, but I stayed up finishing my review of the New York City ballet's Nutcracker. My thought overall is that I really must try to write these reviews up sooner - it's been almost a week since I saw this show and I've already forgotten way too much. Ah well.

Once again, the "years shall run [are running] like rabbits," as November has whizzed by so quickly I can almost feel the breeze in my hair. I don't know if the pace of life in London is faster than Seattle, but I feel like I'm seeing time rush by me like nobody's business. It's probably a good thing that everywhere I look I'm seeing more articles talking about how red wine is good for your health. When we get in our new place, I want to find something I really enjoy and just buy a case of it. Unfortunately we're no nearer to getting a place than we were last week, as the only place we liked has rented and the place we saw this morning was TINY and had the main bedroom facing a fairly busy street. I really, really want to move to a place where I can get a decent night's sleep, and not just because I've been hitting the wine stash.

I blew further of my precious time last night writing up my review of Infra and the other pieces we saw at the ballet Wednesday night. It's not as detailed as I would have liked, but I wanted to actually get some sleep last night and not stay up writing until 11:30 like I do sometimes. With so many shows coming up, I have to keep my energy levels high.

The visit with my uncle is going well so far - my only regret is that I haven't been spending nearly as much time visiting with him as I would like. We went to the Dickens museum yesterday, and while it was a bit interesting, it just didn't really resonate with me like it would have if it had been about Proust. I mean, I think Dickens is a pretty crap author, really, but I do really value his work on behalf of the poor (far more than his writing). And the museum was incredibly cold. Still, it was two hours with Frank, and his choice over the Foundling museum, so not such a bad way to burn an afternoon. And Thanksgiving with many members of the old Tripadelic gang was great - made me want to come back home to roost! (Also, roasted garlic gravy recipe - vegetarian but not vegan. Oh well.)

That said, I've got a full day at work ahead of me ... whch I need to somehow fit into the time remaining (the house hunting slowed down the start of my work day). Off I go - with Autumn: Osage County waiting at the end of my day. Yay!

I really haven't been all that good, but can I have tickets for Ondine anyway? The picture on the ROH home page has given me a powerful hankering to see this show.

(Also, Red Lion Square has two lit Christmas trees in it as of yesterday! They were so cheery to see heading home - in the dark - at 5 PM!)

English schoolgirls dancing in a tribal ritual around Pinocchio? Yep, William Forsythe's Impressing the Czar is on at Sadler's Wells, and a freakish little ballet it is, too. My review is up, and, yes, I'm really enjoying having a world with a real live internet connection again.

I was far too sick to say anything about this yesterday evening, but the ballet last night rocked my socks off. It's taken me almost three hours to write it up (as I have no energy), but I've finally got my review of this show (the Kirov ballet doing a Forsythe program) up. Now I can go to bed for a while longer and see if I can keep the rice gruel I made down.

I spent dinner reading an article I've been holding onto for a while with the cover teaser of "Rachel Cusk on the dangers of telling the truth about motherhood." What were these truths? I had to know. And it was a really engaging read, enough to pull me back to it as soon as dinner had been eaten and the plates cleared away. One of the things she noticed was that she was basically being censored by other women, who weren't okay when what she said about her feelings went against the party line on what was an acceptable thing to say about how being a mother made you feel. While I enjoyed a lot of what she had to say, I found this bit especially resonated with me. Why is it that it's so often other women that try to put the brakes on what comes out of women's mouths? Why are they the forces of conformity? Is the price of sisterhood learning how to "put up or shut up?"

Tell me, oh (female) hive mind: has this been your experience?

I've been moody today. I've even come up with a name for the thing that's been causing my moods lately. I'm going to call it The McGuffin. The McGuffin hasn't gone away, although I thought I saw signs of its demise not too long ago ... it's apparently wormed its way into my brain and will now just kind of twitch now and then when something sets it off. I look forward to it dying permanently, but I now realize this may not happen for another three to six months, or longer. Meanwhile I've got yet another pile of poo added to what I've been toting around inside my head to make me act irrationally and obsess on stupid things. Yay!

So the McGuffin was bothering me as I set out today. I was angry about running so late and making shadowdaddy and wechsler sit and wait for me while I tried to find an outfit to wear (a lack of summer weight pants was making this difficult for me). But after we'd made it to West Dulwich station, of all things, Carter's Steam Fair was set up! It was full of beautiful, restored, gilded giant toys that had calliope accompanyment and silly signs on the sides. The swing even blew out a huge puff of steam every time it went backwards. It was great!

Suddenly I was eight years old and the world was full of wonder. I ran around looking at all of the rides, laughing and pointing and realizing that rather a few of them would make me feel quite ill. The carousel was playing "The Lambeth Walk," a song I wouldn't have recognized a year ago, and I felt so proud of myself for being able to grow a little into the local culture. We stopped in the arcade and played some of the silly, old-fashioned machines. I went for the fortune teller, my obsession since reading American Gods. I got the same one I got last time: "Your hand denotes a firm and determined character, one that can be led but not driven .... Very sincere, but too independent to please most people whom you meet." Yep, it's like a badge of pride and yet a knife in my heart - that ever so accurate fortune of mine - I should just change my LJ user description to say what it says on the card.

I can't really explain how much this cheered me up. We didn't actually ride any rides or play any more games, but trotted off to the Dulwich Picture Gallery to see the Coming of Age: American Art, 1850s to 1950s exhibit (ends tomorrow). This was a very nice exhibit - good representations of the realist, substantially landscape-type work produced in the 1850s right up through Calder and Rauschenberg. I also really enjoyed the artists' description of their art, and the assertion of the need to develop an American identity for art, one which "embraces the world as it exists today" - a philosophy I feel most art forms should pursue, especially the performing arts. We also got to see an exhibit of photographs from China done at the very beginning of the 20th century which I found fairly interesting (reminded me of Song of the Fishermen as well as the Chinese opera I've been watching). We actually were finished in good time - the exhibition hall is rather petite - and had an opportunity to sit down and have tea and scones. It was lovely.

Afterwards it was off to meet natalya and lovingboth up at St. Pancras, with a short stop at London Bridge to wrangle some dinner fixin's (stuffed duck breast at a 30% discount, go heavy bargaining me!) and an opportunity for the McGuffin to take control again (boo). I finally got home at 7:30, popped the food in the oven, and we ate at 8:30 ... and now I'm so tired. So tired! It seems like I really burn the candle at both ends based on how long it takes me to get my engine restoked over the weekend. And I say this, and yet I read that the some Russian ballet company is coming to London in late July and I'm all going, "Oooh! Ooh! How many of the shows can I see?" (the answer is two, but I only really want to see one). I can tell I'm going to put myself in an early grave, but, God, getting there is really fun, except for the sleep deprivation.

Well, I've got my review up of the New Works thing we saw tonight at the Linbury studio in the Royal Opera House. It reminded me of "the good old days" in Seattle when we'd frequent the Northwest New Works series and could frequently be found at On The Boards and Velocity Dance Studio. I guess I've spent a lot of my life looking for the next new thing, at least when it comes to theater and dance - or maybe hoping to support people early in their career when they need it. The quality of dancers tonight was amazing, but the works were - mixed, if uniformly better in general than what I used to see back home. But also - I don't know, dryer. And I came to see a piece by one particular choreographer (Wayne McGregor), and for whatever reason they didn't have it on the program. Boo.

That said - dinner at Wahaca was great. They've added some new items to their menu, substantially expanding their vegetarian options (spinach tacos! nopalitos tostadas!) and changing out moles (I can't remember what the new one is but YUM).

Overall I think I can say I had a good evening but GOD blogging a show right when I get home is just taking it out of me!

I've done a slightly more extensive review of the ballet we saw last night on my other blog. I won't flatter myself that most of you give a rat's patootie about my reviews or ballet, but, man, I did enjoy that show, so I'm pimping it anyway. Who'd think Hamlet would make such a rocking ballet?

First, Northern Ballet Theatre's Hamlet was really good - quite the theatrical spectacle! Who'd thought you'd be having ballet with leather clad Nazis, torture scenes, and, um, men dancing in boots up to their knees? It could recruit a whole new audience to the cause (*tries to remember the name of the recently disgraced politician*). At any rate, the idea of setting it all in Paris during the Occupation was brilliant, and the several changes to the story really served the performance well - Hamlet's dad was head of police, killed by his uncle when the Nazis moved into town, and, while he's no longer a prince, his grief at the loss of his dad is actually much more moving. I also felt like his relationship with Ophelia was much better realized in this ballet than it is in the play - their love dance in the first act was just ... beautiful (*gets goosebumps*) ... and her mad scene in act two was FANTASTIC. I've never seen changing the way someone walks so perfectly capture someone who's gone over the edge. I highly recommend this show, especially because you can get main floor tickets for only £15. Go go go!

So today I was less than motivated to work out. ( Cut as it's no doubt dull to read about. )