not a good time

i'm sick. runny nose, sneezing, congestion. it's not bad enough that i'm completely waylaid by it, but it's slowing me down.

and it's HORRIBLE timing. i'm supposed to get on a plane to sicily on friday. i hope i can kick this out of my system by then. travelling with a clogged head is no fun.

happy halloween, by the way. i've got a spooky divaville planned tonight, if you're interested in listening. 6-9pm Pacific; 9-midnight Eastern.

muscle max

oh my gosh, oh my gosh! i saw the best thing last night!

opera theater oregon put on a show called "muscle max". the director of the company took donizetti's opera "the elixir of love" and reduced it in length (to 90 minutes), set it in an 1980s shopping mall, and added *tons* of cheekiness. i have never had such fun watching opera.

the singers were all local university students, and they were pretty damn good. there was a three piece band (violin, bass, piano), and the show happened in a pretty amazing downtown bar. cocktails and opera! yay!

i can't get over how much fun the whole thing was. the singers were dressed in 1980s neon (bright pink legwarmers, electric blue plastic beads and earrings) and the language was hilarious. in one section, the heroine was telling the chorus something unbelievable, and the chorus responded, "you are shitting us!" and the heroine responded, "i am SO not shitting you!" in another part, the female chorus is coming on to the hero, much to his surprise. the female chorus fawns all over him, saying, "you're so bitchin'. why haven't we hung out before??"

it was just a hoot. the whole thing was great. i can't wait to see more of their productions. in the past they've done something called "opera cinema" (silent film, live sound) that sounds really cool, too.

portland cello project

last night my friend rude (pronounced "rudy") & i went to see the portland cello project. at one point i think there were 15 cellists on stage at once. it was madness.

they did play some classical selections, but the group also really mixed things up by bringing on some guest hip-hop artists, then a celtic ensemble, and even some tango dancers. oh! and the highlight was a tenor from the vagabond opera who joined 8 cellists in a version of "nessun dorma". it was probably the highlight of the show for me.

rude and i enjoyed ourselves, though i have to say honestly that there were intonation problems amongst the cellists, and aside from the two or three clear "leaders" of the ensemble the ability level varied greatly from cellist to cellist.

still, it was a really entertaining night --almost like a variety show, with cellos-- and i'll be happy to see them again in the future.

and boy are my arms tired

ok, i'm back in portland.

i had a really good time visiting with y'all... thank you for coming out and drinking with me. i was really worried that this trip would be badly-timed in my process of getting settled out here (i only left 3 months ago!), but in the end i think the visit was perfectly-timed. those 5 days were well-placed. i had begun to lose my head a bit out here, behaving uncharacteristically and reacting to things too emotionally. i think i had just lost my center. but this trip to NC helped me find that again. i'm feeling good.

last night i saw the boy for the first time in weeks (we'd been experiencing polar opposite travel schedules), and we had a great time together. we saw eric bachmann open for josh ritter (we both MUCH preferred eric to josh; in fact we left only 5 songs into josh's set), then grabbed some late-night dinner at a wonderfully-named restaurant downtown. suffice to say, having been away from each other for so long, the date continued late into the evening. ;)

and now i'm trying to furiously try to work ahead in anticipation of my trip to visit rossi in sicily. i leave a week from friday, and there's a lot do to at the station before i leave. which is ok... i haven't been there long enough to have earned the right to paid vacation, so the whole 9 day trip is unpaid leave. working overtime right now will help financially. a little.

i think i'm going to stay in town over thanksgiving, too, and try to work as much as possible. time-and-a-half will sound really good by that point.

the rest of the deal

it's weird being back at the station. i mean, it's wonderful seeing old friends and all, but it's like i've experienced severe whiplash or something.

anyway, here's the rest of the deal:

Friday night, October 19 @ 9pm - Southern Rail in Carrboro
Saturday night, October 20 @ 9pm - Bull McCabes in Durham

i'm here

geez, it's tropical here. bleah.

the plan proceeds: 8pm tonight (wednesday) at federal, for all who can come.

looking foward to seeing you!

the storm before the calm

this weekend i had fun at the big farmer's market (found the "pine state biscuit" stand, and had a fantastic southern-style sausage biscuit... woo!), then took advantage of the surprisingly sunny weather and played my first-ever game of disc golf. (i sucked, but had a wonderful time in the woods anyway.)

maybe one of the highlights of the weekend was a gloriously decadent midnight sandwich. open-face, on buttered, toasted spelt bread... thick-cut oregon bacon, melted sheep's cheese, sauteed (in more butter) maitake mushrooms, with some farmer's market lettuce, tomato & cucumber on top. good lord. i thought i'd died and gone to heaven.

sunday was a lazy morning in bed, followed by some laundry. i then pulled myself together in order to meet some of the station donors at an indian restaurant for dinner (it's alarming how few indian restaurants i've found here in portland) and then i went to the symphony with our new interim executive director. a really great guy... it was nice getting to know him better.

now i'm frantically trying to wrap up all of my loose ends in order to get on a plane tomorrow afternoon and not worry about the work i'm leaving behind. not enough hours left to do everything i need to do...

trying to get my shit together

i'm coming to north carolina! next week!

i want to see as many of you as possible, so let's just do it this way. i'll just plant myself at a different bar each night, and hope that you can come by and visit.

wednesday night, october 17 @ 8pm - Federal in Durham
friday night, october 19 @ 9pm - Southern Rail in Carrboro
saturday night, october 20 @ 7pm - any suggestions?

sound ok? anyone have any other suggestions?

andre watts

i saw andre watts in recital last night.

it was perhaps one of the best concerts i've seen since i've been in town. he played scarlatti, mozart, schubert, debussy, ravel, liszt and chopin... a nice well-rounded concert. all the works were short and grouped by composer. andre spoke from the piano bench several times, and he came off as knowledgable and personable.

the only bummer was that the audience was INCREDIBLY restless and loud. the woman behind us was fidgeting with the zipper on her purse, sighing loudly and whispering to her husband. the kid on the other side was wiggly and loud. the seats were creaky, and it seemed like there was a constant low din all around us. it definitely detracted from the performance.

what's ironic is that this is one of *the nicest* halls i've been in so far. there are leather chairs and a fireplace in the lobby (with a full bar), and the decor is just really welcoming. the theater itself is cozy and there's not a bad seat in the house. maybe the patrons just feel *too* comfortable in this place.

done

the pledge drive ended friday night. we surpassed our goal by *$80,000*! everyone is just dumbfounded. staggeringly dumbfounded. it was an exhausting 10 days, but it was perhaps also one of the most warm and welcoming pledge drives i've ever had the honor to be a part of.

saturday night a number of us gathered at a co-worker's house to celebrate with dinner & drinks. i had tickets to a dance performance that night, so i couldn't stay until the end of the party, but i enjoyed myself while i was there.

the dance troupe i found to be kinda meh. i think i've gotten spoiled by my 15 years of ADF... the quality that i'm used to was just not in this troupe. perhaps i need to keep searching through portland's other dance options. i'm sure something comparable to ADF is here somewhere.

in other news, the weather here has definitely turned.


it was overcast all day today, and probably in the mid-60s... everyone i encountered was commenting on how nice the weather was (because it wasn't raining). summer is over. i put away all my summer clothes and am spending a good deal of my time shopping for boots, winter raincoats and tights. the rain isn't constant, btw... so far i've found that the morning might be wonderful, but by the afternoon it's drizzling. what you get in one part of the day is probably going to be completely different than the other part of the day. it's an adventure.

consequently, though, the weather is inspiring a lot of soup-making. i cooked up a big pot of posole tonight and it might actually just be my best batch ever.

the end is near

this is the next-to-last day of the station's most successful pledge drive. the staff are just incredulous over this fall's listener response. i heard one woman in the membership department estimate that we could possibly go as much as $40,000 over our goal. that seems overly optimistic to me, but at this point it's pretty much guaranteed that we *will* go over...

we give away a super-swank radio each day of the drive. all of the pledge forms to into a big box, and once a day a name gets drawn out. the box gets more and more full as the pledge drive goes on, of course, and today we made a big deal about how, finally, the box was too heavy to carry... today the program director literally had to drag it across the floor and into the studio. he made a big deal of stirring up all the paper and reaching down deep into the box to pull a name at random. the name he drew? mine.

seriously. out of *thousands* of names, he pulled out *my* pledge form. we were both stunned. of course i declined the prize (dammit) and the PD drew another name out of the box, but we were both just dumbfounded over the odds of that happening. it made for some good radio, though. everyone was talking and buzzing over that.

string quartet

tonight i went to see the emerson string quartet. they were incredible.

not surprisingly, The Boy was busy, so i took todd with me. he really really enjoyed it, and in fact bought a double-CD set of their recording of the bartok string quartets before we left the concert hall. he & i then walked to a five star restaurant nearby for some late-night food & cocktails. good stuff.

there was a big shakeup at work today, with the news that the executive director had resigned. right in the middle of pledge drive. so the madhouse is now a little more chaotic, which no one really enjoys.

which seems a fitting segue for this: i'm sorry for falling largely out of touch with so many of you. i'm finding, two months into my solo relocation, that i'm only now starting to get a grasp on how hard i have to work to build a new social network. it is a time-consuming, somewhat disorienting (not to mention melancholy) process. i spend a lot of time building relationships with people i vaguely like, just to feel like i've got a large circle of acquaintences. i also work hard to nurture new friendships. combined with exploring the town and dealing with the challenges of a new job, i find myself pretty damn preoccupied. i hope you can forgive my neglect and not hold it against me. this is a big journey i'm on, and i'm finding i can't spend too much time looking back at the path that brought me here.