Month: November 2018

Dream it, girl!

I am bursting at the seams with joy and delight tonight!

Remember just the other week, how I kept running into 渡辺 謙 (Ken Watanabe) things all over the place?

Remember how one of them was that quick-change from the Tony Awards, and how it made me really wish I could see that performance of his, in “The King and I”, even though it ended, like, over a year ago?

Believe it or not, due to a reason I know not, that production is, for two nights only, being shown in select movie theaters here in the USA.

Obviously, I (re)arranged everything, and I attended tonight’s showing of the performance.

It was spectacular, and almost even better than an actual live theater performance, because everyone and everything was so much bigger and easier to see, up there on the big screen. 😛

And, let’s be real here, I hadn’t seen the show since I was itty bitty, so I totally balled my eyes out at the end…

Also, the curtain call always makes a show feel complete – this one was no excuse – and I think that’s what’s missing from regular films, is a curtain call… a tiny nudge back to real life after the show, and a chance to show one’s extreme appreciation for the performance just given.

Plus, clapping and cheering and hollering, with a glint of tears in the eyes, is a totally fun way to end the event.

Anyway, thanks, whoever you are, who decided to show this performance for me tonight – miniature dream just came true! Woohoo!

Post-a-day 2018

Packing with my Butler buddy

Siri is a great buddy, but occasionally gets the message a bit mixed up on the butler/personal assistant front.  I’m staying temporarily at my mom’s house right now, because the hot water went out at my new place, but won’t be finished for another few days…, and it’s gotten really cold out, so I didn’t really want to take freezing cold showers.  Therefore, I gratefully accepted my mom’s offer to stay here until the hot water was returned to the new place.

That being said, let us turn to the fact that I had already had a bag packed from various stays elsewhere in the previous week-ish, due to Thanksgiving and moving and all.  I did have some clothes to wear still, but I had now run out of underwear in that bag.  So, I planned that on my way home (to my mom’s house) from class, on the first night that we’d determined that it wasn’t just a one-night deal but a several-undetermined-number-of-nights deal with the no hot water, I would stop at my new place to dig up (almost literally, since I’d done a terrible packing job and nothing was unpacked yet, really, and most of everything was pushed together in a currently un-useful fashion in this one room) whatever I would need for the now-extended stay.  I could borrow socks from my mom, and I already knew that a bra was in my dirty clothes there (so I could just wash that), and I had clothes and could borrow clothes.  So, all I really needed was underwear, when it came to clothing.  And then I needed to bring my laptop for the various things I would need to do on it this week.

Naturally, I was brainstorming all of this while driving to class, and so couldn’t write anything down.  But I knew I would forget if I didn’t have a reminder after class somehow.  And so, I asked Siri to remind me.  And I cracked up when I happened to glance at a stoplight at what she was writing.

 

I didn’t need to correct it, because it was clear to me, anyway, what the reminder meant.  Plus, I enjoyed laughing at it, and knew I would enjoy it as a reminder later on.   And, sure enough, I was right – I loved it later.  More than that, even, was how much I enjoyed getting to mark as completed the odd task.

This is not the first time I’ve had an odd accidental reminder, and not even the first in the past week.  Add to that the actual odd reminders that I ask Siri to give me (and on a somewhat regular basis).  We now have some really odd data to be going back to Apple for stats and improvement… I regularly wonder what the people who see these Siri conversations think when they see how absurd people are with her at times.  And I always enjoy the thought that my silliness and absurdity, both accidental and natural, just might bring some utter joy and delight to their lives here and there.  It definitely does to my own life, anyway. 😛

Post-a-day 2018

Best Friends

When my best friend and I talk, even about the most serious or important of things in life, we never fail to be utterly ridiculous somewhere in there, and crack ourselves up to the point of tears.

Today was no exception, as our planned important and serious conversation had a solid beginning that included my pushing the laptop camera quickly backward, as a means of expressing a digital version of tackling someone, and then we even somehow used the phrase “like a butt flapping in the wind”.

Best friends are great.

Thanks for that, God. 😉

Post-a-day 2018

Class quote, I say

Tonight at class was great, and for various reasons.

At one point, our usually-rather-serious-and-exhausted teacher is mentioning something she has said to us many a times, and I have to do an audio double-take:

“Did you just quote yourself with blah blah?”

She pauses… looks at me…, “I did.”

She ever so slightly smiles…, “I did.”

And then she, along with us, breaks into chuckles laughter, as she explains how she needn’t always be serious and that she finds it important for her to offer some humor for us from time to time, so we can remember that she is not just a mean old professor, but that she is a human being.

Then we went all into how students regularly think she’s mean and grades ‘too hard’ on assignments (definitely false on both accounts, but we could see how kids could think that).

And, somehow, it was all entirely relevant to what we were aiming to cover in class tonight, and we tied it all in with our research methods topics of the night, everyone participating in the conversation (at last!).

It was a great class meeting tonight. 🙂

Post-a-day 2018

Fortunately, Not Quite Like Poe

It was a dark and stormy night…. I mean, it is a dark and stormy night, and it just so happens to be my first night in a new place…, which just so happens to be an old house that is very talkative in this wind tonight…

I feel so oddly exposed, though I am two floors up, because I am the only one here – no one is below to verify my safety, to verify that these sounds I hear are benign or, at least, fully outside and down the street…

However, life couldn’t have made it more clear that this is exactly the place for me to be right now, whatever the hardships that come with it.

So I’ll aim for rest, and possibly get it on this dark and stormy night.

Post-a-day 2018

Biblical coincidence?

I’ve been reading from the Bible every night, in my effort to read the whole thing (Being raised Catholic, my family fit in well with the stereotype that Catholics really don’t read the Bible, but merely rely on hearing almost all of it through Mass attendance over the three-year plan the Catholic Church follows).

I’ve been in the part where Saul becomes King of the Israelites, and just last night hit the part where the Israelites seem like they’re about to have this big showdown with the Philistines… little did I recall that this upcoming showdown is actually where the story of David and Goliath takes place.

But I still haven’t read that part yet, so how have I come by this tiny enlightenment?

Checking my e-mail this morning, I found a digital audiobook from the library to be just this morning checked out to me (it had been on hold for quite some time, really [possibly months]).

And what book was this?

None other than David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell (if you don’t know his books, read them ASAP, or listen to the audiobooks, which are read by the author himself, ASAP)…., in the beginning of which, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the lead-in for the David and Goliath story, which, as I am listening, I suddenly recall, I have just been reading!

And so, with this fabulous Malcolm Gladwell approach to the story, I set myself with delight to the task of continuing on in my reading of the Bible.

I mean, what kind of perfect coincidence is that, anyway???

Bilingual Ballet

I found myself thinking of (and, of course, missing) my ballet class in Japan.

I was the tallest by a lot, and it was mostly older ladies (not old, but definitely older), and everyone was super sweet and happy and even a bit giddy every class.

And the teacher and I had an unwanted but accustomed distance-by-language-barrier, because my technical Japanese was utterly iffy, and her English possibly below that… that is, we had this distance until the night that we delightfully discovered that we both spoke French rather fluently… then we got on quite comfortably, and even more familiarly than I did with any of the others, because we could say so much to each other now.

I had always asked on occasion for the teacher to repeat something she’d said or done (in Japanese, of course), and I continued that…, but now I could and would ask for clarity at times when I still wasn’t certain what the goal or instruction was (if you’ve ever done ballet, you can understand how important it is to understand what muscles are doing what in a movement), and that part would be in French.

All in all, Monday nights at ballet class were always great, and I miss them now, especially with it getting cold outside (that was when I’d first started going to the classes).

Post-a-day 2018

It really isn’t personal

Sometimes a cousin just doesn’t greet you or bid you farewell, and won’t acknowledge your presence, despite your efforts to start conversation on anything at all, over the two days family is all gathered together, and you might as well have not been present, as far as that cousin’s behavior is concerned.

And then you find out that the same was the case for the receiving end of another family member, and likely would have been the case, too, for an absent family member if she had been present, and that this is regular behavior for this particular cousin, to ignore various members of the family (on the somewhat rare occasions she’s ever around, anyway).

And you realize that it’s totally okay if the cousin who ignores lots of family members isn’t really around much and ignores people whenever she is around – she clearly has enough of her own problems to deal with, if she can’t manage to talk to some awesome people (who just so happen to be related to her).

You know?

Kind of a ‘Her loss,’ kind of thing…

Post-a-day 2018