"A Day To Remember"

Yesterday was a big day here in Waco. In fact, the local news station dubbed it the "Great Snow of 2010". How much snow is required to reach weather immortality? Brace yourself... 3 inches! Oh my!

Schools closed early (yay!), Texans drived erratically and for every street corner there was a snowman. In fact, if you didn't make it outside before 4 pm to see the snow falling -- you would have thought that a snowman delivery service just stopped by.

We decided to enjoy the weather with a 12 block walk to the grocery store to pick up dinner supplies and soak in the snowflakes. But... our 24 block outdoor excursion turned into a.. umm.. 48 block, hour and a half, excursion. It seems, one shouldn't leave ones keys at the check out counter.. The clerk's response: "Well, I figured, you couldn't get very far without these.. I was surprised you didn't come back sooner!' yea...

After warming up, we settled down to an evening of Olympic Hockey, crossword puzzles and studying. As you can see, Loki's obsession with pencils and "helping" continues to grow. Thanks Kitty!

St. Valentine's Day and Kristin's Birthday Present

Hello, All. I hope you are doing well. :)

I'm writing today for the singular purpose of cataloging our adventures with the Dallas Opera.

This all started a number of months back when Kristin was pontificating over the onerous situation of having to tell one's parents what to get her for her birthday. This can be a tumultuous situation for any son or daughter, but is exceptionally so in that Kristin prefers to receive gifts that are not 'things'. And that is not to say that K and I are fundamentalists trying to live with just the barest of essentials, but it is because clutter has to be one of my wife's greatest frustrations. That and coursework.

In any case, K decided early on that a non-tangible gift would be the best to suggest (and most conducive to our crowded apartment). And, Kristin did indeed have something that she'd been a wanting after that fit the requirements pretty well: To see an Opera.

K had once been home sick with a gosh-knows-what sickness that had profoundly put her on her ass. On this occasion, in an effort to distract herself from the illness, she was doing much like the rest of America: Channel surfing. In this setting she wandered herself into a new experience much by accident thanks to our friends at PBS. An Opera, of all things, was being aired while K was searching for distraction, and what she found was most diverting. K has strong memories of the stage and the singing and the costumes in this production, but for the life of her, she has no idea what production it was. She was too sick to watch the whole thing, and because PBS avoids commercial interruption like the plague, she never determined the Opera's origin. Also, she was never able to look it up later because all the words were in another language, and there was little else for her to go off of.

So, having been thus defeated before, Kristin wanted to take back up the cause and see an Opera when in: we knew what it was called, we knew what it was about (at least mostly), and we could talk about it later. It is this last point that has just now reminded me of the primary purpose of this prose, and I had best be getting to it.

But first! The players in this blog:

Daniel "Ready To Go" Connors Kristin "At The Door"Connors

And our favorite furry friend:

Loki "Stayin' At Home" Kitty

The Opera itself:

So gift suggested to gift received, K's mom had seen her fair share of the Operatics before and suggested that we see "Cosi fan Tutte" at the Dallas Opera, and the best date that worked for us happened to be Sunday, Valentines Day. Carol indicated that Cosi was a good pick for us because it was a comedy (and would thus be light-hearted), and that the music was writ by W. Mozart (and would thus be light-hearted). Certainly not Wagner's "Ring Cycle".

Being a Sunday Matinee performance, we knew we wouldn't have much time for dinner or lunch, so we went through the Whole Foods Market on the north side of Dallas. We picked up some of their pizza for lunch and nabbed a 'dinner in a sack' type meal of turkey meatloaf, vegies and mac 'n cheese that we tossed in our cooler. (And, it was super-nice not having to cook when we got home.)

The building it self was pretty cool. Sadly in this picture you can't see the top of the building very well, but the building has a red circular top. Once we were inside we got a good look at their chandelier. Luckily, it didn't stay there during the performance, each of the lights is actually held by its own "string" that retracts into the ceiling. They kept the lights on while they were up in the ceiling during the overture, and they looked like stars on the ceiling.

So, we ended up with a very clear view of the stage, it was not pitched, but even so, we couldn't see to far back because of the height of our seats, but we did get an excellent view of the screen above the stage. That screen was were they projected the translations. They did a very good job of translating just the essentials, and I spent most of my time watching the actors, and not the words above them.

This is a shot of the main entry way just as the crowd is leaving. Again, the building was very cool, and built in a very modern style.

In the end, Kristin and I really enjoyed our experience. There was really only one song where I was tempted to check my watch, and I think were were able to catch most all of the jokes. It was really delightful to experience an Opera live. There were no microphones, or any strange modern add-ins. It felt very, well, real. As if it could have been the same production that Mozart would have seen from his podium in 1790. Sure the costumes would have been different, but the feel was great. The characters were well acted, but most importantly the singing came through exceptionally well. Exactly what one would hope for when seeing an Opera. ;)

DJC

Wet Kitty

Our little kitty is quite the bug collector. First ear mites, and now fleas!

After a little research, we ended up purchasing the "store brand" version of Frontline in the hopes that we could be both thrifty and effective. Unfortunately, this did little beyond stressing out our cat. He was *obsessed* with trying to lick the back of his neck for HOURS.

So, long story short, two weeks later despite our efforts and immense house cleaning -- we still found fleas on Mr. Kitty.

Phase II: we decided to give Loki a bath. We were hoping that it would kill off a few of the fleas that were on him and wash away any flea eggs or larva.

As you can see, he was absolutely thrilled with this idea.

Honestly things went much better than we had anticipated. The hardest part was prying him off of our bodies and putting him in the tub. Once tub-bound, he turned into a lifeless, depressed, scrawny grey ragdoll.

It was a two man-job. Kristin held him above water and kept him calm, while Dan sudds'd him up. And to Loki's credit, no blood was drawn.

These lovely pictures describe the result of our endeavors:

And now we have an incredibly fluffy, soft, lavender scented terrorist -- who never wants to be by the bathtub again!

I have the best husband. Ever.

No really, I do.

After 11 long hours on campus full of classes, teaching, driving 15-passenger vans in heavy rain and studying my brains out -- I come home to a wonderful hug and kiss. And the best pizza I have ever had in my life.

My amazing husband made me gluten-free pizza with meatballs, mushrooms, onions and black olives.

Seriously, look at this little beauty.

I am so incredibly thankful I have such an amazingly supportive, thoughtful, loving husband. And this new cooking talent he is developing -- I love love love that part too =)

Happy Early Valentines Day!

Wholy Max! It's been forever since I've posted. Kristin has been doing a sweet-awesome job of keeping this thing a float!

Ok, "what news?"

Well... there it's now been three weeks with my work's new computer system, and people are starting to move more efficiently. There are still many groans about it's limited capabilities, but I'm doing my best to remain positive.

A position might be opening up for a new Team Lead in my department, and if it goes through, I will certainly be applying. Right now there are Team Leaders for the 2nd and 3rd shift in ER Registration, but no one for the day shift. Seeing as the managerial staff is usually around during the day there has never been a great need for 'day' coverage, but that might be changing.

"What else?"

Well, Kristin is really starting to hit the brunt of her semester with exams, papers and rotations. On top of her classes and TA duties she has also had another task added to her plate: Publishing a Scientific Paper. It's amazing, awesome, excellent news to know that K will soon be a published Grad Student (from the work she did in her masters at the EPA in Duluth), but it comes at a time when she is at her busiest. I forget the name of the Journal, but basically it works out that she and her former advisor Sig, have 1 month to make the requested edits that the Journal has asked for... and the list is none to short. Kristin will be very busy with all this going on, and I'm sure she will be relying on the support of all of us ;)

"Is there... more?"

I should hope so! We don't have a camera for nothing, you know.

If you're wondering, this is Eddie Izzard. He is a transvestite comedian from Brittan who, just randomly, ended up in Dallas Texas. Dallas was the only show he did on the US leg of his tour that wasn't on either the East Coast or the West coast. As a result, I think that a lot of people traveled from Oklahoma, Greater Texas and the area.

Kristin and I own the DVD "Dress to Kill", and I have to say that it is one of the best in our collection. His performance in Dallas was very good, and there were plenty of hysterical bits. There were a few references to Christianity that didn't go over well with the whole crowd, but it was never too uncomfortable.

As far as the venue, it was really strange to be in the American Airlines center for a stage show, The AAC is so well situated for Hockey and Basketball that it was a bit odd at first, but it was easy enough to get used to once the show started.

Next, is the most that we've seen of Mother Neff State Park:

Lovely isn't it? I thought so too. Lots of Trees... a great deal of Water... and now that I'm really looking at this image, it may appear to you, the casual viewer of this image that the road oddly turns to the left. This is not actually the case, the water is shifting over the road and is flowing differently. The road should actually continue for at least 200 more yards before veering to the right... Yeah. So much for Volunteering. The sad thing is that were were going to help clean up flood damage from the year before.

Next is something that I don't know if we've blogged about yet or not:

This is the game "Ticket to Ride". It's a game where you make a bunch of connections by riding trains between cities. The idea of the story is loosely based around a bunch of rich people finding strange races for themselves (like: Around the World in Eighty Days, or Cannonball Run, or something). But, it's the game play that's charming, and it's really easy to pick up.

So, I guess there isn't much else to do but to post the last interesting pic that we found on our journey this past weekend. In retrospect, it's hard to tell why we thought that this street name was so funny. Maybe that it was because the town of Moody is about the size of the 50 yard 'mainstreet' that you have to drive to get through it, or perhaps it was that it was so close to Church Street. Either way, Picture taken, Picture Published. I Hope you all are doing well, and if you're ever thinking about it, send us a line and let us know how things are going in your neck of the woods!