Shop Suey!

from a great Chinese/Thai/Japanese restaurant near us...

I got tickets!

It's early Sunday morning and I woke up to an email from the Spice Girls saying more dates had been added. Skip and I are seeing them in February! Oh my goodness I am so excited. We have seats off the floor right in front of the stage. I hope I hope I hope they each get to sing a solo hit or two. Which ones?

Mel C - Never Be The Same Again & Turn To You
Emma B - Free Me & No Sign Of Life
Victoria B - Let Your Head Go
Geri - Ride It & Look At Me
Mel B - I Want You Back

In other news, Blossom has a cough we don't like but we haven't been to a vet here in Maryland yet. Anyone have a suggestion?

What a difference four stars can make

You may remember I walked out of the musical The Color Purple it was so bad. Well I saw it again! Fantasia is currently starring and believe it or not, star is the right word. Or stars to be exact. Four of them. This production left me amazed and extremely confused. Last time I saw it the emotional connections were missing (no one was afraid of Mister, Celie and Nettie didn't seem close, etc.) but this time ALL of the connections were there. I couldn't tell you the last time I cried at a Broadway show (Ok, it was probably Doubt) but I cried last night. Multiple times. And I was certainly not the only one. When poor Nettie and Celie were being separated by Mister I prayed they were both wearing kneepads.

Shug Avery just blew everything away. Even now I'm sitting here wishing I could have the version of "Push the Button" she sang last night. I listened to the preview of the song on iTunes from the original cast and it's nowhere near as good. Since when is the second cast of a musical better than the first?

I dreaded seeing poor Sophia after she was beat up for not wanting to be the mayor's wife's maid. I dreaded it because I was afraid it would be just as heartwrenching as in the movie. Well it was and more. Although they didn't actually show the scene where Sophia is surrounded by all the white men (there were no white people in this production) and beaten, it still was extremely powerful.

Oh Nettie. Nettie was eerie because she seemed to have been channeled right from the movie, looks, voice and all. But that was an amazing thing and it was an amazing performance.

And Fantasia. How can I forget Fantasia? I can honestly say I don't think I've ever clung to every word out of a performer's mouth like the last drops of air. I BELIEVED she was a little girl of 14 and dealing with the loss of her second child in the hands of her baby daddy (her real daddy). I BELIEVED she loved her some Shug Avery (even if she was partly a Nettie substitute). And I BELIEVED she was finally a self-actualized older woman. Maybe this is the only role that Fantasia can convincingly play in her whole life but oh my god every line was perfect. And her singing! I understood every word she sang and although she Fantasiaized it (like that word?) she made it convincing and part of her character.

Until she leaves the production in early January, it is my favorite show on Broadway. If you have any inkling to go to New York between now and then don't miss her.

Broadway week

It's been a while since I've been in NYC for 5 days straight but here I am. I wanted to finally see Fantasia in The Color Purple but they don't have a show on Tuesday night so I got a ticket for Wednesday night. Then I thought, "Why don't I go see the gayest show on Broadway?" It's Xanadu, of course. A bad movie but evidently an amazing show. Well for whatever reason Xanadu started at 7 pm so I got tickets for Thursday night. So I was walking around looking for dinner and there was Cyrano De Bergerac starring Kevin Kline and one of my favorites, Jennifer Garner. I got an aisle seat close to the stage and she was just wonderful.

Hopefully next week I'll see Young Frankenstein.

Topsy Turvy

Here's Skip's latest, a Topsy Turvy made for my sister's birthday. This cake will be on his new business cards.

The Republican Convention Logo

I didn't like it when I saw it, but this analysis of exactly what was wrong with it is just very funny to me.

Presenting Princess Blossom

Only a few weeks in, Blossom has already won Doggie of the Week at Day Care! I've decided that for her own protection, everyone coming to the house to visit her must have a proper security screening. Get your ducks in a row!

Stuff

Sorry posting has been light lately.

I'm getting as big as a house. My knee pain doesn't let me get much sleep or work out. Even when I don't do legs or cardio my knees still hurt at the gym, go figure. The insurance company is taking it's sweet time getting my referral number so I can get this fixed. Oy.

In other news, Skippy has an order for a great cake due Thursday night. If everything goes as planned, it will be the cake featured on his new business cards. Of course I'll post a picture here so you all can have a sugar-coma just looking at it! We ran to Michael's last night and got him a cake sprayer which Skippy claims will make the cake 50% more awesome. His new web site is coming soon, also, as soon as I finish it.

I see that The Bionic Woman had a 30% drop in the ratings in it's second week. Coincidentally, it's the same week that Isaiah Washington joined the cast. If there is any justice, ratings will spike back up after his guest stint (5 episodes) is over.

Hassle or Harassment. You decide!

Ah, we are getting it from both ends. The management company for our Colorado house is claiming that they were never told we were leaving (we have the note and they scheduled a showing while we were still there), they never got the keys and the house was a mess (we hired a professional cleaner who left the keys right where we told her and will testify to the fact), want to charge us a $850 late fee for missing September's rent (documentation states we'll be out by September 1 per our lease) and want to charge us a $400 return check fee for a check he won't describe (we know of no returned check). The upshot is that instead of returning our security deposit they say we owe more than $2500 OVER our security deposit. They will be getting a not-so-nice letter from our lawyer today.

Meanwhile the management company at our new house has us call the maintenance guy to schedule a repair, we schedule it for four days in the future and the guy shows up on the same day the appointment was made. We get calls from the management company complaining about our grass length (well within Baltimore County guidelines), questions about why do we have three cars in the driveway??? and other sundry petty issues. We've talked to the owners of the house, they are very nice people. They also claim they don't know why we are being asked these silly things, they could care less how many cars we have in the driveway.

Welcome to Baltimore!

Medieval Times

Skippy wanted to go to Medieval Times for his birthday so off we went. It was fun but the acting was just awful. A guy would get hit and two seconds later would fall off his horse. Two fights were awesome but besides that it was like a first-time stage-fighting class. But the virgin margaritas were great!

Despite the pictures, we each had only (part of) one.

Gaston

I am sitting on the Acela Express coming home from NYC. I think I like the train a lot. It's not crowded and I see a fair amount of water, so all is good.

Gaston is our coming-up-on-16 year old dog. He was hit by a car as a pup and has hip issues, can't walk very fast, etc. One of the first thing I did when I got back to the area was pick up one of my favorite magazines, The Washingtonian. In it I saw an article about a woman that has had great success doing pet acupuncture. Well I have been a massage therapist and a rolfer so I am certainly not one to poo-poo different modalities.

Long story short he had his first session last Saturday. On Sunday, he woke up without burning hot hips for the first time in forever, was spry, wanted multiple walks, etc. We are very happy and he is too. I could swear he was following me around religiously asking me to take him back.

Just don't ask me to get any acupuncture done on myself. Needles? No way.

Updates

Let's see...

It looks like my years of working out, tennis, volleyball and raquetball are taking a toll on me. I'm going to have knee surgery one one or both knees rather soon. At this point I can only do the treadmill for 10 minutes at a time and can't even take my hour long strolls around NYC! Yay medicine.

I'm in NYC today but will be working from home starting tomorrow until who knows when. The client doesn't want to pay for travel and that's fine with me! It will be great to be home.

Skippy's birthday is on Monday. Over the last few years he has made a humongous cake and we've had a party. This year we decided to just go to Medieval Times. He might still make a smaller cake just to keep the Alzheimers at bay.

Do you know we have Blossom (our 1 year old Beagle) in day care? People seem to think that's very strange. Beagles are bred to run for long periods of time so short of me taking her out for 10 mile daily runs I see it as a very good choice and wise investment in her health and happiness.

I have been on the NYC subway more in the last month than my whole life combined. We stay in midtown but work on Wall Street so it's pretty much a necessity. Needless to say, being used to the ease and efficiency of the Washington area Metro, NYC's subway is very hard to understand for a newcomer. After a few bad detours (why am I in the Village?) I decided to give up and just use hopstop.com. I put in my route and it tells me exactly what subway line to take. Even I can do that.

I still love my iPhone.

What a day

Tuesday that is...

It was only my second time travelling since I moved back to Baltimore. I decided to take the train to NYC. I haven't been on a train in years and even then it's only been once or twice. Since booking the Acela means automatic business class I went that route. So we left the house at 5:30 am for my 6:20 flight (yay) and at the station I find out that American Express has cancelled my ticket. (AmEx has no idea why that happened. Gee, thanks.) I had changed my reservation a week ago to add the train ticket and to change my hotel reservation from Mon-Thurs to Tues-Thurs. I got dizzy listening, but the AmEx lady was trying to explain to me that my itinerary would show my hotel at Mon-Thurs but not to worry she changed it and I wouldn't have a problem. Well I should have just gotten cold chills right there because sure enough they had it as Mon-Thurs. Which means that I missed my first night's reservation and would not only have to pay for it ($599/night) I was now a walk-in and would have to pay $649/night for my stay. Again AmEx couldn't explain this. They showed that I requested the change but couldn't explain why that change was never conveyed to the hotel. This means that the price for my train ticket and my hotel are invalid on my AmEx itinerary are invalid so I will have to write a note and verbally defend the price change for invoicing purposes. Blech.

So the day wasn't a total waste. We normally work this project near the old World Trade Center but were told the day before to report to Jersey City which was easily accessible via the Path train from the Newark Amtrak station. I had never done the Path train but it was very easy and despite my changed itinerary I arrived at 8:58 am. Sweet!

Oh but don't get lulled into complacency, dear reader. I forgot my suitcase at the office and was halfway to Manhattan on the train before I remembered. And, for the first time ever, I forgot my plug for my laptop. We had a thank-you dinner for another client at Tao (one of the best meals I've ever had) which was conveniently located two blocks from the 5th Avenue Apple Store. The store was out of the plug I needed but I obviously needed a plug. I explained that I was from out of town and if I couldn't do my work I could get fired. They couldn't find anything in the back, etc., so I said, "fine, what's your cheapest MacBook? I'll just return it this weekend." They thought this was the strangest thing ever but it drove home the point that I REALLY needed a plug. So (now there were 3 people involved) they walked over to the guy routing traffic to the genius bar, explained my situation and told me that someone from the genius bar could help me but I'd have to wait in line, probably an hour. An hour and a half later there were less than 12 names on the screen meaning they weren't taking new names and the only Jeff I saw was Jeff S. At this time there was a new traffic guy so I said to him, "I'm assuming that I'm Jeff S. as I've been waiting for an hour and a half." Oh no, I wasn't on the list anywhere. I explained my situation yet again and he said they couldn't help me. I stayed calm but got very sad (I had been up since 3 am and it was now 11 pm) and said, "the only reason I've been standing here for the last 90 minutes was they I was told I could get a plug from someone at the Genius Bar." Another Apple employee overheard us and, just like magic, I had a plug 25 minutes later. It doesn't have the normal extension so I can't actually use it from my desk at a conference room but hey, it's a plug.

Usually I walk to my hotel (Hilton Times Square this week) but I was beyond tired so I cabbed it. Normally I never even set an alarm but not only did I set it for 7 am but it took until 7:02 for it to register with my brain.

The rest of the week has gone much smoother. I seem to be here every time Brad and Angelina are at one of their movie premiere's close by and this one was no exception. I'll be home tonight.

Skip's Favorite Cake

I wanted to link to Skip's first Little Mermaid cake in the last post and after searching realized I had never actually posted a picture of it. Skip made this cake for my niece's 6th birthday and it is his favorite cake. I agree.

It is so tall that it did not fit in the back of our hybrid SUV fully assembled. The only part of the cake Skip didn't make from scratch are the little pearls in the treasure chest on the middle layer.

The Little Mermaid again

Call me crazy, but it seems that The Little Mermaid is a popular theme for birthday cakes. Happy 10th birthday to Amber!

Oh yeah, Skippy had both of these cakes due this morning.