52 Weeks of Dresses - Week 6

Otherwise titled: Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

Yesterday was many things: Memorial Day, Grandpa's birthday, S's birthday, the second to last day of May, and our first summer barbecue!  It was a small gathering, as those things go, and sadly probably one of the last that we'll have at mi casa (and I use that phrase very loosely). But true to form, there was lots of good food, and lots of Pimm's!

Lunch/Dinner!

 

E, enjoying the tasty delights

Everyone examining dad's new mode of transportation

Dessert, thanks to our visitors from Chicago

Aunt J with me (and my yellow dress)

Aunt J with T

T was kind enough to join us, to be judged by Aunt J.  And he was also kind enough to take my picture!  It was with my cell phone - not sure why we used that rather than my big camera - but here's my dress of the week:

It doesn't really look like it's normal lemon yellow in this pic, but see above!

Memorial Day

Anheuser-Busch pays tribute in one minute; LeAnn Rimes does it in five.

Beautiful Downtown Cape G

Congratulations to N and J, who got married yesterday!

K, E, me, and Dad outside the church

The ceremony was in a town a couple hours south of St. Louis called Kelso (population: 586), and the reception was in Cape Girardeau.  The church was quite lovely and everything came off without a hitch (at least it appeared that way from where we were sitting).

 Between the wedding and the reception, we had a few hours to explore beautiful downtown Cape Girardeau!  Lucky us!  This is what we saw:

 K, admiring the "Mississippi River Tales" murals along the levee

 We stand for safety

Looks like somebody was having a party last night.

Didn't check to see if they were still passed out in the parked car.

I love old warehouse buildings!

K surveys her domain

Well, at least we're still managing a pun or two

So, we stand for safety.  And also for smoking.

 Oh, and we can't figure out our hours, so we'll just stay open until we close.

We did actually find some cute shops and score some goods, mostly in the form of jewelery.  Eventually we had to head off to the reception, which we reached just in the nick of time.  We saw the wedding party introduced, then got to chatting with A and S, our table mates.  N (who was a groomsman) and A were a couple years ahead of me in law school, but A moved to Kansas City after he graduated, so we had some catching up to do.

As for the reception itself, the food was good, the music was bumping, and there were cupcakes!  As E says, the joy of cupcakes is that they are the easiest way to reach an outrageously delicious frosting-to-cake ratio.  The truth is, though, I haven't actually eaten my cupcake yet.  We got take-homes, but they also gave us other desserts at our table.  And of course, there was the bar!

K with her "blushing bride" - some concoction of vodka, pineapple juice, and something pink

Me and K

E and B

The three of us with the newly married man!

And here we are looking at all the funny pictures from the night

B was kind enough to drive home, and that allowed me to get started on my new book!  And we sang some Miley Cyrus.  Not bad, as road trips go!

What I'm Reading Now -- The Hunger Games

I've been hearing a lot of buzz about the Hunger Games trilogy around my bookstore, and have been meaning to read them for some time.  I know that I haven't yet finished Dracula or Defending the Damned, and I'm not normally the type of person who reads more than one book at a time.

But, with the movie coming out, and starring Jennifer Lawrence of Winter's Bone fame (who has her own pretty awesome red dress), I figured it was about time I jump on the Suzanne Collins train.  And now that all three of the books in the trilogy are out, I can read right through to the end, if I so desire.

So, off I go, trying to start my third simultaneous book; I'm usually a one-book-at-a-time kind of girl.  Wish me luck!

Sad Keystone

Poor Keystone got neutered on Monday.  He was miserably uncomfortable, and couldn't even find a way to lie down and rest.  So he resorted to this:

He was pathetic before.  Now it's especially bad!

Don Giovanni

Last night was my opera night with Grandpa - each of us gets one per season.  This year, mine was Don Giovanni, the Mozart classic.  It's the Italian Don Juan story: pretty boy wreaks havoc on every woman who has the misfortune to cross his path, until he makes the terrible mistake of killing Il Commendatore, the father of one of his victims. Il Commendatore returns to seek vengeance on Don Giovanni, and things do not end well.

Sarah Bryan Miller, the St. Louis Post Dispatch's classical music critic, wrote a review of the performance, the gist of which is that the music and singing is good, but the costumes and sets need some work.  I'd have to agree with most of what she said: music was beautiful, singing was fantastic.  The sets were plain, but I didn't mind that a bit.  The costumes were a hot mess; they were all over the place, and totally incongruous with each other.  But other than that, I thought it was great!

There are some clips available to watch on the OTSL website, if you want to see what you missed!

What I Watched -- 10 Things I Hate About You

10 Things I Hate About You is inspired by William Shakespeare's comedy The Taming of the Shrew, and that's why I watched it.  The Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis is performing Shrew this summer, so I thought it would be fun to see some other versions as well.

10 Things is far more high school romantic comedy than Shakespeare, but there are a few bright spots.  It's nice to see the old Heath Ledger, alternately dark-and-brooding and fun-and-playful, as Patrick Verona working hard to seduce Julia Stiles' fiesty Kat Stratford, likeable despite her status as Padua High School's "heinous bitch."  They've got chemistry, even through all the movie's clichés.  And what's more, they're supported by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception and lots of other stuff) as Cameron, who's pining after Kat's little sister Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), and I like him.

Bottom line: cheese, all the way.  But fun.

E and Bon Jovi!

Whew, what a busy weekend!

Sunday was E's birthday, so after practice K and I went over to her house to make brunch and meet baby G (now three weeks old).  We had scrambled eggs with basil and cream cheese and pancakes with strawberry compote.  And OJ.  E was very excited about the OJ.  And I broke a baking dish :-(  Oops.

There are pictures of this outing, but they're on E's camera.  I'll post them when I get them.

Later that day...

Bon Jovi!  L got us tickets to see Bon Jovi at Scottrade, and I'd have to say I'm two for two so far this summer as far as concerts go.  It was an awesome show from a serious rock star!  The place was sold out, so the crowd energy probably helped, but he rocked out for a really long set, and looked like he was having an awesome time doing it!  There was lots of musical mojo happening, not to mention sweat flying everywhere.  St. Louis was the last stop on the American leg of his tour, and I think we did ourselves proud.

The reviewer who wrote up the set list is totally right that watching him is a little reminiscent of seeing Bruce Springsteen (not that I have).  But there's something weird about the way Bruce kicks his legs around and Jon does the same thing!

Jon started out the show on a side stage at the far end of the arena before braving the crowd to make his way up to the main stage.  Once he got there, the hits just kept on coming; even the newer stuff that he played tended to be the songs that made it big off the albums.  There are dozens and dozens of videos available on his YouTube channel, including the version of "Bad Medicine/Shout" that he did on this tour, although the YouTube video is missing the "Pretty Woman" interlude, and the version I saw was missing the Sambora guitar solo.

I took a couple videos at this concert too, but the sound quality is even worse than at Tim McGraw.  Here are two short ones:

Sometime bassist Hugh McDonald, who occupies an odd position in the band, sings the tail end of "Oh, Pretty Woman" with Jon.  There's a much better YouTube video of this from their show in Washington, D.C.

from "You Give Love a Bad Name"

Lyrics (since they're so hard to understand):

"Your chains of love got a hold on me

When passion's a prison, you can't break free.

Oh, you're a loaded gun..."

It's true, Richie is in rehab.  Canadian guitarist Phil X[enidis] did an admirable job subbing in for Richie, despite having such big shoes to fill.  Phil X has previously worked with the likes of Tommy Lee, Kelly Clarkson, Rob Zombie, Avril Lavigne, and Alice Cooper.  And Jon himself is more of a musician than I previously gave him credit for.  He definitely did more strumming than Tim did, and he did it well.

Our seats were way high up and to the the back right of the stage, but it actually ended up being okay.  We were close to the stage to could see most of what happened, and there were enough TV screens to fill us in on whatever we couldn't get a good angle on.  And speaking of all the TV screens, the stage was a technological marvel!  There were lights and TVs and all kinds of equipment moving all over the place.  The biggest one was in front of the stage to start the show and hide the band from most of the crowd as they came out.  As the music started and the screen shifted around, I saw that it could be divided into as many as 96 smaller screens (yes, I counted; well, actually, I multiplied), with pictures playing all across them in different ways.  Not complicated stuff from a viewing standpoint, but think about all the work that goes into putting it together for every show.  And that was just one of them.  Wowzers.

L and I didn't stay for the single-song second encore, so the last anthem we heard was "Livin' on a Prayer."  This song was originally released as a single off of Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet album, which came out in 1986.  1986!  That's 25 years ago.  This man and this band have been performing "Livin' on a Prayer" for almost as long as I have been alive, and they still put their hearts into it on Sunday night and brought the house down.  At least they know what their fans like.

L, awesome idea!  My faith in the American rock star has been renewed.

52 Weeks of Dresses, Week 5

Otherwise titled: L and Timmy!

Saturday was a great day.  I spent many, many hours outside, both coaching and biking.  T took me to brunch at First Watch, where I destroyed a Far West omelet, along with the potatoes and English muffin that came with it.  Oh, and half of T's whole grain pancake (so is it a half-grain pancake?).

Not 5 hours later (no joke), I was back to the table, this time at dinner with L at Jimmy's for her birthday!  It was an early dinner because she had to be at work at an ungodly early hour on Sunday, so we were pretty much the first seating they had for the night.  The man himself greeted us at the door and took us to our table; the place was empty when we arrived, but by the time we left about 90 minutes later just about every table was full.  All the food was delicious: flash fried spinach (mostly me), pasta crunchers (mostly L), flatiron steak salad (me), spinach salad (L), and bread pudding (me - surprise, surprise!).  Some crazy old dudes outside the restaurant were kind enough to snap a pic of us:

It had (as usual) been too long since we had seen each other, so we talked a lot, getting caught up on work, friends, life, etc.  And I found out that L got another pup!  I have yet to meet him, but soon!

In the meantime...

T, having recently discovered that I would have the later part of the evening free, set about making plans.  I didn't even know Tim McGraw was playing on Saturday night (that's how out of the loop I am - I really should start listening to the radio a little more).  But T scored tickets, and we had amazing seats! Probably about the 8th row (row M, but they didn't start at A), center section.  It was incredible. (More pictures to come here as well; I have T's pictures on my other computer.)

The whole outfit thing was a bit of a challenge, because I needed to find something that would be acceptable at Jimmy's, and also acceptable at a country concert.  I did a red knit minidress with black heels, black leggings, and a black leather jacket for dinner, then kept the dress but switched to cowboy boots and a denim jacket for the concert.  It was a successful transition under odd circumstances if I do say so myself (and I do), although it did necessitate an unplanned trip to K's house.

 The dire warnings in the parking lot...

...and the contents of the garbage can not five feet away.  (The ground didn't look much better.)

Really, why even bother with the signs?

We missed the opening acts, who were The Band Perry and Luke Bryan, although we did hear some of Luke's songs on the walk in from the parking lot, including two real winners: "Rain is a Good Thing" and "All My Friends Say."  Luke returned to the stage to do a hilarious rendition of "I Miss Back When" with Tim, and The Band Perry came back out to sing "Can't Be Really Gone."  The lead singer of Perry (the three of them are siblings) is cute as a button on stage, despite her crazy hair (which was less crazy at our show).

 Look at how close we were - that's Tim McGraw!

Here are a couple videos. Apologies for the sound quality, but there was a lot of ambient noise, and the cell phone camcorder is only so good at filtering sound and light.

"When the Stars Go Blue"

"Live Like You Were Dying"

The set list for the show is available here.  The reviewer's comment is that the first half of the show lacked energy, and the second half really picked it up.  She's right about the second half at least, although there were a few songs in the first half that I thought were really great: "When the Stars Go Blue," "For a Little While," and "Red Ragtop" come to mind.

Photo credits for this one to the lady in the row behind us.

Me, having fun

A lot of the difference in energy level between the first and second halves of the show, I think, was with the audience.  The second half had more of his older, classic stuff, which of course more people know and are excited to hear.  This is his Emotional Traffic tour, but the album isn't actually out yet; he's trying to break away from his record label, and they're (not surprisingly) unhappy about that.  Let the legal battles begin.  Point being: the few songs he played off his new album?  Nobody knows them.  So the crowd's energy is going to be with the old stuff, which the second half of the set list was heavy with.  The single from Emotional Traffic called "It Felt Good on My Lips" was buried in the second half, though, and it fit right in with his earlier songs - fun, upbeat, a little Caribbean flair in the tune.

 After the show

Even though there were a few numbers I didn't know, I forget how much of his stuff I actually do know.  I got to sing and dance and scream and generally act a fool, and I had an awesome time doing it!  And the stuff I didn't know was still great.  That's the thing about live music, which I've talked about before (also here and here) - it's just so fun to see it performed and be in that crazy environment and get lost in it, that it doesn't hardly matter if you don't know it.

Thanks to T for putting together an awesome adventure on such short notice!

52 Weeks of Dresses, Week 4

Last night it was my turn to take T out on a date.  It's restaurant week this week and I'm a big fan of supporting such ventures (especially since they've teamed up with the Wounded Warrior Project), so off we went to Charlie Gitto's for some good old-fashioned Italian food.

Despite the fact that it was available to us, I was overwhelmed by the choices on the full menu.  I stuck with the restaurant week menu, and got the calamari, chicken pasta, and chocolate and hazelnut gelato.  It was a lot of food!  I probably didn't even eat a quarter of my pasta - and that was just what I had.  T got the toasted ravs, lasagna (which was seriously rich), and raspberry and lemon sorbet.

Oh, and we had a half bottle of the Santa Margherita pinot grigio.  The half bottle of wine was a brilliant idea, by the way.  I think all restaurants should have them available.  Sometimes it's just the right amount - the baby bear of wine options!

Let's go Cardinals!

Last night K and I took ourselves out to the ballgame.  We were a little late (okay, two and a half innings late) because we went for a ride on Grant's Trail after work, but we still managed to make it just in time for the action to start.  We decided the game was meant to be because my ticket had Adam Wainwright on it, and hers had Yadier Molina.  We all know how I feel about Adam Wainwright; K feels the same way about Yadi. Our seats weren't stellar, but they were good enough, especially since we got them cheap and last minute.

Things that were stellar: nachos grande (cheese, pulled pork, barbecue sauce; "Chips are really just forks"), chicken tenders.  We destroyed them.  As K so eloquently put it as we practically licked the cheap plastic containers: "Well, we're not anorexic."

We even managed to find street parking!  Practically a miracle!  The weather was lovely, the Cards brought home a win, the game was exciting (summary).  Brilliant idea, K!

52 Weeks of Dresses, Week 3

Last night, T and I happened upon a soiree at the Sheldon!  They were having hors d'œuvre and drinks in honor of the Grand Center Visionary Award Honorees.  We walked in the door to a reception table and a lovely woman asking, "last name please?"  If I had been quick enough, I could have glanced at a name tag and we could have crashed the party, but sadly I was not.  Although they did let us in to look at the exhibit we were there for anyway, so we easily could have hung around.

But instead, we behaved ourselves and just went to see the photographs of choice.  I was there for the exhibit Larry Fink: Attraction and Desire - 50 Years in Photography, which ends on Saturday.

The photographs were very interesting, and there were more of them than I expected.  There were probably five galleries chock full of his images.  They're dark, up close, black and white, intense.  Most of them have a moment-in-time quality, like just for a second you opened a door into a world you didn't know was there, and maybe weren't supposed to see.

 

(c) Larry Fink

It really is worth it to take a few minutes to play on the artist's website, which has a few of the images from the show on it, as well as a bunch of others.  A quick Google images search turns up a number of shots as well, many of them Fink's.  There are also good images here, here, and here. 

After perusing the pics and lamenting the end of the party, we headed to Mosaic for dinner.  It's close to T's office, so he's a regular; it was a first for me.  I'm a big fan of the tapas style of eating though.  I love just ordering whatever looks good, knowing that you can probably try bites of at least half a dozen different things which will appear at the table whenever they're ready.

We tasted bites from all over the menu, including the cheese plate, herb gnocchi with asparagus, beef tenderloin (the bleu cheese butter was delightful!), Korean-style smoked pork (which was barbecued and served in an apple), soy-glazed halibut, and the chocolate pot of cream.  And we each had a glass of the white burgundy, which was perfect with - of all things - the pork.  Everything was good, though I'd probably have to pick that same Korean pork as my favorite of the night.

Unlike L, I'm really bad about remembering to ask people to take my picture.  (I'm going to have to get better at remembering as this adventure continues.)  I even remembered by camera, which is usually problem #1!  So instead T took a picture of me as I was about to get in my car.

It was a little bit cold out last night, so even though it's practically summer, I still needed a significant coat.  I tried to brighten things up with the color though.  I wore heels that are about the same nude shade as the band on the dress, which is knee-length.  I'll try to remember to have a real picture taken next time!  So far I'm 1 for 3.  Which doesn't sound very good, but in the alternative, batting a .333 isn't bad at all.  I suppose it's all relative.

What I Watched -- Restrepo

I watched this movie with K recently - last week maybe.  But even though it was good, I'm not at all enthused to write the review.  I think it's because there's not much to say about the movie.  It just is.  But since I've left you all hanging lately, here it goes...

Restrepo won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, though it lost out in the Best Documentary Feature category at this year's Academy Awards to Inside Job. Restrepo is the story of Second Platoon, Battle Company, 173rd Airborne Brigade, and their 15-month tour of duty in the Korangal Valley in Afghanistan.  Filmmakers Tim Hetherington (who was recently killed while covering the conflict in Libya) and Sebastian Junger (best known for his book The Perfect Storm about the collision of subtropical and extratropical storms and the fishermen caught in the middle) embedded with the soldiers to film their lives.

I was going to say "...embedded with the soldiers to tell their stories," but that's not quite accurate.  I've heard the phrase cinéma vérité associated with this movie, and that's true insofar as the subjects tell the story, with some poking and prodding from the filmmakers. The film conveys most of what you'd expect out of any war movie:
- Fear: "Nobody's going to help you.  You're in no man's land"
- Machismo
- Brotherhood: "That's all you got; you got the guy to your left and your right, and that's it."
- The impossibility of the situation
- Duty and pride: "A normal person would say [bravery]'s going above and beyond the call.  Well that is our call.  Why call us brave?  It's our job to be that way.  So, that's who we are.  We're not doing anything extra that they seem to think we are.  We're doing what's asked of us, and we do it well."

But it may be exactly that cinéma vérité that make it hard for me to get into this movie.  I just wasn't enthralled by the story the way I am by some movies.  I was always very aware that I was sitting on the couch and watching a DVD; I never fell into the story to the extent that my surroundings disappeared.

The film and the outpost the men occupy in the Korangal are named for Doc Restrepo, one of their number who died early in their tour.  Perhaps the most poignant moment came when the men lit flares in honor of Doc, and each man looks into the camera and remembers the man.  The moment highlights the difficulty of the situation - the emotional trauma the soldiers face coupled with their limited ability to deal with it.

One thing that was immensely irritating about Restrepo is that the sound editing was incredibly uneven.  For the entire movie, K and I were reaching for the remote: volume up, down, up, down.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Bottom line: a story worth telling and witnessing, but not something you'll lose yourself in.

"Cosmopolitan yet completely self-absorbed"

There was an article in the Financial Times recently called "Liveable v lovable."  It tries to answer the elusive question of what makes a city great, but my favorite part is right at the end where the author lists his best and worst cities:

"New York: The only city that gives me a thrill every single time I walk through it. Fast, furious, brash, cosmopolitan yet completely self-absorbed, it is the perfect big city."  That is exactly how I feel about New York, and why I love it.

Also on his list is London, which makes me think he knows what he's talking about!  He didn't quite nail my feelings about London the way he did about New York, though.

52 Weeks of Dresses, Week 2

If I didn't have to title this post with the 52 Weeks of Dresses dress count for organizational purposes, I would have given it the title "The Four S's."  Here's why:

Spa.

T has been planning  yesterday's date - although to call the day a date isn't quite right - for some time.  He managed to keep his plans a secret, at least from me, although apparently everyone else knew what was happening.  Anyway, he said he'd pick me up at ten, and that I should pack everything I needed for the day, as well as the symphony later that night.

Sure enough, he picked me up, and off we went, buzzing downtown to our mysterious destination.  And that destination was . . . drum roll, please . . . The Four Seasons!  (Does that mean there are actually Eight S's?  Or six, since only spring and summer start with S?  Something to ponder.)  So, the reason I'm not sure calling it a date is quite right is because T dropped me off at the spa, and left me there for the day with a menu of treatments that he had specially selected for me.  And then off he went to do other stuff!

Anyway, there I was at the spa, still not quite sure what happened and how it was that I was going to be spending the day there.  My list of services included a body polish, a Balinese massage, a facial, a manicure, and a pedicure.  I also got to hang out in the steam room, drink delicious tea that tasted like honey, snack on nuts and dried fruit, and gaze aimlessly out the windows watching the city go by.

When I got there, I changed into a fuzzy bathrobe and left everything I had brought with me, including my cell phone (with the power off!) in a locker.  I spent the whole day being led from lounge chair to massage table and back again by the lovely ladies who work there, never having to think for a moment about what I was supposed to be doing or where I should go.  It was the most wonderful, relaxing, non-harried day that I've had in a long time.

Sky.

When all my treatments were finished, I went to get ready for dinner and found tulips and scented candles waiting for me in the room.  We had a 6:00 reservation at Cielo (Italian for sky; actually Spanish also, but it's an Italian restaurant), and the weather was perfect for eating outside.  We took in the view of the Arch and downtown St. Louis, drank some good wine, and had a tasty dinner.  We shared the Caesar fondue (which I think I ate most of), then I had the stuffed pork tenderloin.  It was the grappa and barbera sauce that sold me on the pork, and that sauce was the highlight of the plate - thick, dark, rich, flavorful.  I finished it off with a cappuccino and delightful little cookie for dunking.  Now that was a date.  But it's not over yet...

Symphony.

This whole day was inspired (I think; T, confirmation?) by the red dress, and needing an occasion worthy of it.  The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra was performing an abridged version of Carl Orff's enduring classic Carmina Burana, and this weekend was the closing weekend of their 40th anniversary season.  My college roommate S sang part of Carmina Burana with her choir, so I was familiar with the piece and didn't want to miss it.

The first half of the performance was actually the world premiere of Christopher Rouse's Symphony No. 3 in two parts.  The first was a loud, sometimes dissonant anthem.  There was a lot of heavy percussion, which I like, but there were also sections that were a little too grating for my taste.  The second part of Symphony No. 3 was a theme on English horn, and five variations on that theme.  I think my favorite was the third - or maybe it was the second?  It was one of those rolling melodic pieces that just seems to make everyone in the place happy.

After intermission, the choir took their places and dove into O Fortuna - far and away the most recognizable portion of Carmina Burana - to rousing effect.  There were a number of solos; the soprano pieces had some very high, long notes that our soloist nailed, and the baritone, who had a number of arias, was so expressive that you didn't need a translation into English to know what he was singing about. (Program notes on the pieces are available here.)

Also, I got lots of compliments on the dress from total strangers at the symphony, as well as from a gaggle of 10-year-olds who were having a birthday party at the hotel (!).  That was kind of awesome, since it almost justified by purchase of said dress.

Strawberries.

We got back to the hotel after the symphony, and what was waiting for me but chocolate-covered strawberries and a bottle of champagne!  I sat at the window eating and drinking and thinking about what an amazing day I had had.  It was the perfect ending.  Well done.