Goals 2019 -- June Recap

Five new things doesn't seem like a lot. But when you need to fit them in between all the obligations of daily living, it can be hard!  Which is my not-so-subtle way of telling you that I didn't quite get it done.  But it wasn't a total failure either!  Here's my list:
1. I tried a case in Lincoln County (to excellent effect!)
2. I got recognized as a volunteer with one of the organizations I've been working with at their quarterly gathering
3. I changed the oil in our daily driver
4. I walked in a Pride parade
5. We decided to take scuba lessons with some friends (although the lessons themselves haven't happened yet).

The last one, obviously, is questionable.  How many well-intentioned plans never come to fruition?  But what can you do?  There's only so much time in 30 days.   43,200 minutes, to be not-quite-exact.  Which seems like a lot when I say it that way; let's go back to calling it 30 days.

I had lots of other ideas, but as with the scuba, they just didn't happen.  My rowing partner wanted to learn to ride a unicycle, but I don't know where you can rent one.  I wanted to go mountain biking on a trail I has never been on before, but that requires that it stop raining.  There was a new circus in town (in addition to St. Louis's own Circus Flora) but they were only here for a weekend and I had visitors that weekend.

Even though I only got four-and-a-half things accomplished, it was a good exercise in thinking outside the box!

Rigoletto

Just a few days after The Marriage of Figaro, it was time for my second opera.  Up next was Rigoletto, or as S liked to call it, Rigatoni.

Speaking of which, this was going to be our Italian-themed food night.  However, everything had been such a whirlwind that I really didn't have a chance to even go shopping for my menu, let along make it.  Instead, we had some good ol' Sauce on the Side (calzones are Italian!) before heading off to the opera in a torrential downpour.

It was not quite the comedic who-loves-who spectacle that Figaro was.  Somehow I think I have perhaps never seen Rigoletto before -- which seems astonishing to me.  But the story sure didn't sound familiar to me.  Boy, is it dark.

Rigoletto is the town jester.  The duke is a womanizer, who falls in lust with Rigoletto's overprotected daughter Gilda.  Through a series of machinations, Gilda believes she loves the duke as well.  Rigoletto is able to secret her away from the duke again, and thinks that he can convince her that she does not love the duke after all.  That does not quite work out the way he planned, and the curse he has been running from comes true in the end.

The Marriage of Figaro + E's visit

The symphony is over, which means it's opera season!  E arrived on Thursday afternoon, and we went to dinner that evening at Savage, which is run by a friend of E's.  She had set us up with a 12-course tasting menu for the evening, and S and I topped it off with the drink pairings.  Every course was an interesting preparation of whatever the subject dish was.  Though I didn't love every one, every one was a curiosity and an adventure.  Perhaps my favorite thing about about the restaurant, though, was the setup.

It's a small space, with an equally small kitchen in the center of the theater-in-the-round seating arrangement.  Watching the staff prepare each plate is as much fun as experiencing the concoctions they place in front of you.  I liked the design and decor very much, but -- as with most restaurants -- the music could have been quieter.

The following day, E was a trooper and prepared our whole meal for the opera!  Though The Marriage of Figaro is in Italian, it is set in Spain.  Accordingly, our Spanish-inspired meal consisted of grape and manchego skewers, two types of empanadas (sweet potato and lentil, and gouda and onion), flan, and non-alcoholic sangria.  The empanada recipes I had found were a little lackluster (no fault of E's), but the leftovers were sufficiently perked up with a quick batch of chimichurri sauce.

The show was a long one -- four acts with an intermission in the middle.  As a whole, the voices were impressive, the sets were well-suited, and the performance was entertaining.  It was a long evening, but a lovely one!

Thanks, E, for a lovely visit!

World Taxidermy Championships

Did you know that the World Taxidermy and Fish Carving Championships is a thing?

I did, but only because I learned about it at SLIFF a few years ago.  Mickey's Pets was a short doc about a girl who enters the championship and has to taxidermy a peacock.  The year the movie was made, the championships were in Peoria, Illinois, which itself isn't too far from StL.

The event looked like a fun thing to go see, and for the last couple of years it's been in Springfield, Missouri.  This year, we made it down!

The drive there was a bit hairy, with some crazy storms rolling through the area.  Plus, the quantity of deceased and partially decomposed armadillos was out of control.  I had heard they were moving north -- we even killed one that was in our yard -- but I had no idea they were movin' on up in such force.  It's an invading army of armadillos!

We stopped for dinner at Smoky J's in Marshfield, Missouri, and each got pizzas.  They were not the best pizzas ever, but they were decent, and after a rough drive they were everything we hoped for.  The beer choices were limited, and we opted for Bud Light from a kegerator.  That would have been exactly as satisfying as one would expect a Bud Light from a kegerator to be -- if our waitress had ever served one before.  Nevertheless, in a funny way it added to the charm of a small town pizza joint en route to a taxidermy show.

We stayed the night in our camper in Marshfield, and headed into Springfield for breakfast in the morning.  We had been to The Aviary before -- when we were in Springfield for WhiskeyFest, and again, it did not disappoint.

The taxidermy show was totally worth the trip.  We all watch the Olympics or the World Series or the Stanley Cup or various other championship events with a passing admiration for the people participating in the subject event.  The awesome thing about the taxidermy champs was this: the judging had happened only the day before, and the judges will talk each participant through their score.  Presumably, this is so they can improve in coming years.  For the visiting public, what this means is that we get to hear a little snipped of the scoring recap as we tour the floor.  "Do you see how there's a little tool mark here on the eyelid?  That should have been corrected with a soft paintbrush before the final display?"  Or "see this line on the fish here?  That should be raised a bit.  You need to sand in this direction, then wet the tip of your pinky finger and run it in the opposite direction to enlarge the grain of the wood."  What?!?

Yes.  It's that detailed.  Here are some of the favorites:

 Catfish

 This was a super neat one.  The artist had found a partial lion hide and turned it into sort of a melting lion, symbolic of the loss of habitat.

 Look at the detail of this cape buffalo eating grass!

Cuttlefish

My new friend the tiger

This one is neat -- propped up on his tail!

The spit trail left behind by this buffalo's tongue -- another impressive detail.

A binturong -- they do not smell like Frito's when they are stuffed.

Who knew they could taxidermy these things?

This one blew my mind.  Since 1940, it has been illegal to "take, possess, sell, purchase, barter, offer to sell, purchase or barter, transport, export or import, at any time or any manner, any bald eagle ..., alive or dead, or any part, nest, or egg thereof."  (This was expanded to include golden eagles in 1962.)  Seeing this blew my mind.  There are some exceptions in the acts, and the back of the base for this beast had a big Ziploc bag taped to it that said "LEGAL PAPERS."  All I wanted to do was open it and find out what the deal was, but S made sure I was escorted to another room before I could get in trouble.

The drive home from Springfield takes you past some of Missouri's best tourist traps, and since we had some time, we stopped to enjoy them -- and also watch the Kentucky Derby at the bar in Uranus.

What I Watched -- A Smorgasbord of Netflix Entertainment

Zombieland was a pick of S's.  I didn't think I was going to like it at all.  It is exactly what you would expect -- the last few people alive in a world dominated by zombies.

It is, however, funnier than I would have expected.  I sat down in front of the TV to do other work, and ended up enjoying it.  Emma Stone is a girl crush of mine, so she always helps, but Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg both played their roles to a T.

Bottom line: brainless but funny.





The Kindergarten Teacher was a pick of mine.  Maggie Gyllenhaal always does complex stuff, but this one was weirder than most.  She plays -- not surprisingly -- a kindergarten teacher.  She develops an overly close relationship with one of her students who has a penchant for poetry and whose father is questionably interested in his son's abilities.

Bottom line: odd and confusing, but with the heart that Maggie always brings to her work.









I've watched a lot of legit cooking shows.  Nailed It is not that show.  If you need to watch something silly and brainless, but still about cooking, this is the show for you.  All the contestants are total kitchen disasters, and the question is really which one of them is the least bad.  But watching them be so terrible is pretty dang funny!

Happy Birthday, K!

SLSO Show #7

Our last show of the season brought an oldie but goodie back to SLSO.  Leonard Slatkin was the music director of SLSO from 1979 to 1990.  There was no official music director this season, since David Robertson concluded his tenure last year, and Stéphane Denève doesn't officially start as Music Director until the upcoming season.  He was the Music Director Designate this season.

So, to fill some of the gap, Leonard Slatkin came to conduct Leonard Bernstein, among others.  The show started with a new piece, Smothered by Sky, by a young composer named Loren Loiacono.  As with much of contemporary music, I was not a fan.  I appreciate that Slatkin is an advocate of young composers -- even if they're not quite my speed.

Second was Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor.  As with so much of Rachmaninoff, it was a lovely (if somewhat long) piece.

Last up was Bernstein's Symphony No. 3, Kaddish.  Here's the problem with Kaddish.  It's a prayer.  Which means it's a Biblical story.  Which means it's really not my thing.  It did have the benefit of being a choral piece, so it gets automatic bonus points for that.

That was our last show -- not my favorite, but not a total bust.

Happy Birthday, D!

Il Palato and Simba

Dad was in town several times in May, and that meant that we explored a couple of new restaurants.

First up was Il Palato, which opened where my much-beloved Remy's used to be.  The interior did not undergo a total gut renovation, but it certainly got a massive face lift.  The bar portion of Remy's was always bright compliments of the enormous front windows.  The renovation brightened up both the bar and the remainder of the interior space, and brought in some simple, modern design elements.

The food is southern Italian and Mediterranean -- lots of seafood and veggies; nary a trough of pasta to be found.  If you don't like food that's a bit fussy, this place probably isn't for you.  But if you don't mind spending a little time deconstructing your food before you eat it, it's surely worth a try.

Our other new restaurant adventure was Simba.  I had never had Ugandan food before.  I didn't have a clue what Ugandan food would even consist of.  My many-years-ago trip to Africa took me south of Uganda by a country or two, and in any case, the food we had really catered to the Americans and the Brits staying at the camps, so wasn't a good reference point anyway.

Ugandan food, it turns out, uses many of the same spices as Indian food, only in smaller quantities and different combinations, with lots of Middle Eastern influence as well.  All three of us loved our dishes, and I easily could have made three meals out of the chicken curry I got (though I only made two).

A warning: do not go here if you are in a rush.  Though service is extremely warm and friendly, it is slow.  Luckily we knew that going in, so we went early and had nowhere to be afterwards.  As long as you can deal with the slo-mo meal delivery, it is 100% worth a visit.

The Friend -- Take 2

I liked The Friend a lot.  I was predisposed to, on account of the dog on the cover.  I feel like putting a dog on the cover of a book is a sure way to get into certain readers' hearts before they even open the book.  I am one of those readers.

Really, the primary relationship in the book is between the narrator and her deceased friend, but since he's dead, there isn't a whole lot of meaningful conversation going on.  Some of the few conversations in the book happen between the friend's widow and the narrator, when the former asks the latter if she will take in the Great Dane left behind.

Reluctantly, the narrator agrees, and the second relationship in the book develops.  It is through the relationship with Apollo, the Dane, that the narrator begins to untangle her complicated history with her dead friend, and also through her relationship with Apollo that the narrator herself begins to move on.

The book does take a strange, and non-dog-related turn, near the end.  I could have completely done without that part.  I didn't feel like it added much to the story, and what it did add seems like it could have been done differently.  But other than that, quite enjoyable.

What I'm Reading Now -- American Son

There was a period in my education when my interest in history was in the middle to late sections of the 20th century.  Among my areas of interest was the American Camelot, the Kennedy clan.  I bought far more books than I had time to read before my interest waned, but I kept many of them.

For reasons unknown, the one that piqued my interest recently was American Son.  So here I go down that path again!

Goals 2019 -- June Edition

After last month, there are so many more tech-type goals that I feel like we could have picked for this month.  It was great to get some of that stuff done, and I feel like we were on a roll of success, which I am loathe to stop.

However, it is June.  In StL, there may still be a few nice days before the oppressive heat and humidity set in.  In Florida, it's too late for that, but they do summer on a while different scale there, so June still probably seems comparatively cool.

So, in an effort to get away from our computers for the month, but in light of the fact that K has some traveling to accomplish as well, this month, we will each explore five new places or things.

This isn't exactly well-defined; the place might be a new city, a new bike trail, or a new experience (spelunking, anyone?).  But we will explore those places or things, and report back at the end of the month!