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the latest
waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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I'm listening to Beethoven's 9th on headphones, and for a while I was following along with the score, easily found on the Web. That was fun, although it made me a little nostalgic for playing with an orchestra. In a sort of abstract way. I don't think I had ever looked at the score for the 9th before. That sucker is difficult, or at least the violin parts are (I'm not really qualified to comment on anything else). Maybe Chicago Symphony Orchestra members do deserve that $50,000 plus starting salary after all. I have the strangest thing in common with cubiclegirl. I too am often mistaken for a Hasidic Jew. I don't know if it's my fondness for ankle-length skirts, my semi-olive complexion, or my generally studious appearance, but it's happened to me more than once. It's even worse because I live in a Hasidic neighborhood, and right near a large Jewish girls' high school. The other day some girl yelled, "Hey Leah!" and started to cross the street to talk to me, then stopped short when she realized she didn't know me after all. I think I just have one of those looks that makes everyone think they know me. I was mistaken for an Egyptian girl in Egypt, for a Jewish girl in my Jewish neighborhood, and all my Arab friends in Bahrain thought I looked Arab. "You are not white!" they would exclaim....I think their conception of "white" is mostly gleamed from TV, a la Celine Dion etc. I do not look like Celine Dion. Thank goodness. Speaking of religion, I can look like an orthodox Jew all I want, but apparently it's not the religion for me. Astrogirl had this very weird, but very interesting religion selector thing on her pitas page recently. You fill out a little theological questionnaire, and it spits back a compatible religion for you. I find this amusing----it's a little like shopping for a car---but it had some interesting results. My top 3 matches were "Unitarian," "Neo-Pagan," and "Liberal Quaker." LT and I got married by a Unitarian, although he was a friend of the family rather than any religious leader of mine. But he's a good guy who let us write our own ceremony, so I feel a certain fondness toward them Unitarians. Even if the word "Unitarian" sounds a little like a sci-fi space alien. Bottom religion choice: Jehovah's Witness. We got zero points in common, they and I. Oh boo hoo. Bad Thing About Xmas: every yahoo from god knows where comes downtown to shop. So the streets are full of armies of lost and bewildered suburban women loaded down with shopping bags. They are ruthless, and they don't know where they're going exactly, and they have a tendency to just stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk and confer. I was walking down Wabash yesterday lunchtime and one of them yelled to me: "Hey! Is there anything that way?" pointing north. I was confused. "Well....civilization doesn't end past Erie Street, if that's what you mean." If you haven't already, read The Hours by Michael Cunningham. Oohhhhhh. I was swooning over some of the writing in this book. Engrossing, meditative, profound, all of that. I'll definitely read it again someday. ---mimi smartypants back/forward |
