To sum up

recent events.

Great Holidays with family and abundant friends.

Amazing New years, trying wealth on for size. (a bit loose in some places, but I can always get it taken in)

Then right back into it.

And by "it" of course I mean Houston, Work, Opera, Art, Illness, Exhaustion, and daily surprises.

The German Language and the Plague both descended upon Houston Grand Opera on the same day, and I was infected by one of them. I'll give you a hint. The one I received endowed me with the ability to lose incredible amounts of weight overnight. But more on the German Language later.

In the interim between California adventures and this web log, we have opened the first of two Winter Operas. Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio. It is a fantastic production of a very... sedate opera. Well, singspiel actually, which is just a pretentious way of saying there is a lot of dialogue without accompaniment, and it is a bit funny.

This weekend also marked the first Wedding I've been to in years. It was a really great, simple, only slightly awkward ceremony. I don't do weddings very well. I'm not really sure why. I don't think I had a horrible experience at one as a child or anything, they just have a way of giving me the creeps. I did get to experience a co-worker in a totally different light which was great, she really is a great person. It was also more fun than words can describe to rehash some of the "highlights" of the opening of Abduction and adventures which followed, the previous night. (no details to follow)

The wedding night was capped off with a group migration to a nearby pub. The wedding was dry, and thusly all toasts were ended with a sip of diet coke. It was mutually agreed that this was no way to start a marriage. So we toasted them with proper drinks. Then it was off to a midnight showing of Rushmore, where a friend smuggled a flask of, ready for this, Coconut Rum into the Theater. It was a tré high school moment. But amazing none the less. Das ist eine wein.

All next week, all Magic Flute, all the time.