Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Conversation on Friday:

Me: Ok, so we're going to the opera tonight (Madame Butterfly), and we're going out for dinner on Saturday for our anniversary. Any plans for Sunday?
Emm: Not that I know of.
My email: *ding* Oh hey, here's a reminder from SF Opera that you have plans to see La Traviata on Sunday.
Me: ...?
Me: *checks Yahoo calendar and email* *finds that I bought tickets for it back in November*
Me: Oh. Well. I guess that answers that question.
Emm: More opera? Yay! And also? You doofus. *laughs at me*

So yes...our weekend has primarily been about Going Everywhere. Tonight's anniversary dinner is at Café de la Presse downtown, where we're finally using the gift certificate my sister got us last Christmas. Should be fun! The only downside being downtown parking is laughable, so we're just going to hop on the 1 California bus a few blocks from there. I'm hoping the bus back isn't too bad, considering it's Pride weekend and everyone's going to be bus-hopping tonight and tomorrow, but I'm sure we can make do. And we'll be bussing it tomorrow for the second opera as well (Pride festivities take place at City Hall, which is right across the street from the Opera House). Thankfully that one's an afternoon show, so travel shouldn't be too bad.

This puts a damper on any writing plans I may have possibly had, but I'm not too bothered by it. It's fun times together (which somehow always includes getting coffee and/or going to a bookstore as well), and July is nearly empty for us until end of month. There's a possibility we may met up with A's parents, but that's still up in the air.

In the meantime...hope everyone's having a good weekend! :)

Tickets for Donizetti's Daughter of the Regiment just went on sale today and WE GOT TICKETS! :D We kind of figured they'd go quick because this one's a big deal... :)

That, and this one was the primary reason we'd originally wanted to buy season tickets, so we could see this one...that idea fell through, but we're happy we got this one! :)

ITEM: Our neighbor across the street needs to get a life. At all hours of the day, we see him standing at the window, staring out, and talking or playing with his phone (and hey, surprise, he's doing that right now!). One of these days I'm just going to stare at him until he gets the point and steps away from the window for once.

ITEM: Most errands done today! I dropped off packages while Emm went food shopping, laundry is done, and a list is being made for our trip down to Target tomorrow.

ITEM: Yay! The scaffolding outside our windows facing Bay Street are now gone! They took them down earlier yesterday while we were at work and moved them further down to the other end of our building. We can see again! And I have to add that I'm amused by the fact that the workers did a cursory wiping down of the windows before they tore down. :p

ITEM: Did some major computer cleaning using MalwareBytes Anti-Malware cleaner, which got some really good reviews on C|Net. It found a good amount of crap that CCleaner, McAfee, and everything else missed. Also updated IE to version 8, which seems to be working okay at the moment. I think I'll keep Firefox for now, just to have an extra browser if something craps out on me again.

ITEM: NINE OPERAS. Did I say NINE? Six of them on consecutive weekends? Yes. Yes, I did. Verdi's Il Trovatore, Puccini's Il Trittico, Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio, Donizetti's Daughter of the Regiment, Strauss' Salome, Verdi's Otello, Gounod's Faust, Puccini's The Girl of the Golden West, and Wagner's Die Walkure. The entirety of the 2009-10 Opera season, and we just bought tickets for all of them in a package deal. Cuz we're cultured n' stuff. Just thought I'd bring up that fact, in case you see me whimpering in the corner somewhere at some point, twitching and humming some aria off-key. :p

ITEM: As usual, today's been one of those days when the weather is alternately warm, cold, rainy, cloudy, foggy, clear, sunny, and, for about five minutes, everything in between. Gotta love San Francisco springs!


More later...I go write now...

Feeling SO much better today. Slept a lot better and took a Claritin just before heading out.

For the third year in a row, emmalyon and I went to SF Library's Big Book Sale over at Fort Mason, and spent a decent amount of money on random fun things we found. Emm definitely found a lot of good stuff, but I managed to find some neat things too:

Kate Elliott, The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars v3)
Kate Elliott, The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars v5)
Kate Elliott, In the Ruins (Crown of Stars v6)
Mercedes Lackey, The Free Bards
The AP Stylebook and Libel Manual, 1992 ed. (yeah, it's out of date, but a good reference book nonetheless)

and the following CDs for $1 each:

Erasure, The Two Ring Circus
Madonna, Ray of Light
O-Positive, toyboatToyBoAtTOYBOAT
The Sundays, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic
Matthew Sweet, Girlfriend
Toad the Wet Sprocket, Fear

We then made a trip to the Target down in Daly City to return something and also pick up some more "Blood Orange" Jones Sodas (unlike the disgusting Holiday Packs, these are quite good and have a pirate cat on the box)...then over to BevMo to buy some of the indie sodas they have there (I'm currently drinking an AJ Stephans' Birch Beer. YUM!).

We were going to stop at In n' Out to have lunch, but alas it looked like everybody else on the entire peninsula had the same idea and it was PACKED, so we passed. We did make up for it by going into the completely empty Krispy Kreme in the same parking lot (some people have no taste, I tells ya...) and doing a doughnut run instead. No In n' Out burgers...is teh sad... :(

So! What else is on tap this weekend?

Going to see The Bonesetter's Daughter at the Opera House tomorrow afternoon--one of my somewhat delayed birthday presents to Emm (the other was tix for Rock n' Roll). Should be fun! :)

Also, before we put some of these new books away, we're probably going to do another book purge--which means sometime in the next few weeks or so we may be posting another giveaway list. Stay tuned!

And that's about it for now...more soon!