Highlights from the last week
2020-Jan-13, Monday 13:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
I'm just going to cover a few things here:
Thursday I went to a concert again, the first of three I'm going to this month. This was much different than the other two, though--for one, it was classical music, and for two, it was conducted by candlelight in the Newberry Library:
There was a bit of marketing at the beginning. The concert was put on by Fever, some event promotion organization I've never heard of that required you to buy tickets through their app and now sends me marketing emails that I immediately delete, and some Fever guy came up before the musicians did and gave the spiel, but the actual concert was really nice. They played Vivaldi's Four Seasons, the main reason I went, and a couple songs at the end. It was just four musicians, which is far smaller than any other performance of it than I've heard, and I think it suffered a bit for that. There wasn't much blending between the violins--not that one was bad, just that one was obviously more squeaky than the other--and the sound didn't fill the space quite to the degree I would have liked. The candlelight made up for that, but not entirely.
The audience was split on whether to clap between movements. I did, but the woman sitting next to me did not.
Despite my criticisms, I really loved the atmosphere and I appreciate a setting to listen to live classical music that's not a CSO concert. I'd definitely go again, and they're planning more of these at least through May, so I'll get the chance!
Finally, I realized as I was listening that Stardew Valley's soundtrack also replicates Four Seasons, at least insofar as it has three songs for each of the four seasons.
One both Monday and Friday,![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
thosesocks invited me over to watch more Samurai Champloo. It's still really good, I'm still confused how I've never seen it, and I'm glad that thosesocks has taken on the mission of correcting that error.
We only got through one episode on Friday because I was at services earlier in the evening and didn't arrive at her apartment, walking through terrible rain all the way, until like 8:45 p.m. and then we spent an hour talking. But I really appreciated that. I'm noticing lately that while I'm very social and I'm out and doing things a lot, I'm missing the days where I'd just go to a friend's place and talk with them. Which means that it's on me to schedule more of them.
Saturday I went to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mutantur's place for the resumption of our now-board gaming days (mutantur's preparation for a forthcoming Delta Green game is still not complete). We started off with another board game version of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, this time based on War With the Evil Power Master, with all of the Golden Age sci-fi camp that I assume was in the original book. There were carnivorous plants, time-travel to ancient earth, a robot with innumerable appendages but only one eye and one eyebrow, and candy-munching Martian, a brash ship captain, and a final confrontation with the Evil Power Master where we sent him to his doom by reading his old seventh grade notebook and revealing an unresolved crush from his past. The message of this game is that therapy prevents megalomania, which I think is something we can all agree on.
There were a lot of references to the "Purple Days War," but no Prince references which was a missed opportunity.
One we had finished that we still had some time left, so atmutantur's suggestion we broke out Villainous, the game of Disney villains.
I picked Scar:
This is the board state right as I drew the cards necessary to win, as "Be Prepared" was playing on the Disney playlist over the room speakers. And furthermore, I started my path to winning by drawing Mufasa, playing him on the board and then using a Stampede card to move him one spot, and then siccing a dozen hyenas on him. Then I defeated Simba. It really did feel like I was enacting a scheme that matched the plot of The Lion King, if Scar had won.
Villainous is a lot of fun, but since every villain has their own goals, their own board and cards, and their own playstyle, it is very difficult to get a handle on exactly how far along everyone is toward winning. Or at least, it was for me. I knew that I didn't have much time oncemutantur as Ratigan brought out the robot queen, but I never had a good example of how far along ![[facebook.com profile]](https://www.facebook.com/favicon.ico)
fin.emery's Evil Queen was toward winning. I knew he needed to gather poison and to get Snow White, but not how much poison he needed or how he could find Snow Queen if we didn't inflict her on him.
But I won, so I won't complain too much.
As I was walking home fromhillel.wayne's "Backup Thanksgiving" dinner on Saturday, the wind was so bad that I ended up having to turn off Broadway onto a side street. It was howling down from the north and blowing the dusting of icy snow into the air and it felt like tiny knives. I hadn't buttoned my coat--it's a thing with me, I don't button my coat until it gets really cold because it's my talisman for warding off the onset of winter--and by the time I had turned off to the west, maybe a block, there was a coating of snow over my pants and shirt.
I could have just buttoned my coat, but that's admitting that it's winter. And like a week ago it was 8°C, so it's not winter. Yet.
It'll be -17°C on Friday, so winter is coming.
Aftertom.hen.12's board game event where we played Splendor, we left and went to Hopleaf where koppel was having a temporary going-away party--in that he's going away temporary; he's moving to Mexico City for a few months--and as we were sitting and talking, koppel started to work his dark sorcery. He's seen 
Cats , you see, and made it his mission to introduce it to everyone he possibly can. I thought he was going to see it again after his party and I had chores to do, so I declined, but he actually meant Tuesday, so it turns out that I'm going to see Cats too. I'll post about it once I return, assuming enough of my sanity remains intact to do so.
As he ordered ten tickets,koppel said that he had done a mitzvah. I pointed out that with ten tickets, we had a minyan.
A "meownyan", if you will.
I'm incredibly tired today due to screwing up the laundry timing last night and not being able to put all the blankets back on the bed until 11:30 p.m., and even having done that I woke up during the night due to being too cold and needing to pull more blankets on. And then I woke up before my alarm, so while I wasn't completely exhausted, I still feel like there's a wall of cotton between the world and me. The last night I had to myself was the Sunday before last, so I'm looking forward to just doing nothing and going to bed earlier tonight.
Well, nothing other than chores, anyway. Let me tell you, it's garbage that you dust and things are clean and then more dust is there next time you look. Who made that legal?
Thursday I went to a concert again, the first of three I'm going to this month. This was much different than the other two, though--for one, it was classical music, and for two, it was conducted by candlelight in the Newberry Library:
There was a bit of marketing at the beginning. The concert was put on by Fever, some event promotion organization I've never heard of that required you to buy tickets through their app and now sends me marketing emails that I immediately delete, and some Fever guy came up before the musicians did and gave the spiel, but the actual concert was really nice. They played Vivaldi's Four Seasons, the main reason I went, and a couple songs at the end. It was just four musicians, which is far smaller than any other performance of it than I've heard, and I think it suffered a bit for that. There wasn't much blending between the violins--not that one was bad, just that one was obviously more squeaky than the other--and the sound didn't fill the space quite to the degree I would have liked. The candlelight made up for that, but not entirely.
The audience was split on whether to clap between movements. I did, but the woman sitting next to me did not.
Despite my criticisms, I really loved the atmosphere and I appreciate a setting to listen to live classical music that's not a CSO concert. I'd definitely go again, and they're planning more of these at least through May, so I'll get the chance!Finally, I realized as I was listening that Stardew Valley's soundtrack also replicates Four Seasons, at least insofar as it has three songs for each of the four seasons.
One both Monday and Friday,
thosesocks invited me over to watch more Samurai Champloo. It's still really good, I'm still confused how I've never seen it, and I'm glad that thosesocks has taken on the mission of correcting that error.We only got through one episode on Friday because I was at services earlier in the evening and didn't arrive at her apartment, walking through terrible rain all the way, until like 8:45 p.m. and then we spent an hour talking. But I really appreciated that. I'm noticing lately that while I'm very social and I'm out and doing things a lot, I'm missing the days where I'd just go to a friend's place and talk with them. Which means that it's on me to schedule more of them.
Saturday I went to
mutantur's place for the resumption of our now-board gaming days (mutantur's preparation for a forthcoming Delta Green game is still not complete). We started off with another board game version of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, this time based on War With the Evil Power Master, with all of the Golden Age sci-fi camp that I assume was in the original book. There were carnivorous plants, time-travel to ancient earth, a robot with innumerable appendages but only one eye and one eyebrow, and candy-munching Martian, a brash ship captain, and a final confrontation with the Evil Power Master where we sent him to his doom by reading his old seventh grade notebook and revealing an unresolved crush from his past. The message of this game is that therapy prevents megalomania, which I think is something we can all agree on. There were a lot of references to the "Purple Days War," but no Prince references which was a missed opportunity.
One we had finished that we still had some time left, so at
mutantur's suggestion we broke out Villainous, the game of Disney villains. I picked Scar:
This is the board state right as I drew the cards necessary to win, as "Be Prepared" was playing on the Disney playlist over the room speakers. And furthermore, I started my path to winning by drawing Mufasa, playing him on the board and then using a Stampede card to move him one spot, and then siccing a dozen hyenas on him. Then I defeated Simba. It really did feel like I was enacting a scheme that matched the plot of The Lion King, if Scar had won.
Villainous is a lot of fun, but since every villain has their own goals, their own board and cards, and their own playstyle, it is very difficult to get a handle on exactly how far along everyone is toward winning. Or at least, it was for me. I knew that I didn't have much time once
mutantur as Ratigan brought out the robot queen, but I never had a good example of how far along But I won, so I won't complain too much.
As I was walking home from
I could have just buttoned my coat, but that's admitting that it's winter. And like a week ago it was 8°C, so it's not winter. Yet.
It'll be -17°C on Friday, so winter is coming.
After
Cats , you see, and made it his mission to introduce it to everyone he possibly can. I thought he was going to see it again after his party and I had chores to do, so I declined, but he actually meant Tuesday, so it turns out that I'm going to see Cats too. I'll post about it once I return, assuming enough of my sanity remains intact to do so.As he ordered ten tickets,
A "meownyan", if you will.
I'm incredibly tired today due to screwing up the laundry timing last night and not being able to put all the blankets back on the bed until 11:30 p.m., and even having done that I woke up during the night due to being too cold and needing to pull more blankets on. And then I woke up before my alarm, so while I wasn't completely exhausted, I still feel like there's a wall of cotton between the world and me. The last night I had to myself was the Sunday before last, so I'm looking forward to just doing nothing and going to bed earlier tonight.
Well, nothing other than chores, anyway. Let me tell you, it's garbage that you dust and things are clean and then more dust is there next time you look. Who made that legal?
