Giving me goose bumps

So we went to see Annie Lennox at the United Palace Theatre way up in the stix - around 165th St in Washington Heights. It was in this funky, huge converted Church (maybe it's still a Church, but that night it was a concert venue.)

I just love Annie. It's personal, I feel if we met we would be friends. And seeing her perform - this is the 5th time I've seen her live, is just wonderful. She always gives me chills, she's so good. Her voice is effortless, just soars up, so strong and clear. And the melodies and lyrics, so haunting. It was a great night.

We also had that small new york moment, when, as I was watching the seats in front of me - I don't know if you play this game, but I often watch people and try to figure out the connections between them. So two women, roughly the same age (mid 30's) came in and sat in the 3 sets before us, and chatted. And then this quite dashing man, 10 years or so older, came and sat between them, and I was trying to figure out who was whom, with the more vibrant girl nodding so attentively to him and the quieter girl fluttering her hands, not quite touching his shoulder. And when the man and the quieter woman went to get more drinks, the more vibrant woman turned to us and said directly 'so you're probably wondering how we fit together' and I laughed, startled, and said, actualy we were. It turns out she's the dashing guy's sister and she's trying to help him with his new girlfriend (who she doesn't know) but frankly, she was more charming and if that the level of women he's used to, the new girlfriend won't cut it. But it was so sweet to actually have one of my connections verifed.

A great night out all round.

the saga continues

It's veteran's day, combined with the shift in daylight savings after Halloween, and suddenly it's dark dark at 5pm. I've got a beef and wine stew scenting up the house. We're cooking stews because, you guessed it, the house is till a total mess. Everything, books, papers, wine glasses, is covered in a fine white dust. I clean and the next day it's as if the dust pixies came out at night and dirtied everything up again.

Sorry to moan, but really, that's the only thing going on in my life right now. Someone emailed me the other day and I said 'I can't do another thing, my plate is absolutely full!' with that weird pitch mother's can get in their voices before the shrieking starts. Luckily, they can't hear my tone in the email, but they didn't answer back either...

I feel that after December 1st and my last big event for the school, I can start to calm down (though December 7th is another smaller event) Okay, after december 7th, I'm officially calm. Except that we leave for Sydney on December 17th - always lovely but not necessarily calming. So by Jan 14 (after the 4th grade ELA exams) I will officially be calm. There, I've set myself a deadline, and I'm sticking to it.

Did go to dancedancepartyparty again, for the first time in a long time, and enjoyed it. Still regret that they no longer let my son come with me, because he loved it and he's coming with me meant a) no whose going to stay with him worries and b) we both did exercise that we enjoyed. Still, I will try to make it next week because I do love dancing, and I miss it.

Next posting, the bathroom will done and the moaning will be over! I'll have photos to prove it :)

When Head is Stupid, Whole Body is Sick

Isn't that a great saying? My contractor (Jiri, call me George) said it to me today, after he mistakenly took my son's keys, in addition to the set I had given him, causing some concern... I have those stupid keys which only the Managing Agent can have cut for me, and as she and I are currently at war, if I lost those keys, I wouldn't be getting any others any time soon.

The bathroom is dominating our lives, and certainly dominating our flat as the rubble and weird boxes grow and the space shrinks. We are down to the sofa and the coffee table, all other space is taken by these huge boxes.

Shall I tell you my restocking saga? Suffice to say that you better read the small print carefully. Some websites charge a 25% restocking fee - it's going to cost us over $200 to return the stuff we ordered that was too big. The pitfalls of the Internet! Well, at least we have all the right equipment now (or its getting here) and I feel that in 2 weeks time, we'll have this jewel of a room and space in our home once more.

Other than that, I'm still enjoying Life, but not watching any of the other new fall programs - they didn't seem to grab me. I am loving one new show which didn't get any media attention - my sister told me of the Israeli version first, but they have a sort of American Idol for psychics - America's Psychic Challenge (the first being how to spell the word psychic, as I misspelled it 3 times in a row!) The premise is in each episode, four contestants who claim to have psychic abilities compete in a series of tests designed to illustrate their clairvoyance, such as finding a man hidden in the trunk of one of 50 cars, correctly pairing up five brides and five grooms and precisely identifying a series of specific details in a police investigation of a violent murder scene. At the end of each episode, the two weakest contenders are eliminated, while the top two return to face two new challengers in the next episode. (don't even know who I'm quoting here, but they summarized it nicely)

DH keeps going - but they got it wrong, and I say, look at how much they got right. There was one where they took the psychics to the room where Janis Joplin killed herself, and the psychic goes... I'm getting the name Anne or Annie with the letter J. I thought that was amazing, and he's scoffing from the sofa. Some of the contestants are way off base, but some are freakishly accurate. As you can no doubt tell, I'm enjoying it a lot!

So it's television and renvoations - except for last night, which was the Candy explosion that is Halloween. I have to say that Tribeca does a very nice halloween, such cute costumes, and kids going shop to shop and collecting candy. Some apartments really get into it, and have wonderfully spooky lobbies, some shops can barely give out Tootsie rolls, but the restaurants are getting more into it, giving out far too fabulous cookies that the munchkins reject but their parents gratefully accept. Disrespectacles did it's traditional thing of handing the parents a glass of wine - very cizilized indeed.

We ended up having a bowl of pasta at Max's, a newish restaurant on Duane St which serves really nice pasta - and more importantly to our son, he got an amazing amount of booty, and loved walking around in his purple alien costume.