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Five Things Make a Post
Jan. 19th, 2020 06:10 pm. It's been that kind of day. I got up, got dressed, started the washing machine, poured milk on my breakfast, and fell down a task fixation rabbit hole until I had to go to a lunch meeting, at which point I remembered I hadn't eaten the breakfast yet. The washing machine I didn't remember until nearly dinner time. (Fortunately it's good drying weather.) On the plus side, I've definitely done my bit for crowd-sourced internet reference works today.
. In my first year living in this house, I'd never been able to figure out how to get the oven going, which was a pity because it seems like a much nicer oven than the ones in the last two houses I've lived in. (To be fair to the oven, I wasn't trying very hard; each time I failed, I took a few months to get around to trying again.) I knew it wasn't the gas, because I sorted that out on an earlier attempt, which got the stove and the griller working but not the oven. It turns out that there's a safety feature where the oven won't ignite unless you're pushing in on the temperature dial at the same time.
To celebrate, last night I revised the subject of "preheating an oven" and then cooked one of a popular brand of frozen pizzas. It's fairly filling and you get from frozen to plated in less than half an hour, but that's about all that can be said for it. Some of the other things I've obtained to try out look more promising.
. On Friday night, I went to the out-of-town tryout for an improv comedy show one of my friends is working on. The premise is that it's a memorial service for [insert name here]; at the beginning, one of the actors in the role of a funeral director asks the audience to "remind" him the name of the deceased and what one thing everyone remembers them for, and then the improv troupe takes over and invents the rest of the dear departed's biography as they go along, with eulogies, flashbacks, a tribute song, and a dramatic emotional confession that casts everything in a whole new light. On this occasion, we heard the life story of Wezz Roberts, who put aside his own needs to fulfill his father's dream of a son who was a star trombonist, despite only having one lung and also, it developed, lacking several other significant body parts. It was a lot of fun, and weirdly heartwarming in places, and I would absolutely go and see another rendition of the show if it makes it into full production.
. The current New York revival of Fiddler on the Roof is notable for several things, among them that it's directed by Broadway legend Joel Grey, but most importantly that it's performed entirely in Yiddish. There are subtitles, apparently, which is good because I want to see this and I only know as much Yiddish as you pick up by osmosis from listening to New York comedians. An Australian transfer is opening later this year; I think it's unlikely to be one of the few musicals that makes it over to this side of the continent, so I'm seriously contemplating making the pilgrimage east to see it.
Here is the New York cast, and Broadway legend Joel Grey, performing at last year's Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Easter Bonnet fundraiser (they got judged "Best Presentation", according to the video blurb).
. Baen recently published a collection of Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric novellas, set in the same world as The Curse of Chalion. If I have this right, this marks their first appearance in a hardcover dead-tree edition, and also their first appearance in a DRM-free ebook edition.
. In my first year living in this house, I'd never been able to figure out how to get the oven going, which was a pity because it seems like a much nicer oven than the ones in the last two houses I've lived in. (To be fair to the oven, I wasn't trying very hard; each time I failed, I took a few months to get around to trying again.) I knew it wasn't the gas, because I sorted that out on an earlier attempt, which got the stove and the griller working but not the oven. It turns out that there's a safety feature where the oven won't ignite unless you're pushing in on the temperature dial at the same time.
To celebrate, last night I revised the subject of "preheating an oven" and then cooked one of a popular brand of frozen pizzas. It's fairly filling and you get from frozen to plated in less than half an hour, but that's about all that can be said for it. Some of the other things I've obtained to try out look more promising.
. On Friday night, I went to the out-of-town tryout for an improv comedy show one of my friends is working on. The premise is that it's a memorial service for [insert name here]; at the beginning, one of the actors in the role of a funeral director asks the audience to "remind" him the name of the deceased and what one thing everyone remembers them for, and then the improv troupe takes over and invents the rest of the dear departed's biography as they go along, with eulogies, flashbacks, a tribute song, and a dramatic emotional confession that casts everything in a whole new light. On this occasion, we heard the life story of Wezz Roberts, who put aside his own needs to fulfill his father's dream of a son who was a star trombonist, despite only having one lung and also, it developed, lacking several other significant body parts. It was a lot of fun, and weirdly heartwarming in places, and I would absolutely go and see another rendition of the show if it makes it into full production.
. The current New York revival of Fiddler on the Roof is notable for several things, among them that it's directed by Broadway legend Joel Grey, but most importantly that it's performed entirely in Yiddish. There are subtitles, apparently, which is good because I want to see this and I only know as much Yiddish as you pick up by osmosis from listening to New York comedians. An Australian transfer is opening later this year; I think it's unlikely to be one of the few musicals that makes it over to this side of the continent, so I'm seriously contemplating making the pilgrimage east to see it.
Here is the New York cast, and Broadway legend Joel Grey, performing at last year's Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Easter Bonnet fundraiser (they got judged "Best Presentation", according to the video blurb).
. Baen recently published a collection of Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric novellas, set in the same world as The Curse of Chalion. If I have this right, this marks their first appearance in a hardcover dead-tree edition, and also their first appearance in a DRM-free ebook edition.
