littlelotte

Have I ever mentioned on here (I think I may have) how beautiful and fantastic Henryk Gorecki's "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" is? Because it is. And Dawn Upshaw is amazing. I'm so angry I was working while she was singing with the Cincinnati Opera in Ainadamar in June :-(

As much as I would love to start ballet again once the wedding is done and paid for, I think I need to get back into singing and take real voice lessons for once in my life. I miss really singing.

Oops...I posted this in my personal journal and I meant for it to go in a planning community. Sorry, guys!

Question: A female cousin is getting married in mid-August. My invites are going out early August. I'm assuming I should use her current name on the invite rather than what her married name will be, even though she'll be married come the time of my wedding?

Also, a little bit of petty rant for a second. My FI's cousin addressed our invite to her wedding in May with both his and my full names. My cousin addressed mine to me and guest even though she has easy access to my FI's name (our Save the Dates and Facebook) and we've been together and engaged for even longer than she's been with her fiance. *sigh* Silly and petty, I know, but it's just yet another detail in the "My dad's family pays no attention" novella that's driven my mom and me crazy for years.

So we're working on the whole "registry" thing even though I'm really not thrilled with the idea of people getting us gifts just because we decided to make the whole thing legal and we want them to come and watch...

I came across an absolute gem, though: http://www.bottlenotes.com A wine registry! Amazing! Really I think once we set something up (as we inevitably will given that we love wine) it should be more of a wine wish list for all future birthdays/occasions/etc...kind of like an amazon.com wish list (before Amazon started selling things like housewares and set up registries of their own).

So I started reading Penny and Aggie ages ago (I can't remember if it was through Something Positive or Queen of Wands). It's high school, and silly but really serious, and it's one that I've stuck with on my "Daily Reading" list for a couple of years now. Since then I've kept up on their other projects (I also read through Cool Cat Studio which was good, but lost me at times when it spun out into a couple of SFF storylines, and I tried to read another one that one of them is involved with but it just didn't click with me). They started a project called Menage a 3 at some point last year, and it is just so silly and so absurd that I finally had to share. It rarely fails to make me laugh hysterically, and I think I may have kept with it simply because I just have to see what they'll come up with next. Warning: Ma3 is VERY not work safe.

Okay...time to get ready for work now!

I had a random person IM me on AIM. They asked me the following question, and I would really actually like to see my f'list answers to it:

What makes a relationship a relationship, besides sex? How is it different from a friendship?

I was asleep when the IM came, so I never responded, but once I'm finished with my current streak of "stuff to get done ASAP for work" I'll probably piece my own answer together.

Same as the last, only this time from diatryma:

Greek things
I've been really interested in Greek mythology ever since I was a very little girl. I always felt very close to Athena, especially, and I've also always had an attachment to Persephone (even though I've never really been able to put my finger quite on why...but I think I may have recently figured it out), and I just always searched more stories out. When I was younger and identified as Christian I just couldn't accept that the people who had once followed the Olympians (and by association any other non-"God" religion) were actually wrong. Even when I was eight I knew that other religions had been around earlier, and it blew my mind that people could see them as "wrong." Luckily, I grew up with fairly agnostic parents who were not opposed to me learning about other religious beliefs. In the way that life works out, I ended up discovering neo-paganism, and eventually (after much trial and error, I guess you could say) realized that the Olympians were the god/desses I belonged to. I think I originally believed that I couldn't belong to them because of my ethnic backgrounds, and so I tried to find something closer to my bloodlines (plus, the majority of the neo-pagan/Wiccan stuff is heavily focused on the Celts so it's hard to find other info). After I got into archaeology I started focusing on classical archaeology, with a personal focus on classical Greece--I started learning about their cult practices and their daily practices and ohhhhhh their festivals!

There's a story involving one of my favorite plays that helped lead me to that moment where the Olympians figuratively beat me over the head and told me I belonged to them, and I realized that I would finally be able to stop searching because I had found my place. I also tried for a long time to think that Athena was not actually my patron, probably because it was another "but She's so popular and so many people claim Her as their patron that I would be just another silly girl to hope that She could possibly think I was special." She had to appear to me in a dream (as a very large owl) to convince me that I was, in fact, one of Hers. I still sometimes don't see how I deserve Her, but She always finds a way to remind me that I am deserving of Her gifts and that I am still Hers. So...long answer, and really still not all of it, but...a fair explanation.

Business of restaurants
More the business of hospitality, I think. I just enjoy the restaurant aspect more than, say, the hotel aspect because I love sharing the experience of food and drink with others, and helping them to celebrate special times in their lives, or supporting them during difficult times. You touch more people more often in restaurants. Also, restaurants are more direct interaction with the people you are giving to. Many career hospitality people will tell you it's a calling of sorts. It really is. It's not that I want to serve, it's that I want to share.

The Absurdists, though you are the only one I've kept even loosely
I still actually keep in touch with a fair number of them. Most of them are on my LJ and/or Facebook, and I last saw Lissa a few years ago when we went to see POTO together--her and I were very very close online, though, and even though we don't talk often I consider her as part of my core group of close friends (ditto Alley--and yes I still call her Alley, though I've finally grown accustomed to occasionally using Stacey...lol). I really love how we all met. We were all interested in one thing, it brought us together in such a unique way, and now we've all grown up and we're all so different and yet so much the same, and I don't think that a single one of us is still really involved in the things that brought us together. I also like knowing deep down that it's almost ten years down the road and I still know that we could all get together again and it would be like not a day went by since our FAnAFAS meetup in Naperville, and that it will probably always be that way. We were exceptionally lucky to be a part of that, and all of you will always be a part of me and who I am and where I've come from.

High school, because that is where I was then
I don't like talking about high school. I try to forget it ever happened, really--though that is where most of us were then. Mainly, I did a lot of theatre in high school, and I spent a lot of time online. That's the only part of it that matters.

Things of beauty
There is so much beauty around us every day. I try really hard to always find it in the smallest things, even when in my head it seems like there can be nothing beautiful. I am exceptionally lucky to have found the love I've found in this world--and not just the love of Dan. I have such unbelievable amounts of love from friends and family, and that is the most beautiful thing in the world. I know that I am loved unconditionally by so many people, and I love them the same way. I miss theatre and ballet because there was such beauty in the art and creation of it. I would love to go on and on about this one, but my eyes are starting to droop, so I think it's bedtime.

...I liked those. They made me think :-)

[Error: unknown template qotd]

I think that some of the writer's blocks lately have just been silly, and this is one of them.

I do believe in reincarnation and past lives, but I couldn't tell you at all what mine may have involved, and personally I don't really know many (if even any) who might be able to. My mom always called me an "old soul," and I'm sure that sparked my belief in such things (even though she's kind of defected and returned Catholic she believes in some random other things, too, and reincarnation is one of those things). I have met people in my life that I have relationships with that just can't be explained from this life...people that when I first met them, often even first saw them, I could already feel our relationship to each other. I am certain that these people are souls from previous lives that I've been lucky enough to be placed on a path with in this lifetime. Of my closest friends, only one did not feel like a previous connection. We didn't really click when we first met, but another friend was so certain we'd get along that he arranged for a second and more involved meeting--by the end of that day you'd have thought we had been best friends forever (and now four years later we've been close friends ever since that day, and she'll be the one standing beside me at my wedding).

So...I drifted, but that's what I think on the subject in a nutshell.

[Error: unknown template qotd]

Yes. Of course I do. If I didn't go out to dinner by myself at nice restaurants I wouldn't often go to nice restaurants. With the travelling I feel it's important to enjoy the places you are travelling in, and without eating at local restaurants I think you miss a large part of the place. Of course, depending on the restaurant, I also enjoy sitting at the bar more than anything--even when I'm with another person. I've met some terribly interesting people going out by myself. I enjoy the experience, actually. I also go to movies by myself. The first movie I saw in the theater by myself was Peter Pan (2003). I was rather happy I was by myself because it touched me so deeply. I was glad to have the personal time to reflect on it.

Like all lovers, they had soon assembled (as on a revolving stage) the places where the scenes of their drama alternately took place: a little Ukrainian diner whose windows were always occluded with steam, where the tea was black and so was the bread; the Folding Bedroom of course; a vast gloomy theater encrusted with Egyptian decoration, where the movies were cheap and changed often and played into the morning; the Nite Owl market; the Seventh Saint Bar & Grill.

--Little, Big, by John Crowley

This is the sort of book that you just fall into. Very fantastical, but very real, too. I was suggested it by a person I didn't even really know, so I found myself surprised to actually pick it up at the library and fall for it.

This quote suddenly had me mentally assembling my own such places--the places I see when I envision a certain friendship or other relationship. Each person in the book my memory with their own little movies.

...obviously I've been reading and reminiscing too much lately.

So Dan and many of his friends really like Nick Cave--and by "really" I mean they're obsessed. There are songs of his that are incredibly intoxicating to me, but in general I'm not a huge fan. Dan made a mix CD for the trip up to Grand Rapids yesterday and I'm suddenly obsessed with this one:

Lovely Creature
Nick Cave

There she stands, this lovely creature
There she stands, there she stands
With her hair full of ribbons
And green gloves on her hands
So I asked this lovely creature
Yes, I asked. Yes I asked
Would she walk with me a while
Through this night so fast
She took my hand, this lovely creature
"Yes", she said, "Yes", she said
"Yes, I'll walk with you a while"
It was a joyful man she led
Over hills, this lovely creature
Over mountains, over ranges
By great pyramids and sphinxes
We met drifters and strangers
On the sands, my lovely creature
And the mad, moaning winds
At night the deserts writhed
With diabolical things
Through the night, through the night
The wind lashed and it whipped me
When I got home, my lovely creature
She was no longer with me
Somewhere she lies, this lovely creature
Beneath the slow drifting sands
With her hair full of ribbons
And green gloves on her hands