Wired Cola

Not much new to report. A fairly uneventful bike ride on Saturday morning. The afternoon was occupied by a tech-support project which was inconclusive. Oh dear.

The return to Standard Time today affects me quite acutely. It means more light in the mornings, which will give me a respite from the recent dark commutes to work.

Indoor soccer. Game 1 of a lunchtime doubleheader. We have a 4-goal lead with 3 minutes to play, so I sub for our goaltender, who also happens to be our top scorer.

The game ended tied 5-5.

D'oh!

We lost the second game. I did not play goal.

Last night, after I came back from my test-ride of the new bike, I noticed that I could see one of my high-cut and one of my low-cut biking shoes on the shoe rack. I looked down at my feet. Sure enough, I had done the ride with mismatched shoes.

A warning to others.

Now listen up, because i'm about to share a bunch of really good information against my own best interests, and it will save you some money.

If you are reading this, you've missed the lunar eclipse tonight.

Slate reprised its refreshingly honest Slate Votes feature, and to the surprise of some, Christopher Hitchens cast his vote for Kerry.

Now, anyone reading Hitchens lately knows that he is one of the strongest proponents of the Iraq War anywhere, and that he has repeatedly stated his case for it. In other words, even though he's a self-described Trotskyite, it came as a lot of a surprise that he didn't back Bush.

The Tafelmusik concert was lovely. They're a really great bunch of musicians, and played some nice music. The last thing they played was a long Telemann work, and it wasn't to my taste. But everything else was pure period-instrument gold.

The cat has been remarkably good-natured about the whole stabbed-with-needles experience. I pet it, I inject it, and if I'm clumsy, it might give a startled meow or glance back at me. When I do it right, it doesn't even flinch. Cat seems a lot happier, too, and much healthier.

But never mind about the Opera, the really big news on Thursday night was the display in the lobby of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, explaining their massive renovation plans.

Good. The QE is a big nasty barn, somewhat pretty to look at from the outside, but ridden with hordes of distant or off-angle seats, and merely adequate acoustics. Its only merit as a venue, to my mind, is its size, just under 3000 seats in a typical configuration.

The opera du jour at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre was Der Rosenkavalier, a nice, amusing 270-minute comic opera in German. Richard Strauss, written in 1911, but set (with anachronisms) in 18th century Vienna.

So Eric is going on vacation and recommended you check this out. Just as I went on one of my longest non-posting spells in months.

The reason for the lack of blogging was lots of real, and quite amusing, real life. So if you can wait it out for a few hours, I promise good stories. Teaser: lesbian opera! See? You'll be back.

Strange medicine in the fridge, needles everywhere, and twice-daily injections. It's the tawdry tale of all too many endurance athletes, right?