Monday, April 7, 2008

Opera, Woods, Gnomes

Saturday, Chicago Meg and I went to the live broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera's "La Boheme," which they broadcast into movie theatres around the world. It's a pretty cool idea and it was fun, but if they'd cut out the seventeen intermissions and two hours of backstage chitchat, the whole thing would have been an hour and a half long and thus much less dread-inducing to most people. There were about fifty people in the room. It's funny seeing an opera in a movie theatre as opposed to an opera house - people still do all the annoying movie theatre things - unwrap sandwiches wrapped in what sounds like corrugated tin, chit chatting, cell-phone answering. It's not cheap - $22 - so I was a little irritated by all that. And then they left the lights up well into the second act and I had to go out and ask for them to turn down the lights in "La Boheme" and I was predictably greeted with "in the huh?" I'll go again, but I might go over to the fancy side of town the next time.

Then on Sunday, Chicago Meg and Nashville Carol and I went on a 2.5 mile hike in Edwin Warner Park, the Harpeth Woods Trail. Muddy, muddy, muddy. Also this one had a lot of "up" and it was not as easy as I would like it to be for when we go to Big South Fork in just six weeks (!); I am wondering if we are as prepared as we think we are. Chicago Meg brought her dog Cooper again and that was nice - he's a great dog - though because it was a beautiful day there were precisely eleventy thousand other dogs on the trail and so that slowed us down because Cooper is Still Learning how to handle the presence of other dogs. Sometimes he doesn't even look at them and sometimes he goes bananas. It's very unpredictable and we can't quite identify the trigger. Then as the trail skirted the picnic area, there was REALLY LOUD music, like half Latino and half Moroccan. And seriously, it was LOUD. I could barely hear myself complaining! This was the loudest Nature I've ever experienced.

The woods were filled - and I mean filled - with trillium. All along the trail, the whole time. I've never seen so much trillium. I kept pointing it out and the ladies were like "yeah, WE'VE SEEN IT" as they marched on. So then I quit pointing it out. We circled back down to the parking lot and loaded up and left. After that, Chicago Meg and I went and decimated a Target and a World Market. I bought sherbet lemons and a measuring cup. She bought a breadbox. Then we went to the scary gnome store. And so ended another fascinating Day in the Life. JEALOUS?

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