Fun week

I know you love my highly original title... Seriously though, I've been meaning to post all week but it's been so busy! There have been some extra-special happenings this week, too:

Tuesday morning my brother Mark was sworn in as a Prospect Heights firefighter. We're all very proud of him as this has been his goal for several years. Though the picture on mom's blog is nice, I think she should've posted the one of him next to the life-sized, light-up Smokey the Bear. :-)

Wednesday night was our 3rd opera of the year - Lulu by Alban Berg. Very interesting, but not what you'd normally think of when you hear the word opera. The singers were all great - both with the incredibly challenging singing and in terms of their acting (Marlis Petersen was FANTASTIC in the title role) - the sets were really neat, and everything else was effective as well. The music is so "modern" (think 12 tone-ish) that it took a while to get accustomed to it, but it was still cool. We did cut out slightly earlier than normal, but decided on the way out that for productions like this one, we should exchange our tickets for weekend performances so we can stay for the whole thing and sleep later the next day. Next opera is Porgy & Bess on December 5!

Ok, funny side note because I just took a potty break - apparently I put my underwear on inside out today. What the hell?

Yesterday was a special day, too - it was Beaujolais Nouveau release day! What better way to spend my down time in between work and rehearsal than at a free tasting? Fortunately there are two different Binny's locations between here and there, and I even ran into some friends from choir earlier in the day who ended up joining me. If anyone is looking for recommendations, I think the Georges Duboeuf is great this year, something I'm very happy about because that's our traditional "brand". The wine manager doing the pouring said that the favorite of the evening was the Dupeuble, but it had the slightly tangy quality all of the others I didn't like had.

This weekend will be a nice weekend of getting our Christmas shopping done and staying home on both Saturday and Sunday nights! We'll need it in order to charge up for the holiday mayhem, which will be commencing early this year for me - my first Christmas gig, at a very high profile party that I'll tell you about next week, is on Thanksgiving night!

Have a great weekend everyone!