OFT No. 8 - Happy 11.5 Years!

This week was another multiple-OFT sort of one. It started off with going to the opera with Donald. No, Brian didn't go. No, we didn't even ask him if he wanted to. Yes, he's ok with that.

The opera was Handel's Julius Caesar at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. When Donald mentioned that there countertenors involved, I knew we were in for an interesting ride. (Countertenors are often men who sing in the soprano range, modern day castrati essentially.) It was a strange night. It was 4 hours, 48 minutes of very facetious staging. Caesar was written in 1707, and let me just say, I'm not sure how Handel would feel about the inclusion of warships, blimps, the Charleston, and a Cleopatra costume worthy of a Vegas showgirl. Anyway, interesting evening, nonetheless. Every review I've read of it has been positive, so... I guess I'm the weakest link.

Anyway, the real OFT of the weekend was Saturday, which was our 11 and a half-year anniversary! To celebrate, we got tickets to see The Crucible at the Steppenwolf, Chicago's famous ensemble theater. Gary Sinise is a co-founder, and a lot of well-known actors have been a part of it (my personal favorite: John Mahoney, aka Frasier's dad, Martin Crane). The play is a powerful commentary on persecution, innocence, and mob mentality, and this version was pretty well done. Yeah, I'll admit it, I cried a couple of times (but really, that doesn't say much now does it?) A few of the main actors were away, which was most noticeable in the performance of the understudy for Mr. Parris. Eeek. Overall though, it was nicely staged and emotional. Hard to go wrong with such a great text!

After the play we had dinner - thanks to our dear, sweet friends Mike and Misha. As a graduation/housewarming gift, they had sent us a gift certificate to an Italian restaurant that was quite close to the Steppenwolf, so we headed over and had a nice dinner of crab-stuffed shrimp with sauteed spinach, and Vitello di Franco. Everything was tasty, and the restaurant seems to be pretty popular, as it was packed the whole time we were there. Thanks Cohens!!!

So that's the OFT report. Sunday was spent working wedding stuff. I got to break out my ol' Gocco machine, which is a screenprinting press from Japan that is really neat. Hopefully I'll have some more free time to do other things with it, since it is really fun and you can get pretty creative with it.

Well, I hope everyone is having fun getting ready for the Thanksgiving holiday! We'll be cooking up our usual feast, and bjourning about it after the fact. Also, we just got the second Bacon-of-the-Month installment yesterday, so stay tuned!