Garden of Thought

I'm back from Ashland, and still jazzed about it - we had a grand time with four fab plays and an adorable cottage to sleep in where a fresh-baked b&b breakfast was delivered to our door every morning in a wooden basket.  A doe kept coming over and chomping the apples that were falling from the tree outside the door, which was fun to watch, and there was even a sweet little arbor we could dine in.  Yay!  The plays were all amazing and mind-blowingly good, but that's normal for Ashland which is quite professional in quality - Comedy of Errors was especially 'wow' - it had all the same dialogue but the locale was moved to twins coming from from New Orleans up to Harlem in search of their other twins.  One was a Marx brothers piece and the guys playing Groucho, Harpo and Zeppo were so good I felt like I'd been somehow swept off in a time vortex and was watching the real deal.

Anyway! That was a good thing, even though it now means catching up on everything that must be caught up on after a week away.  My kids are off to college this week, my son continuing in his welding courses and my daughter starting into Japanese - she's already taught herself how to write it and somewhat read it, now to speaking!  Means lots of J-Pop music, J-dramas and other fun stuff going by, variety is good.

Hope this week has been a good one for all of you as well!

Oooo, very impressive! I finally had a chance to fill one of the gaps in my 'stuff everyone seems to have seen but me' list by spending an evening watching the 25th anniversary version of the Phantom of the Opera that was done at the Royal Albert Hall, as a friend who had recently discovered it herself had gone on a Phantom-athon of sorts and watched 8 different versions of it.  This was the one she said was best. It didn't latch into the 'fandom' part of me the way some characters do - but I can see why it has appealed.

There was the added treat of Andrew Lloyd Webber coming out at the end with a fun multi-phantom rendition of the main theme sung by the original Christine and 5 of the professional Phantoms over the years.  I enjoy Webber's work, especially 'Cats' and 'Joseph...' and bounced around in my seat when he popped up.

Jolly good operatic stuff.