I’ve got your partridge in my pear tree right here.

December 14, 2003

As I was sitting in the Oregon Reportory Singers Christmas concert this afternoon, I suddenly realized that today would be the first day of Christmas, if I understand to song correctly. It’s the twelve days leading up to Christmas, right? Or up to Christmas Eve? I don’t know. But if it’s the former, today’s the partridge day. Yes, I was thinking of this as I listened to the music. You see, my mind was wandering a lot during the concert today not because I was bored, but because I was tired and I had a heavy meal sitting on my belly, something I don’t do a whole lot of the time. The tiredness didn’t help as I dozed off a couple of times and caught my head as it began to dip, but at least I was practicing the time-hononed “falling asleep with your eyes opn while looking down at what’s in front of you so that it appears as if you’re looking at it and not dozing off.” I mastered mine in college, what about you? In any case, several nights in a row of not getting much sleep for some odd reason have taken their toll on me, and sitting in one place for two hours on a hard bench while listening to choral music isn’t what I’d call intellectually stimulating. Enjoyable, but not enough on its own to keep me 100% awake. After those brief moments of the chicken bob (you know, your head drops and then you whip it back up like a chicken pecking for seed), though, you get a rush opf adrenaline that keeps you fully aware of your surroundings for awhile, and so I was good for the rest of the concert after just two slight chicken bobs.

But the concert itself was very good, despite my antics and wandering thoughts. 21 choral songs are a lot to sit through, no matter how good they are, but in more than ten years of singing naturally I’m going to recognize at least a couple of pieces. I think it was three songs tonight that I’d previously done plus a different arrangement of a song I’d done several times, so there was a good deal of familiarity. After the concert, my mother, my sister, and I debated about where would be good for dinner, and we finally decided on the Outback Steakhouse, a restaurant that evokes mixed feelings in my family. My sister wanted a steak, I wanted Mexican or tex/mex food (I had a hankering for fajitas), and my Mom just wanted to eat. I ended up with a steak, some mashed potatoes, and a caesar salad, thugh, so combined with my heavy caloric intake from brunch and I’ve set for the next couple of days on fat intake. Yum, though. Yum. After dinner, we came home and decorated the Christmas tree. This year we just hung most of our shiny balls on it rather than pull out all the ornaments, and I have to say that I really like how it looks just with the lights, a bit of garland, and the different colored balls. I say every year after we finish hanging the balls that we should just stop there, but my Mom always follows that up with “No, you know how much fun it is to see all your ornaments,” so I just give in and we end up hanging something on nearly every branch. Now all the balls reflect the lights and not so much blocks it out, so I like it. I think when I get my own place and the first time I decorate a tree, no matter the type/size/height, I’m going to do a single color of lights and just balls. I think that’ll look nice.

The rest of my weekend wasn’t nearly as exciting. Yesterday I went downtown not once, but twice–once in the afternoon by bus in the pouring rain, and once later in the evening–so my car got some mileage on it. My Dad and stepmother had driven down to Medford for Saturday night to go to a Christmas party down there, so I stayed to house and pet sit. Pet sitting isn’t so hard when it’s just the cats that don’t need a whole lot of looking after, but when you’re sitting alone late at night in a house that’s abut 95% pitch black and you hear thumping from upstairs followed by a blood-curdling scream, you get a bit worried. I had NO idea what made the sound, because it honestly didn’t sound feline in origin. It really sounded like there was a woman (or a man with a really high voice, I suppose) upstairs who ran from one place to the other upstairs and then screamed. I freaked me out a bit, actually, so I ventured upstairs and turned on lights as I went to try and flush out the cats to figure out just exactly what was going on.

Rudy, the resident white cat, was in the living room as calm as ever, trying to get at his pink ball that always gets lodged in the same place. I went from room to room and checked a lot of places, but Kai Fong, the resident black cat was nowhere to be found. I knew he was in the house, though. I gave up after a few minutes and several sweeps, though, so I figured he was curled up somewhere. The next morning I noticed what looked like feathers scattered in several places around the entryway, so I thought maybe Rudy, who gets into EVERYTHING, had been clawing at a coat and freed some of the down from it, but checking the closet that had been open earlier didn’t expose any of his exploits. I then thought that maybe somehow one of them had managed to get a bird that was still alive into the house without me knowing it, but that didn’t make sense because not only could I not imagine a bird making a noise that loud, but on closer examination what I thought originally were feathers turned out to be hair. BLACK hair. Rudy, you naughty kitty. Picking on the black cat, eh? For shame. Thus ended my cat experience for the weekend.

Friday was spent mostly watching movies. After my sister said she didn’t feel up to decorating the tree Friday night, I headed over to my Dad’s because I knew I’d have to go over there eventually. I ended up watching Le Pacte Des Loups, a French film also known by its English title, Brotherhood of the Wolf. I’ve mentioned it in the past when I first watched it last summer (er, 2002, I suppose), but I think this is actually the first time I’ve watched MY copy of the movie, undubbed with English subtitles. Much better than the dubbed VHS version I originally watched. Amazingly, my knowledge of the French language comes back to me when I’m exposed to it. Maybe there’s some logic in that “total immersion” thing after all. Or maybe it was also due to the subtitles that I could easily read. I think I’m more talking about speaking and not understanding, though. After that, it was on to a perrenial favorite of mine, Fight Club.

So that was my weekend in a nutshell. I see they captured Mr. Saddam Hussein yesterday, which I think is a good thing. Whether you believe in the war or not, Saddam Hussein was a Very Bad Man and should be tried for his crimes. Too bad it won’t be in The Hague where criminals who perpetrate crimes against states are tried. Since the United States doesn’t support or believe in the International Court of Justice that the rest of the world has decided to ratify and make into international law, Hussein will instead be tried by Iraqis within Iraq, most likely overseen by Americans. Yeah, that’ll be a good kangaroo…er, impartial court. I don’t have any notion in my mind that there will be shenangins in the court, but geez, the ICJ was conceived for situations EXACTLY like this, but the US won’t have anything to do with it. Join the world, why don’t you? I wonder what would have happened if troops from a state that supported the ICJ had happened upon Hussein? Would they be obligated to turn him over to US forces or immediately over to The Hague? Eh, doesn’t matter I guess. We have him.

Well another week, another set of possibilities. As of right now, I’m only aware of one plan for the week: the first morning showing of The Return of the King with my Dad Wednesday morning. Good stuff. Hope everyone had a good weekend. Later all.

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