We had a very operatic weekend: Tosca on Friday and Peter Grimes on Sunday at the COC. Both performances were excellent. Tosca's obviously a bit of a melodramatic chestnut but the famous arias were handled with aplomb and the bad guy was truly evil which really helped. Peter Grimes is a whole different animal, with complex music, complex characters, and an intense plot, and had it had fantastic reviews we might have been disappointed. Fortunately the reviews were bad, so we were very pleasantly surprised. I'm heavily into Benjamin Britten right now as Exultate's doing a concert of his music so I could pick up on a lot of familiar Britten themes and memes in the work. Great entertainment, anyway.

On Saturday we did a site visit to our new home and spent several hours poking around, measuring and looking for flaws. On the one hand, it's too late: we bought it, along with deficiencies. On the other hand, the builders are still finishing a couple of bits so we may be able to get the deficiencies corrected. We came up with a fairly long list but they're almost all very minor, e.g. a bit of missing paint from the baseboards, a light that's out. We also planned out what would go in each room, and for the most part it should fit our stuff very satisfactorily. The only problem is, of course, the cats: with a rental apartment in the basement we don't have an obvious spot for the cat litter boxes to go, even with three bathrooms in the remainder of the house, so it looks like we'll have to put them in the study to begin with and see how that goes.

I'm off to England tomorrow for my grandfather's memorial service. My parents were there all summer and my sister flew over last week, so it will be a full family affair. Mum's done a great job with the memorial service and it should be lovely. I'm picking up my suit from Harry Rosen and packing tonight!
posted by Tom at 5:30 PM | link |