Liz: Knock knock.

You: Who’s there?

Liz: Boo!

You: Boo hoo?

Liz: Oh, don’t cry! We’re back!

The Manning girls haven’t been too chatty lately… And if you know either of us even remotely, you know that is not at all normal. Dad and CJ are the quiet ones in the family. Mom and I? We’ll talk your ear off if you let us. Me, especially. But I guess talking and typing are two different things.

My generic excuse for failing to blog lately is two-fold:

1. I sit in front of a computer all day at work, so when I get home, I barely have enough computer tolerance to check my email and mull around Ravelry for a bit. I’m even so far behind on my blog-reading, it’s barely worth even trying to catch up at this point.
2. And I have no knitting to share. I don’t have much time to knit these days, but what knitting I am doing is Christmas knitting, so I can’t talk about it or share pictures. Yet. I am taking pictures, so I’ll have stuff to share in January. I just can’t share it now. However, it’s a knitting blog, so when I have no knitting to share, I feel lame about posting.

Still, those people who don’t see me on a daily basis are beginning to wonder if I’m still alive. So… I figured I’d finally take a few moments to sit down and write. It’s going to be a disjointed, train-of-thought post, since there’s a lot on my mind, and very little of it is any way connected. And there’ll be no knitting content. Still, I’m here. Yay!

The most exciting stuff in my life lately happened last Saturday. Hans and I went to the Carolina Ballet to see Carmina Burana. It’s one of my favorite pieces of music, so I was excited when I heard it was being performed here. I looked forward to it for months. We bought our tickets - pricey tickets in the mezzanine. The Ticketmaster fee alone was $7.25. Crazy! Still, I thought it’d be worth it.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

The first piece they performed, before Carmina, was some fluffy pink piece. And it was canned. No orchestra, no string quartet, no live musicians at all. It was a CD. Played over the sound system. Yeah.

Then came Carmina. It wasn’t canned, but it might have been better if it were. It was a piano and percussion. The chorus that performed the vocal parts was pretty awesome, but they sat in the first five rows, facing the stage, which I thought was a little odd. And the soloists, for the most part, were kinda sucky. One woman had so much vibratto that you couldn’t tell what note she was supposed to be on at any given point. She might as well have been tone-deaf. And one of the tenors couldn’t keep a tempo to save his life, it appeared - he was constantly off beat, and the poor conductor had to struggle constantly to keep the rest of the musicians in step with Mr. I-Go-At-My-Own-Pace-So-Screw-the-Rest-of-You.

The ballet itself was … weird. It was set in modern times, and told the story of the rise and fall of mankind in modern society. In a nutshell, man and woman are in love, but very poor. They and all their fellow working-class schlubs play the lottery every day. Then another man wins the lottery, and the woman goes off and marries him. They have a daughter, and are very wealthy and prosperous. Then years later, the man goes into business with a sleezy guy who ends up stealing all his money. The daughter falls in love with him. The man kills the partner, and the daughter never speaks to him again. He’s poor again. Then the first guy, the first love of the woman, wins the lottery. And she goes off with him. O Fortuna.

Oh well. Next time I’ll just go to the symphony and skip the ballet. At least around here.

That evening, Hans, Laura, and I had our Halloween party. For various reasons, we haven’t had a big party in a long time, so we were due for one. And we went all out. We even went so far as to make real invitations - printed and everything! (I do love an excuse to do some graphic design. :)

The front of our Halloween invitation. (Sorry, personal info like phone numbers and addresses have been removed for privacy reasons…)

The back of the Halloween invitation.

It was a great party - many people came in costume, and we had a TON of food and alcohol. The irony of it is that we bought all this alcohol, since our stock was pretty low. I mean it - we bought enough to turn the stomach of even the most devout alcoholic. And it was good stuff, too. And what did people drink? The punch we made with the ultra-cheap vodka. Admittedly, that’s mostly what I drank too, and it was good (and deceptively strong). So, we’ll be well-stocked for our next party, whenever that is. Margaritas, anyone? We’ve got an unopened bottle of tequilla… Or do you prefer a rum and coke? We’ve got some unopened bottles of rum too. Your choice - gold or white! Yeah, the punch was a hit. :)

Costumes were fun. (And so was editing the photos - I felt like fooling around with Photoshop filters. Bear with me. I beg you.)

Anyway… There’s more I want to write about, but I’m a bit tired of writing now. So stay tuned - I’ll ramble again later, I promise. No, really - I will. Soon! :)