love list

I was reading Meg Fowler’s blog, and she urged her readers to create a “love list.”

I’m a sucker for lists and well, frankly, I’m so happy in my new relationship that I sometimes I want to burst into tears. Now is the time to fill this badboy out. Here’s my love list:

THINGS YOU LOVE

1. Song you love
2. Book you love
3. Type of cuisine you love
4. Beverage you love
5. Cookie you love
6. Ice cream flavour you love
7. Place you love to go
8. Thing you love to drive
9. Place you love to live
10. Movie you love
11. Time in your life you loved
12. Person you love
13. Cute picture of a baby animal you love (provide link)
14. Item of clothing you love most (that you own)
15. Way of relaxing you love best

THINGS I LOVE

1. Only you- Joshua Radin with Imogen Heap
2. Book you love- Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
3. Type of cuisine you love- Thai (especially summer rolls and tofu pad thai)
4. Beverage you love- Unsweetened Mango Iced Tea
5. Cookie you love- Oatmeal Chocolate chip cranberry ones from Bakery Bar
6. Ice cream flavour you love- Ben and Jerry’s Chubby Hubby
7. Place you love to go- The beach.
8. Thing you love to drive- Convertibles, especially in the summertime.
9. Place you love to live- New York City
10. Movie you love- Love Actually
11. Time in your life you loved- college. I know it’s a cliche, but its true. Sue me.
12. Person you love- Dad. He is my hero.
13. Cute picture of a baby animal you love: I love beagles
14. Item of clothing you love most (that you own): my black Grecian satin gown that I don’t get to wear often enough.
15. Way of relaxing you love best: laying in the sunshine.

to do before I’m 28.

I’ve been inspired by my friend Jess, and in the true spirit of procrastination, I began my list.

To do before turning 28:

Camp overnight: Yes, I know it is shocking that this Jersey Jew, whose parents left the “annoyance of the country” (read: suburbs of NYC) for an Upper East Side Co-op, has never spent the night asleep in a tent in the middle of the woods. I’ve lived in the land of hipsters and granola for almost two years and before leaving this haven for coffee and microbrews, I want to have a one-night stand with nature. Who knows, I might even text the next day.

Change a diaper: Let me explain. I’m the baby of the family and my wise older brother with his even wiser wife have decided to leave the breeding to those who enjoy vomit, public temper tantrums, and poop stains. I only babysat children whom were already potty trained. My close friends are mostly still unmarried (although this is starting to change very quickly…) and those that have jumped ship, with the exception of two that I can think of off the top of my head, have decided to wait to procreate. I’ve never in my life changed a dirty diaper. It’s almost embarrassing.

Play in at least one more national park

Alter my body in some sort of fashion as a symbol of my independence: Nothing too crazy… sometime benign pierced or a little tattoo…

Sell/Donate all clothing, shoes, etc that haven’t been worn in the last year

Throw out all things without deep significance  and begin to live a clutter free existence: I inherited the packrat gene from mom and need to just purge all of the nonsense from my life, literally and figuratively.

Motorcycle ride at dusk or dawn: I’m told my grandfather had one. My dad and his three brothers had at least one each. My brother has one. I love them. I’ve ridden on my fair share of them in my life, but never as the sun was setting or rising. Seems really cool, right?

Throw a big fat Greek Dinner party where the only things not made from scratch are the feta and the phyllo:

Eat at a restaurant and see a movie alone: I have issues being alone in public places. I have no idea why. I need to kick this.

Finish my Rosetta Stone in Greek, because literacy is important.

Learn to play pool.

Live for a week as a Vegan.

See Coney Island

Knit a pair of socks

This is a work in progress and will be added accordingly. I’m excited.

A new locale

Hi everyone!

I started a tumblr page.  While I’m not entirely ditching my infrequently updated blog, you’ll get much much more Greeky via tumblr… and everything I post here gets automatically forwarded there.

So,  my beloved readers, update your bookmarks, google readers and RSS feeds:  http://supergreek.tumblr.com/

:)

Gluten Free Black Bean Soup

Another cooking experiment for my roommate, the Celiac. This one is stupidly easy and only required slight tweaking as to not murder my roommie.  Instead of flour, more beans are used *toot*

NEED:

11oz can of corn

10oz can of tomatoes & green chilies

14.5 oz of GF chicken broth (I used bouillon cubes and boiling water)

1 tsp of ground cumin

1/2 tsp of red pepper flakes

45 oz of canned black beans

4 minced garlic cloves (mine came from a jar. I hate mincing anything)

1 medium onion, chopped up

Cooking spray

Ready? OK:

Cover bottom of a large pot with cooking spray. Add onion and garlic and cook, stir stir stir stir, until onions are soft but not brown, about  3 min or so.

Place one can of beans in blender;  Liquefy the bejesus out of it, then add sautéed onion mix, red pepper flakes and cumin. Cover and blend on high until smooooooooth. Pour mixture back into da pot.

Place second can of beans and broth in blender and puree,  then add to pot.
Stir third can of beans (do not blend first), tomatoes & green chilies, and corn into stockpot. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes. Yields about 1 1/2 cups of soup per serving.  Serves six or one 6′5 hungry tenor.

Enjoy. 

Hugs and kisses,

Greeky.

Asparagus Risotto

As I promised in my tweet, here is the risotto recipe my Italian teacher gave me. When she had us over for lunch, she made it with mushrooms. This dinner party was unplanned, so we used what we had: asparagus.

NEED:

1lb bag of Riso Carnaroli

1 onion, chopped

2 bouillon cubes (we used Gluten-free chicken)

1lb of fresh asparagus, chopped

olive oil for browning veggies

1/2 cup or so dry white wine

Shredded Parmesan to be added when served.

Boil about 10 cups of water + bouillon. Keep it gently boiling.  The water must be boiling when added to the risotto.

Chop onions and asparagus and saute until golden brown in a another big pot . (This pot will be used to cook the risotto.)

When golden, add dry rice. Stir until golden, making sure not to burn the rice.

Slowly add boiling bouillon water to risotto. I did 1 cup at a time. Stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir.

As the risotto eats the water and expands, add more. Repeat. It’ll take about 20 minutes to cook. Keep stirring.

In the last five minutes, add the wine.

stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir.

Serve when cooked to desired texture. Add Parmesan cheese while still hot. You can also add garlic, too.

Super tasty. The boys and my roommate went back for seconds.

Happy cooking!

7 random things about me

This is my first game of Blog tag. I’m very excited. Thank you very much, Mike Davis, for letting me play.

7 random things about me.

1. I’m missing a bunch of teeth. I was born with neither wisdom teeth nor my last set of molars, and had a pair of baby teeth extracted when I was a kid, because they had no adult counter parts and were sinking into my jaw. They’re on the bottom, so when I smile everything looks very normal.  Sometimes peanuts get stuck in the spaces.

2. I talk in my sleep and don’t remember any of it. I’ve had entire phone conversations that I couldn’t recall. It’s also not only in English. I once woke the only Jewish guy I ever dated by speaking German loudly. Needless to say, he was a little freaked out.

3. I was a New Jersey State representative in the national geography bee when I was 12. I lost.

4.  I really really really want to get my nose pierced but am afraid that I’m too old/what my parents will say/that I’m not cool enough.

5. I hate to be cold. It makes me miserable, crabby, grumpy… I morph into a total super bitch. I would much prefer to burn to a crisp at the Equator than to spend one minute freezing my ass off waiting for a bus in sub 50 degree temperatures.  Strangely, I’ve never lived anywhere it was warm year round.

6. I despise the color orange. I think its an absolutely heinous hue and should be reserved solely for traffic related objects. There was a kid in college who only wore orange, his entire dorm room was orange (my friend lived down the hall) and he had died his hair orange. I would get violent every time I laid eyes on him.

7. I have my dream house totally designed in my head. Maroon, two stories, vegetable and flower garden in the back, antique baby grand piano, wrap around porch with a swing. My perfect wedding however involves sand and  no shoes.

Now, in accordance with the 7-Random-and-Weird-Things-About-Me meme, I must tag 7 more people to participate in the next round.

I’m tagging:

Katy

Dave M

Tara

Josh

Leslie

Damon

Here are the rules I followed as established by Shannon:

Here are the rules for my fellow bloggers:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Not a bad way to get back into the swing of blogging, right?

HAPPY NEW YEAR, ALL! xoxo

Jesus, the Rossini tenor.

Me (1:49:16 AM): you love the jews!

tjk (1:49:21 AM): you fucking know it

tjk (1:49:26 AM): they are my peeps!

tjk(1:49:37 AM): i was many jews in many past lives

tjk (1:49:43 AM): maybe even jesus!

tjk (1:50:04 AM): wouldn’t that be a kick in the balls to a whole cross section of this country!

tjk(1:50:10 AM): take that, oklahoma!

New Yooooork

Hello, all. Sorry I’ve gone totally and completely off the radar. The first half of the season at work was wonderfully educational and fruitful, and yet so time consuming that it nearly sent me to the loony bin.

I’m back in New York City where it is so cold that I keep expecting a polar bear to push his way into the packed 4 train heading downtown to Union Square. Ok, maybe not, but at least some disgruntled penguins returning from work. It’s a solid 15-20 degrees warmer in Oregon, as my adorable roommate exclaimed over gchat today “It’s even SUNNY! Weee!” This angers me greatly. I am the decedent of tan island people. I wasn’t built for cold. I’m pale and my skin is dry.

Anyway, the two weeks before and after thanksgiving in the opera world, for the one reader I have that isn’t in the industry, is *drumroll* audition season. Almost every single American regional company packs up their artistic and/or general director, flies to the ice-cube-tray formally known as Manhattan and sets up camp in one of the many large rehearsal spaces, churches, or ballrooms throughout the city. I am incredibly and amazingly fortunate in that my parents (read: father) got sick of residing in “the country” (read: Northern New Jersey) and moved into an apartment on the East side. For audition season, I pack up audition clothes, sweats, a few party duds, and my laptop and turn in to a 17 year old again for six weeks. I’ll work for dad once the avalanche of auditions are done and stick some money into my pocket, or more accurately to my jet blue card.

With the influx of all of the opera companies, comes the inevitable arrival of every single budding opera singer with a dream and enough credit to buy them a plane ticket. Everyone with whom you ever went to school, summer program, or apprenticeship turns up with tiny wheelie suitcase in hand and is “gonna make it big.” I hear tales of singers who survived an entire season without ever setting foot in the big apple. 1. I don’t believe it. 2. They clearly did fewer auditions than the rest of us and 3. How LAME.

For the three years I lived in New York as a grad student and then as an unemployed opera singer pushing antique textiles to afford the posh abode far out of my price-range, my apartment would turn into a refugee camp. My roommate would pack up her stuff and stay with her boyfriend for a chunk of time and our living room would turn into a sea of air mattresses, coverlets, aria anthologies, and subway maps. I very happily gave couch or floor space to any and all who needed it as long as they didn’t get all clingy or high maintenance. I’m not your tour guide or mother, just your concierge. The doormen at said super-swank apartment must have thought I was running some sort of long term brothel by the different men (and women!) I would have stay with me for a week at a time, and to avoid harassment by the door Gestapo, would have to sign in.

My first audition is tomorrow. My personal goal is to look cute, be early, and sing well, all of which I am fully capable. Screw them if they’re not into it.

Look forward to far more blog posts in the future about my hilarious exploits around the big city. Funny shit happens here. This is gunna be fun, I can feel it.

An open letter found on the internet

The alternative… move to Europe, Bali, or Israel. Who’s in?

Dear Red States:

If you manage to steal this election too we’ve decided we’re leaving.
We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue
States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes California,
Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois
and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the
nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New
California.

To sum up briefly:

You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.

We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

We get the Statue of Liberty.

You get Dollywood.

We get Intel and Microsoft.

You get WorldCom.

We get Harvard.

You get Ole’ Miss.

We get 85% of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs.

You get Alabama.

We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states
pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian
Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families.

You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war,
and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If
you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids
they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and
they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets
coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs
turn up, but we’re not willing to spend our resources in Bush’s
Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80% of the
country’s fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92%
of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95% of America’s quality wines, 90% of
all cheese, 90% of the high tech industry, 95% of the corn and
soybeans (thanks Iowa!), most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living
redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools
plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88%
of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92% of
all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the
hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all
televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the
University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was
actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we’re
discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that
evolution is only a theory, 53% believe that Saddam was involved in
9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher
morals then we lefties.

Finally, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed
they grow in Mexico

Peace out,

Blue States

kindness

This made me so happy.

For some reason (maybe since it’s 1am and I’m really tiiired,) I couldn’t get the embedded link to work. Que sera sera.

I think that this is amazing, really. People like this still exist.

Pdx fall.

Hello, lovely readers…

The chunk of time between early autum and monsoon season in Portland is so beautiful. The air is crisp, but not too cold, the sun shows itself for a few hours everyday, and it DOESN’T RAIN THAT MUCH. The rain here in Pacific Northwest isn’t the same fat droplets that soak you to the core for and hour that we get back east. It’s the thin, almost misty rain that gets you pretty wet and an umbrella does you no good at all. Thats why even the exectives that work downtown rock the big ol’ Columbia hooded windbreakers over their suits. Burberry? Pshh. It ain’t waterproof.

My recital is three weeks from tomorrow (ACK!) so I’m in total overdrive. I haven’t learned a full recital since grad school, ergo I’m out of practice. At least after this recital, I won’t have my significant other giving me a full critique of his likes and dislikes AT THE RECEPTION. (grr.) Thanks to the ever changing roles of the young artist, I have, however, become very good at memorizing gobs of music at an astonishing rate. Three days later those braincells are murdered by the Hops festivals going around town and I can’t even hum you a tune. That’s neither here nor there.

The second show is fully staged and, as per usual, the rehearsal period has been filled with bad clothing, akward conversation, cluelessness, brilliance, and some of the loudest singing imaginable. Since I like my job, I will not go into any more detail here. If you really want more info, I’ll mime them for you next time we’re together.

And now I leave you with a haiku:

No motivation, / want to lay around all day, / Can’t til Nov 17.

This was my Sunday morning at 5am.

I cat-sat for the always lovely Sabine on Saturday night so her mommies could go away to the coast for the evening. After 12 days or so of house-sitting this summer, she no longer runs away and hides when I enter the kitchen. This improvement sadly is met with her plopping herself in front of the sink, under which her treats are kept, and screaming like a human infant until something savory is put in front of her… to ignore.

This was essentially what happened at 5am…

did i go back to sleep? no.

i miss new york.

from Overheard in New York…

Who Needs a Television When You’ve Got the City?

(a soprano is singing an opera aria in her apartment on the 4th floor)

Random man on street (screaming up to the window): Girl, you’re not even gonna sing the high note?! Pussy!
Soprano (screaming out the window): Everyone’s a fucking critic!

–Inwood

war.

I find this to be very very scary. This is from the blog Jewlicious, which I enjoy reading daily.

A New Lebanon War?

October 5th, 2008 by dahlia

Well, my friends, it may be that a new war between Israel and Hizbollah is looming in the near future. Since the so-called “Second Lebanon War” in 2006, Hizbollah has spent its time well, rebuilding its bunkers, recruiting new fighters, and rearming with new and improved rockets, with the help of Syria and Iran.

Major-General Gadi Eizenkot of the Israeli Defense Force Northern Command has warned Hizbollah that any future actions or attacks on Israel carried out would be met with “disproportionate” response. In the past, when Hizbollah fired rockets on Israel, it did so from so-called civilian villages. Eizenkot, in his interview, has made it clear that as far as the IDF is concerned, any village which is used to attack Israel will be viewed as a hostile base. He warns that enemy villages will meet the same fate as the Dahiya quarter of Beirut, Hizbollah’s base of operations in Beirut, which was completely flattened and destroyed during the war. Further, he suggests that Nasrallah think very carefully before messing with Israel again.

Hizbollah, in turn, has responded by calling Israel a “paper tiger”. Thus, this official states that Israel’s “threats” are nothing to fear. Hizbollah claims that it will continue its holy war against Israel until Israel withdraws from the Sheba Farms (which is sort of a lie, as Nasrallah has, also, promised that Hizbollah would continue its resistance until there is a Palestine from the “Sea to the Jordan”). Hizbollah believes it was victorious in both of the “Lebanon Wars” forcing Israel to withdraw in 2000, and not being defeated in 2006. After all, Hizbollah believes that its strategies have, thus far, been quite effective. A Hizbollah official has argued that while Hizbollah would be victorious in any battle, Israel has too many internal problems to really launch a war against Lebanon.

So now the question is: what does this mean? Is Hizbollah right? Is this “threat” by the Israeli military just a ploy, and a way for the Israeli government to distract its people from more pressing issues that if left to fester would lead to the destruction of the State’s very fabric? This theory sounds like a wonderful conspiracy, because that’s what it is. And like every conspiracy, facts can be provicded to support it and it cannot ever be really disproven. This being said, Israel has had internal conflicts since prior to its establishment; a fact which is unlikely to ever change. So, if we dismiss the governmental cover-up theory, we are left with the only reasonable conclusion. Someone believes that Hizbollah is planning something. Afterall, they have rebuilt their bunkers right under the noses of the incompetent U.N. Peace Keeping Troops, as they did last time, and have obtained weapons which ought to be able to hit farther into Israel (maybe even, as Nasrallah put it, “b3d b3d Haifa” – i.e. Tel Aviv). This being said, Hizbollah needs public support to function, as do any effective terrorist organizations. If villages don’t allow their villages to be used as strong holds, Hizbollah’s options will be limited, and if these villages know that they will be destroyed, not attacked, but actually flattened, maybe they will think twice. While Nasrallah may not care about the lives of ordinary Lebanese living in the South of their country, maybe others, such as the ordinary Lebanese do. So maybe this is just an idle threat trying to prevent an act of violence. But in any case, words are cheap, and the threat doesn’t hurt. Maybe it will convince Hizbollah to think twice about attacking Israel. And if it doesn’t, well, it seems that there will be an awful lot of rubble in the South of Lebanon. There is a great consensus in Israel that Israel was too soft in the last war; they won’t make that mistake twice.

As you all know, I spent ten days this past summer in beautiful Israel. For a “cultural experience,” and lets be honest, added security, eight Israeli soldiers joined our trip two days in. I know that many of my fellow birth-righters would agree that their presence on our journey was one of the highlights of the experience.  We learned that these people, although enlisted in compulsory army service, were just like you or I. They listen to same sort of music, drink to the same excess, watch the same stupid, mind-melting television, and, most importantly in my opinion, dream what they’ll do when they grow up and leave the service.

Two of the men had been fighters on the front line of the second war with Lebanon in 2006. They were 19 years old at the time. When we were in the Negev dessert, they gave a short demonstration of what their daily combat training is like and I nearly started to cry. Never has war been so real to me. I come from a military family, and while my father does not speak a word about Vietnam, he tells stories about his hi-jinks when he was a cadet and an officer.  Somehow it became so tangible, watching these two guys with whom not 24 hours prior I had been drinking bad beer and chillin’ on the porch while they tried to show poor American 18 year old boys how to properly use a hookah. Excuse me, a Nargila.

Later in the trip we toured the military cemetery. The majority of the deceased were between 18-21. I’m sure that many of them, like some of our soldiers, loved being in the Army and fighting for the land that they believe in. I’m also very sure that many of them, like others on our trip, wanted nothing more than to go to college and become a teacher, an actor, or an engineer.

Part of me wishes I had never seen that demonstration. I wish I could go back to war being an abstract thing that you read about that seems like fiction and doesn’t really affect your everyday life…. that doesn’t threaten the lives of your friends far away.

Pastoules!!

(This post was supposed to be posted on 9/27. oops.)

It’s recipe time! I haven’t had a moment to cook anything other than Lean Cuisine as of recent, but today is a special day. Not only do we open La Traviata tonight, but it’s also The Tenor’s birthday. Since he’s a good Greek boy (religiously, if nothing else) and I’m a good Greek girl, I figured, what the heck, lets bake the boy some cookies.

I decided to make him Pastoules. Koulourakia and Kourabiedes were getting a little old for me.

HERE WE GO:

3 stick (3/4lb) of unsalted butter at room temp

1cup of sugar (I used splenda blends to prevent ass expansion)

1 teaspoon of double acting baking powder

4 eggs, seperated

3 1/2 cups of all purpose flour

12 oz of chopped almonds (learn from my mistake. buy them prechopped. it took FOREVER.)

Powdered sugar for dipping

1 cup of jam (the original recipe called for marmalade or raspberry jam. I used a mix of marionberry, blackberry, and sugar-free strawberry. I’m strapped for cash.)

Pre-heat oven at 350. Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add baking powder and egg yokes, one at a time. When yokes are blended, add flour, one cup at a time, until blended into a dough.

In a separate bowl, beat eggs til fluffy, but not stiff.

Shape dough into round flattened balls, about an inch wide. Dip each in the egg whites and then roll in the chopped almonds. Make a divot in each cookie and place it on a cookie sheet about 1 inch apart.  Bake for 20-25 minutes until lightly brown. Let cool on the sheet and then dip in confectioners’ sugar. Place 1/4 teaspoon of jam in the center.

Yields 40-50 cookies.

before the sugar and jam

Think we’ve all had these days…

Thank you LOLCats.

ME ON TV!

I know. Now you’re all excited. Well, beloved blog readers, I’ll give you a little bit of back story…

KPTV Good Day Oregon wanted to do a piece on our lil’ opera program. It was a cross between a La Traviata Preview and a day in the life of the POSAs. Pretty sweet, right? We all hauled our butts into the office at 5am for hair and makeup. My wonderful and amazing roommate got up early and made breakfast for the lot of us (I love her, she’s amazing.) Jennifer, our fabulous stage manager, brought us really really really good stumptown coffee. It was a lot of fun.

This is the clip that featured me. I’m the one in the black whose name they spelled wrong. Grr.

Enjoy!!

I don’t think a youtube video has ever made me cry before

but this one did… I’m in the middle of a very strange place musically and artistically right now. Tomorrow is my day off, and I’ll be doing some meditation on it tonight. With a bucket of coffee I may actually find that I’m articulate. We’ll see…

Thank you Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, for making me shed a few tears for this performance. I somehow needed to see this today.

Oh, whats one more liberal political post?

I had a 45 minute conversation about politics with my wonderful, yet horribly fiscally conservative, W/McCain/Palin-loving mom.  Immediately afterwards, I donated money to the Obama campaign.

My parent’s right wing views are a post in and of itself. I’ll get to it another time. I love them, but they watch fox news while they wait for their dinner delivery. YEA.

This little youtube gem is from the immer-hilarious tree.

me (11:11:43 AM): i love satan

thetree (11:11:48 AM): me too.

thetree (11:11:49 AM): oh

thetree (11:11:52 AM): you mean the cartoon.

Matt Damon on Sarah Palin

I’m sorry that all I’ve been posting recently have been links on politics. My life as of late has revolved around 19th Century opera and 21st century politics. You’ll get updates on the former tomorrow, as I FINALLY have a day off. I’m preparing to sleep til around noon. Please do not call, write, send carrier pigeons or smoke signals, as I will ignore them all.

THANK YOU MATT DAMON, you beautiful brainy man, you. He really summed this up well.

I wish that I could take credit for writing this…

After seeing two more McCain signs in car windows today, I felt compelled to pass this on.

From the Italian tenor, on the God Forsaken New Forum for Classical Singing:

Let me tell you something John McCain and Sarah Palin September 4 2008 at 7:35 AM		Italian Tenor  (Login ItalianTenor) NFCS Regular
Your convention has clearly flip flopped when it comes to the “bi-partisan” rhtetoric you were trying to get us to swallow. Last night you consistently mocked the American people who currently support Barack Obama, that would be at least half this Country. You have called half of America stupid, cultists, elitists, and left wing angries. You have disparaged the large segment of Americans who think you are full of crap as politicians, but in the same breath you attempt to make it look like we look down on Republican Americans, whose interests you clearly have not served. You are starting the Rove war of division and polarization. You want to continue to keep America divided and on a downward spiral. Sarah Palin, you attack Barack Obama for being a community organizer. Let me tell you something about community organizers and Barack Obama. He was in his 20s when he was a community organizer; fresh out of a very succesful encounter with Harvard Law School – he could have chosen to go make money big time. Instead he went to a troubled neighborhood. Where were you in your 20s Sarah, hunting moose and caribou? You see, unlike you Barack Obama actually found Jesus in the faces of the poor people he chose to serve. Community organizers help common Americans that have been beat down by a greedy and vicious lopsided runaway capitalistic system, and help the people find a voice so they can fight for their rights within a democratic society; so people can fight against the very type of politician you are. Both of you tout your will to “reform Washington” – unfortunately for you, a lot of us understand just what that means. You want to eliminate earmarks (Palin, at least now you do to foster your political ambitions) with the intent of balancing the budget. What you are not telling the Americans is that you want to limit the amount of tax money that goes back into the communities of this Country. You want to keep taxes low for your rich friends, and give big corporations like Exxon Mobile billions in tax giveaways, and balance the deficit YOU CREATED WITH YOUR WAR AND WITH YOUR CONTINUED OCCUPATION FOR OIL, and attempt to balance the budget by not spending in communities. Why don’t you instead try raising taxes on your wife, John, and the small segment of Americans in her financial situation? You mock community organizers; you fight increases in minimum wage; you fight for keeping benefits away from GIs; you want to reduce funds toward all kinds of social programs and plans – effectively continuing the downward spiral of our infrastructure; you want to continue to ship jobs oversees so that few can get very rich while most in this country live off minimum wage, which you don’t want to raise… in essence John and Sarah – you hate America, the real America, the 95% of us. You are just like those slave owners who “loved their slaves”, and invited them to Thanksgiving dinner, but never freed them or, for pete’s sake, gave them a vote. You love America and fought for her, but when it comes to practical things you do for America, your twisted world view of money and power blinds you to the reality of suffering and hopelessness. It makes perfect sense when you say being rich means making over 5 million a year; but you mock Obama’s supporters and community organizers – the very people who call you out on your lies and skewed social views. Being a POW doesn’t give you the right to destroy inner city America. While you, Sarah Palin, may limit your ideas on “hope” to catching an 8 point Caribou, most Americans define it as being able to keep their homes, despite predatory lenders; most Americans define hope as being able to not see their job go oversees because a corrupt Washington official made the tax code easy for them to do so; most Americans define hope as upward mobility in society. A community organizer fights for the rights of those who have been disenfranchised by a greedy and corrupt society. A community organizer actually loves his neighboor in deed rather than in words… While you Ms. Palin were mayor from your Duncan Donuts City Hall in Wasilla, Obama was fighting for common people in the State Senate of the great State of Illinois. While you were in your brief tenure as Governor, Barack Obama was fighting to change Washington by bringing the most sweeping bill of ethics reforms we have ever seen, fighting together with his colleagues across the aisle to establish laws meant to secure loose nukes in an ever increasingly dangerous ex-Soviet Union, etc. John McCain and Sarah Palin want to win this election by polarizing their base against the evil and angry left represented by their evil minions in the media who dare do the vetting job the McCain camp decided not to do. More George Bush… Most Americans are hurting… we don’t need clowns with stale ideas. We need change. ———– Obama 2008 – The Bridge Toward America’s Future

THANK YOU, DAILY SHOW. thank you.

I couldn’t get the embedded link to work… CLICK HERE FOR AWESOME HYPOCRISY!

i love him and want to have his babies…

a few left wing giggles for a Thurs

Thanks for the always entertaining Tree for this one:

Pygmalion Revisited!

Wow! hi! I haven’t seen you in a while.

Ever have that awkward conversation? You see someone with whom you had a hot and heavy night after one too many tequila shots at a dive bar? You run into them buying tampons at the Rite Aid or picking up ice cream in your pajamas in Safeway with mascara crusted under your eyes? Yea, uh… neither have I.

I’m sorry I haven’t written or called, readers. I’ve been, busy. You know, work and stuff…

I got yelled at again last night for not blogging more often (or ever, as the more recent case may be.) I’m told a blog needs to be updated at least once a week and recently I’ve been clocking in at around once a month. That’s not very good.

So, I’m back! Yay! Rejoice one and all. *fanfare*

What’s been going on the last three weeks? Lets make a bullet list, shall we?

*Work started up again, which means, in short, the last two weeks came and went in the blink of an eye. Because of an overlapping summer season, I arrived a week and change late to work last year . After 18 hours of heavy driving with two wonderful friends, I was immediately chucked into rehearsals for Carmen.  I blasted along on pure adrenaline during that time, so, naturally my brain has erased any and all memory. Even with all of that, the kick off to the season this year seems so. much. worse. than. last. year’s. Maybe I’m just getting old.  Donor events, Sponsor meetings and bbqs, classes, photo shoots, and coachings, coachings, coachings on the first show of the season, La Traviata. Oh, yea… we sang the opening of Trav in concert at the park with the symphony. It looked something like this from our point of view:

I stole that from here.

The most exciting part about this? The principles didn’t come until the night before, so I got to sing the title role for the rehearsals. WITH THE SYMPHONY. Totally badass. hehehehheeh.

*The roommate and I had squatters FOR A WEEK. The three boys in the program with me all showed up to town all homeless. Who moves to an new city without a place to stay is beyond me, but whatever. Anyway, she and I are total suckers and housed them on our pull out couch and air matteress for the last five days. Last night was the first night this week that she and I had the place to ourselves. It felt sort of… strange. My apartment still looks like prom weekend with all of the furniture in disarray and bedding all over the floor . I think I might make the gentlemen clean the whole thing, including my bathroom, which no one used.

*I put myself back in the dating pool. Too soon? Nah. I don’t think so. Judge me all you want. You only live once, damnit and I know you want all of the details.  I realized when “the family” was out celebrating my old roommate’s 27th (eep!) birthday yesterday that I am the ONLY single one left. When did that happen? Why is everyone in my age bracket in pdx married? Don’t get me wrong. I have no interest in getting hitched before I’m at least 30, but still. It’s like not being invited to a party of someone you don’t really like and wouldn’t have gone to anyway.

I have been on one really great date with a guy that turned out to be a total and complete jackass (it’s worthy of and will receive it’s own post,) and I have a date with someone that so far is WAY more refined than the last. I’ll give you a complete update later.

That’s it for now. If you’re really in need of Greeky time, stalk me on twitter.

Hey, world. Miss me?

I’m back in pdx. I know you’ve all missed me.

Big things are changing in my life. I’m still sorting through them all. I just returned from 7 days in New York and 10 incredible days in Israel. It has changed my life. How, exactly? One can only truly tell over time. I guess you’ll come along for the ride.

First change? The SBEB and I split up. It was very apparent when he came to pick me up from the airport that our relationship had run it’s course. We’d both been unhappy for a while and being apart highlighted it.

So, I’m single. Yikes.

I plan on posting some meditations on my trip in the near future.  I have one week left to prep for the beginning of the season, so I need to stop being a lazy asshole and get to work.

xoxox

I’m off to Israel.

Hello world!

As of 2:20am tomorrow morning, I will be in or on route to Israel until August 6th. I am armed with an extra memory card for my camera, SPF 30 sunblock, a lot of deodorant, and no real means to contact the outside world. If aliens come down and take over Portland, I’ll hear about it when I get back.

I’ll post all of my photos when I return to pdx on August 9th and am reunited with the chord to my camera (I knew i forgot something…)  I also bought a blank book and a pen (gasp!) and will be journaling about the experience. If I’m really gutsy, I’ll type it up here. We’ll see. If I have some sort of deep religious experience, I might sell all of my possessions and become a freedom fighter. Or not.

Anyway, be safe. I’ll see you on the flip side, hopefully with a bitchin’ tan.

blurrrrrrg.

That was me, hanging off the couch this morning. What’s not shown is my father walking by me and giggling like a little kid who taped a kick me sign on his teacher. Thanks, Dad.

I’m in New York City, the city where no one actually drives themselves anywhere, so everyone can get totally slap happy drunk as long as they have someone to toss them into a cab or onto the correct subway platform. I was blessed with a group of these people last night.

The evening technically started at Smith and Wollensky’s Steak House for “family dinner” with mom, dad, and one of my friends/almost adopted sister from childhood, The Blonde. Whenever I come back east, I convince my parents that I’m not paid enough to eat really well and they should take me out for a really good steak. and martini. and profiteroles filled with ice cream. with my friend. Somehow, it never fails. I ordered a large Grey Goose Martini. My father and I conquered the chilled seafood appetizer like we had not been given a meal since 1989, and then moved on to very large cuts of steak. I enjoyed Fillet Mignon au Poivre (aka covered in pepper) and housed nearly an entire side of asparagus by myself. Then came profiteroles with extra chocolate sauce and coffee. It was an awesome meal, people. Be jealous.

From there we headed south to The Blond’s Kip’s Bay apartment to pre-game with Absolute Ruby Red (so tasty!) and soda. I should have known then that it was going to be a rough morning. I put on my big girl drinking pants and headed out to Arlo & Esme’s on 1st Street to meet my NY nearest dearests.

I drank vodka all night. I live in Portland, Oregon, so I’ve become a total snobby bitch when it comes to beer and since nothing was up to Portland par, my friends ordered me vodka-tonics. Sadly, I went from zero to crunk in, oh, 10 minutes flat. The Blond, far more versed in long distance drinking, saw this and tried to feed me diet coke and water, which was counterbalanced by the boys feeding me funky mixed drinks and, of course, more vodka. The tequila shots came out and somehow back up sobriety jump-started enough presence of mind to cut me off. The big girl pants were too big. I was back to being a beer drinking light weight. What a waste of  conditioning during grad school. *sigh*

The Quat and JoJo packed it in around 2am. Since everyone else I know lives downtown except them, I hazily decided to hop on the uptown cab share. Sitting on a stoop out side of the bar I took stock of my belongings. Cellphone? check. Credit Cards? check. Drivers License? Check. Camera? Check. Then I saw a big gaping space in my tiny hobo wallet/purse. No keys. Shit. I looked up at #3, helplessly and said,

“…no keys… can’t go home… ever again…” and I believed it completely.

“Oh, man. I’ll find them. Stay here.” She knew exactly where they were, which was weird. I still have no idea what the hell i did to lose my keys.

I got home around 2:30 and no one was waiting up for me. I know, I’m 26 years old, but still. These are my Greek parents we’re talking about.

I woke up at 5:30am. All I wanted was some water and something to put in my belly, but I knew that my parents were up. I stayed in bed for over an hour trying to figure out how to acquire liquid without being seen. I felt 16 again. At almost 7am, I decided that at closer to 30 than 20, I’m a damn adult and I can handle this.

Those Assholes laughed at me. Dad made me toast and tea and continued to snicker and my lifeless body lay on the couch watching law and order. I’ve moved into bedroom where I can steal internet from their crazy next door neighbor and have had two bowls of Product 19 with vanilla soy milk.

I’m supposed to go out again tonight. blurrrrrrrg.

so tired.

I’m currently at gate E3 of Portland International Airport. I’ve been sitting here since about 10:30. It’s now 12:41am. My laptop battery is about to kick it. Our plane is an over an hour late.

As you might be able to tell by my short sentences, I’m not happy.

At least my sleep deprived, cranky ass will fit in beautifully at John F. Kennedy International Airport when we land tomorrow.

NEW YORK HERE I COME.

I’m currently sitting on my bedroom floor, clothes and bags strewn around me, not packing. My red eye to JFK leaves in a little under 6 hours. I have plenty of time.

I CAN’T WAIT TO GO TO NEW YORK. I could hardly stand still in my voice lesson today, I was so excited. If you’re in town and want some Greek in your life, facebook/twitter/comment/call/email/text me. I can get them all on my blackberry.

The thing about going home to my parents sweet East side apartment is that they don’t have internet. OR A COMPUTER. I’m packing up the isty-bitsy laptop and hoping that their crazy neighbor hasn’t figured out how to encrypt her wireless.

The short of it? I’ll be basically without internet ’til Aug 9 when I’m back in Portland.

I will be out of the country from July 27-Aug 6. I’m planning on taking upwards of 7000 photos while in Israel, so fear not, you’ll get to see all the beauty of the holy land and all the stupidity of the jews on the bus.

xoxox

a haiku for the week.

I’m in a haikuish mood, i guess. Check out my twitter for a few more.

I wake in Portland

Next week in hot Israel

New York in between.