So Netflix just came to Austria last Wednesday. This is big news for Austria and big news for us. We had been doing a tricky, potentially not completely above board thing to watch American Netflix over here, but this is so much better—everything's available auf Deutsch! We can still use our regular account, and we're getting a bargain, since we pay $7.99 a month and the Austrians are being charged €7,99 (over $10) for the same service. There's lots of American TV and English-language movies, most of which you can watch either in English or in German, with the option of German subtitles as well. So good for language study! Plus, of course, all kinds of German and Austrian titles we know nothing about. I can't wait to explore.
First, though, I might already be addicted to Modern Family dubbed in German.
We took a couple days at the beginning of the week to rest and recover from the past few weeks (months?). Mostly we lazed around in pajamas reading (Gillian Flynn for me, George Saunders for him) and watching old West Wing episodes. We did, however, manage to leave the house on Monday to go to the movies. Our local Sundance theatre is showing all the Oscar-nominated animated shorts, along with a few that made it to "Highly commended" but didn't actually get nominated. I always try to see as many of the movies as possible before the Oscars, but usually when the animated shorts category gets called I haven't seen a single one.
It was fun to see them on the big screen, but you can actually watch 4 out of 5 of them on YouTube! Go figure. Which is your favorite?
Apologies for the radio silence over here. The internet at my apartment has been sketchy at best, due to the hurricane (I'm not complaining—hit or miss internet is the worst I've had to deal with), and I'm getting settled and readjusting to city life. Here's all the news that's fit to print.
I'm ecstatic and so very relieved that the presidential election turned out how it did. PHEW, am I right?
Last night I started a French class at the Alliance Française. Six hours a week for the next five weeks. C'est bon!
Tomorrow is the first day of rehearsal for Don Giovanni with a fabulous cast of singers I don't know. I'm excited AND scared.
I'm missing CM and the kitties so so much. Luckily, CM is coming to visit in two weeks for Thanksgiving! And he's been very good about taking pictures of pretty Lola.
And videos! See below: the closest the cats have come to playing together. Progress.
And how are you all doing? Hope you're having a good week.
Sometimes the Internet leads me down delightful paths of inspiration and loveliness that can almost make me forget about all the hours I've wasted looking at IMDB and parterre.com and photos of celebrities' babies.
Via swissmiss I found some videos of Elizabeth Gilbert, author of, most famously, Eat Pray Love, but also one of my favorite marriage books, Committed, which I recommend for anyone married, thinking about getting married, opposed to marriage, or just curious. Watching these videos I was struck by wise and articulate she is. She is unapologetic about the live she has lived thus far and incredibly adept at identifying what she needs and making sure she gets it. If you have a bit of time, listen to her speak in these videos. Inspiring, right?
If you have 6 minutes:
"Later in your life, whatever you decide today, that subsequently information may arise that makes you realize you made the wrong decision, but please do not abuse yourself for the choice that you made, when all you knew was what you know today."
If you have 20 minutes:
"It seems obvious that there comes a period in your life when you have to learn to say no to things that you don't want to do, but I think the biggest, trickiest lesson in holding onto the stalwart commitment to your creativity is learning how to say no to things you do want to do."
If you have another 20 minutes:
"I'm a mule, and the way that I have to work is I have to get up at the same time every day, and sweat and labor through it really awkwardly. But even I, in my mulishness, even I have brushed up against that thing, at times. You know, even I have had work or ideas come through me from a source that I honestly cannot identify. And what is that thing? And how are we to relate to it in a way that will not make us lose our minds, but, in fact, might actually keep us sane?"
Okay, I know mash-ups (putting two songs together to create something new) are, like, SO Glee Season One, but I was at our favorite café yesterday, and I heard this. I thought it was so cool I had to share it.
Way back in February, when CameraMan had just been offered the Vienna job and we were still keeping up the fiction that there might be another option besides taking it, he had drinks with a tenor friend of ours. When CM (in strictest confidence, of course) told our friend about the opportunity, his first reaction was to tell CM he had to take it (as everybody did), and his second reaction was, Oh, you know my wife (one of our favorite sopranos) keeps an apartment in Vienna, and sometimes she sublets it.
Fast forward to now, and we're settling in nicely to her beautiful apartment, which is fully furnished and cat-friendly. The location is perfection: a couple blocks off the best shopping street in town, and an easy 15-20 minute walk from the opera house, our German class, and the IKEA bus (yes, that's a real thing). Best of all, we didn't ever have to stress about finding an apartment, or find a realtor who spoke English, or any of those other annoying things most expats have to deal with. Like so many things about this opportunity and this move, it seems completely serendipitous that we were able to stumble into the perfect living situation.
We thought it might be fun to make a little video showing you our apartment. We're still learning how to do this—cut us some slack. And whatever you do, be kind and don't count how many times I use the word "awesome" in 5 minutes. Embarrassing.
My days of lazing in bed until noon, puttering around the apartment, reading for hours, watching movies, and generally being a SLUG are over for the moment. This morning I had to set an alarm, get up, shower, and actually go to work. I know, I know: it's a terribly rough life I'm leading.
We're back in Ophelia rehearsals, of course. This one has 4 days of rehearsal before her first performance, which seems like an incredible luxury of time after the last one. We started off with a musical work-through of her scenes and then a quick and dirty staging of everything she does in Act I. Her first couple rehearsals are mostly going to be about blocking: where she goes, when, and why. The rest of the cast (who have all been doing this for weeks) won't join her until later in the week, so for now it's up to me and the other AD to walk all the parts, with assorted music staff singing (sometimes 3 or 4 in unison).
This is a part of my job I just cannot do gracefully. It's awkward—do I mouth the words or not, how much "acting" should I attempt, is eye contact a help or a hindrance? I never know. You would think, after so many years of performing, that I would be a total pro at this, but I'm a mess. Also, after weeks of watching the staging from the audience's perspective, it's shockingly easy to get turned around when you're actually up there doing it yourself. I find myself mixing up stage left and right, concepts I'm pretty sure I nailed at age 7. Go figure.
Thankfully, I've had a good bit of practice on all the Ophelia scenes by now. My Hamlet/Ophelia love duet will bring tears to your eyes, and my Queen Gertrude is truly hair-raising.
It's too bad the role I'd really like to play isn't even in the opera. And no, I'm not referring to Fortinbras. I'm talking about Ophelia's sassy gay friend, of course:
We've created this epic to-do list for the big move, a Google document that we can both edit and update. It's daunting, and though I suppose it helps to write it all down, all the millions of things we have to do and pack and sell and arrange, it's also freaking me out. So far, we've bought plane tickets (August 4 is the big day), reserved a spot under the seat in front of me for The Bossy Cat (yes, of course she's coming), and given notice at our apartment, all of which are huge but definitely only scratching the surface of all we have to do. Most of it in the next 2 months. Ack!
Sometimes when faced with an overwhelming number of tasks, the only thing we can do is focus on/obsess over something really small. For CM, that's creating the "Muller-Melear Media Library," an external hard drive with all our favorite movies and music so that we don't have to bring the actual DVDs and CDs with us. My minutia of choice is trying to figure out how best to document the move. Of course I'll be blogging, and you probably know us well enough to assume that there will be plenty of pictures, but that doesn't seem like enough, not for the biggest adventure either of us has ever been on. I'm so not a scrapbooker, so what do y'all think? Any ideas?
I fell down a blog rabbit hole the other day, and ended up at this video. I'm not nearly ambitious enough to try anything like this, but it is amazing. Especially knowing that it was created by an 11-year-old girl.
Not having a television growing up (blame it on the hippies) gave me a great love of reading, the ability to play board games opposite myself, and endless hours of backyard playtime. It also gave me a large gap in my pop culture references, because besides afternoons at my best friend's house watching Punky Brewster, Full House, and Saved by the Bell, I didn't have much exposure to TV until high school.
Well, now I'm making up for lost time. I love so much of what's on TV now (and a few recently canceled shows—REALLY, PUSHING DAISIES???), and I don't even want to talk about how many hours I've logged on the couch watching my favorite shows. I DVR, I Hulu, I Netflix TV on DVD…I do it all. Currently my tastes are turning toward quirky comedies, most of which, coincidentally, air on Thursday nights. I would like to turn your attention to my 3 faves of the fall:
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I don't always watch the videos people post on their blogs, so if you don't want to watch all of these, please at least watch the first one. This video pretty much sums up everything I love about this ridiculous show, and it has cheered me greatly on several hard days in the past few weeks.
Community. I started watching this one a few episodes in, but now I'm hooked. This little clip, while awesome, is lacking my favorite part of this show: Joel McHale. Hubba hubba. He's smart.
30 Rock. This show gets funnier all the time, despite my growing fear that I might actually BE Liz Lemon. Although, I guess that would work out pretty well, since Tina Fey is CameraMan's #2 celebrity crush. I don't think being his #1 celebrity crush is quite so attainable for me.
Posts
