Pictures from the Aforementioned Party and Baseball Game (see below)

(I could make a lot of comments about the above pictures of myself, but I don't want to spoil your fun.)

Land of the Free and Home of the All-You-Can Eat Baseball Tickets

Daria in the new Washington Square park fountain.

I am having a fantastic time in America!

After hanging out at Hillwood with my parents, Harlequin, the 2-Faced Juggler, and a couple of Gallants, we came back to Mecca, Ohio. This week has been a relaxing whirlwind of friends and family, including a trip down to Columbus to see a friends from high school that I don't see often enough (Tiffany blogged about the visit much better than I could here, complete with pictures from high school. I looked like a total Pollyanna Prissypants. Hmmmm.)
It was great to see Tiffany again, and hear about her adventures with a newly minted 2-year-old. I stayed at my-best-friend-since-preschool Steph's house. Steph is a wealth of information about Columbus real estate, if anyone needs to know! I also hung out with our friend Randy, and Steph and I successfully steered him on the correct woo-ing path with his new girlfriend. We are quite a team.

I also got to see my friend Karen (who often comments on this blog), and was dismayed that she will be leaving Columbus for a more southern clime soon. Sigh.


On Saturday, I got to see my family at a cook-out that may or may not have been in honor of my father's important birthday (sorry, dad! I just had to say it!). I really love sitting around with my aunts and discussing political issues, this time it was health care ( a lot of them work in the field). Not much heated arguing though, unlike the grand Gays in the Military Debates of the early nineties. It was also fascinating to hear more about Vietnam from one uncle and about being stationed in Germany from my other uncle (He still remembers Brotchen! It's hard to forget...).

For this one important birthday of my father, my brother and I took our parents to an Indians game. We had all-you-can-eat seats! Can you believe it?? I proceeded to annoy everyone by constantly heckling and praising the players and generally annoying my brother, but I hope it was that funny kind of annoying. Well, if not, I'm sure he'll get over it.

The Indians lost, but it was at least close!

Hillwood Pictures

The New York Baroque Dance Company had another rollicking good time at the Hillwood Museum this year. I think this is the fourth time that I've done this job, and the security guards are my pals. However, that apparently that does not translate into being able to eat my sandwich on Mme. de Pompadour's plate (ok, so it is too late to be her actual plate, but she did own the Sevres factory for a while...). Oh, well.

This was also the very first time that I got laughs from the audience while playing Columbine. All I had to do is polish pebbles and dust people in the audience. I also was shot by Harlequin, but I'm not sure if people laughed at my extremely broad theatrics while dying--- I was too busy rolling my head in a circle and gasping for air to notice. Caroline was the naughty Harlequin!

Catherine as the Two-Faced Juggler

Shakespeare for the people (who can get up before dawn)

I really screwed up my sleep-cycle this time around. I should have known better, but I wanted to do a little "experiment": I had to catch the train to go to Frankfurt to get on the Air India flight to Newark at 4:20am, so I thought it might be better to just stay up until then and immediately be on NYC time by sleeping on the plane. WRONG. I DO NOT recommend this practice. It especially doesn't work if you get an aisle seat and you are a fetal-position sleeper like me, trying to curl into a ball without getting run over by the drink cart.

So, even though I was seriously sleep-deprived, I decided to try to get tickets to this year's Shakespeare in the Park offering-- 12th Night with Anne Hathaway. Jeremy and I never did this when we lived in NYC, and I managed to pick the year when it was most impossible to try. Apparently, most years you can go at 8 or 9 am, wait in line until they start giving out the tickets at 1pm, and everything is hunky-dory. My seasoned guide to Shakespeare in the Park, a friend of a friend named Chien (that rhymes!), had already tried unsuccessfully to get tickets 2 times this year before our joint attempt. This year was serious business.

We met in the Park at 6AM.

There were already about 450 people in line before us. By 7am at least 200 people were in line behind us.

I'll spare you the suspense, we DID NOT get tickets.

But, I actually had a great time. It was charming to be hanging out in the park so early, Chien was easy-going and a good conversationalist, I remembered to bring good snacks, Joy (who wasn't able to be in line) brought us lunch, and walking to the bathroom a few times took up a sizeable chunk of the 7 hours I was waiting.

A few impressions from the event:

1. Some people had air mattresses-- very smart because part of the line is on asphalt.
2. Lots of board games and people reading
3. There were some entire families waiting in line together-- the line was a beautiful cross-section of NYC, every age, ethnicity, and class-status was well represented
4. At 6:30 am there was a guy renting chairs to the line, but I never saw him after that.
5. There is a deli that delivers food to the line-- you tell the delivery guy "the big tree near the sign for the Sheep Meadow" or something and he rides his bike up and down the line calling your name.
6. You were only allowed to leave the line to get food from the cafe and to go to the bathroom-- both at the front of the line (I loved going to the bathroom because then I got to see what everyone was doing in line)
7. Chien and I are going to design an iPhone app. with secrets, charts, and useful info for doing Shakespeare in the Park: daily updated time the last person arrived to get a ticket, average sun exposure for different sections of the line, google map of the line, etc.

When they finally began handing out tickets, the last person to get one was there at 5:30. BUT there were at least 200 people in front of me who also didn't get tickets-- which means about 200 people joined the line between 5:30 and 6. Crazy!

The people at the front of the line were there at 11:30pm THE NIGHT BEFORE.

I hope next year they have a less popular actress...

Interim

I have lots to write about Shakespeare in the Park in NYC, the intensification of my dumpling obsession after its German hiatus, and hanging out with my parents in Washington DC while performing a pantomime that is strangely reminiscent of something I did 25 years ago with my cousins in the backyard, but I will wait until I am comfortably ensconced in my parents' house to give you the full details. Bis später, Leute!

And a big Happy Birthday from Tuesday to my adorable and hopefully not still rampaging on his cake high nephew, Ben! I wish I could give him a big sloppy aunt kiss, but I'll have to send it along with Jeremy when he visits later this summer.

Fun with the French

I just got back from Paris!

Aside from showing how we do La Belle Danse in America, I had a number of interesting experiences, a few of which I will chronicle for your reading enjoyment in this our blogular adventure:

I was staying in a very Parisien "la Boheme" apartment-- a non-working fireplace and a delicious old mirror in every room, hot plate in the kitchen, and a continually dripping ceiling in the teeny-tiny bathroom. The apt. belonged to my charming harpsichord playing and baroque dancing friend Annabelle, and it is exactly the kind of place we would live, if we were lucky, in Paris.

As you may know in Paris, in the summer, it sizzles. I had to sleep with the window open to the busy street below, and I was treated to the antics of several drunk Parisiens, including one man who kept reapeating "Balance!" at another man. It is hard to balance sometimes.

Nearby the apartment is my new favorite discovery--the Quai de Loire, a canal with a little park along it where you can picnic and play pétanque (like bocce).

I'm going to America tomorrow! A few days in NYC, a few days in Washington DC to dance (kind-of), and a few days with my family in Ohio.