Christmas Tree 2008

I put up my tree yesterday! And I have a lot of presents wrapped, but none for me yet.

Great Pumpkin?

Daddy's friend George went on vacation and all Daddy got for feeding his dogs and frightening away thieves was this GIGANTIC pumpkin! He's gonna save the seeds. The offspring of this oversized beastie just might be future world-record setters.

Chicken Video

Due to technical difficulties (I don't know my master password to upgrade my computer software) I had to post this using YouTube. In any case, it is a pretty good video of the chickens in their verandah. Ah, lovely chickens. See how they eat their salad.

Cute Donkey Pictures

Maybe it's a little gross, because you can see the saliva, but I think the donkeys are pretty cute.

Good morning donkeys

Morning feeding time.

Isadore "speaks," or tries to

This is Isadore. She almost talks to us. See. She's working it. She's trying to talk. She can't quite get the words out, but you can tell she's pretty brainy.

A funny thing happened...

...on the way to feed the chickens. My cousin Meghan's husband Eric stopped by the turnip field while Daddy was picking wormy greens for the chickens. This story could get very long so I'll cut to the funny part. Eric "Skipper" has a boat, he took the cousins out in the Gulf to an island, didn't tie the boat up and it floated away. He swam to catch it, got a ride with another boat, but the Coast Guard got to it first. He had to prove that it was his boat. Ok, that was funny when I heard the story. Anyway, here's the Skipper, Daddy picking wormy turnip greens, and the chickens eating their salad.

40th Birthday

Well, it wasn't on my actual birthday but Mommy and Daddy got me a cake. And it didn't have 40 candles, we just pretended. But here I am, making a wish.

Emma's Wedding: Video Walking

Video of Emma walking up the aisle with Tommy. The music is "Forever Young" in case you can't tell.

Emma's Wedding: Miscellaneous Photos

After the reception we all lit sparklers to wave at Emma and Sean. Very Day of the Dead.
Did I mention they had a chocolate fountain at the reception? That was possibly my favorite part of the event.

Emma's Wedding: The Happy Couple

Emma's Wedding: More Actors

More pictures from the wedding. I was very happy to see Aunt Sue! She was the first female General Editor of the Birmingham News and the first female president of the Birmingham Press Club. In fact, she was the first female lots of things. She broke a lot of ground for us and I'm trying to get her to publish her autobiography.
For some reason my pictures of Emma just don't do her justice. But you can tell that her hair was fabulous!

Emma's Wedding: The Actors

These aren't all of the people involved in the wedding, so I'll have to make another post. But that's Sarah in the orange bridesmaid dress (my other niece). And that's Sean the groom looking happy/frightened in the tux.

Emma's Wedding: The Venue

My favorite niece named Emma (I have two nieces and I love them both equally so they're both my favorite, really) got married. She told me it was just so they could get a Roomba. They had the ceremony here at the Bare Hands Gallery in Birmingham. It was pretty cool. I really liked the murder of crows floating overhead. Mark said that she could think of them as a flotilla if "murder" seemed too pessimistic for a wedding.

Jim in Action

I'm posting this video of Jim singing a bit of a song here from his album of Robert Burns poems. It's called "A Man's a Man" (I think). Anyway, now you can hear why I love this guy so much. Unless the sound quality of my camera is too crappy.

Jim Malcolm, not in a kilt...

Jim played at a restored ancient house in downtown Florence as part of a Celtic Heritage Music program. Sort of. I'm sure I got that wrong. Anyway there were maybe 100 people there and he was his usual fantastic self. Video to follow. I mainly took these pictures to prove that Jim Malcolm is my friend. See. I didn't imagine it. Not all my friends are figments of my imagination. Nancy there is a real friend of mine too!

Haircut

I finally got a haircut. Now my hair has a purpose. Nancy's frind Gia, pictured here, cut it for me. She's great. She works in Florence, Alabama and I had my 'do done just before the Jim Malcolm concert. Pictures to follow.

President Barack Hussein Obama

I am so very proud to be an American right now.

Lenny Henry and Dawn French

I should be working on school stuff, but I am having trouble concentrating on sphinxes and Greek amazons. So I decided to see how my good friends Dawn French and Lenny Henry are doing. It turns out that they are still married (after Lenny's idiotic affairs) and have bought an old mansion that needs work and are still working. Dawn just published an autobiography called Dear Fatty that I think I might get myself for my birthday...er...that I will ask my good friend Dawn to autograph and send to me. Yeah. That's it.

The Firebird Ballet

Well, here goes my first attempt at a ballet review. Last night I went to see Ballet Memphis perform Stravinski's ballet abstracted from a Russian fairytale. That it was "Rites-of-Spring" Stravinski, the instigator of modernity in music, should have hipped me to the fundamental fact that this would not be classical ballet. I was expecting Orientalism, exotically beautiful, in all its rich layers of (colonizing) fiction. I was expecting silk and color and grace. Ha. Again, Stravinki should have clued me in.
The Ballet Memphis is a modern ballet group. This means that the movements are based on classical ballet, but this has been adulterated with modern ideas about choreography. The choreographer, Mark Godden, has won multiple awards, including an Emmy for Best Performing Arts Film. Alas, I am no fan of this style. To me, dance philistine that I am, the punchy arm movements and the staggering footwork looked more like Tae-Bo than ballet, and the costumes, aiming for an ultra-contemporary minimalism, were a foot shy of the elegance needed to pull this look off (see the top picture for an effective version of this kind of costuming).
All in all, I enjoyed going. I had a kick-ass seat, and it was fun to just go out (a little sad, though without Gilligan to come home to). However, for the Nutcracker, I'm getting a ticket for the Moscow Ballet performance and I think I'll give Ballet Memphis a miss from here on out.

Dia de los Muertos

I made an altar for Sunny and Gilligan for the Day of the Dead. Maybe I can tempt their spirits to come by and visit. I miss them both but this is a pretty happy project.