WHAT YOU WISH FOR

Tuesday, May 5, 1998

One of the CDs I bought recently is a boxed set of Show Boat, the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein ground-breaking musical from 1927. This performance is great! It stars my favorite Frederica von Stade and lots of other folks. Nancy Kulp, from the Beverly Hillbillies, is Parthy Ann Hanks!

This 3 CD set, from EMI, is a scholarly production. There's a very detailed book, and lots of alternate versions of songs and songs that were thought to be lost. I like it! I always like CDs and laser discs with these extra bits.

I've never read the book (by Edna Ferber) that the musical is based on. The story is so sad! I don't know if stories of long-suffering women who go on loving the men who treat them badly really appeal to me. But the tunes are rightfully classic. So maybe I'd prefer a recording without so much of the dialog.

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They are doing an office move today on our wing. They bring in special carts to move the PCs and monitors on. The workers load them up, then cover the carts with huge rolls of shrink wrap. The noise as they roll the shrink wrap around the carts is an odd roaring sound.

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My manager gave me one of those new projects I was talking about wanting. "Be careful what you wish for," indeed! I'm to develop a plan for merging our team website with the larger overall team's website. There are political motivations for this being needed. My team has been too separated from the rest of the team. Whether merging the websites will help in this, I don't know, but it has been wanted by someone high up for a while. Possible problems: we can't lose functionality that my team depends on, and the other website isn't in my charge. There are a lot of factors to consider, but it's a big win for our team and for me if I make it work.

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I had a request from Vonda to stop by sometime this week and take pictures with my Mavica digital camera. She wanted to get some images of the flowers all the Vanguard folks chipped in to get her, in celebration of her novel winning the Nebula. So I went over there after work, and got some good ones of the special arrangement that combined sunflowers in a moon shape, along with other flowers. I also photographed the slab of lucite that makes up the trophy, and the beaded sea creatures that Vonda has been creating lately, to keep her hands busy. These go for a good price at the Clarion West auction, and similar occasions.

From Wallingford I went to a party in West Seattle. Dan Ross, one of my dance friends, had had a party a few months ago, with a "Gilligan's Island" theme. He decorated his place with bamboo in a complete tropical island look. He liked it so much, he kept it that way, and now tells folks that he lives at the Castaway Lounge. He was having a gettogether in honor of Cinco de Mayo. It's a great place, the entire top floor of a house, complete with a bar made of rattan and palm fronds. Even the blender is pedal-powered a la Gilligan. There's also a beautiful view of Puget Sound.

After we snacked on guacamole, chips, salsa, and grilled meat and tortillas, we moved the table out from the middle of the floor and danced a few dances. Fun!