Hello

I know I've neglected my blog for almost a month. I haven't intended to, it's just that in addition to being overly busy and, as a result, incredibly tired, I haven't had much to say. The busy-ness is mostly from work. Sometimes I wish I had one of those jobs where I could sit at a desk behind a computer. Then maybe I could keep my blog up to date on my lunch break or something. The tiredness is because I've actually been doing things outside of work.

One of the highlights of the past two weeks was visiting with Jessica in Sacramento. We started the day by going wine tasting with some of her friends--we went to two excellent wineries in El Dorado county including a new one, Fenton Herriott. I really liked a couple of their wines. I'd like to eventually do some more wine tasting in El Dorado County. After that we went to lunch at an extremely crowded apple orchard in Apple Hill.



The highlight of the day was the evening though both of us were dead tired by this point. After going to the ballet last April, we decided to get season tickets for this year. We enjoyed a delicious dinner at Zocalo before heading to the ballet. I had been looking forward to this one for a long time because they were performing one of my favorite books as a child, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Before I learned to read I would pester my mom every day to read this story to me.

What surprised me most about the evening was that Where the Wild Things Are did not end up being my favorite. The other two ballets they did were ones I'd never heard of and I loved both of them. The first, Balanchine's Western Symphony, was delightful. I didn't take any pictures, but here's a few from the New York ballet's performance of it so you get the idea.





The second, Etosha, was choreographed by the director of the Sacramento ballet, Ron Cunningham. If you can envision a ballet of the African wilderness that's Etosha. Anyone who knows me can imagine why I would've loved this ballet even if it weren't one of the most beautiful dances I've seen. I love the concept. Cunningham based each movement on a scene from a wildlife program he'd seen about the national park called Etosha in the Namibian desert. It was amazing. Imagine scenes like these in the form of a ballet.