Fiddler on the Roof - with Topol - go see it!!

I think I enjoyed this musical with Topol playing Tevye more than any in recent memory! As soon as he took the stage, the audience cheered - even though probably many if not most of them were not alive or were babies when he first played the part in London in 1967 or made the movie in 1971. The first sound of his voice transported me back to teenage years listening to the album, which was a favorite of mine, as well as the movie.

There is no denying he's an older man now, although his voice has not changed too significantly and while he was a young man (35) when he did the movie playing a man probably a bit older, he is now 73 and has done the role over 2500 times. But no way did he look 73 up on stage singing and dancing.... made me feel like I'm the old one :)

  

This is his farewell tour - ending this summer - if he's in your city - GO SEE HIM! I say go see "him", because although I love Fiddler on the Roof anyway, he is the only real standout, but the other cast was good and did a wonderful supporting role to this wonderful actor. The standing ovation at the end was awesome.

Minneapolis TICA show - Feb 21-22, 2009

For this show at least there was no traveling! It was held in Minneapolis at the convention center as part of the Pet Expo.

We showed Amadeus again - with very good results.... he got 9 finals out of 12 rings and was 4th best kitten in the show.  Some cat show pictures ....

 

Altoona IA CFA Show Feb 14-15, 2009

 Our grooming station

Bill working in the corner

 Mary Auth judging Amadeus

  His first final in the show - 4th best longhair kitten

 Brian Moser giving a final

 And Walter Hutzler giving him a final

 Our boy sitting and playing - he loved being on display! And we loved showing him....

Cat Show Number 2 - getting there....

We had thought about a trip to Maumee Ohio for a show but 11 hours of driving was just not sounding good so when my friend Theresa mentioned a show in Iowa, we opted for that...

Driving down to Altoona IA (next to Des Moines), we passed Clear Lake, IA - where "the music died" just over 50 years ago when Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Rudy Valens died in a plane crash in Feb 1959.  Just after that the snow started....


It took two hours to go the last 20 miles.... here the GPS shows 7 miles traveled in almost an hour....

 

But finally we did arrive and ventured out later to look for a restaurant and what a find! We happened on Alba Restaurant in Des Moines and went in - they told us we were in luck because they had been booked solid with reservations but a lot of people cancelled. It was just wonderful food!!

So after all that, we had the show on Saturday and Sunday - see next entry....

Cat show!

Now that kids are moved out - well mostly - no, actually two of them are here a lot of the time keeping tabs on how the refrigerator, washer and dryer and TV are doing They each have all of these things at home themselves so I suppose we should appreciate their concern.  And there are still a lot of things here that qualify as theirs - don't have room for it myself but don't throw it out kind of things.

BUT, now I try to make more time and room for my new babies - my cats. We breed Siberian cats, which we started with due to their lower allergen level that allowed the daughter who then lived at home to better tolerate them - in fact she now has her own Siberian.

This weekend we spent most of our days at a cat show here in St Paul. Pictures here  but here's one for you too of our little boy being judged - actually the judge was giving a commentary on Siberians in this picture while Amadeus watched the crowd.

The cat world can be a crazy place but we are trying to navigate it and keep our sanity. Further posts will probably tell how that's going....  

Just for the record, Amadeus, son of our cats Malina and Danya. You can see them all at Shadowheart Siberians.  So we are proud of him - he was the best Siberian kitten of four at the show.

Here he is with his ribbon too. 

Windows 7

I'm a total sucker for beta versions of programs - I just have to have the latest and greatest versions and all the fun bells and whistles that come with upgrades. Never occurs to me that I might mess up my computer with things that don't work. I've done lots of official beta testing where I had lots of bugs to report and specific tests to do.  So upgrading to the public beta of Windows 7 was really much less risky, its reported to be very stable. 

It took awhile mostly because I didn't realize that doing all the upgrades sent to me by Microsoft (which were waiting to be installed because I use my PC much less than my Mac) which took about a half hour to install did not have me ready for Windows 7. I still was missing the recently released Service Pack 1 for Vista. That took longer to install. So after a few hours of preparing, I was ready to go...

With no errors or problems, Windows 7 was installed with only one warning - that my joystick mouse was not compatible with its current drivers. I never use it so that didn't matter. It took overnight because by the time I actually got to the install I was ready for bed.

First of all, it was just a little disconcerting to see a blue screen, reminiscent of the "blue screen of death" but then from above there was this ray of light - like a ray of hope for this new operating system - the default background for Windows 7 at least so far. So I changed my background as blue screens just don't make me comfortable! 

So far - not one issue. I've looked at a few of the cosmetic changes and they are fun and nice. Programs I've tried have worked fine, even some very old ones.  Hope it continues and we can be done with all the talk about how horrible Vista is.... although I personally did not have many issues, although I hated the constant "are you sure you want to do this" reminders....

Phantom of the Opera in Las Vegas

No photos allowed during the show, but we bought the VIP tickets so we got to take pictures backstage...

Anthony Crivello who plays Phantom talked with us while we got to watch him take off his prosthetic face.... then posed for pictures with us.

Under the stage are all the props and special effects and the control room where they are all cued and operated. We got to see the Masquerade characters and many props and the wig room, as well as photograph the inside of the theater.

And then it was home again... but see my daughter's blog with her Phantom costumes at loettchen.livejournal.com

Here is my daughter in her Red Death costume which she designed and made herself.

See her other costume pictures at the link above or at http://travelsalongprecipices.blogspot.com/2010/07/colleens-new-phantom-of-opera-costumes.html