Kristin Chenoweth at Carnegie Hall!

On Saturday night I was beyond excited to attend Kristin Chenoweth's "The Evolution of a Soprano" at Carnegie Hall! My friend Liz came with me and we had an amazing evening.

We arrived at the theater just in the knick of time, ran up many many flights of stairs to near the very top, and sat down just before Kristin walked on stage.

From there, it was a night filled with a combination of excellent music and silly antics. My favorite piece Kristin did was actually a cover of Dolly Parton's "Little Sparrow", accompanied by drum and guitar. It was just beautiful. 

A few other highlights from the evening:

• Kristin talking about some roles "I shouldn't have played", like Tuptim from The King and I. To get into character, she asked her friends to call her "Christy Chen". (One of the Asian American orchestra members behind her was laughing pretty hard during this story.)
• When they were setting up for "Little Sparrow", Kristin inadvertently sat in the guitar player's spot. When she noticed, and moved, her comment was "I was wondering why the spotlight wasn't on me! It was funny for a second but then..."
• There was a rendition of "Popular" that mimicked the way that the song is performed around the globe, with portions in Japanese, German, and "of course" Italian.
• Kristin singing "My New Philosophy" from You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I knew she had won a Tony for it, but had never actually heard (or seen) it! AND she brought out Andrew Lippa, who wrote the song and with whom she seems very close, to sing it with her! He was a fun performer, too.
  
• Speaking of guest performers... Kristin also brought out Deborah Voigt, and the two of them were hilarious together. They performed 2 songs. The first one was "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better" with a few lyric changes, and they cracked each other up so much that they had to stop singing at one point.
• The encore song was very cool. Nearly all of the lights dimmed out, and Kristin sang without a microphone.

It was a great evening. It goes without saying that Kristin has an amazing voice, and the energy and humor she brings made the performance that much more special. It was an excellent Carnegie Hall experience!

Kitty Update!

8 days ago today, I adopted the an adorable cat! She's a four year old Russian Blue mix, named Eos.

Awwwwww

I spent about a week and a half actively looking before finding Eos. At times the process felt like applying to college again; some of the places I looked at adopting required an application fee, short answer questions ("please describe your views on declawing cats"...), and references. I encountered people who were ready to just hand cats over, and others who seemed so overprotective that the cats they're watching will never find homes. For example, one woman I emailed with told me she didn't trust me enough to even meet cats because I didn't currently have a pet and a veterinarian to vouch for me and because "people around here go through cats like underwear."

Last weekend, I had two visits lined up. One with Pet Rescue in Putnam Valley, New York, and one on the Upper East Side in New York City.

On Friday night, two friends and I made the long drive out the Putnam Valley to visit with two cats. They both made a big impression - Squirrel for biting our hands (she was cute, but... ow), and Phoenix for being sweet, outgoing, and affectionate. I connected with Phoenix, but wanted to be sure that I was considering all options. So the next morning, we went into the city and met two sweet kittens. In the end though, the decision wasn't difficult - if anything, meeting the kittens only solidified it for me. I called Pet Rescue back, and was able to drive back for a pickup that evening.

So content! Purring away...

I chose the name Eos (spelled Ἠώς in the original Greek, according to Wikipedia), after the Greek goddess of the dawn. Eos' coat is a grey that's similar to the sky just at the beginning of dawn. I also wanted to choose a name that commemorates a new beginning for us together.

Sometimes I think she might not have any bones

Eos is four years old (approximately). Her humans abandoned her, and she was taken care of by Pet Rescue for about 6 months before I found her.

An avid reader

When I brought her home, Eos first found her "safe space" in the wooden frame of my box spring. As she became more comfortable, she started spending time on the bed, and then in the living room too. After a week, she's even ready to play with the occasional visitor:

Awwwwwww

Eos is affectionate and loves to be petted and scratched, but she's also calm and enjoys playing by herself with a toy (the catnip-filled banana is her favorite so far) or just taking catnaps. And, as you can tell from the pictures, she is absolutely adorable. <3 <3 <3

Sleepy Eos!

And on that note, goodnight blog readers :-)

Masks

My post for today comes courtesy of Shel Silverstein and his poem Masks.

When I was in high school English classes, I remember being very confused by the idea of "masks". We talked about metaphorical masks that people wear, hiding who they really are from others. I couldn't relate. Perhaps the authors were just making things up to write about, I thought. Or else English teachers liked to read more into works than was really there?

And then life happened, and one day, a few years ago, it made sense. And this (below) is now one of my favorite poems. I forget about it (and its lesson) too often. Here's to learning the lesson of Masks and finding other blue people out there.

A dress that Glitters like the stars

When I was younger, I read a book called Princess Furball. It's a Cinderella-esque story. At one point, the main character asks for three dresses: one as golden as the sun, one as shimmering as the moon, and a third as glittering as the stars. I always like the story - but I never knew how to get my dress that glittered like the stars.

And then I found out about shadowplaynyc, a company that prints dresses using images from the Hubble telescope. I love it, I love it, I love it!

Did I mention that I love this dress?
Have a fantastic week, all.

Sloth!

Hello blog readers! I am posting again, less than two weeks after my previous post! How crazy is that?

You can see my
newish apartment in
the background, too!

I have had a really crazy week. There were 2 nights that I stayed up working all night (and 2 subsequent nights when I crashed immediately when I came home.)

Today though, I had a nice, lazy Saturday. Slothful, even. And keeping with that theme, I wanted to show off my brand new sloth necklace!

Climbing sloth!

The lasercut design looks great (see a nice detailed image of the sloth from  the Etsy page, below.)
If I move my hair out of the way, you can even see the sloth "climb" up the necklace.  --->

Really, the only thing that I was worried about when ordering this was the size. On the Etsy page model, the sloth looks huge to me. So, for anyone else contemplating this sloth, or any of the other awesome designs by roconut, I hope seeing these examples is helpful.

This photo shows off my Christmas
tree, too! (Well "shows off" may be
too strong a term, but you know...)

Original Etsy photo of
Rococonut necklace

I'm always looking for clever new Kickstarter/Etsy/Fab types of games, jewelry, gifts, etc - let me know if you see something I would like. I've ordered several lately, so maybe this string of 2 posts will become longer?! We shall see.

Slothfully,
Kim

Decorating with KickStarter Rewards

I've been backing a lot of kickstarters lately, and a few have sent me backer rewards already.

This is one of my backer rewards from Meimei - A Beautiful Fish, which is a children's book in Chinese characters, pinyin, and English. I love the book, too!

Stories from Guatamala: Part III (Heading West!)

After visiting with Maria, we headed West the next morning, naively believing we could quickly jot over to Lago de Atitlan, given that it was only 110 kilometers away. Somehow, it took us all day.

Arriving in Antigua Guatemala for the first time.

A quick stop in Antigua to "switch buses" took awhile. I like the chair Niki's in that was a the hostel we waited at!

Hanging out in Antigua, waiting for our bus.

When we finally got our new bus, we circled Antigua filling it until we had 16 people (including one child who didn't have her own seat) on the bus. Then the bumpy, fume-y ride to Lago Atitlan began.

We were not prepared for the fumes and the bumps. Oh my. (Photo credit: Anika Huhn)

By the time we reached Panajachel, the skies over Lago Atitlan we getting pretty dark, so instead of spending time there we elected to take the boat across the lake without delay, to get to our night's destination of San Marcos.

Clouds gather over Lago Atitlan (Photo Credit, Yi-Hsin Lin)

The skies darkened and darkened... we added rainjackets, and then a tarp, in our efforts to stay dry as the boat hopped over the rocky lake.

It is getting wet and windy, and the boat is tearing across the lake. We keep leaving the surface of the lake and smacking into it again, hard. (Photo credit: Yi-Hsin Lin)

We're all trying to stay dry. It is partially successful. (Photo credit: Yi-Hsin Lin)

When we finally arrived in San Marcos, we scooted into the first hostel we saw, no questions asked... we found out later that it wasn't even the hotel we thought it was, but after all the traveling and rain, it didn't matter to us! After drying off, we ventured out for dinner.

The main street of San Marcos's tourist area, with a stream running down the middle

We had Indian food (there are so many non-Guatemalan food options in Guatemala!), celebrated Yi-Hsin's birthday, and unwound a bit.

Happy Birthday, Yi-Hsin!!! (Photo credit: Anika Huhn)

Then we headed back to our hostel and waited out the rain until morning.