webcowgirl

Yesterday was supposed to be Good Weather (this means sunny and very cold), and J was planning to do some sort of strenuous walking with djm, so I decided to head to Walmer Castle with wechsler. Why Walmer? Well, first, it was nearby (within 2 hours); second, it looked cool; third, it was English Heritage and thus free thanks to the Christmas present irrationalrobot arranged for me. It was pretty neat, I thought, nice and old looking, though I think I would have preferred to have made a day of it by seeing the other coastal castles nearby, all accessible via an attractive looking cycling network (better for the summer, though). We got very good weather though it was actually a bit too cold for me; I wound up hiding in the castle's cafe to keep warm. However, the food was excellent so it wasn't such a bad place to hide, and boy, was it scenic! Pictures here. I was also given a new life's ambition: Lord Warden of the Cinques Ports, in short, the person who's official residence is Walmer. Last notable title holder: the Queen Mother. It's ambitious, but, hey, unlike the current Lord Warden, I'd be willing to live onsite, which apparently would make the cabbie who drove us there happy.

Then (after a nap and then a large cup of tea and a train ride) it was back to London, home, and then Cafe Koha for the opening night of the Showoff Piano Bar. It was packed already when we showed up but we got a seat against the wall and in the midst of the West End Whingers' crowd, and after half an hour or so Amy showed up. We made it through two bottles of wine and I sang three songs; "I Enjoy Being A Girl," "Maybe This Time" and "Dance 10, Looks 3" (a duet with a gentleman of about 55 who had all the lyrics memorized already). I think it was a really good time and I'll be first in line March 27th - and I'll practice singing so I'm ready. Now, you might have thought I was being vain by bringing a second outfit to wear, but no, I just worried about freezing on the way into town - and then melting when I got in the club. And then, well, the club turned out to be a nice temperature inside but I thought a nicer dress was still called for, and there it was in my bag, so I changed clothes in the middle of the evening.

OOOH it is so lovely and sunny today and I just want to nap but I want to enjoy the weather AND do some writing! I've got two shows to review but I also need to prep for my presentation to the British Computing Society's "Software Testing Special Interest Group" on Thursday ... what's a girl to do? I've also got the incredible burden of not having a book to read right now. I just finished Cold Comfort Farm and absolutely loved it; I saw myself both in the heroine (wants to fix everyone's lives) and the screwed up family she's living with (very emotional and tend to assume every action or word someone makes is somehow directed "to" them). I'm guessing Master and Margarita should get popped back in my bag now.

I'm tired after doing not much - cooking for an hour and a half, playing a game of "Bell Bottom Bad Asses on the Mean Streets of Funk," washing some sweaters and dying my hair (must take shower!).

So I'm entertaining myself with some incredibly juvenile humor I followed from the bottom of a different link booklectic fed me. And I'm laughing hard, which is pretty appropriate given how tired I am. (irrationalrobot, you will love this.)

I'm also listening to songs from YouTube in preparation for tomorrow's Right Cockney Knees Up in Bethnal Green. Knees Up Mother Brown, My Dad's a Dustman ... and "Doing the Lambeth Walk." The video below even has "Pearly Kings" in it, something I'd never heard of two months ago. It's not Sorry Charlies, but I think it's will be a great night out. (I guess of all the songs I've heard this one is my favorite, but, be warned, it will stick in your head for days!)

"Your day breaks, your mind aches,
You find that all her words of kindness linger on,
When she no longer needs you.
She wakes up, she makes up,
She takes her time and doesn’t feel she has to hurry,
She no longer needs you.
And in her eyes you see nothing,
No sign of love behind the tears cried for no one,
A love that should have lasted years."

Et cetera. I managed to sing a horrid version of ABC's "Poison Arrow," a similarly mutilated "People Will Say We're in Love" (freaking intro!), a passable "Dear Prudence," and a pleasing "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover." I did not manage to sing "Sukiyaki" or "88 Lines about 44 Women" or "When You're Good to Mama," but since I got to dance with djm while julietk was singing "It's A Sin" (and I had buttered popcorn), all my failures will ultimately be forgotten "like tears in rain" and replaced with memories of fun, like watching shadowdaddy do back up guitar (with the Guitar Hero axe) for jhg's "Won't Get Fooled Again." (And do people really not know "As" was originally by Stevie Wonder?)

Got pissed off in a Chinese food restaurant (David Wong's Chinese Restaurant) near the Tooting Broadway tube station when they came back and told us our order wasn't hitting their per person minimum and we needed to get appetizers to flesh the order out. I was furious and walked out, and then they stuck shadowdaddy and wechsler with the food I'd ordered before they said we needed to ordered more and I decided to leave rather than pay for food I wasn't hungry enough to eat. Fuckers. Like it isn't criminal enough that they're charging $4 for a plate of plain rice.

The three of us went earlier to see Yobi, the Five Tailed Fox at the Barbican as part of the Korean Film Festival (animated movie day). It had a lot of sloppiness to the translation and occasionally weak animation (mostly bad proportions), but it was cute and the story was very interesting and at the very end it did something I really wanted to see happen, which was that it totally slipped off of the Western story telling plane and did some freaky assed stuff that had jack to do with my culture and had absolutely no explanation at all and was totally cool. Killer bunny spirits feeding soul-birds in their little cages, that rocked.

Oh yeah, and I missed my sister tonight, because I wanted to hear her singing some Stevie Wonder. I really need to give her a call.

I have been bubbling over with music for the last week, so Worthy Opponent and I finally went to Julia's to sing tonight. ( My set was ... )

This last week both Worthy Opponent and I have been feeling like we're very short on friends. I've been feeling a profound disconnect from the people that I had considered important parts of my Circle of Friends, and I haven't been able to figure out why. Is it my new job? I've also kind of had a general restlessness lately, a sort of "is that all there is" brought on by night after night of doing not much. I'm not really sure what to do about this. Maybe it's just cabin fever. I'm guessing Thanksgiving will be a big pick-me-up, but I probably need to start "expanding the circle" again. Of course, I could just go have a baby or something and that would keep me too busy for any of these sorts of issues for a few decades.

Last night left me drained and way behind schedule, seeing that it's 11:30, I've been out of bed for half an hour, and I haven't had breakfast yet.

1. Eat, do dishes.
2. Clean front yard. Plant in back yard if there's time. Shower.
3. Go downtown. Lunch? Get drivers licence renewed. Get sheet music from library.
4. Movie (Chow Yun Fat Meets Brownie Girl at the Harvard Exit).

Then home ... I have no idea what's happening tonight although I hope I'm going to play some games at my brother's house while Worthy Opponent is playing softball.

Update! Well, Rebecca called about going out to lunch, so I guess the list stops at "do the dishes" and "shower." See you later!

We went to Sorry Charlie's tonight and I remembered why it was such an awesome place. Working with Howard after so long with a karaoke machine is a little like having sex with a real person after spending a little too much time with a Hitachi Magic Wand. You have a routine down, but Howard has his own ideas about what's going on and the "rules" have gone out the door. Mysteriously, I got up to sing immediately after Howard's break (which he was on when we arrived), and I was worried that I was going to get Mean Howard when I decided to sing a tune from Cabaret instead of Chicago. He put his hand on the book (on "Razzle Dazzle," a somewhat dull song) and said, "So, are we or aren't we doing this?" But he went with it and did "Two Ladies," which I kind of flubbed (it is a song for three people after all - I did little falsetto voices for the "ladies"), but afterwards he was all smiles and good words and wanted to know what else I knew. I picked "Cry Me a River," the old Sea Wolf standard ("like Julie sings it"), and we danced a tight little dance together on it, him riffing off me, me riffing off him. I got really emotional toward the end (the song just does it to me), and the audience was very responsive. But the incredible thing was how effusive Howard was. "You were great! What is your name again? Spell that for me." It made me hate myself for not having been in there since Alisa moved back to Russia.

We spent the next hour nursing our drinks and pouring through songbooks, and I suffered as not one but two people sang "Summertime" well enough to make me glad I hadn't wasted its charms on my own little self. Finally it was a quarter after one and Worthy Opponent was chomping at the bit, so between yet another new arrivals songs I went up to say goodbye to Howard. "You must sing with Civic Light Opera and at the Village," he said to me. I was perfectly incredulous and told him he had to stop flirting with me like that, my voice isn't all that good (especially considering what the brunette driving the Falcon sung like ... I'm sure Worthy O would have hitched a ride with her given half a chance). And he said, "Oh no, you really can sing."

Gosh, shucks, I can't believe what he said is true, but it still makes me feel all happy that he said it. Am I really not ever going to get to go back?