Thanksgiving (yes, I'm way behind in my writing)

It was a lovely Thanksgiving weekend. Omaha cooked like a demon, preparing a meal for a mere five people. Storm was with her mother, and we had only two friends over, but still-- a 16 pound bird, rolls, stuffing, yams, the whole of it all. It was pretty good.

Friday was even better-- I did nothing. I mean nothing. I think I played video games the whole day. Every once in a while I need some downtime, and this was a fairly nice day to do it. And that was fine, because Saturday was excessively busy.

Painting the walls.

It was an astonishingly productive morning Saturday at the Villa Sternberg. With just Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I living out the turkey leftover apocalypse, the house felt empty and quiet, but we had a lot to do today. The turkey stock I'd made last night was in the refrigerator to separate, but it would have to wait: we had bathrooms to paint.

The upstairs has two bathrooms-- one for Omaha & I, and one for everyone else. The shower in ours is a teeny tiny closet of a thing, whereas the main bath has an extravagance of floor space. Omaha and I had always wanted our shower expanded, so we decided to rotate the main bathtub and expand the master showerstall in the process. We've had contractors come in to do the framing, plumbing, and so forth, but we said we'd do the painting over the Thanksgiving weekend.

It was actually a lot of fun. I did the ceiling in one, then Omaha and Kouryou-chan came in behind me and did the walls while I tackled the ceiling in the other. I'm grateful I remembered my safety goggles, which were dangling on the power washer in the garage, because a few times paint did drip onto my face. I wore a bandana over my hair and a camping headlamp to give myself some light, and it worked pretty well. Painting isn't all that difficult; you just have to care. With rollers for the walls and ceiling, and a brush for the corners, we had everything done in less than two hours.

We had turkey sandwiches (again!) and then headed out to our next event: Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Kouryou-chan had an assignment from her art teacher: attend a public performance. While she's been to plenty of little shows in the past, including local favorites Vixy & Tony, Uffington Horse, and Sooj, as well as the Seattle Gay Men's Chorus annual shown, Omaha and I decided to take her to her first rock concert: Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

I've actually never been inside Key Arena. I wasn't aware of just how small the place was. It's tiny! Then again, it's primary purpose was as a basketball arena, so I guess it doesn't have to be that big. When I saw the stage, I realized just how much this was going to be a light show: there were six cages hung from the ceilings and elevated platforms at the back of the arena.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra isn't a rock band: you're not going to watch people play their art. You're going to watch performers perform work written and assembled by commercially-oriented craftsmen of the highest caliber; this is a production-oriented show. There are two TSO's-- one for the east coast, one for the west, and they perform their Christmas shows every year for two months-- and make most of their cash in that time. Every once in a while, the original line-up (which is also the line-up for the ancient prog-rock band Savatage) tour together in the "off-season" to present new material to fans who remember TSO before it became a Hollywood production.

The first half of the show featured a deep-voiced narrator standing in front of a microphone between pieces from their album The Lost Christmas Eve. Three guitarists, two keyboards, drums, a line-up of eight backup vocalists, a ten-member string section, and an electric violinist. Strobes, lasers, smoke, fire, sparks, the whole kit and kaboodle of a modern sensory overloading rock show.

My one disappointment was that only two guitarists were given even brief solos. The violinist would continue to strum her instrument even at times when it was obvious she had nothing to do, which was terrible form-- it led to the suspicion that she wasn't actually contributing anything at all, and her instrument was tuned such that it sounded like just another electric guitar.

Kouryou-chan thought it was very loud, it being her first, but she was energized and a little exhausted by it all, especially by the flamethrowers in the back of the auditorium. I was impressed with the pace of technology; the servos on those lights are fast, the strobes are fully tunable both in speed and color, and the positioning amazingly precise. Timothy Leary, later in life, explained how "the light show" of stained glass was the first attempt to routinize a psychedelic experience, and this show was a crowning example.

We drove home exhausted.