Thanksgiving it snowed, and it's been cold ever since. Winter is here to stay.
Thanksgiving dinner this year was with the extended family of a couple of my coworkers, which was a treat. They're extremely energetic and outgoing people, and I sometimes feel like a bit of a wet blanket by comparison.
Except for some time working Friday, we mostly spent the rest of the weekend at home.
I saw "Molière" last Tuesday at the Michigan Theater. One of the people I was with described it as a "French Shakespeare in Love"; the story is woven together from bits of his plays, and it explained the central theme of his work with an early romance. I thought it was great fun, and was inspired to go back and read "L'école des Femmes" and a couple other things.
We watched a little more "Buffy". The last couple episodes I've been watching with graph paper with minutes numbered down the left side, and I keep track of major scene changes, where the commercial breaks fall, etc. I'm just kinda curious how they put these things together. And it gives me something to do while I watch.
And Friday we watched "Les Demoiselles de Rochefort", which I thought was wonderful, though it's also ridiculous. It has a scene in the middle where all the dialog is suddenly in rhyming Alexandrine couplets (why? no idea), a nice coincidence with all the recent Moliere reading.
And then Saturday I watched Truffaut's "Agent de Poche", which I also liked. Like a lot of his movies it's more a collection of loosely related little gags, but I enjoy it that way. I should just go through all his movies some time. The UM library seems to have an excellent DVD collection, actually, which I should take better advantage of.
Today after work Sara and I met to see local composer Evan Chambers present some selections from "Old Burying Ground", a big work of his that's premiering at Hill next week, based on texts taking from gravestones. For some reason I had low expectations for the idea, but the songs he did were lovely, and he performed them really well (just singing with his wife playing piano). It reminded me of Sara's dad's singing. And it was great to hear it in a small room with a small audience and the chance to ask questions (a chance I took advantage of).