My cousin Jessica came to visit for the day. Of course, on the day she and her friends come to town, all Florence museums call a mandatory staff meeting and close all exhibits for the morning. We walked up to the Piazzale Michelangelo instead, had coffee and pastries at my local cafe and ate gelato in a famous gelataria... all before the Academia opened and she could meet David.

In my yellow dress ready to walk to the Lady Macbeth opera...Russian.


So I think there should be a rule. Don't open your opera with along aria about being bored. It's rather... boring.

As I tend to do, I left at intermission. Three and a half hours of some woman being bored in Russian was too MONUMENTAL of a work for me. My yellow dress and I went and had a drink at a nearby hotel instead.

missing my camera cord but news none-the-less

When you receive an email with the title "HCM ilmoittautuminen" I do believe that can be loosely translated as "you have just signed up for the August 16 Helsinki marathon, so we advise you to take up running again".


Oh yes, first thing... tomorrow.

More photos from the gallery opening

1. Follie! Follie! (folly!, crazyness!,
what a terrible idea!)




















2. the moment before the Sempre libera
section begins

21 grams... at least

I had Kelly and five other friends over for dinner two nights ago, and, like the wonderful woman she is, Kelly brought her USB drive filled with pictures of my performance last week. I'm singing E' Strano! E Strano! from La Traviata. I love singing that aria maybe even more than Caro Nome because it's filled with changing emotions: breathlessness, mocking, worry, self pity, love, and so it gives lots of opportunities to be the acting lover that I am. Plus, I find I can get deep into the role much more easily than many of the other arias I sing. A little bit of tragedy always helps me along I guess.






I love this photo because it looks like the camera caught the song leaving my mouth. It reminds me of the experiment Dr. Duncan Macdougall did in 1907 when he weighed patients during the hours of their deaths to calculate the weight of their departing souls. Apparently our souls weigh about 21 grams. So what about a song? Sometimes I feel like they weigh a lot, maybe that's why when I finally let them out in a performance of rehearsal I feel such a high, and why when I'm sick and can't song I feel heavy and lethargic and generally icky.

I am a smart girl... I keep telling myself this, but in spite of my self-encouragement it still took me over an hour to figure out how to get the email subscription box to appear to the right of your screen. So "stupid is as stupid does", or shall we blame the internet connection and feedburner's not-so-easy-to-navigate site?

I finally did it though, and now the correct little widget appears on my blog, and I promise this time you can subscribe and you'll receive an email whenever I post something new.

Now, to figure out how to get rid of the previous and incorrect subscription button... my computer and/or blogger is ignoring me.

Ah well, I'll think about that tomorrow. As I sit with my laptop by the glass wall (where the internet connection is the strongest) I have a nice view of my garden (fence goes in today or tomorrow if all goes as planned) and the new addition to the wall. You can see the new Florentine stones at the top. My hydrangeas are just about to bloom too, and you can see a tiny bit of pink on some of the bud clusters (how thoughtful of them to bloom in pink instead of blue, since blue would just NOT go with the raspberry wall and pink roses!).

Had a nasty visit from the landlord's wife today. Wow, now I know why he looks a little hen-pecked! Landlords and land-duchesses are the one downside of renting here in Florence. I thought this time I was going to go a year without wishing I was going to be in one place long enough to buy my own home. No such luck. She seemed unhappy with life in general, I, unfortunately, am part of that unhappy life and so she was unhappy with me too.

I've been told she will not extend my lease after this year and so, a little (okay, A LOT) sad we all went on a walk to the park.




Dave, as you can see, now walks very well off the leash. Puccini, has found a spot he likes too.



Walks outside put things back in perspective, and heck, maybe something good will come of having to leave my little Eden...

Meanwhile I'm off to sing La Rondine and Turandot...