weekend update, aka rodin and soccer

friday night: watched camille claudel with evan. he's been planning this rodin weekend for a while, in which several friends get together for camille claudel and beer, then spend the following day at the philadelphia rodin museum. [aside: claudel was rodin's student and lover. she was enormously talented. she went mad, and died in an asylum. lots of sources say that she went mad because of rodin's treatment of her, or because of the stress of being a woman in a man's world (here she is compared to woolf and plath). i think that it is rather more possible that she was schizophrenic, and that, as often happens, the disease manifested itself in her early twenties. it was just coincidence that she happened to be with rodin at the time.] it was all good, except that evan neglected to get together the several friends, so it was just him and me and karl. but the beer was still consumed (yard's philadelphia pale ale for me, yard's india pale ale for him). and the wine, too (a 2001 sauvingon blanc that was really too sweet, but whatever. it had the alcohol).

saturday: we went to the rodin museum with evan, his new squeeze, and his friend maggie. because we did not get out of bed early enough, we went without fortification of coffee and breakfast. the tourguide was pretty good, but not fabulous. he reminded me of a tv self-help guru, what with the hair helmet and the too-tan-for-this-time-of-year complexion. we saw several of the sculptures that were in the movie, which was cool. after the museum, we wandered over to fresh fields/whole foods/the store that can't decide on one name and has to have two and got breakfast. except by that time it was lunch. i am not of the ilk that must have breakfast-type things for my first meal of the day. rather, i tend to enjoy foods based on the time of day (cereal in the a.m., sandwich at noon, something more substantial that mostly involves heat in preparation in the evening). so i had a salami, roasted pepper, and provolone sandwich. oh, and coffee. while we where there, i also picked up some pre-made yellowfin tuna (mmmmm, yummy) and some dill havarti. i love havarti, i think it's my favorite sandwich cheese, but i do find it frustrating that its buttery goodness is such that the slices stick to each other so well that getting a single slice is nigh impossible and in fact what i normally get is little chunks of varying thicknesses.

saturday night, we had semi-plans to go out with karl's brother and SIL. original plan: dinner and a movie. i like that plan, because i don't really like karl's brother and thus would rather do the obligatory hanging out with him in a place we don't have to talk (movie). but they want to come into the city for dinner at our local yummy pizza restaurant (do those people on the web site not totally look like authentic italians?). but since the local movie theatre isn't playing the movie we want to see, we decide on after dinner drinks instead. now, i'm all for after dinner drinks, except that, as previously mentioned, i don't really like karl's brother. however, the drinking ought to increase my ability to make nice, so it's still a workable plan. i have one request: that we go to some bar that is new (to us) and fun. i even make a list of possibilities, including both dives and posh bars, and bars with jazz or blues playing (last ditch effort to give myself something to do besides talk with the brother). but all these places are located a cab or trolley ride away from our dinner location. 4 possibilities as i see it: 1. have dinner at the pizza place, then drive back out to the 'burbs to find a movie theatre that's playing our flick. 2. have pizza for dinner then head to center city for a bar. involves cabbing or trolleying to dinner, then cabbing or trolleying again to drinks, then again to get home. 3. have dinner in center city (dispensing with the pizza idea), then drinks in walking distance. this involves only two cab/trolley rides instead of three. 4. have pizza for dinner, then go for drinks near there. convenient, transportation-wise, but not meeting my criterion for the drinks place being new and fun, since i've been to all the bars around there many a time. so brother doesn't want like option 1 because they want this to be "a night out in the city." brother doesn't like option 2 because of all the "complicated transport". doesn't like 3 because they want to eat specifically at this pizza place. so we're left with 4 because when brother and anyone else have a conflict, it always gets resolved in favor of brother. now, of course, it doesn't *really* matter where we go for drinks. they've all got the alcohol. it's the principle of the thing. and i don't understand how the brother and SIL can talk of wanting an evening "in the city" and then just want to have pizza and drinks in the university area where i didn't so much want to go, and that isn't any different from the places they could go out in the 'burbs. sigh.

sunday: as has become our routine, karl and i lay in bed on saturday morning and watched 2 episodes of old buffies. season 4, we're up to. we're only watching the ones that karl hadn't previously seen, which means the story jumps around a lot for me (didn't start watching until season 5). here is where i sing the praises of laptops and downloadable tv. [insert singing here] after buffy, we hauled ourselves out of bed to move to the livingroom tv, where we would be watching a pay-per-view everton/newcastle game with the brother. this is better--we can watch the game and not talk. anyway, everton won (yay!) thus pulling ahead of liverpool (arch enemy) in the table. there was much conflict (still is, actually) about one of the incidents in the game, where an everton player fouled a newcastle player, who went down, but the ref didn't stop play and the everton players didn't kick the ball out of bounds (thus stopping play--the sportsmanlike thing to do, the usual thing that is done) so play continued, thus allowing a newcastle player to foul an everton player within the penalty area, causing the ref to award everton a penalty kick, which they made, thus scoring the winning goal. anyway, the newcastle player that was fouled first is all up-in-arms about it, talking to anyone who will listen. he's filing a complaint with the league officials, to get the everton player punished (he claims he was fouled intentionally with aim to harm, which is a BIG NO NO in english football). he is, of course, completely ignoring the fact that earlier in the game, he himself had badly fouled the everton goalie, nearly kicking him hard in the stomach (he came so close that the everton goalie had a hole in his shorts where the newcastle player's cleats had ripped them). now, it's a big deal to foul any player, in soccer. but it's a mega-huge deal to do anything against a goalie. so. i think this newcastle player ought to shut his trap and be thankful that everton's goalie wasn't hurt.

after the tv game, we headed out to the field at drexel where the u.n.d.e.r.g.r.o.u.n.d s.h.a.k.e.s.p.e.a.r.e company beat penn's light opera company in soccer 3-0 in the Penn Arcane Theatre Cup. just me and karl and brother and a mutual friend. kicking around the ball and i twisted my ankle. i've never actually done that before with more than momentary effect. i mean, of course, i've stumbled and fallen before, and hurt my ankle, but it's always been okay after about a minute of sitting down. this time, i thought it would be the same, but today, 36 hours later, my ankle is still mighty swollen and painful. i probably shouldn't have gone riding yesterday after soccer.

which brings me to riding after soccer yesterday. rode katie, as is habit lately. she's a dark bay warmblood, 15.2-16 hands high, or so. she had a foal last june, and has been out of work for 1.5 years. so she's rusty on things like behaving well around others and doing what you tell her without taking off like a crazy horse. the child who owned her before apparently go bored with riding by the rules and took to just running around a course of fences as fast as she could. so katie thinks that's what she should do. she is being retrained to think otherwise. she's getting better, too. after riding, she was sweaty, but i didn't mind the hosing off/standing around in the sun waiting for her to dry routine because it was warm(ish) and sunny. at 5.15 i realized how late it was and had the annual thanksgiving for daylight savings time starting. i *loooooove* the immediate feeling of summer that i get right after the time changes and i'm not used to the extra hour of daylight yet.

sunday night involved tuna sandwiches with the dill havarti, on homemade (bread machine, i'm not really that domestic) two cheese bread (parmesan and double gloucester), followed by icing of the ankles (karl's was a bit swollen too, but from hitting the ball with great manly force, not from klutzily falling the wrong way) and more buffy in bed. buffy watched while in bed, not actual buffy in our bed. just so we're clear.

monday: of course, that immediate feeling of spring was significantly tempered when i woke up this morning to a blizzard. hello? mother nature? it's *spring*. i suspect she had way too much fun this winter with all the snowstorms and just doesn't want to give it up. though i'm not sure why, because the summer full of heat waves is right around the temporal corner, so she should be getting all excited about that.