Family, Drama, and Beautiful Singing

I need to start off on a sad note…  On Sunday, October 16th, my grandma on my mom’s side passed away at the age of 94.  She lived a full life, had a welcoming spirit, and has been a memorable, inspiring figure to so many, including me, my parents, and my sisters and their families. Grandma, you are, and will be missed!

 
The funeral afforded us that unplanned time to celebrate her life and be with our close family up in Lansing this past week.  It was a good reminder of the importance of building and supporting the family in our lives and recognizing the loving bonds of relationships that allow those families to grow and prosper.

Pardon the rough transition, but Saturday evening at the opera gave us a tragic glimpse of how those family bonds can be occluded by feuding and conflict.  Through the creative minds and talented performers of the Lyric Opera, Aimee and I took in the first of our 5 operas this season in what I’m deeming our “Opera Experiment”.  Playing on Saturday was Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.  Susanna Phillips was spectacular and, as the only real female role, shined heads above the rest of the cast.  The drama was ever-present on stage though the music itself, an archetype of the bel canto Italian style, never led you too far away from “pretty” melodies and contented rhythms.  From the Lyric’s website…

In Scotland, Lucia and Edgardo are breathlessly, desperately in love. But their two clans are bitter rivals, so Lucia’s villainous brother Enrico sets out to quell his young sister’s romance. And he deploys every devious device he can muster, including lies, forgery, and finally the false revelation of Edgardo’s infidelity.  Little wonder that Lucia is mentally crushed and destroyed, driven to madness and murder before she dies of a broken heart. 

Turns out that wasn’t the only tragedy on Saturday night as Notre Dame got outplayed by USC and lost miserably.  Avoiding that depressing spectacle, we favored the Halloween Party at Megan’s apartment instead.  We showed our creative spirits and attended, dressed up, as it were, as opera patrons.

Aimee also sang a wedding on Saturday afternoon at OSP before getting on with the rest of that night.  Then on Sunday morning, I played at the 10am accessibility mass (as I have every Sunday since the beginning of August) but this time accompanying my lovely wife.  Later it was off to Best Buy where I ordered this:  the new Canon PowerShot S100.  If it’s anything like the S95, it will be an amazing camera!  Pictures will surely be posted.

This brought us to brunch at Stax in Little Italy. I had the blueberry pancakes with black pepper bacon and Aimee got the brisket hash with egg whites (pictured below).  All in all, I was pretty impressed with the ambiance, service, and food.  The $5 orange juice was steep, but delicious. 

And for a Crowley picture, here’s a recent one of her perfecting the puppy dog eyes.  In this case, I think she was pining for some cheese (definitely not a mushroom; she demonstrated that she shares our abhorrence for the fungi earlier this week):

We closed out the weekend back at Old St. Pat’s with mass at 5 (more singing!) and a leisurely dinner at Greek Islands.  It was a great way to wind down the weekend and get ready for the week ahead.  Back to Austin!!