Sleeping Beauty, Take I

To follow up on my last entry... I took myself out to the ballet on Friday night. I couldn't persuade anyone to come with me -- all were either not into ballet or out of town. But that was fine. I got dressed up in my blue-and-brown 70's style dress and my brown boots and went downtown.

The ballet was Sleeping Beauty, not at all one of my favorites. The problem with it is 1) that a lot of it seems kind of random, both in terms of plot events and choreography, and 2) (a more dire problem) the choreography does not at all live up to the magnificent musical score. But, an outing to see the ballet is generally better than no outing at all, and it is one of the grand, full-on ballets with (as mentioned above) wonderful music. So I decided to go get myself a rush ticket and ended up in the back of the orchestra -- not bad!

Now, this is the second time I've seen Boston Ballet, and they've once again pleasantly surprised me. My favorite ballerina in the company (Erica Cornejo) was dancing my favorite role (Bluebird), which is the role I danced back when I was 14, when we did the Sleeping Beauty. Aurora and the Prince were also pretty good, except the dancer who was doing Aurora was having a bad-balance day, which is really really bad when trying to do the excruciating balances in the Rose Adagio (I think only my friend J from San Diego knows what I'm talking about here). I loved Carabosse (the evil fairy), and if I could, I would love to dance the role of one of her cronies. So overall, a great experience. I'm actually going back next weekend with a friend of mine (who couldn't come this weekend because she's a grad student and has finals this coming week).

In other news, I went to my favorite Saturday-morning yoga class yesterday, and I'm surprisingly sore; I think I might be getting some of my leg muscle back! Running (okay, jogging) this morning was pretty hard because my entire body felt weird and my legs felt like lead. What else? Went to a Pac-10 young alumni event yesterday afternoon and met up with a friend of mine at my fav local bookstore/coffeeshop today. Shared a chocolate-raspberry scone. Mmmm.... Even read a little science!

Evening Stroll in Boston Common

Boston Common in the springtime...
I went to the ballet yesterday, and because I got rush tickets, I had to get there 2 hours before the performance and therefore had time to kill in between getting the ticket and the show itself. Well, I walked around Boston Common and took a photo of one of the beautiful blooming trees and then headed to a Starbucks to read a little. Details about the performance may follow in a subsequent blog entry.

:)

I'm currently in the Bay Area with friends and family. What a beautiful weekend to be home. I went for a run this morning, and I was enjoying the warm sunshine and all the fragrant blooms. So corny! Haha. I only wish I'd remembered my camera so that I could post a photo, because it's been a while since I've done that! Okay, hopefully for the next entry...

Recommended Reading

This bit about stress and sadness isn't news to anyone I'm sure, but things like this are worth reading in various forms:

http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/04/stress_and_sadness.php

Pesach

Pesach sameach :) I went to a seder today, organized by a friend of my mom's from school. It was nice to go out and meet people, and also to practice my Hebrew. The crowd was pretty mixed! I ended up talking to a first-year physics grad student on my left (Stanford undergrad, grew up in Bay Area, woohoo!) and a 60-year-old Israeli construction contractor who's lived in the US for the past 21 years on my right. Food was really good, dessert was awesome!

On another note, I've had this weird twitch in my right upper back for the last two days. Anyone ever experience that? It's kind of annoying, and it makes concentrating at my desk nearly impossible.

Yoga

I had missed a couple weeks of yoga when I finally got to go to a class on Wednesday, which was just in time, because the recent big change in my life hit on Thursday. So glad I'm back at it. My body really feels different when I do it. Plus, it helps me get closer to relaxing my mind, although I still have a very long way to go on that. Well today I went to my favorite Vinyasa yoga class. Aaah. Now I'm watching Barefoot Contessa and am motivating to work on my lab meeting presentation.

On another note, it seems like we're getting into rain season here. Unfortunately, the rubber of my J Crew Wellies cracked! I couldn't believe it. I'll have to take them in to a J Crew, where they will fix them, but I probably won't get to that until next weekend. I guess I'll have to walk this week in my snow boots . I'll probably look pretty funny ;)