Memorable Day Weekend

Wow! What a weekend! Where to begin...

The weekend started out fabulously on Friday night. We had To Kill a Mockingbird at home from netflix and I fell asleep watching it. (I ended up finishing it on Saturday morning.) I had niether seen nor read the story before. I don't know how I could have gotten through jr high or high school without at least seeing it in some literature class. The characters are all fabulous: Atticus Finch(Gregory Peck), the single father of two and lawyer to those who cannot afford one. Scout and Jem, his two kids, ever so smart and yet quite innocent. Dill, their new friend who spends the summers with their neighbor, his aunt. (I think he must have been based on Truman Capote). And what a surprise Robert Duvall as the young, retarded Boo Radlee.

It's such a beautiful story of giving and acceptance and simplying doing what is "right". I find it amazing that it was written in the fifties, about a time in the thirties, and is still contemporary to this day, in 2006! Although the atmosphere is not the same today, and racicsm and classism are not as overt as they once were, but when you scratch the surface, its not hard to find it.

We also spent a lot of time working around the house, as well. J cleaned out the storage closet, again, made some terrifically awesome oatmeal cookies and prepared for a Saturday night picnic at the opera and a Sunday BBQ with the Connors. Meanwhile, Kyle worked her magic in the yard, pulling Jades, chopping the palm/yucca thing in the corner, and planting many of the plants that we used to have in pots on the porch of the old place in the inner sunset.

Saturday night, we went downtown to see Madame Butterfly. It was the first performance by the San Francisco Opera to ever be simulcast live. The projected the opera onto a big screen with terrific sound in the lawn out into the civic center plaza in front of City Hall (where we got married ;)) The performance was absolutely spectacular. Butterfly and Pinkerton meshed quite well together...their voices complemented each other beautifully. Furthermore, the image on the screen was crystal-clear, as was the sound. We packed another spectacular picnic of wine, cheese, salami and pasta salad, with strawberries for dessert.

When the sun went down over city hall, and the opera started, something or someone woke Cobalt up and he stayed up and stayed awake for the entire opera. We wondered to ourselves if it wasn't his grandmother, as Butterfly was one of her favorite roles. He only started to fade towards the end, during the musical portion of the night when Pinkerton returned and Butterfly waited up. At that point, daddy and he went over to play on the playground.