Funny animal videos

Have you ever seen a bird do the moonwalk? It does it better than Michael Jackson. 🙂

Patches is a very unusual horse that reminds me of Mister Ed (from the TV show). Except that Patches creeps me out a bit. He likes to sleep in human beds, rides in cars, and enjoys hamburgers. That’s just not right. Horses eating meat?! I have a feeling Patches’ projected lifespan has been significantly shortened by his lifestyle.

Here’s how fiddler crabs try to attract mates:

The orangutan in this magic comedy act is pretty funny:

Watch what happens to a cat when it gets taped on Japanese TV:

Here’s a compilation of funny cat videos:

Do cats really land on their feet all the time? Apparently, yes, even when they fall while sleeping:

Reviews

Mosaic makes delicious food

We dined at Mosaic Cuisine & Cafe in Rockville this past Friday evening. The food was delicious and the service wonderful. Here are some of the dishes we had with our friends:

Events

BSO's Annual Donor Thank You Concert

Ligia and I attended the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra‘s 2007 Annual Donor Thank You Concert last night. It was held at Strathmore Concert Hall. Pete & Nicole, thank you for the tickets! It was simply amazing.

I realized two things during the concert:

The older I get, the more I appreciate classical music.
The BSO is very good.

Ligia and I both grew up listening to classical music. Ligia studied at music schools since the age of 6, and she finished the conservatory in 2004, after having studied voice and piano. Her appreciation runs much deeper than mine. She actually gets goose bumps while she listens to good music. It’s kind of funny. I can always tell when a piece of music is great by looking at her skin. If she’s got goose bumps, it’s gotta be good. Well, last night she practically broke out in goose bumps…

There was always a huge (and growing) stack of classical music records by our pickup player during my childhood. If I wanted music, I got Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Paganini, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, Handel, Strauss, Brahm, Vivaldi, Verdi, Rossini, Pacabel, Enescu, Porumbescu, Bizet — well, you get the point. I’ve always liked good classical music. But the older I get, the more I relate to it. It speaks to me. It resonates within my body, my soul, and my mind. I appreciate it on more levels. Never did I realize this more poignantly than last night.

We spent the first half on one of the upper levels, and we snuck down to the orchestra seats during the intermission. We felt a little guilty, but after all, it was general seating, and those seats weren’t being used. No point in letting great seats go to waste, right?

The BSO played Tchaikovsky. They started with the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin, then continued with Variations on a Rococo Theme, opus 33, and after the intermission, finished with Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, opus 64.

At Strathmore, photography isn’t allowed during performances. I was good and obeyed the rules. But before the show and during the intermission, I took out my 5D and 24mm prime lens, and took photos of the hall and of the public. Strathmore is quite beautiful. It’s got a modern design, quite different from traditional concert halls, and they’ve had to add floating, adjustable acoustic panels to the ceiling to make sure sound travels properly. They’ve done a good job with that, and the sound quality is pretty consistent between the upper and lower levels. I love the warm colors of the wood floor and panels. That, coupled with the open feel of the place, gives it a really nice atmosphere.

A highly unusual thing happened during the performance. Because of the severe rainstorm outside, the power went out for a few seconds right in the middle of the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony. The entire concert hall was pitch black, save for the red, glowing Exit signs. Do you know what the BSO did? They kept on playing right through the power outage as if everything was alright! They did not miss a beat! Now that’s professionalism! This also underscores one of the advantages of using acoustic instruments. No power outage can put them out!

You know what they say, right? Start strong, finish strong. Well, the BSO most certainly did that. We were on our feet by the end, giving the orchestra a standing ovation, along with everyone else. During the performance, Ligia and I kept looking at each other and smiling. Normally, my obsessive-compulsive mind keeps its manic wheels turning all the time. Even when I dream, I have parallel dreams, and I find myself half awake in the early hours of the morning, trying to force my brain to skip back to the more interesting dream… When I’m supposedly relaxed, tons of thoughts run through and I can’t keep still. Even when I want to think about nothing, I can’t. I’m telling you all of this because I managed to find clarity during the concert. There were long moments when the music passed right through me, clearing my mind. I could focus on just one thing at a time — on enjoying the music — and that was really something. I tell you, those moments are rare for me! What a concert! What a fantastic performance, especially during the symphony!

Places

Photos from the Alexandria photowalk

Last Saturday morning, Ligia and I met up with Keith McCammon and held our first DC area photowalk, as announced last week. Even though rain was predicted for that day, the weather was fantastic. We got there around 7:30 am and had a wonderful time walking on the docks and through the streets, photographing all things of interest to us.

Ligia carried my tripod for me. What a trooper! 😀

We received an amazing gift during our photowalk. We stumbled onto a really old home on Prince Street, built in the 1700s, called the John Douglass Brown House. As we were taking photos outside, the neighbors happened by, and we started talking. They were really nice and offered to introduce us to the owner of the house, Mr. Charles J. Reeder. He not only came out and started talking with us, but allowed us to come into the gated courtyard. We learned how he purchased the home, restored it, and made some additions to it.

While we snapped away at the amazing collection of fascinating things he had around the home and talked, I guess he saw something in us that engendered some trust, because he invited us inside and gave us a tour of his home. He does not normally do this, and he told us that as he let us in. I cannot even begin to tell you how many amazing old antiques he has in there, and how much he knows about each of them. My mind reels when I try to remember the experience. Thankfully I took plenty of photos. I’m not sure how many of them I’ll make public, because I do not want to invade Mr. Reeder’s privacy. Just because he allowed us into his home doesn’t mean he wants it shown on the internet. I’ll have to choose carefully what I publish online.

In the end, it worked out better than we could have imagined. If a larger group got together for the photowalk, I doubt we would have been able to visit inside Mr. Reeder’s home. This way, we formed a nice photowalking nucleus, and we’ll try to expand the group with future photowalks in the DC area. What a great start we had!