Happy Halloween!

Per our annual Halloween tradition, Eric and I carved up some pumpkins this year.

Can you guess who did which one? I'll give you a hint: mine is the better one.

Yankee Doodle went to the symphony

Eric and I went to the symphony last night to hear Joshua Bell (and to try to get the Movers of Arabia out of our heads).

He was wonderful!

He was called back to the stage five times by the thunderous applause and finally agreed to do an encore. He said nothing - just raised his violin and launched into a piece in his typical highly animated fashion. Maybe a minute into his emotional performance it became clear: he was playing Yankee Doodle.*

This elaborate and at times gut-wrenchingly heartfelt rendition of Yankee Doodle went on for several minutes and afterward people erupted into even more thunderous applause; these people simply could not clap loud enough for Joshua Bell. I had the feeling that the audience sort of wanted to devour him whole. I didn't stick around for the special CD signing afterwards but I hope they had excellent security or Joshua's untucked black dress shirt was likely shredded from his "concert violinist bad boy" body before he was even fully seated in his chair.

"You know, he's making fun of us," Eric commented.

Yep. And we love it.


*This actually happens to be one of the songs that Emerson's musical "laptop" plays as well so, as it turned out, even the symphony was not a safe escape from horrible-baby-music-land.

In your head

Eric and I both regularly now sing the alphabet song in Spanish.

We do the numbers 1-10 as well.

It would be funny if it weren't so hard to stop.

I blame all these singing musical toys that Emerson plays with. These little ditties get played hundreds of times a day and they are all of them completely infectious.

This little sing 'n play guitar plays a song that both Eric and I sing almost constantly now: The Movers of Arabia. It's very catchy! And nonsensical. The lyrics are: "We are the movers of Arabia!" over and over. What does that mean? I have no idea! But I suspect that this toy might actually be a secret Defense Department project to start programming young minds early on the need for democratic reform in the Middle East.

Spider-Goats

Can't help myself - check out these goats who have climbed up a 160 foot dam wall on the Italian-Swiss border. Definitely scroll down to see the last picture of the goats on the dam wall that they have cleverly prevented me from copying and reposting here.

Have a great weekend!

Just saying

You know how, sometimes, if you are eating muesli that also has some larger multigrain flakes in it, when you are pouring the milk into it the milk hits the concave part of the flake and gets ski-jumped out of the bowl onto the counter, not just some of the milk but like ALL of the milk? Dude! Come on!

Of dogs and babies

This morning we walked 5k in Golden Gate Park to support local midwives and provide greater access to midwives for low income women. It was a neat little $50 walk in the park and got us up and out much earlier than usual, which was nice in that it made the weekend feel longer.

As we were walking through the park to the event we (of course) passed by a homeless man just waking up to start the day. We were maybe five yards past him when he suddenly yelled out, loudly, "Lasagna!"

Was this some new Italian expletive that I have been unaware of?

After a moment a dog trotted out of the bushes and went over to the man.

Not an expletive - just an awesome dog name.

Grace and grays

Over the last year and a bit I have learned to love my natural hair color (inspired by my desire to avoid the chemicals used to give my hair its 'natural' blonde highlights).

I thought it might be hard to get used to being a non-blond, and I was definitely worried that I would see a decrease in how much fun I have. But it turned out to be great! And I welcomed my natural hair color gracefully.

And then about five minutes later I made a very rude discovery: a gray hair. Maybe even more than one. I'm not telling.

You might point out that it is entirely possible that the gray hairs have been there all along and I just didn't see them because I was highlighting my hair. I would ask you to mind your own business and let me tell the story my way. This is a recent development that requires further consideration. I only have so much gracefulness to go around.

Others

I went to a BCG alumni event last night and chatted with my Wharton classmate and former BCG colleague Matt Kropp. It emerged through conversation that he has a son named...Emerson. I remarked on his good taste in names.

Matt shared with me a funny discovery he recently made when he posted a video of his 7 year old son Emerson Kropp on youtube: there's another Emerson Kropp out there. And the other one is 13 years old and one of three brothers comprising the boy band Kropp Circle. (The other brothers are Remington and Sebastian, so apparently their parents has uneven taste in names.)

My question: does this help or hurt Emerson's chances of being in a hugely successful boy band?

We may need to wait and see how well his hair grows out and if he eventually stops drooling so much.