Rock Star

Hey All! I'm sitting in our living room watching Brenda rock-out on a plastic guitar. She is my own personal guitar hero. Brenda had her second to last rehearsal today for The Rake's Progress. Its a good show with a lot of great singing (Brenda was her usual magnificent self). There aren't any pictures up on the Oper Frankfurt website yet, but there will be soon. They are going to make a little video about the production, too. I'll let you know when it's available.

It's hard to believe that today is my seventh day in Frankfurt. We've been busy so its gone fast. Last Thursday, I went to Frankfurt's Grüne Soße (green sauce) Festival. Florian was performing and he was kind enough to get me a ticket. I got to try seven different types of green sauce (a famous Frankfurt food) which is made of seven different herbs and some other stuff. Obviously I'm not expert, but I can tell you that it tastes good. The festival takes place over eight days. There are seven different contestants each night, and the winners from each night compete on the eighth day to crown the winner of the winners. There is a comedian that hosts the whole thing. It really helped me get back into a German mindset.

I finished my paper on Friday and now I can finally put my first year of law school behind me (and stop complaining about it to you). On Saturday I turned another year older and Brenda and I had a great day celebrating. We went out to coffee with the McCowns and then went and saw the Avengers. We highly recommend it if you're into superhero movies. On our walk home we took a couple of photos:

 A sunny day in Frankfurt.

Brenda has the next two days off from work so we'll be enjoying a little free time. The occupy Frankfurt people are protesting for the next four days, and since the European Central Bank is right in front of the opera house, it's especially nice that Brenda won't have to go to work for a couple of days. It will still be happening Friday, though, so Brenda and I'll both get to experience it then.

I hope you're all having a great week, and I'll talk to you next Tuesday!

Together again

Hey All! I arrived in Frankfurt a few hours ago and I am doing my best to stay awake. It's almost 12:30 PM Germany time (5:30 AM central time) and it would be good if I could stay up for 9 more hours. That'll never happen. Brenda and I usually force our guests to stay awake to get over jet lag more quickly, but I am always too weak after a long flight to resist a comfortable pillow. Brenda is at rehearsal right now so she isn't here to stop me from resting my eyes for a few minutes.

My tests are done (yipee!) and, after I finish up a paper, I can put the first year of law school behind me. I'm looking forward to spending the next few months taking it easy and enjoying time with Brenda. When I head back to law school in the fall I will be much closer to Brenda. I was accepted into a study abroad program in Hamburg, Germany for the fall semester which means that Brenda and I will only be a train ride away from one another.

Brenda's opera opens a week from Sunday. There haven't been any photos taken of the production yet, but I'll let you know when they're up on the website. I'm really looking forward to the premiere.

My eyelids seem to be getting heavier so I had better wrap this up before I fall asleep on my keyboard.  Maybe a shower would wake me up. In any event, I hope you all have a great week and I'll talk to you next Tuesday!

two down, one to go

Hey All! It's still finals week. The folks that run the law school are nice enough to give us two weeks for our exams so we have more time to study. I had my second exam yesterday. It was a four-hour essay exam about civil procedure. After that class I can tell you a little bit about where you can sue someone, but if you want any answers you'd better ask soon. I can feel everything I learned over the semester starting to fade away. Don't worry, I'll get to relearn all of it when it comes time to take the bar.

While I've been busy studying and taking tests, Brenda took a short trip to Bordeaux, France. She has several friends singing in a opera there right now, and since she had a few days off from rehearsal she went to visit them. She told me that she had a great time. She'll be returning to Bordeaux to do some singing of her own next year.

Brenda and I are both counting down the days until we see each other again. I fly out a week from today, and I can't wait. I can't think about that too much, however, because I need to study for my impending Criminal Law exam. It's a multiple choice exam which I am very thankful for. I've left my last two essay exams with headaches. All I'll have to do for this exam is fill in bubbles. That sounds much more relaxing.

Brenda and I will definitely post a blog entry next week. Hopefully it will be on Tuesday, but that might be difficult because I will be leaving on a jet plane and Brenda will be singing for a birthday party. It'll happen at some point and until then I hope you have a great week!

Finals

Hey All! I'm a day late and a dollar short. Actually, thanks to my student loans I'm way more than a dollar short. It must be a common problem because President Obama was in Iowa City today talking about it. I'm afraid I didn't go hear him speak. I hope he doesn't take it personally. It's just that I'm busy studying for finals, and I don't like large crowds of people. Several of my classmates went, though, and I'm sure they said "hi" to him for me.

Finals are here. I think finals are both exciting and anxiety inducing. They are exciting in the sense that I finally get to put all the pieces together from each class and see the big picture. They are anxiety inducing for obvious reasons. My first exam was yesterday, and I felt good about it. Of course, that doesn't mean anything thanks to the curve. I have two more exams and a 30-page paper to finish before I can fly off to Germany.

Speaking of Germany, my wonderful wife has been very busy with rehearsals lately. It sounds like things are going fine with the rehearsal process other than a few people getting sick. Brenda has also been rehearsing for a party (a birthday party, I believe) in honor of the former mayor of Frankfurt. I think that's a few weeks off. In fact, it may not happen until I'm in Germany. Maybe Obama will be there. I could apologize for missing his speech. Come to think of it, I'm not invited to the former mayor's party. The President and I just can't get our schedules to line up.

Well, I should probably get ready for bed. I'm looking forward to a night filled with dreams about Civil Procedure. I hope you all have a great week, and I'll talk to you next Tuesday!

with fragrant odours and with notes of cheer...

Hello everybody! Well, it's that time of the semester again! Finals are drawing near, and Chad is buried under a mountain of case books, so I'm doing my wifely duty and taking over the blog for the week! His first exam is a week from today. However stressful the exam period will be, I'm personally happy it's here, because that means Chad will soon join me in Germany! In about three weeks from now, he should be completely stress-free, perhaps enjoying an aperitif on our lovely balcony! Speaking of our balcony, we have a new addition growing on it! Last spring we were delighted by the green vines that decorated the posts, but they apparently grew a lot during the summer, and now there are little purple flowers blooming! I believe it's wisteria, and once they're in full bloom, our balcony will be so colorful!

The current state of our wisteria.

I have been busier than usual this past week, since I'm involved in two shows at the moment. As Chad mentioned, I started rehearsals for a new production in Frankfurt called The Rake's Progress, and have been in rehearsal pretty much every day for that. I'm also still doing performances of the Magic Flute, and since the cast has changed, I've been rehearsing with the new cast members. Yesterday I was literally running between rooms at the opera house, going between one rehearsal and the other! These operas were written more than 150 years apart, so you can imagine that the musical styles are quite different! I must admit, I was rather tired by the end of the day! My last Magic Flute is on Sunday, and even though it's a delightfully fun show, I will be glad to focus on just one opera!

Since The Rake's Progress is a new production, that means most of our rehearsals take place in a special rehearsal hall which is not at all near the opera house. I won't say it's in the middle of nowhere, but it sure feels like it early in the morning and I want to buy a coffee on my way, and there isn't anything nearby... Anyway, it prompted me to go out and buy a new (to me!) bicycle, since the subway can actually take longer than biking! I went out bike shopping with the American tenor who is singing the lead role in the opera (and with whom I went to Juilliard!), since he saw a used bike store in his neighborhood. There were two bikes that fit our price range, and I tried the pink and purple one, since it was more "girly". Of course, the other more "manly" bike didn't actually end up fitting him, and he started coveting my pink bike as we were on our test drives. Too bad for him, the bike suited me just fine, and I ended up buying it! Don't worry, he got a different bike the next day, but not before giving me a major guilt trip! :-) So now we're all getting in great shape by biking to rehearsal! If I bike to each rehearsal, I end up biking about 1 hour and 40 minutes each day! Not bad! Now the weather just needs to warm up... Those mornings are cold!

My new bike! Her name is Dazzler. I don't know

why I felt the need to name my bike...

So that's pretty much my life right now! All opera, all the time! I'm very excited for Chad to arrive in Germany, and am very happy he'll be around for the premiere of The Rake's Progress. He'll probably arrive about 10 days before we open, so he won't have to deal with my busy schedule too much! Then we can just focus on being together - one of our favorite pastimes. :-)

Have a beautiful week!

May it please the court

Hey All! Once again I owe all of you, my wonderful and devoted readers, an apology. Brenda posted a mini blog entry last week and she said that I would write a full post the following day. Well, it turns out that I underestimated the amount of time I needed to spend on a big paper due last week and I neglected my blog duties. The budding lawyer in me wants to create a defense by arguing what the words "write a post tomorrow" actually mean, but I think I'll do us all a favor and not do that. The bottom line is that this law school stuff is really interfering with my blog duties. Good thing summer vacation is just around the corner.

My wonderful wife is once again on the other side of the pond. In fact, she has already performed an opera and has started rehearsals for another one. She doesn't waste any time. The rehearsal process for this new production (The Rake's Progress) will take six weeks which means I get to see the premier. It's a great opera and I'm really looking forward to seeing Brenda perform it.

There are eight more days of class until finals. (Uh oh. Is that true? I have to stop writing this right now and go study.) I'm excited to have this semester behind me. It's been great and I've learned a lot but I want to be in the same country as my wife for a few months. Speaking of which, today I submitted my application to study abroad in Hamburg, Germany for the fall. If it works out then Brenda and I will only be a 4-hour train ride away from one another. Cross your fingers for me.

Well, I had better get some shut-eye. I am doing an oral argument tomorrow for my writing class. Basically, I will talk about my paper for ten minutes and field questions from the court (my professor). I plan on using my operatic training during my argument. I can only imagine that singing my arguments will get me extra credit. I'll let you know next week how that works out for me. Until then, have a great week!

the eve before a great journey

Hello all! It is my last night here in the States, and since the splitting of the "Ch" from "enda" makes me sad, I've declared that there will be no real blog posting today! However, Chad has informed me that he'll write a post tomorrow, so I do hope you enjoy that! To tide you over, here's a picture of a kitten.

Have a great week!