Cultural Redemption

Remember our exciting time at the ballet last month?  That popcorn and beer event confirmed my belief that something special really does exist in the water down here.  Well, I've been proven wrong!  I know, complete shocker, right!?  After my first final was finished last Friday, I was up for a free weekend of fun.  "Lonnie" and I took the kids to the Polar Express train ride and they loved it!  However, I would like to say, for the record, that our choice to eliminate dairy, soy, gluten, and all other nasty processed crap from our diet was well informed (it's been over a year).  Let me explain...so the Polar Express included milk and cookies.  Of course it would!  The cookies were Otis Spunkmyer, which have calories and sugar in amounts I dare not repeat.  That was expected and the food cheat was a joy to the kids, but merely gave "Lonnie" and I intense heartburn.  It was the milk that confirmed my conspiracy of the food industry intentionally keeping people fat.  The first ingredient on the individual milk carton was, as hoped, milk.  The second ingredient was...liquid sugar!!  I'm not kidding and wish I had taken a picture as proof.  REALLY?!  Do we need liquid, fricken sugar in milk?  Oh, and the 4th ingredient was just plain sugar, because apparently liquid sugar alone can't make milk palatable.  I can't even express my horror at this and when people wonder why kids have diabetes, this is definately a piece to that puzzle.

Orion getting his liquid sugar fix

But anyway, on to why I was wrong (because that's way more interesting than my pontificating), so BREAK BREAK, I just looked outside and Kai was peeing in a wide arch on the neighbors lawn.  Sigh, we were doing so good, thankfully everyone has left for the holidays...anywho..."Lonnie" and I had tickets on Saturday to see A Christmas Carol at the local Shakespeare Theater.  We had been told, and confirmed online, that the Alabama Shakespeare Theater is number 6 in the world.  Yes, you read that correctly.  My expectations were, therefore, high and I wasn't disappointed.  The theater was beautiful, the audience quiet and mostly well-dressed (some in jeans, but you see that in NYC too), and the performance was spectacular.  It was a new take on the story, with the main elements intact.  The production was specifically written for Alabama and I have to say that so far it is my favorite version of Dickens' story that I've seen.  Score Alabama-1, Kelly-1.  The next day, "Lonnie" and I took Ayla to see the local ballet company perform the Nutcracker.  I had much lower expectations for this show mostly because the skill in the local company is not world class.  Again, I was overwhelmed by how much I enjoyed the production.  Ayla was awake for most of it, and other than a lady behind us who wouldn't shut the hell up, the audience was again well-dressed and not a kernel of popcorn in sight!  The company really did great and the sets were excellent.  Score Alabama-2, Kelly-1. 

Now that classes are over for the holiday break, all I can think is...why don't I have 100 pages to read tonight and what can I possibly do with all my free time?  The answer is: read 100 pages a night for my dissertation and play catchup with that.  Or maybe do some recreational reading?  Or, at this point, I just want to take a nap!