A bit of a ramble....

The past weekend has been a busy one for us.  On Saturday I went to see one of the televised operas I go to at our local movie theater.  Just two of us this time as it was not on our list of original picks for the season, but as one of my friends really wanted to see it and others in our group could not make it, she and I headed out and spent a very pleasant afternoon listening to Verdi's Ernani.

At the same time Gregg joined our son and daughter-in-law and had lunch at one of son's favorite restaurants that is sadly after many years finally closing its doors.  The Tortilla Factory in Herndon has been open since 1975 and we've been going to it for years, not as much as our son who lives closer than we do.   You can read about it here.

Gregg and Brad love their salsa and say it's the best they have ever tasted anywhere, and the owner promised that if any customer left their e-mail address, he would see that they finally got that recipe.

The following night they came over and we watched the Oscars.  Brad arrived first and Lisa turned up a while later.  She has a role in a theater group, a musical and she was coming straight from the theater.  We saw her perform a couple of weeks ago and it was great seeing her up on the stage singing.  She has a beautiful voice.

In the photo above Gregg and Brad are talking about history.  Gregg is reading a book on WWI.  He and Brad often get into some great discussions, and Gregg drew a map on a piece of kitchen roll while explaining events, which Brad took with him when he left.

We started off with dinner and then turned the TV on and watched the interviews on the red carpet, for me enjoying the fashion show, watching all the presentations and enjoying Billy Crystal as host.  He really is the best!  Gregg and I haven't watched the Oscars in years but we had a fun time spending the evening with Lisa and Brad.  I hadn't seen many of the films so couldn't really be a good judge of what I thought was the best movie, best actor, actress, etc. but it was fun chatting about them and generally having a great time.  They left well after midnight and Gregg and I realized that we're not party people any more as we were both ready to go up the apples and pears (that's Cockney slang for stairs just in case you weren't sure what the heck I was talking about.)  No, my family and I were not born within the sound Bow Bells, but I grew up knowing a lot of the vernacular which was often used in my family, and it slips out occasionally even to this day.

A couple of days ago our niece got in touch with me and said they would be in town over the weekend and could they pop by on Saturday for an hour.  Lovely!  They are now a family of three and we have a nine month old great niece called Elle whom we all adore, and said yet again what great parents our niece and nephew are, a great team and that sweet little babe is so loved it does the heart good.  Elle is crawling now and I was glad the carpet had been vacuumed before they came over, though I hadn't had much of a chance to do much else!   Still they are good about taking us as they find us and we had a lovely visit.  The photo above is Elle in her Valentine's Day outfit.  Danielle has been real good about letting me put photos of her on my blog.  Thanks again Danielle and it was great to see you, Chris and Elle, thanks for stopping by.  Looking forward to seeing you again soon and I am sure we'll be running after Elle as it won't be long before she's walking from what we could see.

I also had a lovely chat with my brother-in-law.  We were talking via Skype and it was a bit difficult hearing as we found out later that our modem has been playing up and voices were cutting in and out.  Only realized this recently but it must have been going on for a very long time as we've noticed how slowwwwwww everything had become and the company told us today that our modem had restarted over 240 times over the last month!!!  We had no clue!  But it was great talking to brother-in-law and next time we will have a much clearer conversation because.....

yesterday after chatting to our cable company, we found out that our modem was on the blink.  Gregg stopped on his way home and picked up a new one, except that at first he couldn't get it to work with our wi-fi box.  Gregg spoke to three people and one computerized voice, only to be passed on to the final actual, honest-to-goodness live person who obviously knew what he was talking about because he was able to guide Gregg through one more process and, eureka!  Gregg has the patience of a saint and we were very grateful that the last person was able to solve our problem.  I can't imagine how many people that chap has to talk to during the day.   He also must have the patience of a saint.   Yay for him!   And, I can now watch the videos that people send me  as it's been nigh on impossible to watch them lately.  I unfortunately, who used to have the patience of a saint, can no longer claim that fine attribute.  I'm working on that.

This afternoon I finally watched The King's Speech on a DVD, which I treated myself to quite a while ago but only just got around to it.  I came across a very interesting article here.  It was a very good movie, one of my favorites, though have just added this note, there was foul language used which I could have done without.  I suppose we all need to let fly occasionally but as Valerie mentioned in her comments, couldn't imagine the King dropping loads of 'f' bombs and other curse words in such rapid succession.  As Valerie said, "artistic licence" perhaps?    I don't know how factual or true to the way things were, but I ended up having a lot of empathy for King George VI.  It must have been  a nightmare to be thrust onto the throne by the abdication of his brother.  I read that the Queen Mother had asked David Seidler, the screen writer, to postpone the work until after she had passed away.   Also, nine weeks before filming began, Lionel Logue's notebooks were discovered and quotations from them were incorporated into the script.   Colin Firth, one of my favorite actors, did a first class job as King George and Geoffrey Rush as the Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue, excelled and Helena Bonham Carter was marvelous as Queen Elizabeth.

I saw the first Goldfinch on the thistle feeder this afternoon since last summer.  I enjoyed watching him for a while and hope he'll bring his friends by tomorrow.   His feathers were a little tussled and it looked like he was developing his yellow coat.  The photo isn't that sharp but hopefully he will come back earlier in the day when there is lots of sunshine.

Gregg surprised me by arriving home early.  He spent a lot of time on the phone, firstly with the cable company and then on two conference calls with colleagues.   And now I have an Internet that actually works properly.  It's been a good day!