Now I do have a recommendation for hot air balloon rides, Balloons Above the Valley. Our patriotically patterned balloon Freedom is one of the biggest balloons ever. I believe they said there are only 4 that large. We rode in a really large wicker basket with compartments. The ride was very beautiful and not at all scary. We had a panaramic view which included the yellow of grape leaves, a subtle mix of autumn colors, and a little frost.
The pilot can make a balloon go up and down, and make it spin (so all the passengers have different views) but not direct it. Moving up or down can put the balloon in a different air current but only the wind determines its direction and speed. When it was time to land it was quite tricky because we were above grape fields without many good places to land. You can't just land on someone's grape plants. Our pilot, Ferrell, decided to land on a dirt road separating fields. We got about 10 feet up from the ground and the wind pushed us back over a field. So we went higher, waited and tried again. Then the chase crew caught up and Ferrell threw down a rope. They grabbed the end of the rope and pulled with all their weight to coax the balloon back over the road. It worked, and the landing was incredibly gentle.
They drove us all back to the restaurant where we all parked for an all-you-can eat buffet breakfast with sparklying wine and mimosas.
Here are some of the still photos. David took most of them. I had the camcorder and it's going to take me a while to edit the shots.
According to the the NYTimes Magazine
A modegreen is a misheard lyric... It is named after Lady Mondegreen. There was no Lady Mondegreen. The lines of a ballad, "They hae slain the Earl of Murray,/And laid him on the green" are misheard as "They hae slain the Earl of Murray and Lady Mondegreen."
Mondegreen is the favorite word of one of the lexicographers of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Reuben and I just went to a demo of motion capture stuff at Pixel Corps. RealViz has programs that allow you to stitch together photographs to make a panorama, to use 6 photographs to make a 3d model complete with textures of a room or space, and you can do motion capture by tracking points on a person or object. Reuben now wants more cameras because to make the last bit work you need multiple cameras. These demos were pretty neat.
I had a wonderful time at the San Francisco Opera last night. Die Fledermaus is probably my favorite opera because it's got lots of pretty, catchy music and it's a comedy. The audience was able to fully enjoy the comedy part because the whole opera was sung in English. (This might be a slight to the original German. We thought it less likely that they would have translated it if it had been in Italian, but German is notoriously difficult to sing.) In case you still didn't understand the words, they projected supertitles above the stage. The dialog in between songs was spoken in English.
Already a comedy with an involved plot, there was also a stand-up comedy routine in in the third act by the character of the drunken jailer. He was the only one who hammed too much. The physical humour by the warden and Eisenstein was very funny though.
Prince Orlofsky was very well done. I don't think I've heard the role sung by a counter tenor before (a man singing soprano) and that added to the comedy.
There was a ballet in the middle. My family would disinherit me if I didn't mention the sets, which were lavish and ornate, as befits an opera. I particularly liked the sets for the 2nd act at the palace. The lighting was expertly unobtrusive. The costumes were fun and bright and dealt well with the usual challenges of costuming opera singers.
Take a photo of something orange.
If you could open any sort of restaurant, what would it be like?
If I opened a restaurant I would have an outdoor area with lush vegetation, flowers, and possibly a fountain. There would also be an indoor area with beautiful finely detailed crafts on the walls for people to look at. There would be fancy silverware and dishes also. The restaurant would have some sweet drinks like Tai iced tea and freshly made Tamarindo. The desserts would be really special, with most items having chocolate in some form. I don't know what kind of food there would be....I'm getting hungry just thinking of the drinks and desserts...
Here is the deer that I saw while I ate breakfast this morning. I waited too long to get the camera (finished eating first) and took one photo through the window and the other after the deer was in the neighbors yard.
Myheritage.com gave me a good laugh! To explain- myheritage.com lets you upload a photo and then tells you which celebrities you look most like. (My friend Kristen says I shouldn't tell anyone that Scarlet and Mel are my parents.)
New from Reuben Products the free demo of this program is availble from downloads.com. Obviously, there is no way I can be objective about this, but hopefully if I brag about it here I won't bore everyone at lunch about it.
On Friday I discovered that I was the only person present at lunch who had never put a 9 volt battery on my tongue. Apparently that's a convenient way to test if the battery is dead or not. That reminds me of how painters used to put fine points on their brushes using their mouths. (About a century ago most stopped after more became known about lead-white...) It just never occurred to me to put a battery in my mouth, but it sounds like a fun thing to try when I'm done stapling my hand. Isn't battery acid one of the main food groups of poison? And who knows where that battery has been?
