As those of you who've seen my facebook will know, there are five gorgeous little kittens and their mother spending a lot of time in our backyard at the moment. The mother clearly has been domesticated - she comes over for a cuddle and a good scratch under the chin whenever I go out to her, but the kittens themselves are very shy, and scatter to hide in the shrubbery whenever they see me or MrM. I thought they belonged to the neighbour over the back fence, but I talked to her on the weekend and she says no, the mother cat isn't hers. Apparently there was an old lady a couple of doors down from her who used to to have lots of cats and who moved out a while ago - my neighbour thinks this could well be one of those that was left behind. Which makes mother and kittens strays. They're utterly adorable, but we can't responsibility for 6 extra cats right now, and they can't live in our backyard indefinitely - it's not fair to them or the local wildlife.

I just rang the RSPCA, who said they would take them if we brought them in, but they don't do pick-ups; that's the council's job. So I rang the council, who said they'd drop off a cat-trap and take the animals to the RSPCA to be vet-checked and put up for adoption once we'd caught them. I don't see that there's any other option, but I'm still feeling terribly guilty at the thought of trapping the little kittens. Plus I'll miss their little faces peeping out at me from under the lemon tree, and watching them scamper around the clothesline when they think I'm not looking.

MrM and I went to see Chicago last night, and it was fantastic - one of the best musical productions I've seen.

The two leads were very impressive in their different ways: Sharon Millerchip was captivating as Roxie and clearly having a great time hamming it up (and she has a great face for it); Caroline O'Connor as Velma had fantastic comedic timing and spectacular vocal control. And they could both dance as well as sing and act - I think the first time I've seen that on stage: normally the principals do a few steps here and there, but the actual dancing is left to the ensemble, but not this time. And the chorus and swings were really strong, beautiful, fit dancers - it was even a bit frustrating in some of the numbers because I couldn't watch them all at once!

We didn't get to see Gina Reilly's interpretation of Mama Morton, which was a shame - I was looking forward to seeing what she did with a straight role - but her understudy, Caroline Kaspar, was fine, although perhaps a little overshadowed by the rest of the cast (or possibly by my memory of the fantastic performance by Queen Latifah in the movie). The actor who normally plays Amos was away too, and his understudy, Nick Jones, gave a great performance as the weedy husband who fades into the background. And I loved the set, with the musicians dominating the stage and the rest of the cast working around them.

And now it's time to go dancing myself. :-) 

... but it was lovely to have a warm sunny day today.

The courtyard at work is being relandscaped at the moment to get rid of all the old dead things that didn't survive the ferocious heat last summer despite the rainwater tank and staff's best efforts. There's no point replacing most of them with identical varieties since they were species that are unlikely to survive in our current climate, so they're being replaced with drought-resistant ones that will. As part of this the dustbowl grass has been replaced with fake turf. I wasn't sure that was such a great idea, but it actually looks quite good, and apparently it's comfortable enough to lie on - a couple of people were doing just that at lunchtime.

I went to Preggi Bellies again this evening. I'm finding it a challenge mentally as well as physically - I've never done aerobics or pump or any of the other "exercise to music" things before (dancing is different!), and the choreography is completely unfamiliar. I thought, with my dance training, I'd find it easy, but I was wrong! It probably hasn't helped that I've been to three classes now, at two different locations, and had three instructors, each of whom had totally different routines and used a different mix of equipment to the others: the core of each class is the fitball or whatever it's called, but we've also used weights and mats and bikes and today steps as well. I found the first two classes utterly exhausting; tonight's not so much, but I'm not sure if that was my body adjusting or whether the routine really wasn't as tough as the previous ones. I guess I'll find out next week.
 

Last night MrM and I went with some dancing friends to the Taste of Melbourne Festival. It was kind of a cross between a degustation menu and a prgressive dinner: about fifteen restaurants had set up kitchens and were serving three small dishes from their menu, which you could buy for $8 -12. There was wine tasting too, lots of wines, but of course I had to forgo that.

( Details of the dishes we tried )

MrM and I have been watching Farscape on dvd tonight, with Leela curled up next to us. I can't quite decide whether I like Farscape or not. I want to like it, and it often feels as though it's just about to be really good, but something about it just seems off - I'm not sure if it's the writing or the direction or the perfromances, but scenes somehow don't seem to flow quite right - characters react too strongly, too fast, or not enough, and the dialogue doesn't sing the way it should. I suspect I've been spoilt by the Whedonverse!

We had a lovely relaxing and social Saturday today, starting with a late breakfast at Relish in Bentleigh. I do like their potato and ricotta hotcakes with smoked salmon and a poached egg on rocket. Very yummy.

Then we went to Bunnings and looked at powerboards - we made the slightly alarming discovery on Thursday that our tv/video/dvd/sound system draws 45W just on standby, so just leaving it like that accounts for up to 10% of our energy bill. Ouch! We're not going to climb in amongst the cables to turn it off at the wall each time we leave, but we also desicovered there's something called a green energy saving powerboard  that detects when the appliance plugged into the master switch is turned off, and automatically turns off the other appliances plugged into the slave sockets, which could be really useful. But we didn't buy one today, because it wasn't entirely clear from the packaging whether "turns off" always means "really truly off", or whether it sometimes means "puts on standby". And since a six-socket one costs nearly $60, we decided to go away and do a bit of research before we buy one. But I've been having a look at the specs on the web tonight, and it looks like it might do the job.

After that we went to catch up with some friends, a number of whom had been on a longish bike ride this morning, and were feeling a bit stiff, so we ended up with 12 of us in an 8-person spa (we hadn't been on the bike ride, but the spa was too good to pass up!) I could have stayed there all afternoon, but we had plans to meet other friends to see Terminator Salvation at 4.30, so we got dried and dressed and drove off to Chadstone

Terminator was a very silly movie, and I did get impatient with the scenes that served no plot purpose whatsoever, and were solely there for the videogame tie-in. It's a pet peeve of mine, and it's showing up in more and more movies (the idiotic blue and red monsters on the ice planet in Star Trek also made me cross) I was a bit disappointed it didn't go further into the exploration of what is the difference between a self-aware machine and a human. But possibly that was expecting a bit much from an action flick! Overall verdict: not my kind of movie, but there were some very pretty CGI effects and it was a not unpleasant way to pass the time. We finished the evening with a group dinner at Safi in Brighton - good food and plenty of it. It took a long time for the food to arrive, but there were nine of us and the conversation was flowing nicely, so I didn't really notice. 

It is nice to be home again after a busy Saturday and know that I still have two more days before I have to go back to work. :-)

Big party last night, with lots of dancers, most of whom I hadn't seen since before we went away. It was an excellent party, although not as raucous as last year (and no swimming, since the pool heater wasn't working properly). I had my hair cut and recoloured yesterday, and had a very entertaining time watching people see me without seeing me (as they mentally processed the image as a blonde they didn't know) and then, sooner or later, realise they did in fact know me. It was a late night - we got home about 3 in the morning - but I slept in till 11, so I'm feeling okay. Which is just as well, since it's the DeChorum concert this afternoon:

Passion Fire and Fury
Melbourne’s newest choral ensemble, DeChorum, is pleased to present a concert of madrigals old and new, featuring works by Monteverdi, Janequin, Palestrina and Lauridsen.

Conducted by Trevor Jones

WHEN: 3pm | Sunday 31st May | 2009
WHERE: Memorial Hall | Melbourne High School | Forrest Hill | South Yarra
TICKETS: $25 adult | $18 concession
ENQUIRIES: 0407 830 820 | info@dechorum.org

MrM and I went to see A Little Night Music at the State Theatre tonight. It was the first time I'd seen a live preformance of Sondheim - I know the music to Assassins and Company and Into the Woods reasonably well, but I've never seen any of them live. 

It was a great show, with some fantastic lines and situations, and farcical while not being cringe-worthy: I  was never afraid that the characters wouldn't be able to talk themselves out of trouble, and quite looked forward to seeing what they'd come up with, whereas I watch most farces thinking "this is just going to be embarrassing for everybody" and wishing they would end. 

We booked very late, so had tickets in the second front row, just below stage level, which wasn't the best angle for listening, but was great for seeing all the little facial expressions and details that aren't visible from further back - particularly for those of us, like me, whose eyesight is far from perfect even with glasses!

The performances were good; the women perhaps more than the men, although Ben Lewis as the Count was delightfully appallingly pompous. I enjoyed Kate Hoolihan as Petra, especially her physical comedy (although the fast sections of her solo felt a bit frantic) and Katrina Retallick as the Countess with her beautifully dry delivery. Sigrid Thornton was good as Desiree, although having seen her so much on tv it's a bit difficult to "buy" her as a character - she doesn't have the knack that some actors have of inhabiting a persona and making themselves unrecognisable (Paul Bettany is a stand-out at it.) But tonight Nancye Hayes as Madame Arnfeldt stole the show.

MrM and I love our Prius - it's a great car to drive, as well as making us feel less guilty than if we were still driving a petrol-guzzling Commodore - but there are drawbacks.

And the big one is needing to be super careful around pedestrians when we're driving slowly, because they will just step out in front of us without looking, assuming (presumably) that because they can't hear an engine, there is no car. Pedestrian crossings are okay - I expect people to step out there; it's all the people milling out in all directions from a tram stop or train station that scare me. And clearly we're not the only ones to notice this issue, although the idea of replacing actual engine noise with speakers that play a recorded sound just seems silly.