"Glee" - I Don't Get It

I'm trying to latch onto the "Glee" phenomenon, but I just don't quite get all the hype. I've watched the show the past two weeks to see what all the fuss is about. Last night's show revolved around Madonna songs. Lots of musical numbers and reworking of some of the videos, like "Vogue." All well done, I guess, but overall, I didn't find the show all that enjoyable.

Maybe I was expecting a riff on High School Musical. However, when you have two teenage couples rolling around on the bed singing "Like a Virgin," then we've deviated just a tiny bit from the family-friendly confines of those movies (I guess maybe I should have known going in that Glee was more adult oriented).

For all the "Gleeks" out there, more power to ya. Maybe I'll give the show another chance, but it just ain't clicking with me.

Getting Cultured

Last night I attended the senior piano recital of Tinatin Saralidze, who is part of IU South Bend's Toradze Piano Studio, which features world class piano players. Now, why would I be doing that? Actually, Tinatin (who goes by Tika) is one of my student workers. She is from Georgia, the former Soviet Republic. International students are very much restricted on how they can work when attending college here and are limited to on-campus employment, so I tend to hire quite a few of them (Tika is actually my third Georgian piano player who has worked for me).

When she asked if I could attend the recital, I asked her what she was playing. She said Beethoven's 7th. Now why did I ask that? What do I know about classical piano? What was I going to say, "Yeah, that's a good one. I'll be curious how you play the moderato section in the middle. Oh, you're playing it in D Major? That will really bring out the nuances in what I believe was one of Beethoven's best compositions."

This was her senior recital, as she will be graduating and then headed off to Chicago for graduate school. She, along with all the international student workers I've hired, are great workers and I enjoy getting to know them. As for the recital, I was only able to stay for the first of two pieces (which still ran about 20 minutes as it had 4 different movements). I thought she did a very good job. Kind of amazing that they have to play such complicated compositions totally by memory.

Fortunately, no one put a Pez dispenser on my lap.

. . . And You Think Butler Came So Close!

Check out this video of the Women's Final 4. Xavier v. Stanford, with the winner going to the finals. A choke for the ages by a Xavier player who will forever be replaying this game in her mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR3OyP8f8Fc

Cell Phone Problems

My phone has been giving me a lot of trouble. I dropped it a few months back and a piece of it broke off, so I had to tape it back together. It often shuts off automatically, which isn't exactly convenient.

So, Dorene went to the AT&T store to see what they could do. After much back and forth and haggling over early upgrades, etc., it finally came to an equitable resolution, as Dorene is quite the negotiator. She now will be getting a brand new phone and I'll be using her old one.

Let's see now, MY phone was broken, so SHE gets the new one and I'm using the old one. Hmm, did I miss something here?

Allie's First Easter Egg Hunt

We had an Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning at our church. Lots of neighborhood kids showed up. Allie caught on pretty quick to the whole routine.