Spamalot

For those of us who are looking for something a little different in our showtunes, Broadway now offers something for husbands with strange senses of humor, too. We were watching The Daily Show one night a couple of weeks ago and the guest for the evening was Eric Idle of Monty Python fame. Apparently the newest show to grace our favorite street is none other than a musical adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, complete with coconuts and starring Tim Curry and David Hyde Pierce. Seriously. I couldn't make something like this up.

I had almost forgotten about it until tonight, when I saw a little blurb about the show's opening night on CNN. Word on the street is that it got rave reviews. I'm just wondering how they did the killer rabbit and the catapulting cows on a stage...

Granted, it's a little odd, but John and I are already planning for a post-graduation trip to New York just to see it. Just something a little different for those of us who eat ham and jam and spamalot :)

A Happy Day in the Peer House

Many happy congratulations to John (my language partner Chia-wei, who has difficulty saying his name, calls him Joohhnnn), who today celebrates his three-weeks-as-a-vegetarian anniversary. I haven't heard him pine for meat at all, unless you count the time he commented that he wished he'd tried the new hot dot place up the street before he'd given up meat for good. He even threw out a half a bag of frozen fish sticks yesterday evening when he was cleaning out the freezer, declaring that he would no longer have any use for them. Now the only meat left in the house is a can of tuna and a package of instant turkey gravy, which John won't let me throw away in case the local food bank suddenly finds itself short one tin of mushy fish and something to put on their mashed potatoes.

I have to say that I am so proud of the man John has become, at the way his social conscience and his compassion have just flowered. He's gone from being a man who didn't care about anything at all when I first met him to being a man who wouldn't talk to anyone for a whole day after Kerry lost the election. You may or may not agree with his politics, his beliefs, or his now meatless lifestyle, but that isn't the point. The point is that John cares, about me most of all, and I am so lucky to have a man with such a huge, kind heart.

Girls Can Kick Butt, Too

So I was having a little bit of trouble at Jeet Kune Do on Monday night. I was working with my sometime partner and alltime friend Travis, and I kept punching him in the head without actually meaning to. It'd be a useful tendency in an actual fight, but when you're not actually trying to hurt your opponent it can be a little frustrating.

"I'm so sorry," I finally said after I nailed him in the jaw. "Maybe I should be home knitting instead."

"Oh no," he responded. "Knitting is the last thing you should be doing."

Seeing it in print now makes it look like he thinks I'm a real tomboy (either that or just really uncoordinated with my hands, which may actually be the case), but I was pretty flattered at the time. It just illustrates one of the things I love about that class; never once have I been treated like a girl. I've always been encouraged by all of my 200-pound kung fu brothers to be the very best I could be, in spite of the fact that I lack 30% of their upper body strength and 90% of their physical endurance. People ask me from time to time whether it's ever been awkward being a girl and learning from Taky Kimura, one of the most respected martial artists in recent American memory, and it always throws me off guard because it's always been so extremely the opposite of awkward. It's been amazing; it's one of the few places in my life where I've actually felt like I fit in. The only thing that might make it a little awkward is that many times I'm the only girl in the class, just for the fact that I feel like a tabby in a room full of lions. I mentioned this to one of the instructors, though, and he just laughed at me.

"You're going to be one of the few females to come out of the Kimura camp," he said. "If anything you're doubly lucky."

I humbly, totally agree.