1351 Aural Pyrotechnics

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

I joined FW at Omega at 5 pm. She bought her drum in the bookstore. It's small, very prettily painted in a rainbow of colors and swirling patterns. She's very pleased with it. I thought it was shockingly expensive. The head is tacked and glued, which means that when it stretches, you can't tighten it. There was another plain one with a roped head that I recommended (you tighten it by slipping wedges under the ropes), for slightly over half the price of the one she liked, but she wanted a pretty one. I guess it doesn't matter so much how it plays as how you feel when you play it, so maybe the pretty one was the best choice for her.

The food at Omega is excellent, if you don't mind a dearth of meat. Before we went to the bookstore I had some cucumber yogurt soup in the cafe, that was perfectly seasoned with some unidentified herb. A buffet dinner was served in the dining hall. The only meat was lemon tilapia. I don't usually care for fish, but this was delicious. I had two pieces. The other protein was roasted tofu. Again, a surprise. It had been tossed in tahini before roasting, and it was perfect. I had two servings of that, too. The salad dressing was a neon green house creation involving bananas, some exotic fruits, and mint. Very good. Everything was good, even the steamed broccoli and the rice salads, both herbed perfectly.

I recommend dinner at Omega. You stop by the Guest Services office, sign in and buy a $10 dinner ticket, and show up at the dining hall.

The concert was free. I didn't write down the guy's name, figuring I could find him on the internet - but the Omega online calendar doesn't list the concerts! Oh well. I liked his voice on the ballads, and he certainly can play the guitar, but most of the selections were very raucous, very hard rock, and even on most of the "softer" stuff he beat the guitar up so brutally it drowned out his voice. He did some interesting vocal things, and some of the songs (his own) were funny or poignant, and I'd have liked to have heard them more clearly.

So, a good evening.
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