There will be no more posts until Sunday night at the earliest. I'm heading for New York City right after work to celebrate my 50th birthday with three operas and dinner with one of my favorite bloggers, including lots of meat for International Eat An Animal For PETA Day, which happens to be my birthday. The blogger will remain nameless (though I don't suppose I can stop her from posting about our dinner), but the operas are Otello tonight (best opera I haven't seen yet by my favorite operatic composer), Traviata tomorrow afternoon (favorite opera so far), and Les Troyens tomorrow evening (a 5-hour non-Wagner extravaganza on the founding of Rome -- just the thing for a Latin teacher on holiday).

Those who've seen the Met's production of La Traviata will know what I mean when I say that I wish I could play one of the five dancing bulls. I used to think the great disappointment of my life was not having had a college job driving the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, but I was wrong.