Reprise (and some vulgar name dropping)

That would be "vulgar" modifying the act of dropping the names, not the names themselves. Except as I now, in passing, mention the nasty real estate agent I once encountered named Anne Orefice -- yeah, you know which one, too -- and another slimey realtor named Harry Cockey -- he could have easily been "Harold," it just wasn't as much fun, I guess.

Today, to reward ourselves for all our hard work of late, or to be completely honest, because I am still licking my wounds from yesterday, we watched movies.

History related, and therefore, of some educational value. Right.

The new flat screen LCD TV/DVD that Dad brought home has some tricky sound modulation that I haven't quite mastered yet. Some DVDs will not play above a certain volume level no matter how high the sound is turned up. To overcome this problem, we activated the subtitles for our first selection, Les Miserables in Concert, and all sang along at the top of our lungs in mock operatic style.

Next up, The Madness of King George, and then back to Hugo's story in Bille August's adaptation of Les Miserables.

It occurred to me during the musical's credits that I am following in my great-grandmother's footsteps, though I have a much smaller and less impressive collection. Cameron Mackintosh once sent me a thank you note for beach towels I designed as gifts for the cast and crew of The Phantom of the Opera, which we had for six sold out weeks as the very first show in the brand new Broward Center for the Performing Arts. They were terribly clever, made to resemble postcards with "Wishing you were somehow here again...," a completely insincere sentiment by the way, scrawled on one side, the mask as the stamp, and show dates as the cancellation mark. I'm sure it was major copyright infringement, but thankfully, everybody like them. A thank-you note to our CEO from Andrew Lloyd Webber for some London opening night gift basket was doomed to be forgotten, and ultimately disposed of, in some long-lost file somewhere had it not been for my refiling it in a safer location. And when Greg Louganis mailed a postcard to his friend who shared an office suite with our company before he left under unfavorable circumstances with no forwarding address, I rescued the postcard from the trash. That one was from a dive trip Louganis had taken in Belize shortly after we purchased our farm down there, I couldn't resist.