Cirque du Soleil cancelled a show I had tickets for--And I'm glad they did

If you know me or have read this blog for a long time, you know I love Cirque du Soleil's shows.  I've been to all of the Las Vegas permanent shows (except the one about Michael Jackson; I won't support him).  I particularly love O and Love and Ka, but I've enjoyed all of them.  If my journeys take me to a city where a Cirque traveling show is playing, I go if I possibly can.  It's no surprise, then, that when Cirque announced last year a show, Toruk, would be playing in Raleigh, I bought tickets.  I had great seats.  I was very much looking forward to seeing the show on Sunday, June 26.

Yesterday, Cirque cancelled that show and all of its upcoming shows in North Carolina.

Normally, I'd be bummed, but right now, I'm not.  I'm glad the Cirque folks cancelled these shows, because the reason they did it is one I support:  they're protesting North Carolina's stupid, offensive, discriminatory HB2 law, which I wrote about recently.  (By the way, if you think the law is only about bathroom usage, you're missing the far greater bad practices it institutionalizes.  See for yourself:  you can read the whole bill here.)  Bruce Springsteen also cancelled a show in NC.  PayPal decided not to set up a center NC.  More and more people and businesses are boycotting NC because of this law.

I have to stand with those people and organizations.  We should not accept this awful law; we should protest it.

And, come election time, we should vote out of office every single NC legislator who voted for the bill, as well as our governor, who signed it.

Not getting to see a show is a small price to pay for supporting the rights of others.

I'm home again

Even though I had an exit-row seat on the first flight, it sucked massively thanks to overcrowding and a flight attendant who seemed intent on destroying my shoulder by walking repeatedly right through it.

On the second flight, however, the travel gods smiled on me, and I received a first-class upgrade.  It was glorious to be able to work in comfort for the entire flight.

To wind up salad week, today's lunch was this tasty Cobb salad at a cafe in PDX.

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It's great to be home.

Another great salad

This one came from the fine folks at Le Pigeon, one of my favorite restaurants.

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Butter lettuce, chives, and radish slices form the healthy part of this appetizer.  The bleu cheese and dressing make it incredibly delicious but definitely diminish its healthiness.  This salad has been on the menu here for years, but I'd never ordered it.  I'm glad I finally did.

The entire meal was excellent, as always.

I recommend Le Pigeon without reservation to anyone who's close enough to visit it.

Another salad!

At home, I eat salad nearly every day, so making a big deal of eating it on the road is a bit disingenuous, but this salad, courtesy of local Italian fave Ava Gene's, is something special.

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The menu's description of this dish read only, "radish, turnips, cashews, prosciutto".  Wow, was it amazingly good.  I even liked the radish and turnip bits.

The two of us at dinner ordered different pasta dishes, but both shared a problem:  they used way, way too much pepper.  These plates marked the first time I've not loved a course from Ava Gene's.

Despite them, I still highly recommend the place.  I just hope they control the pepper better in the future.

Look: something healthy!

Lest you think I never eat anything healthy while on the road, check out this very reasonable, lightly dressed, and quite tasty salad, which I enjoyed tonight at Bamboo Sushi.

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Of course, I also had a sushi roll and some miso soup, and there was the matter of the steam bun with pork belly in it, but all in all, it was not a heavy meal.

The small ice cream I ordered from the Salt & Straw location next door didn't help my cause, but, hey, Salt & Straw right next door!

Tomorrow, more meetings, a metric shit-ton of work, and a dinner at another fine restaurant.

Crappy seats, excellent dinner

Having exit-row seats and enjoying early or on-time arrivals were the two good parts of today's air travel.  The rest pretty much sucked.  I realize I'm fat, but the thinnest people on today's flights also had miserable times of it.  As the airlines find more ways to pack in customers, the flights become less and less enjoyable.  I dozed as much as I could simply to avoid the rest of the cramped and uncomfortable parts of the trip.  The rest of the time, I worked.  I was delighted to be on the ground in Portland and to walk outside and breathe non-recycled air.

Almost all of my day went to work and travel, but dinner was a delightful, as always, meal at Little Bird.  The lamb ribs with salad under them were particularly delicious.

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Tomorrow brings many, many meetings and a ton of work.

I'm heading to Portland in the moring

Tomorrow will start insanely early for me, with a 5:15 a.m. wake-up, a quick shower, and a trip to the airport.  So, I'm going to make a short night of it.

We were recently discussing this trailer and the associated film.



This movie could be the kind of awesome small film that makes me happy to have sat in a nearly empty theater for a couple of hours, or it could be so self-absorbed that its one trick peters out early and leaves me wishing I was the sort of person who could walk out on a movie.  (I'm not.)

I'm hoping for the former and plan to see Swiss Army Man, but I believe the latter is definitely possible.

I'll let you know what I think.