The Week in Entertainment

Live: My Yule present to myself - Aida and Un Ballo en Maschera at the Met, and The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. Busy weekend, but oh such fun. Aida had spectacular sets - even horses in the victory processional of Act II; Ballo was much more stylized; I can't say I was crazy about the slanted floor, since it played heck with perspective, not to mention made the singers walk funny. But Hvorostovsky and the rest of the cast were brilliant.

TV: Two episodes of Leverage - yay! I love this show, and it's still good. The Neighbors had a rather odd little Christmas episode, and The Middle had a funny one - especially when Frankie started working at the store to get the employee discount.

Read: The Stockholm Octavo - quite coincidentally to seeing Ballo, by the way, as it too deals with the murder of Sweden's King Gustav. Several books by Grace Lin, mostly YAs about a Taiwanese-American girl growing up and finding her place in the world, but also a couple of stories set in an ancient China of myth and legend.