I do spend an awful lot of my life thinking, “oh, I should take a power walk every day” or “I should practice the piano every day” or “I should do some of the organization projects in the random tote bags in the utility room every weekend” or whatever. And of course it never gets done, or if I look at how I’d have to schedule that, my day instantly fills up.
Anyway, another “I’d like to do this every day” is writing, and even just blogging is apparently too much to keep up with. The big one that’s overdue is about BB66, the opera project I finished two weeks ago, and I want to, but it’s large. And in the meantime, a whole bunch has happened since, which I’d like to blog about. Maybe I can do very short versions of stuff.
Last weekend was the big 4th of July weekend, which I had set aside to get caught up on a lot of stuff (first weekend off in forever, and also a turn into a new quarter/half year). I did get a lot of it done, such as washing the big linens (bedspreads, pillows), but there’s a lot left (I have a list). Saturday, the 4th itself, I was about to plunge into a day of ‘house projects so yucky I should wait to shower until later’ when my buddy Liz, from Richmond, texted me and asked if I was around. She was in town, heading home, her flight was delayed, did I want to do lunch? Yes, of course I did, but that meant cleaning up (and neating up), which I did. She showed up, we had a great chat, then I took her out to the Q for brunch. Great fun. Once I saw her off, I only had an hour or so before heading to Susan’s for the planned July 4th celebration, which was basically eating and watching Americana movies. This was great as well, we watched all of The Music Man and had fancy cheese and chips and dips and impressive polish-sausage hot dogs and some of the world’s largest apple pie, which she’d gotten from Costco. This pie was amazing and I got to take a big chunk of it home, and I still have some left. We went out to watch some local fireworks, and then I headed home. Didn’t get a lot done on Sunday – I really tend towards inertia, which is a big part of my problem.
Monday I worked from home, but had choir rehearsal at night, which was fun. (Village Light Opera Group summer concert, mostly Broadway, some G&S. I get some random solo lines in “Oklahoma”, like “It ain’t too early and it ain’t too late!”) Tuesday, more work from home. Wed, I went into the office and at lunchtime, went to the TKTS booth and got a ticket to “Shmigadoon!” for the evening. That was fun – I had sushi for dinner at my favorite sushi place on 43rd, and then the show. From FB: “Verdict: Very fun, very entertaining. Cast is great, no one was out. The Broadway song parodies are spot on. Not significantly different from the TV show, although they did replace “He’s a Queer One”, making me sad. As an actual story, it’s quite flabby in places and does not have a good act 1 button for curtain. But worth seeing. Also, the Nederlander theater seats crunched me up like no one’s business.”
Thursday, I worked from home, but Susan and I had tickets to go see Paul Simon in Forest Hills! This had been a spontaneous buy: Paul Simon is a songwriter I’ve always liked, enough to always have in the back of my brain that I should get more albums of his, although I certainly already have Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits and Graceland and (as it turns out) The Essential Paul Simon. I don’t usually go to that sort of concert, but Forest Hills is only one express subway stop away. Unfortunately, the weather on Thursday was on and off thunderstorms, and it was an outdoor venue that didn’t allow umbrellas. Susan and I each brought parkas – but as it turned out, the rain was pretty much done by the time we got to the stadium (former home of the US Open).
Expecting concert etiquette was a lost cause, but unfortunately he started with his fairly recent “Seven Psalms”, which is kind of a song cycle, about a half hour, very peaceful and quiet. And since it wasn’t his known stuff, and was quiet, most people just talked through it all. And then of course, for the known stuff, people sang along, or (if it was a lesser known song) again, just talked and talked. OK, we were in a sports stadium and people were eating hot dogs and french fries, but still. I tried not to be a bitch about the whole thing, but did do some turning around and glaring.
Simon himself is in his mid-80’s and really doesn’t have a voice left, and of course the S&G songs suffered from the lack of harmony, but it was still delightful to get to see him. Edie Brickell (a name I recognized, but knew nothing about) was there, singing with him sometimes, and the band of about twelve players was excellent. The weather was actually really pleasant. So… this was definitely an experiment and a boundary-pusher for me, but a very successful one and I’ll be glad to do something like that again.
This weekend, I was supposed to go up to Ivoryton, CT (and Essex, next door) to sightsee, see my buddy Mark as John Adams in 1776, spend a night in a schmancy inn, and (on the way home) do a walking tour of New Haven and the Yale campus, a place I haven’t been in forty years or so. I did all my weekend household stuff on Friday, and on Saturday was literally a minute from walking out the door to go to the Avis lot to get the car, when I got a call from the inn. The area was having a high e coli reading in the local water supply (!!!) and their restaurant, as well as every other restaurant, would be closed. Jeez!
So I had decisions to make real quick. Was it worth making this trip if I had to hunt down restaurants outside the danger zone? Um… no, it really wasn’t. OK, can I cancel the inn? Yes, she let me do that. Could I cancel the theater ticket? No, but I could send the ticket to Mark to pass on to someone else. OK, I still have a car, which they’re expecting me to pick up any minute now. Should I go somewhere else? Nowhere sprang to mine, except… hmmm maybe New Hope and Lambertville? Haven’t been to New Hope in decades, and even though Lambertville is right across the bridge, I’d never been. But do I want to scramble to get housing for tonight?
Bottom line: I cancelled the car, have scheduled the New Hope/Lambertville trip for next weekend (plus a Princeton campus tour instead of a Yale campus tour – I like college campuses), and had the weekend basically free. So I’ve been putzing around.
Again tending towards inertia. But I got some paperwork done and this morning did both a powerwalk and a grocery run and tonight will be cooking up chicken breasts and a pork tenderloin to portion out and throw in the freezer, which will keep me going for a while. I have not been cooking much lately, nor have I missed it.
Oh, also, I talked to my recently-widowed sister-in-law this week. She and my nieces did a trip to Arizona which sounded really beautiful. She’s holding up OK, we commiserated about the need for and annoyance of getting rid of all the stuff and finding all the paperwork.
And my dad and I decided to hold off on the trip we were tentatively planning for the fall. This frees me up to do some other stuff, like for instance, I will almost certainly go to Provincetown for my birthday, end of September. I might combine that with a week in Boston (probably working from there) – I haven’t been since my few years in the 2010’s traveling there a lot on business, and it’s such an interesting city. Might do some other little trips as well. And also plotting what performance opportunities I can take advantage off.
Cool, this actually covers a lot of ground and I will Declare to All and Sundry that I’ll do the BB66 post before the end of the week. I should also do a ‘media consumption’ post, but that can wait. Enjoy the week!
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