The First Good Day of Spring
Mar. 25th, 2006 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stdesjardinsSpring did not get off to a good start. Tuesday, it snowed. Just a few flakes, but still, if it's cold enough for a few flakes it's cold. Then I started to come down with a cold. By Wednesday morning, I was chugging Sudafed1, and could manage to stay upright for as much as two or three hours between naps. Thursday was much the same as Wednesday. By Friday morning, my cold was pretty much on the wane, but I was bone-exhausted from having been sick. My good health felt fragile, as if a small shock could easily shatter it, so I went straight back to bed and slept half the day. By mid-afternoon, I was feeling fairly decent, which only made me realize how lousy I had felt.
But today--I feel fine. In fact, I was full of energy, getting up to pace around my apartment. I stepped out on my balcony, and found that it was not uncomfortably cool. I decided to walk over to Teaism for an early lunch, then when I got there I decided I wasn't really hungry yet2, so I walked back home, and on the way passed the discount ticket office. After a little thought, I decided I was up for a matinee, and bought a ticket to "Fanny's First Play" by George Bernard Shaw.
I decided to read the preface before going to the play--I have a complete set of the plays and prefaces, a very nice hardcover edition--and was disappointed to find out it was a single page. It hardly seems right for one of Shaw's prefaces to be shorter than the play.
So then I embarked on a long day's hike--back to Teaism for lunch, then to CVS to get some calcium, three stops on the Green Line to the theater, then several blocks down 14th Street to Whole Foods3, over to my old apartment to inspect the painting and bathroom4, and finally back home. By the end one of my legs was getting sore, but it wasn't the leg that gave out on me a few weeks ago, and it didn't feel like more than a "yeah, I did a lot of walking today" soreness, so that's okay. It reminds me of my trip to Budapest, when I hiked all over the place and slept well at night. Good news, that I rebounded so quickly.
The play itself was a lot of fun, and I was one of half a dozen people under seventy in the audience.5 The prologue, where Shaw lampoons his critics, is the best part, and I was somewhat disappointed as the play-within-a-play went on that we didn't see the (fictional) audience's reaction. We do get to hear from the critics at the end, of course, but by then it fell a little flat. It's not surprising that Shaw didn't adopt a Mystery Science Theater 3000 approach (he professed to despise the show's inventor, William Shakespeare), and it probably wouldn't have been a good fit for his style, but even if it's only what Shaw calls a "potboiler", that's still a great work. He has the wonderful gift of creating characters who are obviously foolish and absurd and finding a perspective from which there's undeniably a grain of rightness in what they say. (And of course, the converse: showing utterly conventional people from a perspective that makes them patently absurd.)
[1] If "taking exactly the recommended dosage" can be described as "chugging", and if misery doesn't entitle you to use hyperbole I don't know what does.
[2] I completely lost my appetite while I was sick. When I heated up a can of soup, I was only able to eat about four bites. About the most filling meal I managed to stomach was a bowl of ice cream. Even on Friday, I couldn't eat much, and my appetite still isn't quite back to normal. I hope I'm ravenously hungry tomorrow, because I know I haven't been getting enough calories.6
[3] Where I got a few prepared foods, along with butter and milk to make cookies. My condo association's book club is meeting again on Tuesday7, and I've decided to try a new recipe each month. This month, butter drop cookies from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. The recipe is so simple I figure it has to be delicious.
[4] Yep, I still haven't finished putting the condominium on the market. At first, I thought there was no hurry, since condos don't sell well in the winter. Then when spring approached, my usual problem with serial procrastination reared its ugly head: I divide each problem into several tasks, put off dealing with one as long as I can, and put off worrying about the others until the first one is taken care of. Iterate until no obstacles remain.
[5] I understate for dramatic effect. There were seven of us. Along with several people who might have merely been in their sixties.
[6] Coincidentally, I weighed myself Wednesday, and found my weight hit a new high, 126 pounds. Despite being ungodly skinny, I manage to have the beginning of a pot belly.
[7] I really do need to get past page 10. Not my fault, I wanted to finish Dorothy Dunnett's Niccolo series before I started it, and I got a third of the way through the last book before deciding that I had to switch books now.
But today--I feel fine. In fact, I was full of energy, getting up to pace around my apartment. I stepped out on my balcony, and found that it was not uncomfortably cool. I decided to walk over to Teaism for an early lunch, then when I got there I decided I wasn't really hungry yet2, so I walked back home, and on the way passed the discount ticket office. After a little thought, I decided I was up for a matinee, and bought a ticket to "Fanny's First Play" by George Bernard Shaw.
I decided to read the preface before going to the play--I have a complete set of the plays and prefaces, a very nice hardcover edition--and was disappointed to find out it was a single page. It hardly seems right for one of Shaw's prefaces to be shorter than the play.
So then I embarked on a long day's hike--back to Teaism for lunch, then to CVS to get some calcium, three stops on the Green Line to the theater, then several blocks down 14th Street to Whole Foods3, over to my old apartment to inspect the painting and bathroom4, and finally back home. By the end one of my legs was getting sore, but it wasn't the leg that gave out on me a few weeks ago, and it didn't feel like more than a "yeah, I did a lot of walking today" soreness, so that's okay. It reminds me of my trip to Budapest, when I hiked all over the place and slept well at night. Good news, that I rebounded so quickly.
The play itself was a lot of fun, and I was one of half a dozen people under seventy in the audience.5 The prologue, where Shaw lampoons his critics, is the best part, and I was somewhat disappointed as the play-within-a-play went on that we didn't see the (fictional) audience's reaction. We do get to hear from the critics at the end, of course, but by then it fell a little flat. It's not surprising that Shaw didn't adopt a Mystery Science Theater 3000 approach (he professed to despise the show's inventor, William Shakespeare), and it probably wouldn't have been a good fit for his style, but even if it's only what Shaw calls a "potboiler", that's still a great work. He has the wonderful gift of creating characters who are obviously foolish and absurd and finding a perspective from which there's undeniably a grain of rightness in what they say. (And of course, the converse: showing utterly conventional people from a perspective that makes them patently absurd.)
[1] If "taking exactly the recommended dosage" can be described as "chugging", and if misery doesn't entitle you to use hyperbole I don't know what does.
[2] I completely lost my appetite while I was sick. When I heated up a can of soup, I was only able to eat about four bites. About the most filling meal I managed to stomach was a bowl of ice cream. Even on Friday, I couldn't eat much, and my appetite still isn't quite back to normal. I hope I'm ravenously hungry tomorrow, because I know I haven't been getting enough calories.6
[3] Where I got a few prepared foods, along with butter and milk to make cookies. My condo association's book club is meeting again on Tuesday7, and I've decided to try a new recipe each month. This month, butter drop cookies from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. The recipe is so simple I figure it has to be delicious.
[4] Yep, I still haven't finished putting the condominium on the market. At first, I thought there was no hurry, since condos don't sell well in the winter. Then when spring approached, my usual problem with serial procrastination reared its ugly head: I divide each problem into several tasks, put off dealing with one as long as I can, and put off worrying about the others until the first one is taken care of. Iterate until no obstacles remain.
[5] I understate for dramatic effect. There were seven of us. Along with several people who might have merely been in their sixties.
[6] Coincidentally, I weighed myself Wednesday, and found my weight hit a new high, 126 pounds. Despite being ungodly skinny, I manage to have the beginning of a pot belly.
[7] I really do need to get past page 10. Not my fault, I wanted to finish Dorothy Dunnett's Niccolo series before I started it, and I got a third of the way through the last book before deciding that I had to switch books now.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-26 06:27 pm (UTC)5) dramatic effect and explanation enjoyed. I mainly see older people at plays.
7) What's the book club book?
no subject
Date: 2006-03-26 06:46 pm (UTC)Washington Stage Guild is moving to a new theater near the Spy Museum in a couple of years, which may help.
The book club book is Middlesex. Really need to get reading. (At some point, I'll get into the book and the pages will start flying, but that hasn't happened yet.)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-26 07:21 pm (UTC)The city raised the assessment of my condo by 50% this year, but they also raised the maximum income for disabled and elderly folk to get an exemption from real estate tax, so I'm not paying it this year.