Whatta Fiasco

I’d like a bottle of dry red wine, a friend (or friends) to share it with, and an evening to do the sharing. A few small, fork tender steaks, medium rare would also be appreciated. And if you could arrange for Jon to get whatever he wished for on his birthday this year, I would be appropriately grateful.
That is all. Thank you.

Summer really is over, but you knew that. You don’t have to spend twenty hours of your weekend standing around outside to figure it out. All it takes is one time of walking out of the house and digging in the trunk of your car for a jacket because it’s cold out. But it was a beautiful weekend. The crowds at renfest on Saturday that they were at the level that got me to stop attending as a patron quite a few years ago. I spent almost the entire day hiding behind the rope barrier of our booth, getting out only long enough to take some video footage of a fun but as yet unnamed musical group.

Sunday had slightly crisper air but fewer crowds. It also featured a duel between a CD hawker and a pirate which came off splendidly to the delight of the crowd. At this point we’re extending our demos, starting them early or having them run late in order to accommodate all the people who want to come down and fence with us or get lessons. It’s quite amusing.

And now there are only two weekends to go. It will be very nice to have a life with weekends back (although fencing competition season is starting again), but there’s also a small chance that those two weekends could be it. The lease on the site is up for renegotiation again this year and no one seems to know whether its going to happen or not. I’m mostly not thinking about it for now.

So I’m in a better mood now. By the time I got to fencing practice tonight I was tired and dragging. By the time fencing practice was over I was still tired, but had better reason to feel that way, and I’d made Ariadne turn up the speed in order to beat me when we were bouting. That felt good. I may even be ready for the next tournament. I also got a lovely email from Elf that might have made me feel like a pathetic whiner except that would be ungrateful. They made me smile and that’s always welcome. Come to think of it, several people made me smile this weekend. Many thank to all of you, whether you know who you are or not.

Some days I feel invisible, unremarkable. Presented: one (still) overweight, middle-aged woman with long brown hair and glasses. Walk down most any city street in middle America an you’ll see half a dozen or more like me, if you notice them at all. And having a new friend confuse my name with that of one of the few of my acquaintances I’d least like to be mistaken for and it just hammers the point home.

One of the downsides to renfest for me is being constantly in the company of flamboyant and exuberant extroverts reveling in their extrovertedness. It can be highly entertaining and amusing. It can also be tiring and leave an introvert feeling envious of all the attention they get. Which is not to say that I want to be the sort of person I’d have to be to get that attention. That’s not me at all and trying to live that way would drive me crazy.

I know I’m not an interchangeable cog. I know I have my own unique set of skills (and faults) to offer, even if it isn’t immediately obvious to the casual observer. But it’s nice to be the bright shiny toy every now and then.

At least fencing went well last night, once I’d warmed up and gotten over a bout of frustration. My foot is still susceptible under prolonged strain but I’m getting better acceleration on my lunges than ever. If I can incorporate the advice I got from a fellow fencer Monday night into my default technique (the lunge lands on the heel) I should be able to keep on improving without getting injured again. Just over two more weeks until I get to compete in my first Division II event. I’m looking forward to it.

Sigh. The library books I dropped off on my way to work this morning are overdue. And of the ones I still have out, the one I was planning on reading last is (of course!) the one that can’t be renewed. Can I really give it proper due in less than two weeks? Given that I’ve only finished one book in the last month, that seems pretty unlikely. Ah well. I’ll just have to check it out again later.

My connectivity conniptions have subsided for the time being (knock on wood) so I got a chance to sit in on Matt’s latest online class. Sadly, they’re in the eastern time zone so I’ll need to adjust my schedule if I want to not show up in the middle of a discussion. Awkward, that. There’s still something refreshing about MOO, but with so many of my online friends having moved on to other things, it gets harder all the time to devote much energy to the environment. But there are still good friends there, and even a few befuddled and not quite starry-eyed newbies. The time when people found computer mediated communication unique and thrilling (instead of as common and unremarkable as a dirty windshield) has passed us by. Which doesn’t mean any of us understand the nature of these modes of communication any better.

It’s been a difficult couple of days for me but things are looking better. Quiche day helped. Roasted peppers. The flirty cashier always makes a point of checking which kind of quiche the customer gets. When he sees I’ve ordered the vegetarian one, he’s alway inordinately happy and makes as if I have excellent taste. But the truth is that they make one vegetarian and one meat quiche, and the meat always sells faster than the vegetarian. (It’s cow town. Go figure.) No wonder he’s always so happy to see me. But the quiche was good and life could be a lot worse. And tonight I’m watching trashy television and eating popcorn for dinner.

Has anyone written a Bayesian juke box program? Someone really should. I didn’t have any CDs with me at work this afternoon when the noise level in the office went beyond my tolerance threshold, so I pulled up my (statistically legal) mp3 collection and noticed that at some point I had begun putting together playlists labeled by mood. I want to be able to tell my music management software what my current mood is and be able to train it to know what my listening preferences for that mood are without having to specify specific playlists.

Or maybe I should just reduce my caffeine intake.

We were short handed giving fencing demos at renfest today, but still had a good time. With the weather so wonderful (clear skies and seventy-five degrees), we had a lot more people, and an amazing number of fencers wandered past. Hubby ended up giving quite a few lessons. There were also a lot of people wandering past who were happy to stop and chat, and plenty of kids to show the weapons to. Fun.

Toward the end of the day and old friend stopped by to say hello. I’ve mentioned him before as my carpenter friend, the one I worked front gate with a few years ago. I had expected him and his wife (and isn’t it nice when the people you like get together with other great people?) to have moved out of the area by now. Not too far off. In about a week they pack up and head off to Colorado where they’re going to be renting a house while they build one of their own. It sounds like exactly the sort of thing they’re both going to love.

We were invited out to dinner with the archers tonight but I wasn’t feeling that good, having come down with a headache at the end of the day. Instead we went home and I got us some beer and some takeout cheap tacos. In a feat of unplanned brilliance, I managed to get out of the restaurant just as the post football game crowd showed up. The downside to living in a college town; all those students! And in the oddest turn of the day, while I was waiting for my tacos, I got chatted up by a gentleman who looked like about a third of the guys I see at renfest. It took me awhile to decide that he wasn’t someone I knew from there. Odd but not unpleasant.

Here’s to another good day tomorrow.

My evening off tonight I spent clothes shopping. Ugh. I’ve never seen so many dull and uninspiring clothes. Almost everything with a little color or any shape to it gives me flashbacks to thrift store shopping in the early eighties. Frou-frou pinks and bad seventies knockoffs done in ugly plastic materials. I found one green skirt in an interesting textured fabric that was sorely tempting, but no shirt to wear with it. I even tried on some nicely made pants, but they would have needed major alterations to fit in the waist and the hip at the same time. I really could use some more clothing for work, but I’m feeling much more picky about what I spend money on, so I came home empty-handed.

One of these days I’m going to have enough disposable income again that I can look into getting tailor made clothes. When I look at how much they’re charing for off the rack clothing that doesn’t fit right and doesn’t for spit, even the cost of custom made clothes doesn’t look so terrible. One of these days.

Blowing my one free evening this week just to try on clothes I don’t want to buy is depressing, even if the clothes are smaller than they used to be. But on the bumper-to-bumper drive to the (ugh) mall, I had an idea for a costume based on the idea of wearing books, fancy leather-bound gilt-edged books, complete with layers of printed pages and fluttering ribbons bookmarks. Imagine the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, only as a librarian. I don’t have much of a clue as to how one would do it and it would be an insane amount of work but it would be cool as all get out.

It seems to be a week for some good news, and about time. There’s finally a small light at the end of the tunnel of our cash flow situation. Nothing certain, but I’ll grasp at whatever straws I can find. I just don’t intend to make rope from them yet.

The other good news came from Max. He’s now employed, or was as of yesterday. (I’m such the optimist.) He started training on Monday. He seemingly isn’t much enjoying the training process, having compared it to junior high school. But he noticed that if you shut up, listen, and do what you’re told it all goes much more smoothly. Never mind that he should have learned that in junior high school but didn’t. The real trick is knowing when that behavior is appropriate and when it isn’t. Balance, grasshopper. Balance and paying the bills.

Financial stress sucks.

It’s opera time again! Last night was Charles Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette. Lots of lovely French romantic music. Very pretty. Very sweet. Not very complex. But the voices were as lovely as the music. No big names, just good performances. Romeo (Marc Heller) and Father Lawrence (Mark McCrory) were especially good. I didn’t care so much for Romeo at first. He has an odd broad face on stage and two completely different profiles, but the more he sang the better I liked him. Juliette (Kelly Kaduce), Mercutio (Keith Phares), and Tybalt (Hugo Vera) all fairly popped off the stage with their acting. And the fight scenes (rapier, dagger, quarterstaves, and a few punches choreographed by Martin English) were as good as all but the best fight scenes you’ll see out at renfest. Paul Horsley’s review in the Kansas City Star of Saturday night’s performance was more critical of the fight scenes than I thought was warranted. (Although there were a few notable bobbles Monday night, especially with the quarterstaves.) Either that or they’re getting better. Or maybe both. At any rate, it was a fun, if light start, to the season.

The downside to the night was the audience. This is my ninth opera at the Lyric and I have never heard a ruder audience. Or maybe I was just unlucky in my section last night. The three old ladies behind me who spent most f the evening chattering (when there wasn’t something else going on) weren’t so bad. At least they quieted down (mostly) once the music started in earnest. Then there was the couple sitting next to me. They only whispered comments to one another (mostly) while the audience was busy clapping. I can deal with that too, even if it does get annoying after three hours. But the couple immediately in front of me took the cake with all the frosting and most of the crumbs.

They were an older couple (the mean age of opera going couples on a Monday night here is roughly sixty-five) sitting in the very front row, just a few seats to the right of the conductor. Every time something at all interesting happened, the husband would turn to his wife, put a hand between his mouth and the stage, and then whisper loudly to his wife. Every time. I wanted to bean him over the head. The man sitting to their left actually shushed them at one point, and then found another seat somewhere else during the first intermission. I don’t blame him. They were also passing a pair of binoculars back and forth. Were their eyes that bad, or did they just want to see the beads of sweat on the tenor’s upper lip?

But, almost as bad the incessant whispering, the male of the pair spent most of the opera leaning over the railing so that he could stare down into the orchestra pit, gesticulating from time to time. I was flabbergasted that someone who knew (or at least gave the impression of knowing) as much about opera as he did would be so incredibly rude. And I wasn’t the only one to notice it. Walking back to my car, there were two gentlemen behind me discussing this same cad. Apparently the cad had been complaining about the performance of the orchestra and, as one of the men behind me declared to the other, the conductor was right there beside him. If Mr. Know-It-All had asked, the conductor might have been able to do something about it. Frankly, I’m surprised the conductor didn’t throw his baton at Mr. Know-It-All. He was just that annoying. Right now I’m just hoping like crazy that he’s not a season ticket holder, because if he is, I’m going to be up at the call window (at intermission if necessary) to change my regular seat. Ugh.

And even with all of that, it was still a worthwhile evening.

Last night was fun, if not scintillatingly adventurous. GoLightly and hubby and I went over to the fabric store and I picked out some fabric for my new bodice. And decided what style I want. It won’t happen right away, but I need a little time to figure out what to do about a new skirt anyhow.

But today? Today was one of those days when I want to go very far away from anyone I know and stay there until I start missing people again. It started early in the morning unhappy enough that I got up and read for awhile because I couldn’t get back to sleep. By the time I got back to bed, the alarm had gone off. Then the solution I had for a problem at work fell apart. Not completely, but enough that the automation I was looking for won’t work. Argh. And my dialup connectivity was the worst it’s been all week. And in spite of my best intentions, my apa zine wasn’t done and I had a choice of cutting a few pages of not having a zine in this issue. By the end of the day I wasn’t fit for human company. Seriously.

So I cut the pages, wrapped up the zine and emailed it off. I also decided that fencing practice was optional this evening. Then hubby reminded me that the Halfway to Hollywood film festival was starting tonight and they were showing Jason and the Argonauts on the big screen. And Ray Harryhausen was in town for the event!
So I went to the movies tonight, and that was just about exactly right. I showed up at the theater shortly after Mr. Harryhausen did. They still had him outside getting photos. He finally made it inside for even more photos before the head of the festival dragged him up on stage to introduce the movie. And what’s he like? An affable if somewhat frail old man who likes the word marvelous. It’s a good word for him.
If you ever get a chance to see a good print of Jason and the Argonauts on the big screen, please do. If you’ve only ever seen Harryhausen’s work on the small screen, you’re missing out, and this particular movie works exceptionally well. And best of all? The final battle scene where the argonauts do battle with the skeletons. Kick ass skeletons. Just marvelous.

Maybe now I can get through the weekend without snarling at people. Maybe I’ll even have some fun.