I finish yet another Horatio book. I’m going through them too fast, and soon I’ll be through them all. What will I do then?

I guess I can go back and re-read them. I’ve ended up buying all of them so far, except for the first one, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. I can probably spring for that one as well. And one of the things I’d like to do is get the Nelson’s Navy: Its Ships, Men, and Organization, 1793-1815 book that I’ve seen at Second Story Books. It’s a beautiful hardcover from the Naval Institute Press, and they describe it thus:

First published in 1990, this encyclopedic yet highly readable work gives an indepth description of the Royal Navy in Lord Nelson’s time. Filled with over four hundred illustrations, the book is divided into fourteen sections that deal with the design and construction of ships, the navy’s administration, and life at sea. Other topics include shiphandling and navigation, gunnery techniques and fighting tactics, and a discussion of foreign navies of the day. Nelson’s Navy is an important source book for the naval historian, a valuable reference for the enthusiast, and a revelation to the general reader.

The hardback is thirty dollars at Second Story Books, but I see a trade paperback available from Amazon for twenty-three and change. Interesting that the average customer review on Amazon is five out of five stars.

Anyway, I just kind of gloss over a lot of stuff in the Horatio books, mizzenmasts & quarterdecks and bomb-vessels & cutters and linstocks & bosun’s mates. I’d probably get a lot more out of it all if I knew more about what they were saying and doing. Although that’s not to say that Forester doesn’t explain so much of it to the modern civilian reader. A real navy hand might find the books ridiculously dumbed down, maybe. I don’t know. But I’m often just taking things in context as I go along.

And I’m going along because these are exciting adventure stories. I feel a little guilty at times, like when I’m sharing Horatio’s excitement as he’s going into battle, not wanting some ship to get away, wanting him to get around again for another broadside, while men are being maimed and killed all around. These are war stories. Awfully gritty stuff. Lots of shit blowing up, as my brother might say. And I’m usually Mr. Pacifist Anti-war Boy, but here I am all caught up in the excitement of these war stories. Oh, who knows why we like the things we do?

So I’m reading these now for the narrative, for the atmosphere, for the adventure. I can go back later and fill in more of the details, appreciate the aracana more then. But for now, it’s fun to live in Horatio’s world and find out what happens.

And in that vein, I finish Flying Colours. I am most definitely not happy about poor Maria. And I’ve been annoyed at Horatio and his pathetic mooning over Lady Barbara and his scandalous behavior with the Vicomtesse de Graçay. But I go trucking over to Borders Books on 14th Street to get the next book, Commodore Hornblower, because I’m dying to know what happens next anyway. The Borders website says that the store also has in stock the next book after that, Lord Hornblower, but it’s not on the shelf.

I take Carol’s 9:15 yoga class, and Carol is actually teaching it, after two weeks away and then last week cancelled for the holiday. And assisting her is the same woman who was assisting when I took her class in early May, but she’s not named Karen as I thought. Although again this time I hear someone saying hi to someone named Karen, and when I turn around it’s this person that I see. But her name is Purvi. I introduce myself after class just to make sure.

Afterwards I meet Dawn outside and we walk up to Academy of Theatrical Arts to get tickets to their fiftieth anniversary recital. Dawn took ballet there for years, when she lived and worked closer, before we moved all the way across town. They’re all excited to see her, and excited that we’ll be coming to see them at the recital.

I’m looking for the next Horatio book, since I’m threatening to finish the current one soon. (Ship of the Line. Next one is Flying Colors.) The used bookstore Kultur has apparently closed, moved to Los Angeles. We go to Kramerbooks, but they only have two Horatios, Midshipman and Lieutenant. On the way back to the car we stop at Second Story Books, another used bookstore, but they have no Horatio. We’ll try Borders tomorrow.

We stop at Whole Foods for cucumbers for a salad Dawn wants to try making. We buy a bottle of white wine because Dawn likes the bottle. We stop at Safeway on the way home as well, for the regular weekly groceries.

We have quick snack for lunch, then we’re off to the dump. Officially it’s called the Fort Totten Waste Transfer Station. We have two old cabinets to take, one a kitchen cabinet, a corner cabinet, that’s been slowly rotting in the back yard while we’ve been using it to store bags of potting soil and mulch, the other a little cabinet of Dawn’s that used to hold videos, and more lately I’ve been hacking away at trying to fashion a shopmade router table, which I don’t need now with the new Ryobi saw with the extension that I want to see if I can drop a router into. The dump is fairly deserted. Some days we’ve had to wait in line, but not today.

On the way home we sort of what-the-hell stop at Home Depot. Dawn’s mother is coming to visit next weekend, and Dawn seems to think that her gardening needs a bit more show. So while Dawn looks for flowers and plants, I get ten minutes to go check out the tool corral.

I play with the fence on the Ridgid table saw that’s way out of my price range, just to see how much steadier it is than the Ryobi saw I’ve got. I’m pleased that it’s not remarkably different. Then I check out the little Ryobi bandsaw. It’s a little 9″ thing, meaning that you’ve got nine inches of clearance between the blade and the arm of the saw. It doesn’t mean that you can resaw nine inches. Depth of cut is probably like three inches or so, around the same as my table saw. I check out the Ryobi planer, playing with the depth adjustment. I think I’ll buy a planer next year. And finally I play with the drill press, trying to figure out the stroke adjustment.

I go back to meet Dawn and help her grab some hanging plants too high for her to reach. We’re on our way to get in line when I think of needing a deck box or something to replace the cabinet that we just threw away. We see a lot of Rubbermaid ones, but no prices. We decide it’s probably in our price range and grab one.

When we finally get through the line to the cashier, it won’t scan though. The cashier pages for help and has us wait while she checks through the next customer. Then she has a problem with him trying to charge something to his store account. Then her entire register computer just flat out dies. We read the gardening circular to pass the time.

At home the thing snaps together in a jiffy. The instructions are on the giant box itself; there’s no printed manual or instructions inside. The instructions are just pictures, even, no words. There’s a picture of a screwdriver and a hammer, and a block of wood with “1×4” under it. Like who has 1x4s just lying around? I find a strip of MDF that’s about right and use that. And then I stretch the plastic hinges while I’m screwing on the straps that hold the top. I have to yell for Dawn, who’s inside toasting walnuts, to help me. Finally it’s done. And it fits pretty well in the yard, where the old cabinet was. Looks a lot better.

Dawn and I go after work to Arbutus MD to the Ambrose Funeral Home. The father of our friend Rhea has passed away suddenly. We’re using Yahoo/MapQuest directions. We get lost.

Step 10 gets us off I-195 and onto Washington Boulevard/US-1. Problem is step 11, which says to continue on US-1. But apparently we should have veered off to the right, which would have taken us around and under the road on which we stayed, and would have taken us to where we needed to go. And compounding the problem was that, right around the time we were supposed to turn left on Selma Avenue, there was in fact another fucking Selma Avenue right there exactly. And we find Maple and Poplar Avenues, streets that we see on the map as being right by where we want to be, but they’re also apparently the wrong ones. Could it have possibly been any more confusing?

So we get into the classic man/woman thing about asking for directions. I’ve never before understood this, really. Like who wouldn’t stop for directions if they were lost? Well, me, turns out. But it’s because Dawn is suggesting that we stop for like any person walking. No way. I’ll stop at a gas station or some other business for directions, but I sure ain’t asking just any random schmo for directions. That’s just crazy.

So we pass up various random schmos. Dawn will say, “How about this person?” and I’ll reply “No, I don’t like that person.”

It appears from the map that we’re on the wrong side of these railroad tracks here, despite Selma and Maple and Poplar. So we find an overpass, and on the other side we find Oregon Avenue, which we also see on the map. So we take that and sure enough we finally find Sulphur Springs Road and the Ambrose Funeral Home. And later it’s only on the way back, retracing the Yahoo directions that we see where we got off track. And probably those railroad tracks are a later addition to the area, is why there are non-contiguous streets with the same name on both side of the tracks.

At the funeral home a sign directs us into the visiting room immediately to the right, where we sign the guestbook just inside the door and then wander further inside. I don’t see Rhea in the crowd. A man comes up to us and asks who we are and introduces himself. He’s Harold Jr., Rhea’s brother. He points out where Rhea is standing, talking to other people. Dawn had already spotted her, and we were just waiting politely until she was finished, whereas I thought we were waiting for her to arrive. But anyway Harold Jr. takes us over, because Rhea’s talking to some people who used to work with her, at Covington & Burling, where she and Dawn work now. Sort of predecessor coworkers of Dawn’s then. They are Roberta and Ann. We meet and greet for a while. We also meet Rhea’s mother, who’s a dear.

Then we talk with Rhea over by her father, by the open casket. She says that he doesn’t really look like him, and Dawn notes that she thought the same thing at her Grandfather’s funeral last year. There’s a kneeler in front of the casket, and I want to kneel and pray, but I’m not sure of the protocol. I’m not sure if it’s more of a Catholic thing, the kneeling and praying in front of the deceased, and I don’t know if making the sign of the cross is okay in Lutheran settings. So I opt for safety and refrain. I tell Rhea that, I don’t know why, but I found the loss of my grandparents ameliorated somewhat by the thought of them having had lost their own grandparents. Somehow I was comforted by the idea that they themselves had to deal with this very same grief. She understands.

The trip home, back into Washington, is a lot faster than the rush hour trip coming out to Arbutus, going against rush hour traffic now.

It’s our last game of the season, and we’ve got only two guys on the field at game time. We need four or we can’t play.

Usually this wouldn’t be a huge problem, as another team might give us grief for not having enough women but would also likely just go ahead and play – and expect to totally stomp us – if we don’t have enough men. But there’s a young woman in a yellow t-shirt (Balls to the Wall, I think) who’s acting as some sort of league official today. And she’s being a hardass about having the right number of people on the field. The 6:15 game that’s going on, neither team has enough women, but they’ve decided to play anyway. But yellow t-shirt is trying to stop the game. There’s lots of arguing.

We need to find some guys.

We’re lucky, though, that the game is delayed for other reasons. There are workers erecting all these tents on the Mall where we play, so we’ve only got three fields for the eight games going on this evening. With a full complement of four fields, there’d be four games at 6:15 and four games at 7:00. As it is, our 7:00 game has to wait for another 7:00 game to play before we can play. And that gives us time to find some guys.

Kate is our hero in this, stopping random young men walking or jogging by our field, asking them if they want to play. And she actually gets two guys to volunteer. The second of the two is Brian, whom I meet briefly and then don’t see again, not after Virginia’s husband Patrick shows up, making Brian unnecessary. The first guy Kate grabs, however, is Chester, and he is a total star.

Chester makes protestations at first, about how he doesn’t know the game like we do, hasn’t practiced like we have, doesn’t have a strategy like we have. So we explain that it’s like baseball, except that you kick the ball. Then we explain that we’ve never practiced. And we explain that we have no strategy, except, well, “play kickball.” So he’s perfect.

Making small talk, I ask him what he does for a living, and get this. He’s a pilot. He graduated from Indiana State University with a degree in aviation technology, and now he flies. How cool is that? Well, sadly, like a lot of pilots, he doesn’t actually fly. He looks for work. I tell him that I always look at and write down the N-numbers on planes on which I fly, and he’s excited that I know what an N-number is.

Our game finally starts. I’ve got my video camera with me, and I’ve been interviewing the players, to match up later with footage of them actually playing. Neither Ben nor Julie want to be on camera, although Ben doesn’t declare such until after the interview starts. I also interview actual fans who have shown up to watch us play: LaFaundra and her daughter, and Stephanie’s two friends, Lindsey and Hannah. Lindsey later takes over camera duty and shoots us while we play. Chester tells the story of how he was born, at home.

We play a decent game, although we lose, to Recreational Hazard, who are generally nice about it though. Chester makes spectacular catches in the outfield. And then he kicks a home run, driving in another baserunner along with him. Another time he catches a pop fly out in left field, then personally comes hustling into the infield to tag the base runner trying to get back to first base. Elisa pitches well, but she tries to give up at one point after somebody kicks a home run on her. Stephanie tries a few pitches, but Elisa eventually returns.

I get up to bat twice. The first time I fly out to shallow center field. The second time I get on base, but later I’m forced out running to third. As usual on defense I play catcher and introduce the opposing team players at their first at bats. After the game I drive Tiffany, Kyra, and Kate to the bar, and then head home.

I leave work later than I had hoped, right around five-thirty. I’m trying to get to Springfield via the Blue Line, trying to get there at six. The platform at Farragut West is packed: there’s some trouble on the Orange Line, resulting in single tracking some ways back, so my Blue Line is delayed as well. I’m late.

I get to the Franconia Springfield station right about six-thirty. I called Gordon when I was between King Street and Van Dorn, and we agreed that he would wait seven minutes then leave to come pick me up at Franconia Springfield. The cars at the Kiss and Ride are three deep when I get out and try to find him, but I don’t see him. I walk all the way down to almost the split between the Kiss and Ride and the bus lanes, and I wait.

Then I think about what car I should be expecting. When I met Gordon he had a VW Bug, then he got a Ford Escort, then a Ford Mustang (I even remember his license plate, LHB-507). Then he had a Honda Prelude. I remember all these cars so well. But I really don’t have a fucking clue what he drives now. Oh, wait, yes I do. It’s a Lexus. Babs bought him a Lexus for Christmas one year. I think it’s purple or champagne colored, even. Maybe. Oh, I don’t know. I’m waiting for my friend to arrive in a car I don’t know in a color I’m not sure.

Luckily, when he pulls up he sees me and pulls over. The car certainly looks familiar, but I am sure to forget it as soon as it’s out of sight.

We have dinner at the Hard Times Cafe in Springfield Plaza. Gordon used to manage the Mars Music here, that’s now a Baby-R-Us or something like that. I used to manage the Crown Books here that’s now a donut shop. The hostess who seats us turns out also to be our waitress. I ask her about this, and she says the hostess was just busy at the moment, so she sat us. (It’s only later that I think that this is a good strategy to make sure that customers get sat in your section, if you’re the wait staff. Seating them yourself, I mean.)

She’s a cute little number. She introduces herself as Christine. I give her my usual schtick, “Hi, we’re Gordon and Edward, and we’ll be your customers this evening.” While she’s off to get drinks, Gordon teases me about flirting with her. I’m thankful that he also notes that there’s no real actual desire behind the flirting, though. It’s just sort of habit with me. I’m not trying to pick anyone up. And she’s so young, just a girl, far too young for an old guy like me. Not that I ever picked up a waitress in my life anyway. Not to mention that I am also happily married. I ask Gordon to keep me reigned in, though, to make sure I stay friendly-nice-customer guy and not creepy-older-hitting-on guy.

Later, after dinner, when she’s bringing the check, she asks if I want more water. I’ve had a 23 oz. beer and a tall glass of water, so I tell her, “No, because … ”

And then I hesitate, because I was about to say that we’re going to be driving around in the car, maybe just listening to tunes, but anyway not especially near a restroom for a while, and I’m worried about having to pee later. And really all this is unnecessary. A simple “no, thanks” will do here.

She asks, “… because you’re already hydrated?”

And that just confuses me, the word ‘hydrated,’ and I don’t know what else to say now so I blurt out, “No, because I’m worried about having to pee later.” She laughs and walks away, but then Gordon warns me.

“Creepy,” he says soothingly.

Damn.

So when she comes back, I apologize to her for being crude. But she just immediately laughs genuinely and says that she was glad that I was honest. She doesn’t seem offended at all. So I think I’m in the clear. Gordon thinks so too. Whew.

But it was close, man.

Dawn wakes me with song, with Happy Birthday, and then she gives me a sweet card. We have breakfast but are able to be a little lazy. Yoga is later this morning; early classes are cancelled for the holiday weekend.

My class is at 10:30 a.m. Danielle is teaching. I’ve gotten kind of used to Chuck, after two weeks now, but Danielle taught my newbie workshop so I suppose it’s okay. The class is packed full, everybody’s mat is on a daisy, all thirty of us. Time passes oddly quickly. I’ve forgotten to wear a watch, but the woman next to me has one, and every time I glance up another half hour has gone by. Only in the last fifteen minutes or so does Danielle start to kick our asses.

We get home just in time to go meet my Dad at the Metro for the baseball game. Dawn walks over with me, then heads out for a walk by herself. Dad and I head over to the stadium. There’s cart vendors selling water and peanuts on the way, telling us it’s much cheaper to by from them instead of inside the stadium. I buy a water, which I’m positive has been refilled and resealed, but figure it’s okay. I drink it in the block to the stadium, but I take the empty bottle in with me and refill it twice, although the 72 oz. of water requires me to go to the restroom twice during the game.

We get sausages with pepper and onions right away and find our seats. We’re still in the middle of eating when we have to stand for the national anthem. We remove our hats. Some Springfield high school student madrigals sing their multipart harmony arrangement of the Star Spangled Banner. It’s a little awkward, holding hat in one hand and sausages in the other. Finally we get to sit back down.

We greatly enjoy the game, even though the Nationals lose. But they deserve to lose, blowing as many scoring chances as they do. We have very good cheap seats, although we do move up even further so the people walking on the gangway in front of us don’t distract us so much. And up higher we’re able to stretch our legs over the seats in front of us.

On the way home we see Adrian Fenty, who’s on the city council and is also running for mayor. He’s out pressing the flesh. I make sure to shake his hand and tell him he’s got my support in November. But of course he needs votes in the Democratic primary in September. I’m not a registered Democrat, so I can’t vote in the primary. I ask him what he plans to do, as mayor, about the Nationals’ crappy bullpen. He says he’ll work closely with Lerner, the owner.

I introduce Dad to our neighbor Kara and her dog Rosie. I take an extra fabulous picture of them. Back home I print it out and take it back to Kara. We talk about councilman Fenty, and I tell Kara that I’m not a registered Democrat because the Democratic Party is too conservative for me. Dad pipes up that the Republican Party is too liberal for him.

We head to dinner at the Carlyle Grand at Shirlington. Dawn drives while Dad rides in front and totally kibbutzes. We get to Shirlington and there’s like condos and an office building and a parking deck all new to me, although I suppose it’s been almost fifteen years since I worked down here. I’ve been to movies here still over the years, but I haven’t been paying attention to the construction. Maybe because the movies have been at night?

We meet Rob and Carol waiting at the bar. Dad calls Sharon and she’s still on her way, so we make our way upstairs to our table. It’s a nice corner table, round, big, up a step. We order drinks. I get the Carlyle Lager and Dawn gets a glass of wine. Sadly, no one else orders alcohol. I feel a bit self-conscious. Sharon arrives and I really expect her to get wine, but she doesn’t.

The food is very good. I have lobster pot stickers for an appetizer and the pecan encrusted trout for an entree. Dawn has a salad, sized up to an entree. Rob has the lobster bisque to start. Carol has what looks like mashed potatoes but is in fact creamed cauliflower. I give Dad some trout in exchange for a medallion of his pork.

We all get coffee, except Dad, who says he thinks he hasn’t had coffee since the mid fifties. Dawn and I share the creme brulee. They bring it with a birthday candle on the plate. And they’ve written Happy Birthday in drizzled chocolate around the rim of the plate. The gang sings to me.

And there’s presents too. A wonderful book from Rob and Carol, and fun toy tools as well. And a very generous check from Dad. We chat more, about Tom Hanks and politics, and then we make our ways out and home.

At home I feed the cats. As I’m bending down to put Louise’s dish on the floor, it feels a little funny how far I’m bending down. I straighten my legs and see how close I can get to my toes. I’ve never been able to get more than about a third of the way down my shins. Now I can stretch stretch and touch the floor. And I’m still wearing my shoes while I do this. I rush out of the bedroom to the other bedroom where Dawn is on the computer to show her.

Amazing. It might have something to do with the yoga.

It’s a relief to go to ballet and not have to run through the recital piece time and time again. But then Miss Jessica throws some trickier combinations at us in class. Even at the barre I’m completely inept at the double frappes that she wants us to do. I just stand there throwing out random frappes, embarrassed.

Later when we come center the adagio baffles even Miss Jessica. Another combination with changements and something new to me, contretemps, leaves me completely defeated. But it’s fun and I’m able to laugh at myself.

By the end of class we’re all leaping across the studio, first with a pique combination and then with grand jetes. Jill is easily the best leaper of us all, although she sounds like she lands hard, loud, without enough plie.

On the walk home we walk a ways with Renee, who invites us to a wine tasting. But it’s on an evening that we’re seeing the Royal Ballet at the Kennedy Center. It’s a shame, because it sounds like great fun. Renee also gives us a flyer for an almost month-long season of the Washington Early Music Festival.

I’m not even sure what early music is, but I’m intrigued. I think of it as something like the version of Handel’s Messiah that I have, the version that Dawn owned too when we met, with Christopher Hogwood leading the Academy of Ancient Music. Period instruments and things like that maybe.

It’s Wednesday, so that means kickball. Kyra goes early to squat on the fields. Kate, who originally had to stick around because of a conference call, but now the call’s been cancelled, leaves a little later. They get to the fields sometime after four. Early games start at 6:15 p.m. Our game’s at 7:00.

I mean to go home to change into sports clothing, but I get wrapped up in work at the office until after six. But I’ve got jeans on today, in case of just such an emergency, so I just change into my sneakers and I’m ready. I get to the fields about ten of seven.

Kate’s there reffing the early game, between the grey t-shirts and the yellow t-shirts. I think the yellow are Balls to the Wall. Kate’s already on beer three, of the Natural Light or whatever rank brew that Ben has brought. She’s a little loopy and has to pee.

We find nearby some sort of construction area surrounded by privacy fence. She’s able to just squeeze under a gate as I lift it up manfully. And I’ve got a pack of Kleenex, so no need to drip dry, as she puts it. She comes back under the gate and we shake hands at our mission accomplished.

Our game turns out to be a very close one, with the Parc Vista Ballers scoring one run, after which we settle in for a defensive battle. Only in the bottom of the last inning do we get a break. Ryan boots one up the third base line past both infielders and outfielders, allowing Kyra and Virginia to score before he’s tagged out at third. But we’ve won anyway.

I actually feel a little guilty at our win, snatching it away from them at the last minute. I poll the rest of our team and nobody feels even remotely bad about it like I do.

A comment from CPC to the Worlds Collide post:

[S]peaking as an observer who goes neither to church or to strip clubs, this posting helps to put your life into perspective. To me, your life seems to swing a bit like a big pendulum; there’s the meat phase, then the vegetarian phase; the heavy drinking phase then the more sober phase, the stripper phase, then the renewed Catholicism phase, and other phases that I’m sure that I’ve missed. Each seems like a correction — overcorrection? of the former. You’re certainly not the only one. Several of my wilder friends have turned to the church now, particularly those with kids. I guess I’ve taken a different tack; if one believes in moderation is all things (maybe except for root beer) the big swing, the big correction, is not needed. So, observing you fondly as I have all these years, I have to wonder, is the religious fascination a permanent thing, or another temporary swing of the pendulum? I have to wonder if a correction of the correction is in your future. Where will the pendulum rest?

Ouch. I am stunned when I read this. I try to think that it’s not true. But it is true, isn’t it?

But I suppose I never really like to do anything halfway. (Trust me, I’ve had to do a lot of things half-assed, but I never like doing things that way.) So, consequently, when I go about something, anything, I like to just dive right it. Perhaps I don’t recognize at the time that I’m doing so, or even much notice if I later decide to do something ostensibly opposite. Apparently it’s just what I do. Takes a good friend to point these things out sometimes.

But then I also like to think that I’m not just this way or that way, then or now, but that I’m all of these things all at once. I’m the sum total of all these things that I’ve been over time, becoming me now.

I’m a vegetarian, generally, by choice. Or I am at home anyway where my wife is strictly veggie. But I’ll eat meat if you put it in front of me, which kinda makes me not a vegetarian, even though I’ll feel guilty about eating the cute little animals. So I’m a non-vegetarian vegetarian.

I’m a sober guy, too. I’ve been to a couple of work happy hours, and seen the kids downing beers and doing shots, but none of that for me thanks. But I drink wine with dinner, and I have a beer about three o’clock on weekend afternoons. I even like to get drunk sometimes. I’m a sober drinker.

I’m a Catholic, but I still admire the strippers. Well, I don’t like literally admire them, as in to the point of actually going to see them. But I’ve also got nothing against them either. Heck, they’re just naked and we’re all born naked, in God’s image even. But strip clubs are just too smoky, now that I don’t smoke, and I’ve got no money to spend on strippers nowadays, what with the house and all. So, okay, I don’t truly have like much actual desire to hang out with strippers anymore, really. But, dammit, strippers are still just plain cool.

So, therefore, I’m sorry but I’m just not going to be able to quite fully accept the penduluum analogy. It’s close, but not exactly right.

However, CPC also uses the term tack, which gets me to thinking, maybe he’s on to something. Tack is a sailing term, a noun describing the position of the bow of a boat with respect to the wind. (I’m reading Horatio books, so I’ve got sailing on the brain.) He says that he’s taken a different tack in life, one of moderation. And I admire that. I totally do.

But in sailing terms, however, there’s also the verb form, tacking, which describes bringing the bow through the eye of the wind. It’s a way of sailing into the wind, of sailing upwind. So, there, exactly, I think, that’s what it is. I’ve always just had to necessarily go tacking like this, like I have, from one side to the other, because I’ve always been sailing to that point upwind, where I need to go.

That’s what I’ve been doing. Not swinging like a penduluum. I’ve been tacking.

So, today, it’s recital day. We go to morning yoga, as a sort of usual thing, but also today in lieu of the warmup class that Jessica’s going to do before the show. We get home and I plug in the video camera, to charge the battery. I haven’t used it in a while, but it says that there’s 32 minutes of battery life left, so I could live with that, but any extra will be gravy.

When the battery’s all charged, I pop in a brand new tape and record a quick intro. “Hi, this is me. This is the St. Mark’s recital tape.” Then I pack up the camera and put it by the door. We leave the house around two-fifteen, to be there by three, for the recital at four. I of course forget the video camera.

The studio is packed with people, just finishing up the warmup class. Ann from the Thu 7:30 class is outside looking in, saying it was just too crowded to join in. Then folks start running through their pieces. Some have the music, some don’t. It’s funny running through with people watching. I’m more nervous I think than I’ll be in the actual performance, having peers watching me. I love seeing other pieces, though. I won’t be able to watch, as our class is almost last. It’s my only chance to see Dawn with her pointe class, with Renee, Rhonda, and Sally. Dawn is so great, so lovely. She’s totally the best.

Dawn and I get a chance to run through our duet. I feel like I screw up holding her on her first sous-sus, but later she tells me that she didn’t make it all the way up until I grabbed her and helped her up. The other students watching give us a big hand, whooping it up, when we finish. They’re nice.

I still haven’t got on my costume, and I won’t have it on until the actual performance. This worries me. It’s funny how it seems like such a little thing, what I’m wearing, but those little things can totally throw you. Last week was the first time we did the piece with Dawn in the dress that she’s going to wear, and it’s totally a slippery fabric and changes how I need to wrap my arms around her to lift her. And at one point I’ve got her lifted and I have to shift her from one arm under her to two arms, and I have trouble with the slippery fabric. Or even the difference between doing it over and over in the studio, and then going down to the actual performance space. The first time we went down there it was like I couldn’t remember a damn thing, it threw me off so much. So I’m glad that we’ve rehearsed there a number of times now. But the costume, I’m just going to have to deal.

Miss Jessica is in street clothes, not her usual ballet clothes that she teaches in. And she’s in total babe mode, with bright tight short dress with tall boots. I’m really glad that she’s here. I thought I had heard that she couldn’t make it to the recital. She had some sort of pilates training or certification last year and couldn’t make, and I thought there was something going on again this year. But she’s here and I’m glad.

I have time to read some Horatio while we wait. I’m plowing through the Hotspur book. I’ll probably finish it tonight.

The recital starts, with Dawn’s Wed 7:15 pointe class going first. Seems like they’re back upstairs so quickly. Rhonda and Renee both say it went well. Dawn’s gone to change for our duet, so I don’t see her for a minute. We’re up fourth.

And seems like the next two pieces go by too fast and we’re suddenly on. Everything’s happening so fast that I don’t have time to be nervous. I don’t have much time to enjoy it either, though, going by so fast. But, I try and take some time; there’s this point where I slide to the floor and then wait several beats until Dawn slides down next to me. I close my eyes as soon as I’m seated, trying to just be in the moment, until I hear her right behind me and then I open my eyes. I do this also for effect, having been thinking about what I should do, besides nothing, while I’m sitting there and I can’t see her. I feel like it’s sort of an awakening kind of move, that I’m there but not there until she arrives. Then she’s down beside me and we’re up again and there’s no time to think again. Except that my co-worker and dashing young protege Kate is here, so I make sure to give her a smile as I go by, on my way to catch Dawn at the end. It’s a modern piece, so we’re not really keyed to the music necessarily at any point, except for the end, where I’m supposed to have lifted Dawn and then dip her at one musical cue and she throws her arms out at the final drumbeat. I think I get her down at around the right time, but she totally flashes her arms out perfectly as the last beat crashes.

Then we have a while to wait upstairs, as our Thu 6:15 is not on until ninth. But I’m alone in the studio for a moment, which is good since I have to whip off my white shirt that I wore for the duet and put on a black shirt for the intermediate class piece.

When we’re finally about to go on, I’m standing at the end of our entrance line, wondering where Ayanna is, since she’s supposed to be at the end behind me. No, really, we’re like going into the church now and where is she? She slips in behind me at totally the last second. (She’s been in a number of other pieces with the St. Mark’s Dance Company, and they’ve been changing in the library, is why I haven’t seen her.) It seems like an agonizing wait for the music to start. And then it kicks in and we’re off.

It goes by in a real blur, except that I find myself at the end farther to the right and middle than I’ve ever been before, and Jessica B., whom I usually key off of, who’s usually just ahead of me to my left, she’s way up towards the front. We’re like in places we’ve never been in rehearsal. But, this is also a modern piece, more rhythmic to the music but not so rigid that we can’t just be wherever we are and just space ourselves apart. So we are where we are, and we finish.

And it’s been great fun. I always think of my brother at these times. He plays guitar and has been in bands and has performed a lot, certainly a lot more than I ever have. But he’s never had to do it in tights, I suppose. But anyway, here I am, up in front of people. It’s funny how exciting it is, before and after, exciting to think about doing, even if there’s no time to think while doing.

After the show there’s food and wine. Kate joins us, as do Becky and Aida. We all sit and chat and eat and drink, although there’s music playing and I find it hard to hear. Aida is in her seventies but doesn’t seem to have any trouble hearing, but I guess she never used to listen to Kiss really really loud through headphones. I mean to do more mingling, meeting Jill’s boyfriend, and Jessica B. seems to have a boy here as well, but I’m all wrapped up in our little group and never do mingle. Aida leaves first and then a little later we all get ready to go.

Dawn and Becky and I walk Kate to her car and then walk over to Tortilla Coast for margaritas and dinner. I show the hostess the flowers that Kate gave me, and I tell her that I’ve just come from my dance recital. She’s clearly and utterly not interested in hearing it, and disdainfully shows us to a table. We’re seated next to two large groups, the first being cops, Capitol Police, in all black and leather and utility belts and guns, and the other group five girls and three boys, Mennonites, seems like. The boys are in general young person street dress, while the girls are in Mennonite garb, pretty dresses plus wraps or covering jackets, as well as caps. I wonder why the girls have to dress traditionally while the boys don’t. None of them has any drink other than water.

Dawn drinks a frozen margarita while I have plain on the rocks, and Becky just has iced tea. We are next to the window on Second Street, and there’s a constant stream of colorful people walking by. There’re elderly people with name tags. Younger women with too-short skirts and not the legs to pull off said too-short skirts. A little girl charmed by a dog. Guys in tuxes. We snark on everyone, especially women who can’t walk in their high heels.

We see Becky off to the Metro across the street and then walk home. And by this time it’s pretty late, and we pretty much go straight to bed. And then I do in fact finish Hornblower and the Hotspur.

(And although I remember to set the VCR to tape Saturday Night Live before going to bed, I end up taping an hour of the ABC Family Channel and only the last half-hour of SNL. Seems like the satellite box has somehow screwed up daylight savings time. Grr.)

I’m late getting to ballet, and when I arrive they’re down in the church already running through the piece. But looks like only half the folks are in there. And I see Pat and Ayanna standing in back, not dancing and so they must have just arrived. And when I ask Jill after they’re done with the run-through she says that this was the first time through, so I’m not too terribly late or in trouble or anything.

We then work through it a couple more times, stopping and starting, trying to figure out our entrance. We’ve got this combination that we do coming in and up the far left aisle to get on stage, during this long intro to the music. We do two eight-counts of arm poses & an outside soutenu, then another eight-count of three chaines and tombe pas de bourree. Repeat until in place.

I never can figure out how to do three chaines to a four count, though.

We’re divided into two groups. Dawn’s in the first group, one of four. They arrive at their places right at time their music kicks in, and my group, of six, is supposed to arrive eight counts later. But we just don’t have time to get the six of us into position anywhere in the soutenus or chaines. So finally Jessica decides we can just walk to our places after Dawn’s group starts. This makes sense, as the audience is going to be looking at them at that point anyway.

Finally the choir is arriving and we have to leave since it’s really their space for the night. So we go back up to the studio and run through the piece like five more times. And, heck, I’m tired. And I’m still a little fuzzy on some of the transitions, but that’s showbiz, I guess. Or maybe I can rehearse a little with Dawn at home before the recital on Saturday.

It’s the anniversary of our engagement. I asked Dawn to marry me, on this day, in 2003, at Jyothi Indian Restaurant in Adams Morgan. It’s a shame we never go there anymore, but we like Aroma downtown so much better. Dawn swears by their baigan bharta.

It’s also Gwen’s birthday, or her calculated birthday anyway. She was a stray, so her actual DOB remains a mystery. She’s six now.

And I’ve got kickball on Wednesdays. And last time I went, last Wednesday I was in town, the third of May, I forgot my shirt. I was about to call it my jersey, but it’s really just a t-shirt with the WAKA logo on the front and “Play Kickball” on the back. Our team signed up late, like the last team to sign up, so the division had to order extra shirts. So we didn’t get the cool Kelly’s Irish Times logo and whatnot on the back, Irish Times being the division sponsor and the watering hole to which we repair after games. And the shirts are like totally the bottom of the barrel last color available, the last color anybody would ever pick, the last color available. Officially it’s called natural. You’d probably call it tan. We call it nude.

So anyway, this time I remember on Tuesday night to get out the ugly shirt and put it on my dresser, so that I’ll remember it. In the morning I put it on Dawn’s book on the newel post heading downstairs. And Dawn grabs it and puts it by my backpack, by the front door. And of course I don’t see it and forget it. Again.

But luckily it’s a 7:00 p.m. game, so I have time after work to go home and get it and drive back to the Mall. It’s weird being able to park right on the Mall, on Madison Drive, but I guess since the museums all close at 5:30 there aren’t many people needing to park after that.

It’s raining when I get to the field, around 6:40 p.m. I see a couple ASH Kickers arriving and parking themselves under a big tree. I find Virginia and Josh refereeing the early game, so I hang out with Virginia by first base and we share the umbrella. I wonder which is less safe, being under a tree in a thunderstorm or standing out in the open with an umbrella. But there’s no thunder, no lightning. There’s a league requirement that games are called on account of lightning.

The two teams playing both only have three women. League rule is that a team must field at least four men and four women, but apparently since the two teams are equal they’ve decided to play. This presents a moral dilemma for us, however, since we’re playing one of these teams in a few minutes. Since the weather is crappy rain, maybe we’d rather not play tonight. We could force them to forfeit, since they don’t have the required number of women. We discuss amongst ourselves, and various Ash Kickers offer differing opinions. My favorite is that we play them, but only as a scrimmage, taking the win before we even start.

As it turns out, the weather improves and we decide to tough it out and play them for real, despite the gender disparity. And it proves to be a good and close game, and we win by one run. All very satisfying. Afterwards, I drive Tiffany, Stephanie, and Elisa to Irish Times. I’d really rather not join in the drinking and debauchery, and I’m able to get off the hook because of the special anniversary with the wife. And especially because Dawn’s not feeling well, poor dear.

I leave work to go to my committee meeting at the Cathedral. I’ve been a member, gosh, for three years now, of the Adult Formation Committee.

Chris McCullough was the Adult Formation Coordinator and head of the RCIA when I went through classes and confirmation. He said at the time that we should attend some committee meetings and see if we were interested in volunteering for further service. For some reason I got it into my head that we were like required to check out the committees, like it would be really bad form not to do so. So I went to a couple of Adult Formation Committee meetings and a couple of Social Justice Committee meetings.

The really wonderful Dori was getting on the Social Justice Committee, but I found a better fit for myself with the folks on Adult Formation. My sponsor Barbara was there, as well as Pat and Mary. All good folk. And so I’ve stuck around.

So anyway, on my way there, on the block and a half walk, I necessarily go by Camelot, more formally known as Camelot Show Bar. And walking out at that moment, dragging an enormous rolling suitcase, is Ana C. I know her from way back, from my own drunken nights spent in strip clubs during my divorce. She danced under the name Rio at Archibalds on K Street. I think I may have first met her at the 1720 Club, or maybe Good Guys, but I don’t remember. She danced for a long time at Nexus Gold Club. Her sister danced at Archibalds as well, and later at Camelot, under the glorious name of Oona, before moving to California.

Ana C. now sells costumes to dancers all over the city. Hence the suitcase. I load it into the back of her minivan for her and we chat for a minute. I remember that she had had a son, and she says he’s doing well. She’s had another baby, just last year, a girl. I ask after her sister, and she’s doing fine, still in California. And Ana herself is looking better; she seemed like she had lost a lot of weight after her son was born. Too much weight. I used to beg her to eat more every time I saw her.

So then we say our goodbyes and I head off to my church meeting. And again I feel all full of myself. All renaissance-y, like I did on Thursday with the power tools and ballet. Today I’m the good Catholic boy who’s still friends with the strippers.

Back in town, and having finished Lieutenant Hornblower, I resolve to make it to the DC Library to borrow Hornblower and the Hotspur rather than buy it. But then stuff comes up at work and I don’t get a chance to get to the library at lunch. So then I dash to Borders and just buy the damn thing.

But Lieutenant Hornblower ends with him (a) asking Maria to marry him and (b) having been made commander (but not post captain) of the Hotspur. I needed to know what happens next.

So, sure enough, Hornblower and the Hotspur begins:

“Repeat after me,” said the parson. “I, Horatio, take thee, Maria Ellen –“

And of course Horatio’s thinking that Maria is not the right woman for him, that he’s not even suitable husband material to begin with. And of course he bravely forges ahead anyway. That’s just the kind of guy he is.

We haven’t been to the ballet in a while. Tonight our friend Becky joins us.

She arrives just after I’ve finished vacuuming, just as she always does, before I’m finished dressing. We enjoy a wonderful early dinner and a couple bottles of wine. Then coffee. Then we’re off to the Kennedy Center for the Washington Ballet in something called the Bach/Beatles Project. It sounds perfectly dreadful.

First up is State of Wonder, choreographed by artistic director Septime Weber. Music is the Goldberg Variations, some of it recordings of Glenn Gould, other parts played onstage by a pianist and a harpsichordist. There’s the aria, twenty-nine variations, and the aria da capo. The dancing is very modern-influenced, but I find it beautiful, at turns moving and haunting and exhilarating.

The second program is Always, No Somtimes, choreographed by choreographer in residence Trey McIntyre. Dawn and Becky enjoy it, but I hate hate hate it. First, they use the actual Beatles recordings themselves, which is distracting. I’ve heard all these songs a million times, so they have meaning in and of themselves apart from what’s being presented and interpreted. As opposed to the Glenn Gould recordings, which I know of, but I don’t especially know. And then the Beatles songs lean more towards the Beatles’ later period (four songs are from the White Album) and are also somewhat McCartney heavy, neither of which things pleases me much. And the dancing is vaguely reminiscent of musical production numbers, gangs of dancers running to the beat or standing & tapping to the beat. Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da is especially loathesome, although Wild Honey Pie might be worse if it weren’t so incredibly short.

That Erin Mahoney-Du has a hell of a lot of charisma, though. And she’s nine feet tall. She’s been my favorite since Emily Vonne SoRelle left. Well, I like Elizabeth Gaither. And Runqiao Du, I like him too. None of these are Dawn’s favorites, but she knows a lot more about ballet.

There are a ton of dishes to do when we get home. Dawn takes great pity on me and helps me.

Up early, but this time, yes, sadly, I go to yoga too, instead of working out.

I had taken a newbie yogi workshop with Danielle, at Tranquil Space, and it wasn’t awful. So now I’ve got the three classes for $33 pass. That’s the newbie rate of $11 per class rather than like $14 or whatever Dawn usually pays by buying the mega-pass. Teaching is Carol, assisted by the lovely Karen or something like that. It’s weird being in some pose and then suddenly feeling someone’s hands on you, pushing you down or otherwise adjusting you. I generally can tell who it is, because Carol keeps talking, so if she’s nearby and someone’s hands are on me then it’s her but if she sounds far away then it’s Karen.

I’m way up front, next to Carol, or her mat anyway, since she’s often wandering around. Down dog is not a restful position for me. I wear a basic workout sort of uniform, shorts & t-shirt, but am not especially comfortable with either, as they both tend to react to gravity a little more than I’d prefer. The shorts are particularly alarming when doing a shoulder stand, exposing more pale thigh than anyone really wants to see.

Later at ballet practice I decide that the tights and clingy shirt that I’m wearing might work better for yoga.

We go to the Saturday vigil Mass, since we’re flying out early tomorrow for Savannah. Later I screw up and don’t tape Tom Hanks on Saturday Night Live. Seems like I’m always screwing up and missing it. To wit, this Tom Hanks show is the seventeenth of the season, and the third non-repeat one in a row that I’ve missed. Although the repeats have allowed me to catch the Scarlett Johansson and Steve Martin episodes. But still.

Seen a man carrying a dead dog.

Dawn and I were walking to work along Mass Ave. We were somewhere between Lincoln Park and Stanton Park, I don’t remember exactly which block. We saw walking toward us a man carrying a dog. And at first I smiled at how the dog was being silly, hanging his head down like that. It made me think of how dogs like to stick their heads out of car windows and feel the breeze on their faces.

But then I noticed the really grim set of this guy’s face as he walked. And then I noticed that that dog’s head wasn’t moving at all. And you could see blood in its open mouth.

A woman was walking a number of paces ahead of us, and he passed by her first, then passed by us. The woman took a few steps and then slowed down and then turned around to us stunned. She tried to mouth some words but nothing came out. We just kind of nodded to her, understanding and feeling the same way.

The image of that guy haunts me all day. The way he was cradling the dog. It was some sort of spaniel. I imagined at first that he was out walking it and it got off the leash and it ran into the road and got hit. But then later I think that it couldn’t have happened so soon before we saw him, that I don’t know how he could have been holding himself together like that, even though it looked like he was just barely holding himself together. I imagine all sorts of scenarios leading up to what little we witnessed.

That poor man, I say to Dawn later. The poor dog, she says.

A January gale was roaring up the Channel, blustering loudly, and bearing on its bosom rain squalls whose big drops rattled loudly on the tarpaulin clothing of those among the officers and men whose duties kept them on deck.

So begins the many and various adventures of one Horatio Hornblower. I just finished this Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, the first book chronologically in the Hornblower saga. Forester’s first Hornblower book written and published was a novel in 1937 called The Happy Return, where Horatio is already captain of the frigate HMS Lydia. This Midshipman book is a collection of short stories, copyrighted 1948 through 1950, so I assume they were published in one or more magazines in those years. My particular copy is a first edition hardback from Little Brown in 1950, totally beat up and falling apart now, that I borrowed from the DC Library. In it, of course, Horatio begins his career as a midshipman.

We’ve been watching the British TV series with Ioan Griffud as Horatio. He’s pretty hot. He allegedly has been in other stuff, like Black Hawk Down and The Fantastic Four, so you may know him, but we haven’t see any of those. We have seen him as Bosinney in The Forsyte Saga.

There are three series, as they call them in the UK, of videos, and the first series pretty much follows the adventures in this book, with various major and minor changes. The first episode, The Duel (in the US, original UK title was The Even Chance), seems to be a mash of the first three stories in the book, “Hornblower and the Even Chance,” “Hornblower and the Cargo of Rice,” and “Hornblower and the Penalty of Failure.” The Fire Ships (UK title The Examination for Lieutenant), the second episode, mixes “Hornblower and the Examination for Lieutenant” and “Hornblower and Noah’s Ark.” Episode three is The Duchess and the Devil, with the same UK title and from the story of the same name. Finally, the fourth episode is called The Wrong War, with the original UK title and the original story being The Frogs and the Lobsters and “Hornblower, the Frogs, and the Lobsters,” respectively.

The next two series may cover material from other books, but I don’t exactly know yet. Up next for me to read is Lieutenant Hornblower, so I’ll let you know. A commenter on IMDB claims that the last two episodes of the third series, Loyalty and Duty, are loosely based on the novel Hornblower and the Hotspur. We’ve still got that last episode Duty to watch, where Horatio is captain of the Hotspur, and he’s about to marry Julia Sawalha, who is way cute. I used to get her confused with Saffron Burrows, although they look nothing alike, but Julia Sawalha played a character named Saffron on Ab Fab, so maybe that’s why. Dawn seems to very much dislike this chick whom Horatio is marrying, but I think it’s just because Dawn’s jealous of her.

The other star of the series is Robert Lindsay as Sir Edward Pellew. He’s gruff and professional in all the right ways, but apparently Robert Lindsay is a big star for his singin’ and dancin’ and comedy skills. Other favorites have shown up in guest roles, like Samuel West, whom I used to get confused with Rupert Graves. (Apparently I get lots of actors confused: Sterling Hayden and Robert Ryan, Julia Sawalha and Saffron Burrows, Samuel West and Rupert Graves, etc.) And in another episode is Denis Lawson, who’s also in one of my all-time favorite movies Local Hero, although he’s more famous for his appearances as the character Wedge in the first three Star Wars movies, as well as for being Ewan McGregor’s uncle.

I’m happy to be reading something again other than woodworking stuff. I started out the year well, reading Elie Wiesel, with the idea that maybe I could swing at least a book a month. (Long gone are the days when I could do a book a week.) But depending on how you count, I’ve finished by now five books, or only three. The three Wiesel books were all published separately, but I read them in a collection in one volume, so we could count that as either three or just one. But heck, I’m going to be generous and count it as three. Then there was the Flannery O’Connor. Hmm, now that I think about it, all of what I’ve read this year has been collections of things, either three books in one or short story collections. Wonder if that means anything. Probably not.

And anyway up next is a proper novel, Lieutenant Hornblower. Oh, from the little recaplet in Wikipedia, sounds like this is where the material for the second series, the two episodes Mutiny and Retribution, comes from, where Horatio is on HMS Renown with nutty Captain Sawyer. And where he meet Lieutenant Bush. The DC Library’s online catalog CityCat says that the MLK branch has four copies. Gotta go grab one.

Dawn leaves work early Monday night to go to Catholic University to some library science class. She’s not taking the class; rather, she’s one of three members of a panel of some sort presenting to a class. My understanding is that some co-worker of hers was supposed to do it but had to back out at the last minute, and Dawn is filling in for her. Things go late so Dawn doesn’t get out until like 7:30, and then she doesn’t get to the Brookland CUA Metro stop until almost 8:00. I pick her up at Union Station at 8:20.

So anyway we get home late and have dinner late, too late to start an episode of Horatio or The Forsyte Saga that we’ve been watching. But we end up finding on PBS a documentary called Save Our Land, Save Our Towns, about suburban sprawl and land use planning. It’s utterly and thoroughly compelling.

It first makes me think how my brother every chance he gets reminds me that he thinks that DC is a special corner of Hell. And that makes me so fucking mad every time he spews that shit. First of all because it’s just gone beyond rude at this point, that he has to keep saying it. But then also because he lives out Route 7 in Loudon County in fucking grotesque suburban sprawl. And that sprawl is killing him and killing America.

The part we saw in Save Our Land, Save Our Towns talked about the postwar development of suburbs, and the decay of cities, as being a byproduct of fractured zoning laws among too many municipalities, as well as great subsidization of highways, and everything devoted to the automobile, at the expense of public transportation. Nowadays, of course, so many states and counties are realizing that suburbs are ugly and polluting and isolating places, and are not at all a good model. Hence the renewal of cities, as witnessed by the astonishing real estate market in my city, as well as the idea of mixed use, town-like development rather than awful Levittowns and strip malls.

And today I hear that Jane Jacobs has died. She apparently was the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. And I immediately like how that title has it, first death and then life. I really feel that, living in a city as I do, that life. My neighborhood is getting better, with fewer and fewer boarded up abandoned buildings. (The once abandoned and now grossly expanding house next door to me notwithstanding.)

And I really felt it today when Dawn and I were walking to work. We said hello to Rob a couple doors down as he was leaving for work. Around the corner we said hello to Tiffany, as she was getting on her bike and leaving for work. We said hello to the two dogs that we know, Simon and Rose, and we petted Rose’s head, and chatted with their owner, whom we know only as Mr. Simon or sometimes Mr. Rose.

We waved at the Jack Russel terrier who’s always in the upstairs window at 1347 Mass and whom we call Jack, and he gave us a friendly bark. We said hello to the guy at the bus stop at Independence and Massachusetts, whom we learned today is named Peter. We waved to the woman who jogs in Lincoln Park with her yellow lab. We saw our ballet friend Renee walking her two dogs. We chatted for half a block with the woman who owns the three English Sheepdogs that we think, and she agreed, look like pandas.

We waved at Ann in her minivan (okay, driving her kids to school); we see them and exchange waves a lot of mornings on D Street. And I chatted briefly with my friend from St. Matt’s on Connecticut Avenue on my walk from Farragut North to my building.

Meanwhile, millions of people in the suburbs got in their cars and drove to work, spending hours in the car alone, spewing pollution, without a kind word to or from anybody. Oh, except for Howard Stern on the radio, if he counts for kind words. Now, admittedly, we don’t see all those people every morning, but we do see somebody, one or two of them, every morning. Or we see and chat with Tiger the Yorkshire terrier and his owner. Or wave to the old white gentleman who buys the morning paper at the market at 4th and Mass. Or the old black gentleman who lives in the building next to the old Red River Grill. Or the homeless woman outside the Catholic Charities John L. Young Center. Our commute is really friendly.

But of course I don’t really know much about urban planning and land use, or know just a little, just enough to think maybe I know something, which is usually worse than knowing nothing, so I want to learn more. The Save our Land, Save our Towns website lists books to read for further reference. And I even know one of them, Edge City by Joel Garreau, having read a bit of it. I even met Joel Garreau when he came into the Crown Books at 22nd and M when I was working one weekend, when I worked for Tony Bell as a floating manager. I got Mr. Garreau to sign a copy for me, mostly because the book had these great photos comparing Tysons Corner in like 1940 to Tysons Corner today (or then, in 1990 or so). But I don’t think I ever finished the book. I’m pretty sure I didn’t, although it was a long time ago, so who knows. I’m sure I don’t have that signed copy anymore. The website recommends Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth T. Jackson as the definitive history of suburban sprawl.

Of course I want to read more about St. Paul, and more woodworking books and magazines, and keep up with my New Yorker subscription. And more about the Mexican Revolution and the Cristeros. More about land use planning? Then it’ll have to be in my spare time, my other spare time, the spare time from my spare time.

But my point here, I suppose, if I ever really have a point, is that living in the city is good for me. It’s good for my physical health. It’s good for my mental health, my psychic health, my cultural health. And it’s apparently good for the environment. Gosh darn it, it’s good for America.

I haven’t thought about it in a long time, and I suppose I never really thought that much about it anyway, but I guess I played a lot of organized sports as a kid.

I was in a bowling league a couple years like around first and second grade, in Texas, and then again as a teenager in Illinois. I played football between fourth grade and fifth grade, in Fairfax County VA, then again between fifth and sixth grades in Norfolk VA, and then in the summer of 1976, between sixth and seventh grades, in Illinois.

I played soccer in Fairfax County as well. And basketball. And baseball. This was all through the county parks department, I think. Near us was Lee District Park, so I guess we were in Lee District. That’s what I seem to remember as organizing the leagues. But then I seem to remember having some sort of local business on our baseball jerseys.

I was utterly terrible at baseball. I was too afraid to swing at the ball, so I’d just sit there and hope for balls, to get a walk to get on base. And it was so much worse to strike out on called strikes, rather than go down swinging. I remember my teammates screaming in frustration, to just swing at the fucking thing, rather than standing there dumb like an idiot. But I couldn’t swing. I don’t know why. But I couldn’t.

I did get a hit once. The count was like 2-0 or 3-0, and I vaguely recalled my father having said to me that in such a situation one really had not a whole lot to lose by swinging. The pitcher was going to have to try to get something in the strike zone, rather than just let you walk. So I swung and connected with the bastard, popping it into centerfield. And I then just stood there with my mouth hanging open, astonished that such a thing had happened. I can’t remember now if somebody caught the fly ball or if I made it to first base or what.

I have some other memory of actually running around the bases and making it to home, but having the run not count for some reason. That may have been a different time, although you’d think I’d remember a second hit if that’s what it was. But I remember excitedly racing down the third base line, but the other team wasn’t paying much attention to me, walking around, or walking off the field I guess. I think there was some rule about only being able to score a certain number of runs per inning, so that we maybe had reached that number by the person ahead of me crossing home plate, so then that was the end of the inning, despite the fact that a play was kind of, you know, still going on.

I’m not sure how they organized players, by age or weight or what. I think football was by weight, because I was never on a team with my brother, but we were on the same baseball teams. And basketball. In fact one year our Dad was the basketball coach. I seem to remember that my Mom had coached my sister’s girls basketball team one year, and then Mom and Dad both coached teams the next year. Greg Francois, John Triggs, Chris Lynch and Larry Kane were all on the basketball team, I remember. We had blue shirts, but I think we named our team the Celtics. I was horribly sick with some staph infection around the time of team pictures. I looked terrible.

Katrina Radam’s dad coached soccer one year. Then Keith Wilson’s dad coached the next year. I remember Mr. Wilson had a rule that you had to wear a long-sleeved sweatshirt underneath the soccer jersey. I forgot for a game once, and he sent me home to get one.

I always loved playing football the best, probably because that’s the one I played the best. They must have organized the leagues by weight, because I dimly remember this one kid being all nervous about being too heavy at weigh-in. And that’s probably why I was any good at football, because we were all pretty much the same size. And I seemed to understand better than most of the other kids that one of the main objects of the game was to hit other people, and we were kids and we were used to throwing our bodies around and into each other with abandon, and here we were like totally encased in plastic and padding and there was no way any of this was gonna hurt. So I remember playing defense, playing linebacker, my first year. That was fun.

Greg Korn’s dad was our coach. Greg was a real little guy, but he played running back. Chris Burns was the other running back. I played fullback, too, now that I remember, because Mark Lynch was an offensive lineman, and I totally plowed right into his back during practice one day. He must have been standing in the hole I was supposed to go through.

I remember we had this offensive system where the plays were designated by numbers. Each back had a number, and each hole between the offensive lineman was numbered. So like Timmy Myers the quarterback was number one, and like maybe Greg was two, Chris was three, and I was four. Between the center and the right guard was hole #1, between the guard and tackle was #3, between the tackle and the end was #5, etc. And the left side was the even numbered holes. So like play #12 was Timmy running forward between the center and the left guard, and play #35 was Chris getting the handoff and running between the right tackle and right end. I suppose like maybe play #48 would be me sweeping around to the left, but I don’t remember what exactly sweeps were. I think play #10 was just a quarterback sneak straight over the center. Maybe I was two, and Greg and Chris were three and four, now that I think more about it. But whatever.

I thought it was a neat system, in that it allowed for a lot of plays but we dumb kids didn’t have to remember too much. I don’t recall much passing the ball though. I do remember that we did have one trick play, a double reverse. It always used to confuse me, though, because we didn’t ever learn or have a single reverse. I always wondered about that, why we’d have the double but not the single. Being that I played on offense and defense though was a bit helpful in practice, against that double reverse. Because normally Greg and Chris would line up behind the quarterback each on a certain side, except that the one time it would be different would be the double reverse. They’d switch sides. And being a linebacker, being a little more free to move side to side behind the defensive line, I could gravitate over to where I knew the offense was going to run. I’m sure I felt pretty smug about all this. Probably still do.

Our defensive coach was Mr. Ed Keightley. He also apparently repaired TVs, because we took one to him once. Or I think maybe he was taking a TV repair class or something. But this TV we took to him wouldn’t show a picture. You could switch channels and hear everything just fine, but no picture. I remember listening to Conquest of the Planet of the Apes one night, trying to figure out what was going on when nobody was talking. Mr. Keightley never did figure out what was wrong with that TV. We just had to get a new one.

Mr. Keightley taught us what to do in case of a trap play, if as a defensive lineman or blitzing linebacker your opposing offensive lineman pulls and just lets you through rather than blocking you. He said that we were supposed to drop to our knees and just grab legs, any legs that were nearby. I clearly remember this being in like these written instructions that we had, these xeroxed written playbooks that we had. And the specific instructions were written in like the hand printed version of italics, they were that important. I don’t think we ever faced a trap play in any game that we ever had, and we sure never had any on offense, so we never even practiced it. But I still sometimes think about Mr. Keightley when Washington runs that trap play that they’re kind of famous for, the one that John Riggins would get all kinds of yards with. I think it even has its own name, not just “trap play” or whatever.

Our team name was the Dolphins, although I don’t know that we ever won any game, and we certainly didn’t go the whole season undefeated, like I think the Miami Dolphins had the year before and was probably why we chose the name, even though our colors were green and gold. I had jersey #74. My next year in football was in Norfolk, and the jersey was one of those shiny fancy kind with a kind of mesh hole system in it and I was #81. Again with the green and gold my last year, with #15. Although you can see from the picture in the earlier post that the #15 is just printed on and is in white, whereas my #74 jersey had gold numbers that were sewn on.

In Norfolk my brother’s coach was Mr. Smith, and I think my Dad was an assistant coach. My team scrimmaged their team once, and they were bigger and totally wiped us out. But I remember my brother lining up on defense against me as the left end on one play, and I executed a nifty low crackback block on him that put him out of the game.

My last year in sports was on the eighth grade school team, on the JV soccer team, at Eisenhower Middle School in New Jersey. I wasn’t especially good and didn’t play much.

Oh, wait, I ran cross country in high school, in my junior year, again on the JV team, and again I wasn’t much good. I could run run run forever, but just not especially fast. And then I developed shin splints and didn’t much like to run very far after that. But like running ten miles was only for practice. Cross country meets were only three miles. I was the only player who smoked.

I’ve played on softball teams at various jobs I’ve had in Washington DC. I worked at the Office of Federal Tax Services for Arthur Andersen. Our team name was the Tax Dodgers, with our hats having the same “D” logo as the old Brooklyn Dodgers. Tax Dodgers was funny until Andersen got indicted. But I still love my Tax Dodgers jersey. When I worked at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, our team name was Orbital Debris. At Deloitte & Touche, I only went to a couple games. But I’ve been making up for my sins as a youngster, in that now I swing at fucking everything. I will never just watch a strike zip by me ever again.

I’m forty-one now, and I play league kickball with my work team. Our team name is the Ash Kickers.

 Found this gem while at Mom’s on Saturday.

We moved to Rock Island IL in January of 1976. I remember football practice starting in the blasting heat of summer, so this is sometime in the summer of 76. I’m twelve years old.

This picture looks to have been taken during an afternoon practice. I don’t remember our team name, but the colors are Green Bay Packers colors. When the coach was handing out jerseys, nobody else wanted number fifteen. I was shocked and pleased then that I was able to grab it, it of course being Bart Starr’s number. I didn’t play quarterback, though.

I remember riding around on somebody’s bicycle before practice one day, and somebody threw a helmet at the bike. I crashed in a heap on top of the bike, my face jamming into broken spokes of the front wheel, jabbing and cutting my cheek.

And I chipped a tooth, turned out. I discovered and spit out what I thought was a bit of rock or food or something, and then realized it was a chip off the tip of my left upper canine.

I scanned the picture and the resulting file was like a megabyte or something. I cropped it, reduced the color depth, and then saved the jpeg with high compression. This file now is all of 7K, which I think now is too small, although it does sort of have an antique-y quality to it. But I think I’ll work on it again and repost. In the meantime, though, enjoy.

The usual for Saturday, getting up around seven to be able to eat breakfast and get to Dupont Circle by nine for Dawn’s yoga class and my workout. On the step machine I watch the Bollywood segment of Darshan TV, and it’s unbelievably cool. It’s Raj Kapoor in Shree 420 from 1955. Then Shilpa and Ramesh discuss the US/India nuclear deal. But I generally cut my workout way back, having hauled stuff and broken up the shed last night, and looking forward to loading it all onto a truck and taking it to the dump today. We stop by Safeway on the way home, to get fixings for Easter brunch and dinner tomorrow. The place is jammed, and the liquor store is closed because they’ve lost power.

We wait in line a long time. I read Fine Homebuilding so I don’t notice how long really, but Dawn pegs it at forty minutes. We chat a little with the woman behind us. I ask her why she’s not reading, not catching up on celebrity gossip while she has the chance. She says that she reads celebrity gossip blogs and is up to the minute current. The magazines are all filled with old news for her. She specifically mentions Gawker and What Would Tyler Durden Do.

I go back to Mom’s for the trip to the dump. Mom’s ex-husband Glenn is there with his brother Carl. He’s buying pretty much all the furniture that Mom’s not taking to Florida. That’s awesome to hear, because I didn’t know what the hell we were going to do with it all. I guess let Purple Heart pick it up or something like that. Glenn is funny. I haven’t seen him in years, but he looks exactly the same except for being really gray. He’s grinning from ear to ear, in a good mood.

John and Rob and I fill up the van that John as rented from Rent-a-Wreck. Then John and Mom and I go in it to the dump. The van has two bucket seats in the front and is filled with debris in the back, so I crouch down up front between the two seats. I watch the clouds, is about all I can see. Mom narrates a little of the scenery to me too.

At the dump we get on the scale and the guy announces to us that we have 480 pounds of stuff and have to pay fifteen bucks. He says it somewhat hesitatingly, like we’re supposed to argue or bargain or something. John and I both think it’s a great deal, but it’s not like we’re the ones who have to pay. Mom’s actually paying, but she hands the guy the bucks without complaint. Up the hill where we unload we have to shuttle between the wood and metal areas, because the stuff is all mixed up in the truck. For the trip back, I start out in the back of the van. But there’s no windows so it’s beastly hot, so I make John stop so I can come up and crouch up front in the middle again.

Back at Mom’s I help Glenn load more furniture into his minivan as well as the big rented van. He’s taking two filing cabinets from the upstairs office. I pull the drawers out of one and carry them downstairs, then carry the empty cabinet after that. Glenn decides to use the hand truck to roll the other one down. I tell him that the cabinet is going to be tumbling down the stairs in a second. Sure enough, it is. It makes giant gouges in the drywall before getting jammed between the wall and the railing.

I get home and Dawn meets me at the door with a beer. I’ve made it through the harsh Lenten regime of no drinking during the week. And we traded away Good Friday back when Laura & Elizabeth visited. So this is my first drink all week. And oh my goodness is it good.

We have fondue for dinner and watch Good Night and Good Luck. It’s a fine movie, beautifully shot in a crisp black and white, and the clothes are gorgeous as well. I’m as familiar with the story as Dawn is not, so I enjoy it better than she does. But, then again, it’s also somewhat pointless in its bland retelling of what happened. It doesn’t for me evoke the paranoia enough, the danger of the times. It tries its best, but it just doesn’t do. But it’s a wonderful performance by David Strathairn. And they’re all great for just presenting this obvious parallel to our own times.

We go to bed and for the second week in a row I forget to tape Saturday Night Live. So this is why we need TiVo.

We take the day off from work so that we can go to Good Friday services. We have toast for breakfast, then head out.

First we stop at the DMV so that I can renew my license. Apparently I can’t renew it online. I forget that you have to pass through metal detectors, and get bags x-rayed, to get into the DMV. What a pain. Same with the library. Life in DC, I guess. The DMV is especially bad, where I even had to take off my belt and shoes one time. This time I hurriedly gather up wallet and keys and phone and pocket change and everything I can find and stuff it all into my backpack, so as not to set off the metal detector. But of course I do set it off. But seems like everybody is setting it off and the guard is too busy to figure out why so he just waves us through.

I’m pleased that the line to get into the main room isn’t long at all. This is one of those setups they use nowadays, at least in DC and Maryland but I figure it’s pretty standard, where you first check in at a main counter and they make sure you’ve got all your paperwork in order before they give you a number and you wait to get service. My number is C41 and the estimated wait time says one hour and thirty-six minutes. We might not make it.

They also give me a form to fill out. It’s an application for a license and is confusing because I’m here for to renew. It says I need proof of residence. But isn’t my license proof of residence? But it doesn’t say so because this is an application for a license. And there’s also an application for voter registration. Dawn suggests that I use it to change my registration, so as to register as a Democrat, whereas now I’m not registered with any party. DC is very much a Democratic Party town, as in going for Kerry 90% vs. President Bush getting 9% in 2004. That’s right. Only nine percent. We would in fact have only Democrats on the city council except for the fact that that the city charter requires two members be from a different party. Yup, that’s right. Congress forces on us an affirmative action quota for Republicans.

So anyway pretty much local elections are decided by the race in the Democratic primary in September, not the general election in November. So Dawn tells me that, as much as I yack about politics, I should register as a Democrat. But I’m not a Democrat. Maybe I’ll register as a Green.

And Dawn thought that we’d be in and out of the DMV in twenty minutes, having come on a work day and not a Saturday. But that 1:36 estimate proves to be pretty much true. And we have to bail after an hour and a half because we have to get to church. We give our number to the young woman sitting next to us, who’s got like A60-something.

CPC wrote in wondering about Office Space.

I mentioned that Dawn didn’t think much of it and in fact had thought she was renting something else when she picked it on NetFlix. She said it certainly was no Office (British version). But I didn’t mention just how sublime I think it is. With certain reservations.

As a work of art, or more probably a work of satire, it’s just so generally perfect in tone. About the only performance that I think is a little too mannered is John C. McGinley as one of the Bobs. Or maybe it’s just the idea that the Bobs get all worked up in their admiration and willingness to promote Peter after he goes all slacker. That’s about the only note to me that’s wrong.

The rest is just so exactly on target. The soul-crushing boredom of the office work. The passive-aggressiveness of Lumbergh the boss. The nauseating fake perkiness of the waiter at Chotchkies. The geeky Michael Bolton and geekier Samir Nagheenanajar, computer nerds who use the word “fuck” and all its variations a refreshingly large amount of the time. The blue collar but realistic neighbor Lawrence. Looking up “money laundering” in the dictionary.

It surprises me sometimes that something coming out of Hollywood could understand the tiny details of so many of us out here in the real world. But apparently Mike Judge, the writer, as well as director, grew up in Albuquerque NM, got a BS in physics from UC San Diego and then did in fact work as some sort of electronics or computer or software engineer, so he lived in the cubes and knows of what he speaks.

I think I especially love when Peter, Samir and Michael discuss the guidance counseler’s trite little exercise about finding your true calling by asking yourself what you would do if you had a million dollars. Peter never really had an answer, and Michael understands that the “question is just bullshit to begin with.” Samir hilariously misses the point, and the scene ends with Michael raging at the malfunctioning printer. “PC load letter. What the fuck does that mean?” Structurally, the scene is great because it serves up this basically inane and unanswerable question, looks at it from the various sides, and then, because it’s unaswerable the scene turns left and ends with a sort of vulgar absurd segue. And furthermore, while these characters are much younger than I am, I still don’t especially feel like I have any sort of career path or goal in mind. I still don’t know what I want to grow up to be. And as little as I know now, I knew only a fraction when I was in high school, having to think about what I needed to grow up to be. And so probably the inane question is not only not helpful, but it’s maddeningly not helpful. So, therefore, PC load letter. What the fuck does that mean?

And but then again the whole movie really isn’t satire. The narrative is fairly conventional, not nearly at all subversive. The arc of the story itself is about redemption. Peter is lost at the beginning, but then he has a transformative experience. He therefore faces hardship as he seeks to live according to these newfound principles, such as they are. And in the end he finds a truer calling.

Good things happen in the end, says Tom Symkowski, bandaged and in a wheelchair. How can you not love that? And “PC load letter. What the fuck does that mean?” How can you not love that too?

***

But, also, what are we all whining about? While yes, it’s true, “[h]uman beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.” But just what exactly were human beings meant to do? And staring at our compute screens, it’s a hell of a lot better than working in a coal mine, or a garment work sweatshop, or a sewer pipe manufacturing plant, or a chicken processing plant. Remember the Sago miners at the beginning of this year? How often do we face imminent violent death sitting in our little cubicles? Sometimes I feel like we dishonor the miners, dishoner the women of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, dishonor all those injured and killed at McWane, dishonor the workers at the Imperial Food Products plant in Hamlet NC. We dishonor them all when we mewl about how hard it is to sit in a warm, dry office, surrounded by modern safety and conveniences, drinking the free coffee, looking forward to the weekend or our vacations.

And not just workers here in America. How we whine so, when too many in the world are just trying to get by and find clean water and a living wage. When many in the world have no access to any sort of decent healthcare at all, much less health insurance. When too many are in the grip of famine or civil war, or both.

But I understand that I can’t let that paralyze me. I can’t mope all day, unable to enjoy anything, unable to laugh or smile, just because someone is suffering somewhere.

But I can’t forget them either.

We get up for our usual Saturday morning routine. On the TV at the step machine at the gym I find surf quite a bit, trying to find something to watch. I find some B-movie noir thing that were I really a hipster I would totally dig, but I just find it lame. This scene set at a police station is so static, all exposition, and complicated at that. The camera moves all of once, panning to the left to show a suspect coming into the detective’s office. Then pan back to the right as suspect sits down. Then more yakking. I can’t stand it, so on I surf. (Turns out it’s Destination Murder, from 1950, with Joyce MacKenzie, Stanley Clements, and Hurd Hatfield, and directed by Edward L. Cahn.) On another channel I find the remake of Thomas Crown Affair, the one with Pierce Brosnan. Nah. Then I find Ben Affleck in what must be Reindeer Games. Ugh. Then some western with Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark, but I’m not in the mood. (That turns out to be Yellow Sky from 1948.)

I end up watching Darshan TV, on the MHz Network, the segment where Shilpa Hart and Ramesh Butani discuss current events n’ stuff. Ramesh says in thirty years the world won’t have religious differences. Shilpa declares this to be the most optimistic thing she’s ever heard from him, although she politely disagrees. I finish my twenty-two minutes on the stepper before the Bollywood video segment. And I don’t see Shanti Aranha, whom I’ve met, back when she also worked at our software vendor TMA Resources. Her sister Suzi is our customer service rep.

I feel better lifting weights than I did last week. Maybe it’s because this week I skip the chest press. Last week I did that first and was really tired doing everything else, although to be fair I was also still somewhat depressed. But I do the overhead press and then the regular pec fly and then the curls and then tricep curls and then the delt fly machines. I think I need to up the weight a little on the triceps; I forgot to stop at 15 during the second set. Must not be working hard enough then.

We take Rock Creek Parkway on the way home and end up driving by the cherry blossoms. Today’s the Cherry Blossom Parade. Sadly, the blossoms themselves have long since peaked and are gone. And it’s pissing down rain all day, so that’s not good for the parade either.

We drive to ballet rehearsal. Dawn does the actual driving. She’s thinking more about her driving now, now that she’s getting more comfortable doing it, rather than just sort of doing it and not thinking so much, so she overthinks her technique when we get to St. Mark’s and she has to parallel park. She ends up way on the curb. Then she’s all back & forth and back & forth trying to correct it, before pulling out and trying again. I start yelling “stop stop stop” when she hits the curb again, and she snaps at me not to yell at her. I just jump out of the car and stomp off and go up to the studio. Dawn follows a few minutes later. We kiss and make up before dancing.

On the way home from ballet we stop at the frame shop to get Dawn’s latest cross-stitch framed. It’s a lovely scene with the prayer of St. Francis on it: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference. I generally try to wander around and look at things, but Dawn makes me help choose the frame. I like the look of oak, so I suggest that, knowing that my ideas are always only indicative of my own bad taste and are summarily rejected. But oddly, this time, she agrees with me and goes with the oak. Then I get to go wandering and checking out the framers’ tools. They have them around the shop on magnetic bars, just like the one I have in my workshop at home. Except theirs aren’t as pretty as mine, but they are a lot heftier, stronger. There’s a cool Stanley scratch awl at each station, with a wooden handle, much nicer than my plastic handled Sears Craftsman. Dawn ends up choosing a pink linen matting. The total for the framing comes to an astonishing two-hundred dollars. I suddenly feel a whole lot better about the Ryobi saw I’ve been wanting. I’m grinning, and teasing Dawn, when we leave.

We go to the Saturday Vigil Mass, since the Cardinal is celebrating Palm Sunday the next morning at ten instead of our usual Novus Ordo. Traffic is bad and we’re only a little late, but for Palm Sunday Mass the procession starts in the back of the nave, right where we come in. Everybody’s turning around and holding up their palms, and I feel very very conspicuous coming in. We make our way up to our usual pews before it really starts though. (And more on the Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord tomorrow.)

We have fondue for dinner, since we had gone out to Tortilla Cafe last night. And we watched Office Space last night as well. Dawn had ordered it, thinking it was something else, although we can’t figure out what that something else was. I had seen bits and pieces of it on TV like a million times, but never the whole thing in one sitting. And I had never seen the very end after the building goes up in flames. Dawn is underwhelmed by Jennifer Aniston.

And tonight we watch another Horatio, this one about a mutiny. Except it’s only part one of two, so we’re left hanging. David Warner plays the legendary but evil Capt. James Sawyer. I think David Warner is really the poor man’s Michael Caine; like Michael Caine he is pretty much ubiquitous, but unlike him he’s always in lame stuff, rather than just sometimes. Dawn thinks David Warner is handsome. And Dawn is mighty pleased by Horatio’s nude scene, which I kindly rewind and freeze-frame for her.

(And later research reveals that that’s not the Prayer of St. Francis. It’s actually called the Serenity Prayer, written by one Reinhold Niebuhr and used & made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous.)

Hey, everyone! Check out CPC’s Dreams.

Up early for our usual Saturday morning yoga and working out. There’s a woman already on my regular step machine, so I have to try another one. The headphone jack doesn’t work on the one I try, so I have to try yet another one. Then I can’t find This Old House like I watched last week. I settle on some old movie with Sterling Hayden and Harry Belafonte robbing a bank. (Later research reveals that it’s called Odds Against Tomorrow, and it’s Robert Ryan, not Sterling Hayden.) I’m still feeling a little down, so I cut my weightlifting short and sit in the car and listen to music some.

Pick Dawn up and we go to the grocery store. There’s work going on up on the roof, looks kinda like cement work. I decide that they’re pouring the vault for the bank that they’re installing. (Later research reveals that they’re re-tarring the roof.)

Lunch is pita and hummus and olives, then we have a walk through stiff wind to ballet rehearsal where we start fine-tuning. Dawn is back to cue-ing me by first touching my left arm, but then Rosie works a little bit on the transition and we will now start intertwining our arms before we turn around. Rosie and Dawn help me figure out my soutenu turn, help me stop stepping out with my right foot and making it more of a chaîné. But it’s also not quite a soutenu, or it’s something of a modern soutenu, with my arms more sort of flowing downward rather than in a usual first position type deal. We’re still not right on the timing at the end where I lift Dawn and dip her down and she flings her arms out at the final drumbeat.

The song we’re using is Gone with Leaves from the Hero soundtrack, music composed by Tan Dun. According to Amazon, this particular track features Tan Dun conducting the China Philharmonic Orchestra, along with KODO, You Yan, Liu Li, Itzhak Perlman, and the Ancient Rao Ensemble of Changsha Museum. I think maybe KODO is Kodo, a Japanese taiko drumming outfit. Either You Yan or Liu Li is the woman singing, and let’s go ahead and take a wild ass guess that it’s Itzhak Perlman playing the violin.

Later I’m off to my Ma’s to see about fixing some of the things found during the inspection. There are four items that maybe I can do. One is the leaky faucet on the side of the house, where the hose is also stuck on the bibb. I can’t get it off. Next is the garage door opener, which is plugged in using a really long extension cord, since no outlet is in the ceiling near the unit. Then are two things in the attic, one being an exposed junction box and the other exposed wires of the attic fan. Really it all turns out that I can’t really fix any of it. Or, rather, I could fix these things but I’m not quite sure what needs to be done to satisfy code. I could run cable from one receptacle and put another receptacle in the ceiling by the garage door opener. But then I’d either have to attach armored cable to the ceiling, and I’m not sure what code requires for that, or I could run shielded cable, but I don’t have fish tape or even any experience with fish tape, since we have plaster walls at our house and haven’t ever needed it. And I’m not sure which wires in the attic the inspector means. So I’m generally no help to Mom at all.

But I do help her with the day’s New York Times crossword puzzle. It’s a real bitch. It’s one of those where you have to start or finish words off the grid, in this case using the word think. As in “thinking outside the box.”

On my way to Mom’s I stopped at two Goodwill stores and bought 3-ring binders. My woodworking magazines are getting out of control and so I’m going to use those plastic edge strips and hold them in binders. But I’m too cheap to buy new binders, and I’d really rather not steal them from work. I’m sure I’ve seen binders at thrift stores before, so I go looking. Sure enough they’ve got a lot. Some too small and some weirdly rusted, but I get 3 for ninety-nine cents each and one for fifty-nine cents. But then on my way home I stop at Staples for the Rubbermaid Plastic Edge Magazine Holders 12/Pack Item 261644. But I can’t for the life of me find them, and then I can’t find anyone to help me. Finally I get a guy and he takes a million years to seach the computer and eventually he tells me that they ain’t got ’em. So I get home late and empty-handed and Dawn wonders where in the world I’ve been and what took me so long.

We make lentil chili and watch us some Forsyte Saga. We’re pleased to discover that Ioan Griffud is in it. We’ve been watching him in the Horatio Hornblower series. There’s this auto manufacturer Infiniti, and they make this SUV called the FX. There’s the FX35 and the FX45 and I can’t tell you what the difference between them is. But anyway I really like them. They’re like really boss tough badass vehicles. Dawn hates them. Whenever I see one I point it out and call it “badass FX.” In revenge, Dawn has decided that every time she has to look at one of these ugly vehicles, she’s going to think of Ioan Griffud with his shirt off. “Ooh, Horatio,” she says, with like this lascivious tone. And so now I think of the FX as the Horatio of SUVs. And Horatio is the badass of British naval officers in the Napoleonic wars.

What a lovely, lovely day today.

I work a little late, talking with my dashing young protege, who’s having something of a crisis with her fella. Dawn wants to walk home, which for her is an hour walk, but for me is an hour and a half. So I split the difference, like I do with the walk with her into work in the mornings, and meet Dawn at Judiciary Square Metro and we walk home together from there.

I don’t know why, but I’m in a sullen mood tonight. It’s great to walk by all the blooming cherry blossoms, though. There’s this one tree, on the south side of D Street, between New Jersey and Louisiana Avenues. It’s just fat and bursting with blossoms. It looks almost wooly. Every other tree we see is like a 98-pound weakling compared to this tough guy.

The loveliness of today refers mostly to just the weather, though. I spent the day wrestling with these data sets, lists of attendees for various meetings, as well as lists of abstract submitters. I need to filter out duplicates, but I’ve got no primary key. I’m just going by name and location. So like people listed one way as Larry and another as Lawrence are giving me fits. Aargh. It’s frustrating. I do the meeting attendees separately from the abstract submitters, and the woman to whom I send it all wants me to match between those two sets. More aargh.

I also notice today that I’ve lost my ATM card. Luckily I walked Dawn to work and we stopped at the ATM together to get cash, is where I noticed it was gone. Last I had used it was Monday, so who knows when and where it’s gone off to. I look all around my desk at work, thinking I might have left it out when I was trying to sign up for kickball on Wednesday. Not there though. I call the bank and report it missing.

I thought I’d find it somewhere at home as soon as I arrived, but in fact I don’t. That sucker is gone.

First time I can remember losing a card like that. First time in at least ten years anyway. Where’d it go? I’d just gotten the new one last weekend, and was carrying both for a couple days, until Monday when I confirmed that the new one worked. I know I cut up the old one. Last time I saw them both. Last time I saw the new one.

Crazy.

Just heard that Matraca Berg is going to be in town next week at the Kennedy Center Millenium Stage. Hey, now, my favorite favorite country artist giving a concert, for free, at a place that’s only like a fifteen minute walk from my office.

Sigh. But I have to miss it. Laura and Elizabeth — sister-in-law and niece — arrive in town that day.

Got my hair cut yesterday, a bit shorter than usual, although went to my usual barber Mike at Louis’s Barber Shop on 20th Street Northwest. He asked if by wanting it shorter I meant tighter or higher. I only sort of had a vague notion as to what either meant, so at first I said tighter then said oh what the hell go higher too. I think it’s too short, as does Dawn.

The usual morning yoga & workout routine, except that we leave a little early because of road closures. There’s some marathon or some type of running race starting and ending at RFK. We have a lot of trouble navigating in and up and down and around and through it. We head south instead of up Massachusetts, but then we can’t cross Pennsylvania on Potomac to make our way to I Street. We have to turn up Penn. We go to 8th and take that down to I, and get on 395 from there. We get off at 12th, thinking we can go under Independence, but 12th is closed and we have to turn on C. Fourteenth is closed at Independence, so we take Independence to 17th. There’re cops blocking traffic on the southbound side of 17th, but we’re cool to go north. Whew. That feeds us on to Connecticut and to Dupont Circle for Dawn’s yoga class.

At my gym I watch This Old House while on the Stairmaster. Funny enough, Norm & Co. are working on a row house in DC.

Afterwards we drive out to Alexandria VW to get the car washed and buy a new gas cap. The manager of the parts department Fred is like a character from The Office, and he goes on and on about his Russian wolfhounds and how fierce and loyal they are.

We have a good ballet rehearsal, now having gotten the whole thing choreographed and memorized and now just rehearsing and fine tuning. Except that we didn’t have rehearsal last week and now Dawn is cuing me at one point by touching my right arm whereas she used to cue me on the left. Takes a little getting used to it. Rosie’s eye is astonishingly bloodshot red. She whapped herself in the eye trying to do too many things at once last Wednesday morning.

Kevin drops by just as we’re about to have popcorn and beer. We’re glad because we haven’t seen him in a while. He tells us about his new gal, who’s out of town at some horse event, and how he has to pick up her dog from the kennel tomorrow.

I go to make pizza dough in the bread machine and somehow don’t seat the pan right. It makes awful noises and doesn’t mix properly. It looks like how it did when I tried to make the wine and cheese bread, except this time it’s only mixed for a minute or two rather than gone through the whole bake cycle and baked a useless brick. I get it reseated and reset and restarted, but the pizza’s now going to take longer.

So we chow down but don’t have time to get to the circus early to see the elephants like we wanted to do. Most years I get to see the elephants when I come up out of the Metro, but I haven’t gone out that side of the station this year. Just forgot. But turns out they’ve got trailers parked so as to block the freeloaders like me who just gawk through the fence.

The circus of course turns out to be the hootingest good time ever. We get Bello this year, after having sorely missed him last year. He comes up into the stands when he arrives and shakes some hands. He comes up our row, and I get to shake his hand. I’m pretty excited. I mean, not quite as excited as when I met Chuck Berry, but still it’s pretty great.

I wave and dance and cheer and we have a grand, grand time. I do so love the circus.

Later we meet Kate and her new boy Lance, who have also come to the circus. We have them over for water and other drinks, although I forget that Lance is on the wagon, but he’s polite when he asks for just water. Dawn drinks vodka and orange juice and Kate & I have hot buttered rum. It’s nice to meet Lance, whom Kate has told me much about. He’s a fine looking lad and has a good scratchy voice.

I drive Kate and Lance to the Metro, taking them to Eastern Market by way of the Marine Barracks, which Lance has never seen. We slow down by the old gate and the guards start moving towards us menacingly, so we scram.

So I take ballet on Thursdays at St. Mark’s Dance Studio in Capitol Hill. It’s part of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church; for some reason they’ve also got a dance studio. They’ve got some liturgical dance, children’s classes and adult classes. Thursday night is Jessica Sloane teaching the intermediate adult class. Jessica is married, so I guess she’s a Mrs., but as ballet mistress I call her Miss Jessica. Well, usually she’s simply Jessica, but on occasion, in more formal settings, like now, I go with Miss Jessica.

I started out in Miss Jessica’s 7:30 p.m. class for beginners, but after two years I’ve moved up with the big kids. Also in the class are my love Dawn, as well as — pardon my attempts at spelling names — Finnette, Renee, Ada, Jill, Jessica, Ayanna, and Pat. Last night we were also joined by Susan and someone else who’s name Dawn told me and I’ve forgotten, but they’re not doing the recital piece with us. And Renee was missing last night. And Shirley is sometimes there, but I’m not certain what her status is regarding the recital.

We’re doing a somewhat modern piece for the recital. It’s set to a pretty cool tune, called “My Guru.” Jessica found it on the soundtrack to the Jack Johnson movie Thicker than Water. It seems, though, that Jack Johnson himself found it on a soundtrack called Bombay The Hard Way: Guns, Cars And Sitars. That soundtrack is itself a compilation of songs from many other soundtracks, with snippets of dialog added, and then all of that remixed and mashed up by Dan the Automator. The original music is credited to the legendary Bollywood team, the Shah brothers, Kalyanji and Anandji. But there’s no telling at this point what the underlying song is, where it’s from originally, or who’s speaking from what movie the dialog bit at the beginning of the track, “I’m sorry, my good friend. Let me learn it properly from my guru. Then I will teach you.” Blame Dan the Automator, I guess.

The choreography goes well with the music, in that it blends old and new, traditional and modern. There’s this one point where my group does this swivel hip thing that I’m still trying to get comfortable with, but otherwise it’s all cool fun moves. I’m still trying to learn the basic steps, when I’m supposed to be stepping where, and then I’ll be able to stop running into the other dancers.