What the 'L?'

Every place on Second Street has a S-A-L-E and that's the L from Estilo (with LB in there somewhere). I've been missing since Saturday from this space, it seems. I've been doing things, though, really.

We saw Austin Lyric Opera's "Rigoletto." I enjoyed it immensely. Well, as much as I enjoy any opera which is to say as much as I'm equipped to enjoy it. A lot anyway. I especially liked the soprano. I think it's so difficult to get stabbed and stuck in a tow sack and still sing an aria. I'm just saying. Yeah, I'm opera stupid but I'm working on it. Great production in our lovely new Long Center.

I watched TOO MANY sports on Sunday. I'm sports weary. I watched the Aussie Open Final (Federer-Nadal), a UT women's basketball game and the Stupid Bowl. I'm giving up sports until the French Open. I think I saw Roddick practicing on the fake clay tonight. Maybe not.

I did Dad duty. I took him to lunch, to church, picked up prescriptions, worked on his taxes, shredded stuff, took and picked up shirts at the laundry, got his garbage and recycling out, took his picture with his monster amarylis. I told him his sister died. I have been to his house three days in a row this week. I was out there a few days last week. Somewhat of a record during a time when he is doing OK, really, pretty much, health-wise. On Tuesday during my every morning call to him he said "My horoscope says 'The methods that helped you get through the day yesterday won't carry you into the future.' So I will have to do things differently." I didn't know he read his horoscope. I also didn't know he watched a string of old M*A*S*H episodes in the afternoon, but I happened to be there to catch him at it this week. Or maybe it's something new. Maybe he's fallen out of love with Rachel Ray and FOX news commentators.

I went to a memorial for a former co-worker who died.

I ate a bag of those Necco conversation hearts they have at Valentine's. I'm a sucker for those. They are crack cocaine for me. But I was disappointed because they have no quality control and half of them had no saying or had it printed in an off-center or in a blurred fashion. So, never again.

I cleaned our bathroom and did a few other chores.

I attended a board meeting at my country club. I'm going to slide off the board. Three years is plenty.

I played tennis. Yeah, of course. But I'm taking a break until next Tuesday and hope my strained back improves.

I attended an education thing about Ballet Austin's upcoming production of Stephen Mill's "Hamlet." I love this production. I loved the education thing where we saw some of the dance and heard about it. I bought the Phillip Glass music for it for the iPod. I like that there is an iTunes mix on the WEB so I can just buy the music. I never have enough time to listen to music. I also became a fan of Jeff Lofton and downloaded a CD his wife gave FFP. He's not on iTunes yet. He played a tune at Austin Cabaret Theater's open mike production with Jim Caruso and Billy Stritch. (Cast Party.) We are now lining up to hear more from him.

FFP and I walked down to South Congress and came back stopping at Vespaio, Cissi's Market and Taste and having some food and a glass of wine at each one. That was Tuesday.

I've been busy. Yep. I caught up most of the financial stuff for now although my taxes loom. I'm behind on reading. I think I'll go read some now. Just as soon as I see how many labels I can attach to this post.

The Fire Next Time...

No, not a fire. But this sunrise in the chilled water steam looks more like a fire than the last post, even, huh?

I don't have anything coherent to say today. (My friend Jette said on Facebook that she was 'impressed by her own incoherence.' I thought she said 'imprisoned' which I get. Impressed am I, too, by mine.) I think I'll just dash off a bunch of random stuff. Follow along if you wish. Otherwise, see you later. (I have posted another couple of amusing, well to me, Journal of Unintended Consequences posts if you are looking for alleged coherence.)

So, random things. Not random things about me necessarily which a lot of people are doing twenty-five of lately (but not me, so far I'm resisting or maybe editing my batch in my head). But anyway random stuff.

That chilled water from that plant? Expensive to use it turns out. We thought it would be an efficient cooling option. But it costs $14 a month to have access to the chilled water to cool and it is decidedly expensive to actually divert some across your fan. Ah, well. Maybe it's better for the environment? Don't know. For the last month or more, we haven't turned on either heat or A.C. but we have to pay $14 bucks in case we do. A person can do Netflix for that. Oh, well. Still haven't had to use the heater in this place which is electric so you know that wouldn't be efficient. The bad news is that the place is being heated by computers and TVs and computer peripherals. So yeah. Wasted electricity.

My 98-year-old father-in-law just called me to remind me he gets an extra deduction for being blind. I figured out they didn't owe any income taxes, but he also figured that out. With a magnifying glass no doubt.

Reading list: I finished Bénabou's book as I think I mentioned. I started another small, light book suitable for carrying around when I go somewhere with just FFP and we take books to read while we eat, wait for a performance to start, etc. It is Milan Kundera's Slowness. What do I like about Milan? That he is not afraid to write fiction and he doesn't impose unnecessary rules on himself, it doesn't seem, and just plunges in and if characters or scenes get in the way, to hell with characters and scenes. Which makes me wonder several things. Should I buy (and maybe even read) his book on writing novels. Would it help me with my problematic novel project or would it just become another book I haven't read. Which, if I can be allowed to digress, leads me to another little side project which is how to use technology to present the novel being accidentally and haphazardly written here as a whole. This caused me to do some brief, futile searches of some techie sites. I'm always assaulted with just the information I do not want to read. And I'm reminded that, even for the little HTML I know I constantly forget actual syntax.

But back to reading. I'm falling behind on my newspapers. That's because I've spent too much time working crosswords, trying to get further into the week in The New York Times and working the unsatisfying but still tempting ones in the Austin American-Statesman. This reduces the input I have for The Journal of Unintended Consequences. And I have an outstanding (and in my mind's eye coherent) essay for this space on newspapers to complete as well. One reason I'm behind on the paper's is that I haven't been riding the recumbent bike as much and the couple of times I've done it I have been reading Ulysses. I'm determined to get through to page 933 of the edition I'm working on before I book my trip to New York for Bloomsday this year. I purchased this edition in Dublin in 2004. It was the hundredth anniversary of Bloom's Day but I was there after the fact, in September not June. Anyway, I'm on page 758. Bloom and Stephen are in the livery stand having something like coffee. This will be my first complete trip through any edition. Joyce was not afraid to write a novel either. Stream of consciousness and unconsciousness and all that.

Other books (and magazines) lie neglected, partly finished. A book of conversations with Woody Allen. Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I recently purchased two books from Amazon. Covers are stiff and uncracked. I was well into E.J. Kahn, Jr.'s Year of Change when somehow I put it aside. Really good book. E.J. Kahn in 1994 died after a car accident. (I sometimes wonder when reading a decades-old book what happened to the person who wrote it in the interim. So I looked up his NY Times obit a few weeks ago.) Reading Kahn's book made me wonder if I owned The New Yorker and Me. Which was Kahn's first book about his relationship with that venerable rag. Did I mention that I own The Complete New Yorker and that, recently, I printed out the Salinger story "Hapworth 16, 1924" from the June 19, 1965 edition and read it. FFP was going to read it, too, but I don't think he has. We read an article about Salinger in the NY Times on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday which mentioned the story. Salinger is not dead, but he's a recluse.

So, not doing as much reading as I'd like. We are quicker to recycle papers and magazines these days, but they are still building up too much. And I secreted a large pile in a storage thing by my my chair and I really need to clean those out so I can store other things in there. (These are from, I'm afraid, last summer when we were in the deep throes of moving.)

I've been watching some of the Australian Open. I am especially interested in the Federer/Nadal match that will occur tonight. I may watch it live. Or not. I'm much more interested in that than the Stupid Bowl. Who is playing again?

Did I mention that I hurt my back playing tennis? That I just keep playing anyway. I need to do a good 'core' exercise program when it heals. Assuming it will. I always assume such things. If it's broke, it will heal. With our bodies this isn't always a correct assumption but it's a helpful one.

It's a nice day for a walk. I think I'll take one. We are going to see Austin Lyric Opera's "Rigoletto" tonight. We will walk to the Long Center, too, I think. Did I mention how glorious the weather has been. It has. Although everyone, myself included, seems to have had a cycle of cedar fever.

FFP is listening to opera and making himself vegetarian barbecue for lunch. I think I'll have some. (OK, did that. Had a Chimay with it. So sue me.)

So, yeah, random stuff. Not going much of anywhere. Sort of like my life. Next time, though. The fire.