Enchanting Juno

The right note.

So I went on a date last night, which is not the point of this story, but nice.  It was a good date.  Which is also nice.

Restored steam locomotives left unattended in the wee small hours of a fine spring night are a good place to kiss someone.  Make a note.

Anyway, in order to go on a date you have to get dressed for a date, which is a challenging thing.  Attractive but not overt,  appealing but not too sexy, like you made an effort, but not TOO much of an effort.  And for me - no heels, as I have a tendency to trip if I turn out to be attracted to someone.  Injury is not a good outcome. (Alternatively I will drop my keys, spill the wine or similar.)

I know some people just wear whatever, but I dunno.  I think its nice to show up like this is something you're really there for.   I realize that optimism in the face of dating is counter to the prevailing ethos, but I say dudes, if you haven't got the balls to hope for it, you ain't never going to find it.  Whatever your it is.  And for me showing up un-groomed is going in with LOW expectations.

So I worked out some variation on my normal theme of basic black with some stuff.
Wrap dress.  Mohair shawl made by a freind.  Nice earrings (one of which I lost, dammit.  Maybe the etsy lady can make me another?).  Chunky ring.  Ridiculously expensive suede bag I bought literally under the influence (never shop with a label conscious friend after three cocktails.  Tip from me) about 6 years ago and still love. 

And these great flat-heeled knee high, unlined black suede boots I bought over the winter.  Now, I've worn them before, to walk around the city, to go to dinner - very comfortable.  But always with black tights.  Last night - as it is April - I did not wear tights.  I wore legs.

I was out for oh, 6 or 7 hours. And I came home and took off my boots and checked my email and took off my jewelry and sat down.

And happened to notice something. 

My legs were black from the knee to the ankle. Like, ink-black.  Squid ink black.  Crocked, by gum.  My boots are crocked.

I forgot to take a picture (It was two am, when I thought of you it was already too late.  Forgive me.) but when I get home tonight I will show you the formerly white towel I scrubbed down with.

If it were yarn I could try rinsing, and a setting agent.  But suede? 

I'm at a loss.

 

7 minutes.

So this morning I hit the snooze and returned to the delightful cocoon of down blankets to contemplate the inside of my eyelids and the deliciousness of being entirely surrounded by weightless coziness. 

I began to make a list in my head.

First, go to the gym. 

Then - you know, the sheets need changing and the suitcase is still in the living room with dirty clothes in it.  Time for laundry. 

And mind you, laundry that you put away moron, not laundry you wash and fold and leave in a basket to be rummaged through on an ad hoc basis.

Where did I put my belt when I left my jeans by the washer yesterday - in the basement?  I hate going down there in the morning - the extra flight of stairs is so demoralizing first thing.  Eh, no matter.  Gym clothes are on the banister.
You know, Home Depot is by the gym - I bought the wrong size joint for the gutter pipe I need to fix.    Do that before the laundry, more efficient.   And Target - the gym socks are vanishing at an extinction level pace.  

Ok.

Gym
Home Depot
Target
Laundry.
Work on drain pipe while laundry does its thing
Oh, and those boxes by the door for goodwill?  Put those in the car - been sitting there too long (you have too much stuff.  How about not buying anything for a few days?)

And you know, it wouldn't kill you to vacuum something.  The cat hair is out of hand.

Gym
Home Depot
Target
GOOD WILL
Lau....

Hold on.  I'm forgetting something. 

No really?

Its only 7:45, not late for working out yet.

....

....

7:45?  I'm working out at 9.  Why is the alarm set this early?

It's Thursday. 

Thursday?

Yes, Thursday. 

Not Saturday? 

Thursday.  When you leave for the office at 7:45?  At least theoretically?

Shit.

(Sound of bare feet on floor)

Howdy.

I'm a crabby ass bitch today and I thought - hey, the blog might enjoy this. 

All foolishness to blame, really.  Plaguey doubts and irrational fears.  Too much celibacy, not enough hope.  I need a nap, some exercise and a bowl of edamame with sea salt and also, to not be ovulating.  Which is to say, give me a day or two.

I never think of myself as a PMS kind of person - in childhood, the mother's cycle was the undercurrent of our lives and I never saw myself that way.  But there is no denying I go optimism-shy on a couple of pretty specific dates and when I was out with mom for a few weeks the only days I had real trouble coping were the PMS days.   People talk about it like you should just pull up your socks and cope, but it is far more insidious than that. 
There may be a chance that I am a little bit like my mother after all, but if you tell her I said so, I'm afraid you'll have to be killed.  Nothing for it.

The big event of the weekend was that I accidentally deleted my iTunes library.  I'm new to the Mac thing and am constantly being hamstrung by the non-expectation of automation. The conversion has begun though - I used someone's Windows machine recently and found it EVER so clunky.  My brother just got a Vista laptop and his wife a Macbook and during the get to know you process he had this to say:

I find my experience with Dell a disappointing shadow of the customer service machine they were the last time I purchased a computer from them – I guess all the jobs have been shipped overseas.  Regardless, the computer is quite awesome and working great – despite a few glitches of the new operating system which I am told will work themselves out with a few hundred upgrades over the next few months......In an annoying parallel to my frustration with the Dell people, S. went out and bought a Mac after getting jealous of my new computer, and following a week of playing around with her parents Mac during her recent visit home. While I fight with marginally lingual tech support, the Mac people are all about “can I come to your house and help you set it up, …oh e-mail, sure we’ll help you set it up….oh, yeah we can transfer all your files for you and convert them to out much less complicated computer language.....can we have a group hug, Mac Users Unite….blah, blah, blah…….” Bunch of hippies!.

Which completely cracks me up.  And on balance I am happy to align myself with the hippies.  Though the Macbook does not feel near as sturdy as the old Vaio* and I don't generally care for the sleek Mac aesthetic (I got a Kandinsky for the top so I don't have to look at it.)  And he reminds me that I should maybe call Mac about the remaining file transfers I have to do, rather than wander in the wilderness as Microsoft has conditioned me.   

I imported my music files in January and have been deleting extraneous .wma files as I found them. I prefer MP3 (spare me all input on the subject of file quality and compression, etc.  I do not care and I can't hear the difference.) for its universality but turned out to have a number of cds that had been imported in the Windows specific format.  This is the thing that kept me from Mac & iTunes for so long - it is beautifully integrated as long as you stay in what David Pogue at the NYTimes calls the "walled garden" that is the Apple experience.  I didn't want to.  Keep your damn Kool-aid.  Also, I hate that backspace and delete are the same thing.  Drives me crazy.
But I've given up.  My Windows based tech knowledge was all seat of the pants and has been made obsolete in the last few versions of Windows and really, I am middle aged now.  I hate to admit it, but I just want it to work and be simple and the Mac integration is so satisfying I don't care any more.

I'm going to be able to wirelessly and automatically do back ups AND play iTunes on my stereo.  Because I will be able to play iTunes on my stereo I am not sure at this point I even need to replace my MP3 player, which is full to the point of crashing.  I have the bitty iPod for the gym and the playlists are so easy to swap out it takes five seconds.  (These people are marketing geniuses and I feel a little bit like I've sold my soul, but you know, do I really need one?)  Also, I'm in love with Adium for chat (iChat didn't quite make the cut, not cross platform enough).  Photobooth is enormous fun.  I even love Apple mail, though my heart's desire is for a GMail style email software.

That's if I had playlists left at this point, of course, because I believe I did mention that I DELETED my library.
It took me a long time to clue in to the fact that iTunes was organizing the iTunes Music data files using the info tags.  Because really, the computer doing the work for me is outside my experience.  So I kept sorting files the way I liked them and then finding them switched back, which lead to some bad links and double listings.   And then there were these data files left from the .wma deletions which lead to some more double listings in iTunes, one dead song, one live.  Untidy.  Inelegant.

I spent the weekend going through my cds, adding in anything that was missing or a bad file type and about 2/3 of the way through all the clutter started to annoy me.  No sweat.  I will delete and re-add the library. 

So I did delete and then I went to add to library from iTunes Music and dudes, there was nothing there.  6500 song files.  Gone.

Huh.

I looked in the garbage can and they were all there, but no longer in their album and artist files.  Just 6500 songs in a pile.  If I had a brain I would have said "Undo Delete" but my sinking heart and rising gorge prevented this simple option from occurring to me.

Instead I highlighted them all to drag them back into a file, despite the horror at the idea that I would have to manually sort them.  It would be simpler, if depressing, to re-rip every disk. 
But then what of the downloads? 

Lost in my despair I did not drag, I clicked.

And Finder informed me that it could not open file XX song title 12.mp3 because it was in the garbage and I should remove it and try again and please click OK.

Which I did.  Only to be told that it could not open file XX song title 11.mp3 because it was in the garbage and I should remove it and try again and please click OK.

Which I did.  Only to be told that it could not open file XX song title 10.mp3 because it was in the garbage and I should remove it and try again and please click OK.

And so on. 

And so on.

And I realized that it would try each file individually.   There was no Yes-to-all option.  The was no Esc.  And I was too scared to do a hard reboot for fear of data loss.

Click OK. Wait for process. Minutely adjust cursor to sit on new button.  Lather Rinse Repeat.

Do you know how long it takes to do that 6500 times?  More than five hours, that's how long.  And I did it because it is still a damn sight less time than loading every cd in again and cheaper than re-buying the downloads.

Then I dragged them all into iTunes Music and added them to the Library again, and bless its little people-pleasing heart, it sorted them back into albums and artists.   And it is fine.  Works perfectly, all there, pretty as a picture.  It even re-found all the album artwork for me.  You know what I am now?  A Mac person.  If I had deleted the files in Windows it would almost certainly have bypassed the Trash because the data chunk was so big and you know what I would be doing?  Re-ripping my CD collection and swearing.   When the desktop goes I'm getting an iMac, and Parallels or some equivalent to run the knitting software I have that's Windows only.  And maybe Apple TV when it comes time to go High Def.  And, and, and.....

I'm getting one of these this week.   I think it is much safer that way.

* The tragic demise of which I still mourn.  That was a computer I loved, genuinely loved, the tiniest computer in all the land.  It was a sweet pretty thing, though limited in speed and memory by its size.  If I could put Leopard in the Vaio?  That would be PERFECT.  Can you do that?  And get the camera all integrated and stuff?  I bet not.

 

oh my goodness.

Where to start, where to start.  I missed the blog.  But I've not been able to spare any kind of energy for things that require thinking.  Or energy.

I'm at my mom's house.  Most of the end of February and the beginning of March I was working to get my work and life in order to come out here, because Mom had back surgery in mid Feb and the plan was for me to come out about three weeks after to spring her from the rehab hospital and help her get her routines organized as she got more mobile. 

Problem the first is that her insurer would not approve her for a rehab hospital only a nursing home - which while it was staffed by very kind people was not really set up for the kind of wound care she needed, nor the kind of rehab she needs to rebuild muscle atrophied during the years of impaired mobility the surgery is intended to correct.  She was uncomfortable, and frustrated.  But ok, we work with the options available and set up out patient rehab for later and etc, etc. 

When I arrived to bust her out, she had developed a staph infection.  So from there, back to the hospital to have it drained - two further surgeries and what looks like 6 weeks more of IV antibiotics and so for two weeks I've been driving around visiting her and doing what I can to make things better and just giving her a hand to hold when she needed one.   I don't think she was ever in capital T trouble - no one at the hospital has ever given me the sad eyes - but she certainly hasn't been in good shape.  Its been an interesting time in our relationship.

I struggle with my mom - all our tastes and many of our values are different and I am still learning how to consciously discard the assumptions I've picked up from her over the years and we chafe at each other.  This time she was just so broken that I responded to her from a different place.   It has been not so bad to not be full of rage all the time around her, rage or the conscious decision to let things go.

Anyway.  She's getting better and has color in her face and started demanding tweezers yesterday and I actually wanted to kill her once, so things are looking a bit more cheerful and now we have to sort out after care and get her home.  And then I can collapse maybe because I am tired like I have never experienced tired before.

And then I can go home.  And knit.  Well really, I have been knitting a bit.  I even spun.  But I need to figure out how to disinfect silk from prolonged contact with hospital air and then take a picture.

I miss my cat.

These days that go the other way.

I think its time to face the fact that I may not be a knit blogger.  A blogger, yes, and one who knits.  But as a knitter I am too erratic for focus, too slow for glory and too self-taught for technical mastery.  Not that I mind these things about myself, but they maybe sort of make the knit blogging designation a bit of an overly optimistic statement.
Though I did go out with a guy a few times - a complete knob, it proved -who when he read the blog said "there's an awful lot of wool in it, isn't there?"  And I replied impatiently - yes, well, it's a knit blog [idiot].  (The 'idiot' was implied)

Anyway. 

I've been reading a lot these days - I'm starting to fall in love with the writer's strike.  At first no TV was really weird, kind of left a hole in the evening.  Which was a piece of self-discovery I found very disturbing.  And then I watched old episodes of things to fill in the gaps.  And now, I'm just not turning it on, the tube.   Or not much:  I watch BBC news at 11 sometimes - I find non-American news soothing for its lack of breathless drama and acknowledgment that there is a world outside of this chunk of North America.  Sometimes I catch the Colbert Report and Coupling re-runs on PBS.  The Jane Austen marathon, also on PBS, is fantastic.   
But I'm mostly reading again.

This is a small thing, you may say, but for me it is huge.  I was the original bookworm, ruined my eyes reading under the covers by flashlight, spent the years from 1st grade to 23 or 4 pretty much carrying two books plus a spare in case I finished something out in the world and suffered a terrible word drought that might kill me before I returned to the safety of my book-lined burrow.  But something happened - I worked in book retail for a couple of years and got so tired I stopped reading things that made me think, ever, and focused more on pure escapist literature.  And then I got a job that left me even more tired and involved a bit of editing as well, and I pretty much divided my days between my desk and catatonia, and reading took another hit (this is when I discovered couch TV - the pure numbing power of home improvement shows and similar).   And then my dad died 7 years ago and that finished me: I could not focus on other stories, I could not surrender to narrative.  I couldn't get lost.  I was much too raw to feel the pain, even the imaginary pain, maybe especially the imaginary pain, of others.

Somewhere after that it occurred to me to ask why I was trying to get lost in a book, rather than sucking it dry of inspiration, of education, of guidance.  And I began to read the occasional biography.  A book here and there.  But slowly, and without that joyful surrender I remembered, that time stoppage.  I missed it, but I no longer had the knack.

A few months ago I picked up some kind of escapist literature - a mystery?  A romance?  Which had continued to be the only kind of occasional fiction I could handle - and I couldn't finish it.  Not because I couldn't give in to the story, but because it irritated me with bad logic and poor writing, shallow waters.  After all this time, my critical faculties were stretching, blinking in the light.  I backed away from the crap book and then spent a weekend collecting and organizing the books in my house.  (I have a lot). 

Since then I have carried books with me a little bit like I used to, reading some of them, not all though.  Getting familiar again.  Reading good things.  Gaining momentum, but a weird kind of momentum that involves slowing down and having actual thoughts, actual feelings about what I'm reading.  Taking it inside me and making it part of me.  And I'm finding that I'm accumulating recommendations unconsciously again - a note here, a word there, the list grows.  A giant box from Amazon arrived yesterday and I already finished one of the things inside.  I'm really happy to feel a book in my hands again.   I'm maybe just really happy.

To be me again.  Something about the march of adult life and the shattering force of grief broke this thing I thought was central to my identity and I have missed it so much.  So much.  But it has come back different - tougher and more thoughtful.  Better.

At one point I thought a lot about adding audio books to my day - but it is not the same.  Not bad, but not the same.  You can't trip and hesitate over a phrase, a word, go back and read again and think about it and go on, or skip something with your eyes, catch yourself and step back and wonder what made that paragraph miss for you.  Read it again more slowly.  Audio books do not enhance the silence, audio books are not a break from the onslaught, they don't enter your brain quietly through your hands and eyes.  They can be great - the treadmill for one, is a wonderful place for being read to.  But they are not reading, not for me.

We don't give each other enough time in this word (Update: should be WORLD.  grr.  Although....) Time to be silent, time to formulate thoughts, time to recover, time to grieve.  We can be in such a hurry to get what We NeedNeedNeed that we steamroll over the nuance and delicacy that make our world complex and beautiful.  We can be morons.  Morons with ear buds and a personal soundtrack, morons with 24 hours of streaming video and 200 channels of loud.  What exactly are we trying to drown out?  Our own senses?  Pain?  Other people?

 

I know these streets and these backyards

On my way into therapy last night I stop to use the rest room.  It is an office building and the restrooms on each floor have a push button combination lock, recently installed to keep people from coming in off the street to use the facilities.   As I enter a woman comes out of a stall and applies what I can only describe as 1000 yard stare; intent and just faintly, politely hostile.  Her eyes stay on me too long.  And she says nothing when I say hello.

I wonder briefly if I have something on my face. 

I mention this to my therapist, who remarks "this town".  I know what he means.  After all, I was in her private bathroom.  To her, I am the hoi polloi.  I expect most people are.

When I go out to the car it doesn't start.  It takes me a minute to realize it, turn the key one, two extra times to be sure. 
This why Triple A exists, so I call and at 6:23 she says I can expect someone by 7:10

I put up the hood to mark me for the service guy, and stand on the curb and watch the traffic - no knitting, can you imagine?  I never have down time, outside of home, so I frequently don't carry any.  It wasn't cold, but it was chilly.  I watch my breath in the air and the way no one looks to see anything around them.

Cars pass, people park near me and say nothing.  A woman gets into the car in front of mine and drives away and says nothing.  I see a few people notice the raised hood and turn their heads back, away, as they drive.   Two men walk by with a dog.  They say nothing.  Someone parks across the street and stares a minute.  Walks away.

Someone tries to park in the empty space in front of my car.  I ask him not to so the truck can get in.  He is startled but agreeable.  He wishes me luck but does not ask if I need help.

I grew up here.  I once would have expected nothing other than this from any place, any people.  Now I am amused and angry in equal measure.

7:10 came and I called AAA again - their guy is doing a battery replacement a mile away and will be there soon,  10 more minutes, 15. 

I walk up and down the empty space - 10 steps end to end, and if I place my foot carefully I can just step on the line at each end.  My right side pivots more smoothly than my left.  I'm warmer now that I am moving, my back doesn't hurt.  I am starting to worry that I will exceed the capacity of my Diva cup, as today is hemorrhage day.

7:22 a police cruiser slows down - the fifth that has gone past in the last 49 minutes.  He asks if I am OK, I say I am waiting for Triple A and he nods, hesitates, drives away.  He does not ask me if I need assistance, or what the problem is or if he can help.

A woman walks by - power walking.  She nods, smiles.  Does not say anything, maybe doesn't even notice the hood raised.

7:31 a truck pulls in, a man hops out - hey, what's your trouble.  He lives near me - in the hood, he jokes.  You too, he says, when I give him my address for the form.  I tell him how the eyes have been sliding past me for over an hour and he nods.  I hate calls to this town, everyone is like that. 
I grin - uptight.  He laughs.  Makes a dirty joke and then gets self-conscious, apologizes to me and I brush it off.
We talk about how in our neighborhoods - which are much less nice than this place - you could never go 10 minutes with the hood up without someone stopping, offering help. 

(It's true - last winter a friend called me to borrow my jumper cables and while we stood there in the freezing cold of a February midnight, three white women in the dark, an older African-American man on a bicycle stopped, helped us clean the corrosion off the contacts, waited to make sure we got sorted out.  He used to be a navy diver, I think he said, and didn't have a good coat.  I think about him sometimes when I am feeling like a fish out of water, and then make a point to make eye contact, to see faces, to not be from that town any more.)

My battery is seriously dead and he tells the price of a new one.  Then he stops - tells me there's a discount, recalculates, gives me a price 20 bucks lower.  I think it might be a solidarity discount.

I hold the flashlight for him, he does his thing, I turn the key and everything works.  Write him a check - ask his name.  Orlando, you're a star.
Just a man, he says.  Good and bad.

7:56 I pull out and head home.

Telescoping universe

I was going to take pictures of an older finished object for you - the post is all done but for pictures and it's rather good, if I do say so myself.

But instead of that or knitting, or organizing the bookcase, which were the sum of my rather tenuous plans for the day, I have been reading the Inheritance of Loss, which is really a devastating book in such a number of ways, starting with the fact that I will never be that good a writer (selfish first, please), running through the realization that my world is too small and ranging into colonialism, and racism and injustice and the weak show that is good intention most of the time, particularly when movement peters out at the far end of intent and doesn't manage the thrust into action and change, selflessness.

More and more I think capitalism is maybe fundamentally selfish and yet, I can't quite get my head 'round the alternatives.  There's pride in nationalism so narrow and limiting and yet, love of culture so profoundly valuable, the customs, the history so precious to who we are, human locusts destroying and changing everything in the act of living.

The extra weight I carry is more than a private difficulty, really more of an affront to those who have so very little.  I go to the store and think about healthy choices and I have Whole Foods and Wegman's and Trader Joe's and an infinity of options and they are good, but they are luxurious opulent abundance in this world, not necessity.  And yet good fresh vegetables ought not to be the high end choice, but even here in the first world there's less and less food in the food at the affordable end of things.  The expanding American girth is a sign of self destruction at a cellular level.

So I go and clean the bathroom, a manageable task, and find myself using a metal dpn to pull the long hair from the slow drain, trying to clear it enough that baking soda will clear the rest.  And it is a sloppy, disgusting human mess I don't want to touch even though it literally comes from me.  In the end the lye dissolves the human remains, the clog is beyond the reach of my digging needle point.

Where was I?

I've been suffering a serious deficit recently and I didn't even really know it:  what with one thing and another I hadn't seen my brother and his family since Thanksgiving, which is totally lame.  But we had a nice talk a week or so ago and he said, seriously, always welcome.  Drive up whenever.

So I did.

And despite the fact that sometimes when I look at them being a family together I think I might die of loneliness, I had a great time.  I think I am realizing that feeling that way doesn't mean that something is wrong, just that I should keep searching.  If you never feel a bit empty, what's the motivation to do the work, move forward, evolve, create, grow, dig, think, feel? 

Science museum/water garden is a great combo.

Baseball, with natural field hazard in the form of a Labrador.

Auntie Juno has Fun with her camera.

Can you believe I MISSED HER FIRST BIRTHDAY!

A superstar already.

More fun with the camera at the science museum.  And just a tip, when you are overwhelmed by sadness unexpectedly in public, the Rube Goldberg device hanging on the wall is a totally Zen building thing to stare at until the feeling evolves. 

And you know, if I happened to make the trip the weekend of Vermont Sheep & Wool, that was totally a coincidence, yes?  Anyway, I didn't buy anything (though I did pick my Merlin Tree wheel up from Dave).

I know, what's the world coming to? But I didn't.  I saw lots of good people for 11 seconds each, and I did all the things with my brother's kids I don't usually make time for.  Feeding goats and talking to breeders and petting sheep and watching the border collies work and sitting in the sun eating fair food while the toddler plays in the  grass.  A new experience.  It was good.

too much is the new normal

I saw this via The Morning News.

What does 120 calories look like?

Do you know?

I am not sure I did.  Plus the pictures are beautiful.

I noticed in Toronto that portions in restaurants tend to be smaller.  Not unsatisfying, but smaller.  And much more full of vegetables used creatively and thoughtfully than I am used to.
The exception was the Indian restaurant - which was delicious, but the vegetarian platter was enormous.  I ate too much.  Carrot pickle, yum.

I noticed that though Torontonians do come in the full range of sizes available to the human being, they too, tend overall to be smaller that what I am used to seeing.
I expect there is a connection.

Don't you?

Apparently my intellect is antique.

Not really a surprise.  My favorite professor in college told me once that I had a very 19th century turn of phrase.   I had a better vocabulary in those days, I think.

The unexpected, part 1.

On the right you can see a line of yarn overs - that would be the center of the shawl.
On the left are the remaining stitches to be bound off.
In the middle, my remaining yarn.

You see the problem.

Fortunately, before I began my preparations for ritual suicide (well, really, I just started swatching some Wool Bam Boo, rather than disemboweling myself with ebony straights.  Knitting has, if nothing else, taught me fatalism) I thought to email Judy at Smatterings, the artist who authored this yarn.  She believes she has a half skein or so about the place.  If true, I can even rip back and add the last two rows of the border.  Which would be bitchin'.. ..

...because this is much too pretty to leave on the needles indefinitely.

Unexpected thing the second was much pleasanter but even more of a surprise - I had, after all, rather begun to suspect that I wasn't going to make it all the way through the cast off some time before I actually ran out of yarn.

Last night I arrived home to unusually congested parking and a park ranger (we have those?) who gave me permission to park illegally.   Quite oddly, a person or persons unknown had erected a stage at the end of the street, upon which there were three guys playing some pretty decent summer music.  Kind of a Santana/blues/Ventures kind of thing.

Gotta click for big so you can appreciate one of Our Nation's Fathers supervising the proceedings.

There isn't much that's more enjoyable than outdoor music on a summer night.  I don't know who they were or why they were there, but the ranger told me they were playing in different neighborhoods each night, working their way through the city.  Which is one of those things that is just a gift to the universe - like buying a thousand copies of the best CD you ever heard and giving it to 1000 strangers.   Or the time I was leaving the grocery store and passed a guy coming in - a stranger - and I was done and he needed a cart and we just handed it off like we could read each other's minds and grinned at each other.

Miss Kitty was fascinated by it - once I was home cooking to the blues coming through the open window, every time I looked she was at the door or the window with her ears oriented to the music.

She's an odd little creature.