Dear Diary: Cold
When I got back from lunchtime errands, I was hot and steaming. An hour later, having cleaned up and changed, I was freezing out on the balcony. It’s the usual seasonal disorder: because the weather is nice again, you’re determined to spend some time outdoors; only, now the weather isn’t so nice — in fact, it’s dismal. Raining and about 60º. On top of that, the grey glare made it very hard to read the laptop screen. But I did write finish a page that I’ve been working on for weeks. When I came in, I began another.
Oops! Suddenly, it was too late to scramble over to Thomas Meglioranza’s recital at Mannes. Tom hasn’t sung in the city for a while, and I need a fix. I am heartily sorry. But this has been a week for staying at home and getting things done; having no plans to join anyone for the recital, it was easy to get lost in my work. Nevertheless, I am heartily sorry.
So far, the day has been nicely productive. The Daily Office didn’t eat up the hours, as it did on Monday and almost did yesterday (some canonicals are much easier to fill than others — I don’t yet know why). I took care of a long list of irregular housekeeping chores. For example: cable reception. The wrong button had evidently been pressed on one of the remotes. I figured out which one. Just to test the fix, I tuned into TV5. There was a broadcast of le tennis from Roland Garros. I almost sat down to watch Roger Federer play somebody, not because of a sudden interest in tennis but because I could actually understand the sportscasters.
Right now, I’m in the middle of Labelmania, having as much fun as a six year-old, typing in the names of movies (font: Gills Sans MT) and then pressing Ctrl-P. Whir, whine: voilà .
Just for the record: the building restored landscaping, this morning, to the long planters that stretch along the 86th Street sidewalk. Not the big one between the street and the driveway — that has to wait, one of the doormen told me, for the new canopy, which will actually stretch across the driveway, making a real porte-cochère. Nobody seems to know when the construction will be finished and the driveway re-opened, but the plantings are a welcome sight. I wonder if the Google Street View truck has already been by — I hope not.