Gah. The cold is still really irritating me and sapping my energy and enthusiasm for life. Summer colds are awful, especially given how gorgeous it is outside. Still, I managed to
1) trim the bushes in the yard (which totally exhausted me, what was I thinking)
2) pick up a used divan bed in Putney (thanks to wechsler), which means the back room now has more storage space in it and is laid out better (lemme know if you need a double Ikea bed, no charge)
3) wash dishes

WOW, huh. Now I need to finish reading through my post office contract and get it mailed off so I'll be on payroll and such for next month. One more week of freedom ...

What I accomplished today: grocery shopping, planted all of my flowers (the ones I bought 2 months ago), made tacos out of the most beat-up tortillas I've ever deigned to use, bought some summer-weight trousers online (never did this last summer, still needed them, fall in value of pound made them seem more affordable in UK than previously), survived an hour and a half of bad monkey puns (for details see my Twitter feed), redid my resume so that it's ready to submit for that Test Manager job at Tripadelic (God, my fingers are crossed).

Failed to do: finish review of Company at the Union Theater (really, really good), clean living room, put away laundry.

Ah well. Three shows this week so all I've got time to do is pack, and when I say "time to do" I mean "when I stay up late after I get back home because I have no extra time, no, not really." I'll be going to Nice on Friday and I'm really looking forward to it. :-)

I realized yesterday that there was probably no chance of my going anywhere today. I wanted to stay home and work on making my little house pretty. Now, the weather has worked both for and against me today, as the sunny weather we had at noon made me think I should go for a walk, but then a squall came along, convincing me of the genius of staying inside, but also dumping a bunch of black crap in the living room via the chimney.

At any rate, despite the mess associated with cooking (I have put a leg of lamb, sitting in a puddle of old white wine, in the oven to roast, with little holes punched in it and stuffed full of bacon cubes, garlic, and rosemary - recipe available upon request), I've got the kitchen looking almost liveable, and may be able to get the living room in a similar state without too much work. The challenge is, as ever, the bedroom, where the piles of clothes with no place to go are becoming a walking hazard, and the sheets and towels we also had no home for (and yet which have found a place to live) are now becoming vitally necessary while remaining quite invisible. Speaking of which, the peanut butter lid has, like the prodigal son, returned to its old home - but its one time friend, the jar where it spent the best times of its life, has moved on. Which reminds me, garbage collection is tomorrow, better get those bags outside.

Hmm. I need to turn the lamb and pour some juice on it, then get the potatoes together. I'm doing something that will look like scalloping and involve some wine and cheese. And maybe, if I 'm lucky, I can get in a game of Agricola before the night is over.

I'm drinking some Natela Gold Standard tea from the Perennial Tea room and it's particularly sweet and delicious.

I just had a HUGE breakfast, in part because I slept so freaking late I wanted piles and piles of food. This included home fried potatoes, which were basically 1) fried in bacon grease 2) sprinkled with Konriko and 3) juiced up with a tablespoon of chopped garlic. Yeah, they rocked, and I'm safe from vampires today.

The weather can't make up its mind right now - snowing in the back yard one minute, sun shining through the front windows the next. I'm going to roll the dice and J and I are going to go to Tooting Common and see what it's all about - then go do our grocery shopping. I'm expecting we're going to wind up at DosaAndChutney for lunch, because they're 1) cheap 2) yummy and 3) across from the grocery store. Then it will be back to the unpacking ... today we will finish the living room, REALLY, and maybe finally find J's John in the Morning mug.

(Local time: 12:30 PM.)

I've had the big Mexican scramble we started cooking at 11:30 - it was a bit of a trial but thank God J figured out the broiler was in the bottom of the oven not too long after I turned it on, meaning I managed to get all the pans stored there out before the plastic on the handles melted. Oops.

Now that we've eaten I'm ready to fall back asleep for a few hours and spend the rest of the day doing about nothing. Instead, we're going to find thedivas in Prospect Park and I will see my beloved Shadow doggy for the first time in two and a half years. Later on I'll make us all tacos and we'll do something silly like watch a movie or something. It should be nice.

Well, only two years after I started, I've finished all of Remembrance of Things Past (better called In Search of Lost Time) as I reached the big "The End" on page 358 of Time Regained. He spent the last 15-20 pages talking about how he was afraid he'd die before he finished his life work, and I was feeling like I was cheering him on as he was trying to race against his own bad health to get to the finish line. "You can do it, Marcel! In fact, you did it! We're all here waiting for you -- just a few more steps!"

It's really been a great read - I can't say it's changed my life, but in many ways it's changed how I perceived thing, and not just because I get jokes about madeleines, insomnia,and cork-lined rooms. The best bit has been this appreciation of really intense moments of timelessness, when everything around me comes together and I feel both so alive and so entirely out of time, like the things that are happening to me have always happen and will continue to happen and I'm just experiencing a tiny, perfect, repeatable moment in the endless sea of Time. Skies will cloud over, spring flowers will fade and fall, even I will be gone one day, but a perfect day in spring, or autumn, or summer, or winter, they will all happen again and in experiencing one perfect instant of them I am, in effect, experiencing them all. I know this sounds like some pretty serious hippie shit, but it does happen to me and it's Proust that made me recognize them (plus my sum total of other life experiences all welling up at the same time).

Sadly I haven't had any moments like this recently - they happen when they happen (and require a full dose of Be Here Now, which is sometimes in short supply for me). Instead I'll mention the rest of my day, as boring in its minutiae as ever, but an ongoing accretion of Things That Make Me Me.

1. Today's lesson: be aware of when the time changes are going to happen and make sure you set your alarm clock properly if you're travelling on that day. If this had been the spring changeover, I would have been screwed this morning. Instead, I got up too early (and yet still barely made it to the airport on time, no thanks to the Time Out guides shit transpo maps and poor information about getting to the airport).

2. Yummy new food item: "Secreto Catalan" (I think), which is a cut of pork from the back of the pig's neck - very buttery and soft. Incorrectly named food item: "Ensalada Fantasia," as my fantasies never involve a food item covered with thin slices of raw salmon. Yuck.

3. The flamenco concert was a lot of fun. El Capullo de Jerez was J's favorite of the evening, and likely mine (the other singer being Remedios Amaya, video of the two of them performing here, only when the egotistical "El Farruco," a dancer who was reminding me of a cross between Liberace and Michael Jackson, got his 10 year old son out there to cut the rug with him, I was so stupendously moved by his skill at such a young age (plus the whole "mini-me" thing going on, I kept laughing) that I stood up and cheered - with the rest of the Barcelonans. That said, listening to Capullo de Jerez singing these old songs with this backdrop of these creepy Art Nouveau maidens coming out of the walls behind him in the Palau de Musica was really something - it's like the ghosts were listening to him perform.

We brought home three bottles of booze, two bottles of cider, three bottles of wine, two new handpainted earthenware bowls for serving food in, and three packages of tea, so it was a pretty good haul for a weekend, and it was a nice and fairly relaxing time. We got in early (noon) and I've managed to not just get home but also get up the street to meet wechsler's sister (husband and baby too). Now I'm roasting up a chicken and I am hungry! There may have been a time change but my stomach thinks it's time to eat now. At least the cat is happy to have us home again.

Well, somehow I've convinced shadowdaddy to make dinner - chicken and peanut stew. I'm too beat to stand up long enough to cook. It's pathetic; going to the store to pick up a few groceries completely wore me out. I said I'm sad; J said I'm sick. Well, okay, it's just hard to be so weak and not feel lame.

While on my way out of said grocery store, I was briefly distracted into going into a bookstore, where they had a table full of books recommended by Phillip Pullman. I am fascinated; I think I am going to add all of them to my Amazon wish list. They really do look like good reading, and I think that list gives me ideas for Christmas presents for all sorts of people.

My Sunday: sleep until 11 (blissful lack of coughing); eat the nice waffles shadowdaddy made; say goodbye to him as he went to do something fun; find wechsler in Waitrose; let him make me lunch (salad and omelette); snooze on his couch; go back home. Yep, it was quite a day.

Today I woke up around 12:30, not entirely rested due to the effects of getting to bed at 5 AM. I took a shower, realized no one had breakfast (including shadowdaddy, who actually hadn't made it home yet and had called to say he was on his way and hungry), and popped to the store to buy Lots of Meat (two kinds of bacon) and some English muffins and fruit. I made the French potato scramble thing (includes ham, bacon, and sausage, plus extra butter and piles of potatoes) and served up a very starving wechsler, tonyawinter, and me and J around 3 ish or so. ciphergoth showed up, and he's now visiting with tonyawinter while J and W and I flop around on the couches and whinge about how chowed we are from last night. I ought to update about my outrageous evening, but I'm awfully tired right now. I think I'm going to finish The Atrocity Archives instead.

Life caught up to me today and I've so far failed to leave the house. It just seemed like a good idea to, I don't know, finish the cheesy Michael Moorcock/Storm Constantine book I've been reading, pick up some of the layers of crud strewn across every room of the house, catch up with my theater blogging ((reviews of Giselle (24 hits without any attempt to pimp it, who in the world is bothering to read the crap I write anyway?) and the play I saw yesterday with booklectic are now up, and can I say that having to blog four shows in a week constitutes WORK?), and maybe get some relaxing in. I tried making the cherry tomato and arugula/"rocket" (seriously, that is what they call it here) pasta dish I linked to a few days ago, and it was quite good.

Now I'm sitting in the living room enjoying the benefits of the fan we just bought because, well, you know, it's kind of warm in here. I definitely need to clean some more, but, well, Max Silverskin is about to save the world, and ... I think I need to ... nap ... for a bit ......

I had a good time killing my Sunday in Brighton with wechsler while shadowdaddy worked on a show near Euston. The weather was pretty good, a bit cool at times, but I borrowed wechsler's extra jacket and stayed more than warm enough.

What is funny is that if I summarized my trip, I would say, "I went to Brighton, I walked to the beach, and then I fell asleep. After I woke up, I went home." It is really a bit hard to get more relaxed than that. We also had ice cream at Scoop Crump (amazing, I want to write to Rick Steves and have him recommend it) and a rather dull lunch at Picasso (a pan-Hispanic cuisine restaurant that utterly failed to be as good as the Ecuadoran bakery near tonyawinter's place) which was marred for me by the unannounced addition of blue cheese to the brushetta we ordered. I was eating it and suddenly wondered why everything tasted like mold - it was because some rank melted blue cheese had got in my mouth!

Otherwise I bought nothing despite yesterday's windfall, which basically loosened the purse strings enough for me to feel like I could afford to go to Brighton on a whim. Getting the "annual Gold card" discount on my fare sure helped - from 18 quid to 11 - a deal! - but still, mostly, I consider that (18 pounds) above and beyond acceptable expenses for a day's amusement. Actually, I did buy more food at the "50 Miles" shop, which is closing, sadly. Most of what I bought was boozes for shadowdaddy so he'd have something nice to come home to, but I also got some bottles of cider (to drink on the train) and two jars of jam.

Er, anyway, so W and I went home, I made some dinner, we drank wine and basically killed time until shadowdaddy made it back, and now it's the end of the day and I'm pretty worn out. Working on a Saturda, it pretty much guarantees that I go back into work not as refreshed as I would have been with two full days off.

1. Made enchiladas. Yum!
2. Tried making sangria with white wine. Yum! (It doesn't really taste like sangria but whatever.)
3. Beat wechsler and shadowdaddy decisively at Through the Desert. (I was making it up, however. I will be beaten again the next time we play.)
4. Bought tickets for two more movies in the Guy Maddin series: Archangel (Friday 18 July 2008 at 18:30, seats F5 - F6), and Brand Upon the Brain! (Tuesday 15 July 2008 at 18:20, J4 - J5, and only 5 quid). If anyone else wants to come to these shows with us, please do!
5. Tried and failed to get tickets to see Faeries, which is well on its way to selling out. I am not happy about not being able to get tickets to this show on a schedule convenient to me because the show requires that adults bring a child. What's up, if I went to this show as an adult I must be a pedophile? Is this really legal? To me it's blatant discrimination against the childless and it pisses me off.
6. Bought a second copy of a Proust book, Following Proust: Norman Churches, Cathedrals, and Paris Paintings, that I'd ordered before as a present to me from my dad.
7. Tried to get a copy of Finding Time Again, as I'm getting darned near to the end of my current book and it's become very interesting.
8. Put in some laundry, including all of the clothes the rain soaked through while in York.

Oh, also I found the program from Friday night's Emma Kirkby show, and I'm going to reprint a poem from it (though what I should be doing is writing it up for my other blog). I found it, on Independence Day, a sort of 9/11 reflection on a fallen America, but I'm now much better able to understand what they mean, in a pre-Christian era tribal society, when they are talking about someone being a widow and what that has to say about what would happen to their status in society. It was sung in German and I found it very moving. Anyway, Lamentations 1: 1, (2,) 8, (9,) 12, (20, and 21) for the original.

How desolate lies the city/ Wie liegt die Stadt so wuste
that was so full of people/ die voll Volkes war.
She is like a widow/ Sie ist wie eine Witwe.
She who was a princess among the heathen/ Die eine Furstin unter den Heiden
and a queen in the provinces / und eine Konigen in den Landern war
must now serve/ muss nun dienen.

She weeps in the night so that (Look and see!) / Sie weinet des Nachts (Schauet doch und sehet!)
tears run down her cheeks / dass ihr die Tranen uber die Wangen fliessen,
and no one among all of her lovers / und ist niemand unter allen ihren Freunden
will comfort her/ der sie troste.

All those who were close to her despise her/ Alle ihre Nachsten verachten sie
and have become her enemies / und sind ihre Feinde worden.

Anyway, from this poem to the Trojan Woman to today, the tale of being left desolate by war and death and crying to yourself hopelessly really hit me. It was really lovely listening to the three gambas and two violins of the London Baroque accompanying Emma Kirkby and baritone Peter Harvey (the "beholds" above) as they sang this song, the "Klaglied" by Buxtehude and written upon the death of his father. Sadness, it is truly something that transcends all history. Is joy not the greater surprise?

Well, coming out of the Waitrose, we saw that it had started snowing again. So much for the zoo, really.

And I had this great idea of going to the God Is ... Victorian part dressed as Odette de Crecy, the ex-courtesan heroine/focus of Swann's Way (the second half of the first book of In Search of Lost Time), if someone described as so unintelligent and manipulative - and not the narrator of a first person novel - can be a heroine. There is a beautiful lilac dress she wears while walking in the Bois de Boulogne - the train of the skirt trailing behind her, a clutch of violets pinned to her top and a wisteria parasol in her hand - that sounded like it would have been the perfect thing for the party. Unfortunately, the high street charity shops don't really carry any formal dresses, though in America I could have easily found blue bridesmaids dresses galore at pretty much any thrift store. Instead I get to read about the dress in Paris Fashion: A Cultural History by Valerie Steele (as very kindly previewed on Google) and wish there was some way I could get just one of these lovely dresses to wear. I suppose I'll come up with something.

Last night wechsler and I went to a lovely Japanese restaurant on Red Lion street in Holborn, basically across the street from work. It's called Edokko and was absolutely wonderful. The upstairs was pure Japanese - including the tables with the area dug out underneath for your legs to dangle, as well as a proper tatami mat room. You had to take your shoes off before you sat at your table, and every time the waitresses came by with food they'd take their shoes off and come over in their socks. It was lovely. The menu was about 1/3 snacks, 1/3 sushi/sashimi, and 1/3 more entree-like things. W had cold soba noodles (just like in Kyoto!) and I had beef teriyaki as well as some "rice with green tea poured on it" (couldn't help myself). We started with spinach and peanuts, gyoza, and salmon roll (the last two for W as they both had fishies in them) and had lovely cold sake throughout. Our menu choices were to some extent dictated by how incredibly warm the restaurant was, but once they'd turned off the heater, it became more pleasant. The service was stellar and I left with stars in my eyes about Japan ... and also about how amazing it was that this adorable place was only half a block from my office. It wasn't really cheap, but "snacks" were running 4-7, entrees 8-16 ... and then there was the sushi, which seemed to get as expensive as you wanted it to be. It was a great cure for my exhausting week at work (and my nine hour work day).

Once home, I think I lasted for about an hour and fell asleep five minutes after my head touched the pillow - then slept nearly 12 hours. I kept waking up and hearing the wind blowing and the rain spattering on the windows, and then falling back asleep again as I was Not Motivated to Get Up. It is now almost 3 and I am not at the ballet now. I had a big breakfast (poached eggs on crumpet muffin with cheese on top, two kinds of chipolatas, black treacle cured bacon, and a second crumpet with butter and jam) and then was lucky enough to catch shadowdaddy at his hotel and have a nice chatty catchup about his first day in NYC. Now I'm going to fall back asleep, and when I get up later I'll spend some time cleaning the house as it needs it desperately. Six day work weeks, they take it out of me, and it's a huge relief that I've only got three coming up next week. I can't wait to be in Sicily - sure hope the weather is better there than it is here.

Yesterday's sunshine faded away while I was naping, and with it my motivation to do anything. It is terrible that I'm so weather-dependent. So as the daylight hours trickled away, suddenly there became less and less things we COULD do and only the things we had to do: visit my friend Josh in central London.

As it turned out, we went for Dim Sum to China Harbor (or something along those lines, right where Gerrard Street hits Gerrard ... Avenue or something, across from China China) in keeping with our former Sunday tradition of afternoon dim sum. While the selection was good and the food was not bad, the fact of the matter is the bill came in at 36 pounds, and when I asked them to total it in front of me, it recalculated at 19. I'm not sure if it was just an addition error or the fact we had a little suitcase with us that made this happen, but I was pretty pissed off.

Then off we went to Josh's. To my surprise, he had two cardboard boxes PACKED full of canned Mexican food for me - more than we could carry home in one trip! So we loaded up our little suitcase with refried beans, red enchilada sauce, cans of green salsa - things I'd been out of for months. But the excitement of all of these goodies was too much, and Josh got a hankering for Mexican. Well, so be it. Off we went to Oaxaca, even though J and I weren't all that hungry. It worked out fine, though - the guy at the door recognized me from December, when I lost the button off of my big coat, and very kindly treated us to a round of drinks to compensate me for my loss. Yee hah! As usual, the food was delicious, even though I wasn't at all hungry (but somehow managed to fit in a taco and lots of guacamole anyway). Now we are stocked with the goods and I'm ready for a taco party again! All I need are some corn tortillas ...

I have made biscuits and "red eye gravy" (ham base with a bit of coffee in it), along with (surprise) ham and (because I could) soft boiled eggs. I had my egg in my black cat egg cup, and with the top of the egg sawed off, it looked like I was eating BRANEZ! It was funny and wrong and I should have taken a picture of it so that you could all have a laugh.

I finished reading Living Dead in Dallas yesterday and it was GREAT. Charlaine Harris rules! I'm actually deliberately waiting to start book #3 so I can ... hold off the enjoyment.

It does seem that today is rather another lazy Sunday in the making, but what with the sun outside, I'm determined to go out, only I want to take a nap first. I have to go to Goodge Street to pick up a case of enchilada sauce from a friend of mine, and I'm feeling inclined toward a walk in a park. Perhaps we'll join jhg at the Ritzy ... I'd enjoy a movie today, and since Still Life appears rather painfully sold out, Be Kind, Rewind might be a good replacement ....

So, in the long series of posts called Another Sunday Pissed Away, I present today's entry:

Breakfast: country potato hash (bacon, peppers, onions, taters) with melted cheese on top, poached eggs, a side of smoked back bacon, and hot sauce.

Afternoon: a walk in Bishop's park, as the sun was really shining nicely and some kind of trees are blooming and something else bizarre is smelling lovely. I went with wechsler (shadowdaddy is not so much up for walking as his foot is not well yet) and we watched Indian ring necked parakeets eating cherry blossoms in a little private garden inside the Fulham Palace grounds. Said palace was actually open today, and we went in, but held off poking around in favor of snacking: scones with raspberry jam and clotted cream for me with something they said was Assam tea but wasn't; shepherd's pie for him, with no salad as they were out.

Now I'm back and off to shop for groceries before going to the NFT to see Anna Mae Wong as a fan girl; unlike some of you, she'll actually be dancing and holding fans. At some point I'm going to try this recipe for Bucatini all’Amatriciana, but I think I screwed up and just got pork cheek instead of cured pork cheek (guanciale), so I may save it for later.

I was going to see Annie Get Your Gun this afternoon but as no one said they would go see it with me (except W, but he's here right now so it's not like he's going to say, "Hey, how come you stood me up?"), I am going to stay home and sleep some more instead and just have "dinner with souldier_blue be my big event of the day. I'll arrange to go see it on Thursday instead, when hopefully J and I will both still be feeling better.

Still ill but coughing much less - energy levels are still very low.

Breakfast: apricot/hazelnut brioche french toast, bacon from the Theobalds Road butcher shop, and "Egyptian fruit compote," which, let's face it, was just a way to use up the leftover apples I had sitting in the fruit bowl but was supposed to be what I made for dessert last night. However, fried in butter, with some cinnamon added, a banana and sliced orange thrown in the mix, with some ginger and Lyle's Golden Syrup, it made a convincing side dish.

PS: To prove I am tired, I just saw an ad for Oedipus Rex entitled "Patricide and incest on stage?" and I read (out loud) the title of the play as "Innapus." Therefore I will now sleep.

So the first time I heard this song was when I heard my little brother singing it as a karaoke song. What a hoot! I can't believe I never saw the video for this, although it wasn't exactly in the same flow of culture as I was in 1992. But ... what a comical use of tomatoes and lemons! (Oh, that Sir Mix-a-Lot!)

It's gorgeous outside today, but I'm not feeling well enough for walking around, and I think I'm going to send shadowdaddy and butterbee out on their own. I pushed myself too hard the last two days and I need to get better. Thus staying home and being quiet ...

So in addition to a butterbee for Christmas, our other gift to us is ....

a trip to Egypt!

I booked the tickets today and I'm very excited. In some ways it's my gift to us, since it's being substantially funded through the weekends I worked earlier this year, but still ... Pyramids! The Sphinx! Luxor with no roulette tables! And a felucca ride! It'll be just like Stargate, I bet!

Hopefully when shadowdaddy realizes all my presents for him are basically crap he'll think of the trip and realize I'm not so bad after all.

I'm a big believer in giving experiences not stuff, so I'm excited about the idea of an experience we can talk about for years! If we move back to America we would never be able to afford to do this, so this has the double pleasure of just being outstandingly cool and of being something where we are taking advantage of the opportunities that are available for us now that we're living so much closer to other parts of the world than we used to.

In dull news, spent today doing grocery and Christmas shopping (I live in fear of being locked in my house with no food and all of the shops being closed), which just wore me completely out. I got big kick out of being in a bookstore desperately struggling for inspiration when I got a call from FormerCoworkerJosh, who was also desperately struggling for inspiration. I recommended to him that he get port for the people he's going to visit for Christmas, as liquor always goes over well, and that he sweeten it (as it were) with some rum. I mean, hey, that works for me, you know?

Anyway, I must rest a bit now. Tonight we're seeing a concert (Emma Kirkby performing The Messiah with Polyphony at St. John's Smith Square) with rosamicula, and I want to be in good shape. Thank goodness all I have to do is sit while I'm there!

We're back from our stroll up the river - to Hammersmith and back. It was the first time I walked across the Hammersmith bridge and it was pretty neat. For some reason the bridge looked very brittle. On the way up I told shadowdaddy a story from teh "Book of Gay Fairy Tales" I'm reading, and he seemed to enjoy that. On the way back we talked about Life in London and how he's adjusting and whether or not we should buy a house and the usual heavy stuff we get into when we go for walks (somehow it just happens). We actually got sun on both banks of the river.

Now it's time for hot chocolate and grilled cheese sandwiches. I did the drinks, and I see shadowdaddy has got a sammy on a plate for me. See you later!