Today the new books came in and I brought an armful to the staff meeting to distribute. CoolBoss challenged who would find the first typo, because we always find something. The meeting began but I paid only half an ear as I thumbed through the book. I found a formatting error on page iii, for pity's sake: the footer under the Table of Contents is left- instead of center-aligned--mine. Bleah. I continued to read it through and immediately I turned the leaf of page 21 I gasped. The entire table swiveled to me. Mutely I pointed out to CoolBoss to my left. She gave the exact same gasp. "First sentence of page 22," I squeaked. Everyone turned to the page. There were no other gasps.
It's not an error of fact. It's not a misspelling or misgramming (hee!) or misformatting. It's just...wrong.
On the other hand the other two books that've come out in the past month are perfect. So far.
I have previously declared I don't like opera, but I said that based on two exposures, both Puccini. Last night I saw Don Giovanni and now it's "I don't like Puccini" or perhaps even "those two Puccinis." I hardly dreaded the prospect of an evening of Mozart, but I wasn't looking forward to it as RDC was. Mostly I was anticipating being able to wear my dress.
Right now I hear the Commandatore intoning "Don Giovanni," which scene is in "Amadeus," but it's overlaid with another "Amadeus" scene, with Mozart dictating his Requiem Mass to Salieri, singing "maledictum," which scans the same. Because I am a real eddicated opera-goer.
So I got to dress up! And really, isn't that the important thing? I even wore nail polish, though it's a bit of gilding the sow's ear to polish my short, broken nails in their ragged cuticles. It was only my skin color but shiny. I wore a tiny bit of eyeshadow, a tiny bit because once the first daubs went on correctly, any additional stroke might have either gone wrong or been whorish so I stopped. And the mascara was still on my eyelashes six hours later, a first.
My hair refused to be either curly or flatly curvily obedient. I pulled into a French twist and mourned aloud that now that it is nearly long enough for that style, I don't have a twist comb (and it's not long enough to use sticks in). I picked up a barrette RDC gave me two years ago, a slightly concave, oval, broad ring of silver, whose silver-topped wooden pin goes in one piercing, under the hair, and out the other piercing. RDC came in to look, loved the twist, and fastened the pin. And it held! It wouldn't've held for, say, dancing, but it held for sedate dining, strolling, and sitting. Silver and wood might have been Wrong with my ultrafake rhinestone and pearl and silver earrings, but did I care? I did not.
The real coup was my dress. Last spring, rootling through Ross, I found, OMFB, the most beautiful dress ever. At Ross. Yes, I know. Celidon. Silky satiny floor-length full skirt, a shimmery but not sparkly shell top. The shimmery layer attaches at the shoulders to some kind of underpinning fabric that connects the shoulders to the waist of the skirt. I am probably not explaining it adequately, but it means that the weight of the skirt (which is considerable) and of the dress as a whole is on the shoulders, not at the waist, that the bust is not fitted or exposed, and that waist is suggested but not defined or constrained. I wore the same silvery grey shoes I bought for the 2000 fall weddings, which were only passing serviceable with strategic bandaids and a dose of talcum powder. Floor-length skirt: the way to go. (I am aware I match the wall.)
We dined at Adega again. I would make such a good fabulously wealthy person, except that I might not be allowed to do my own gardening or wear shorts overalls. I love good service. Also I love good food. RDC had a fish whose name I forget, with crab and pea tendrils (pea tendrils?). I had goat cheese and asparagus tortelloni with salsify, which I learned is a root vegetable like a parsnip and also called oyster root for its briny taste. I considered whether it would be couth to tip the bowl to my mouth, not to miss a drop of broth.
Talcum powder: the reason I was able to walk from public conveyance to restaurant, to theatre, to conveyance again. Stupid shoes. On the way we met my COO and her kids. She'd recently given the oldest "Amadeus" for his birthday, hence their presence. I remarked to the youngest that we were supposed to have met three years ago when her mother brought her to the Tattered Cover for the midnight release of Goblet of Fire (no surprise we missed each other in the press) but maybe we would see each other this June.
The set was modernized in good ways. Instead of scenery, on the floor and backdrop were huge scrawls of all the names in Don Giovanni's little black book. The actual catalog was a Palm Pilot in Leporello's hand; people carried firearms instead of swords (though a musket and pistol are in the text); and the dresses...actually, the dress. Donna Anna wore black mourning; Zerlina wore red in a flamenco-ish style; but Donna Elvira's dress I lusted after.
(Yes. Opera is all about costuming, mine and others'.)
Stiff, nearly gun-metal gray but pretty anyway, four buttons in a square closing the bodice, wide neck, stand-up cloak collar, long to floor but, because it was cut like a coat, opening from buttons to hem revealing a sheath underneath. Stunning.
The program told me a couple of things to listen for: how themes in the overture, which by legend Mozart wrote at the last minute, are repeated and developed later on (which might mean the legend is not true or that he did, as reputed, have everything composed in his head but just not notated yet) and how, when Don Giovanni is seducing Zerlina, her music changes into his until, as she succumbs to him, they are singing the same notes. Also that he wrote the opera to suit the voices he knew would perform it.
That's a new one.
I returned all my Paris guidebooks to the library and picked up about a gallon of coffee grounds from Peaberry Coffee--a good bike-sized portion. They will be an excellent source for my lasagne mulch. Getting raw materials in sufficient quantities to dedicate a spatch of garden to might be tricky.
When I got home I began to fuss with compost, frustrating Blake, who wanted me inside. RDC was wearing a collared shirt and was therefore Bad (collared shirts mean that Daddy Is Leaving the House and must therefore be Shunned and Yelled At and Avoided) so Blake was desperate. RDC put Blake on the kitchen windowsill and came out to say hi, and when we went back in, Blake was pacing back and forth on the floor of the back landing, squawking and whining his discontent. Poor little beast.
I changed into garden clothes, shut Blake into his cage with barely a cuddle, and brought him outside to help me in the garden. I took a last wheelbarrow of dirt out and began to double-dig. I think. I'm not sure if what I did counts as double-digging, but there were trenches and mixing compost with present dirt. And combing, to remove old root structures. The whole vegetable garden is soft again, for most of its depth. It's a step I didn't take last year. I also amended the south garden, much less diligently because it was late. I planted spinach, carrot, and bean seeds along the south fence, and squash plants under the cherry tree on the hopeful hypothesis that only weeds (zucchini is a weed) stand a chance against other weeds. I had been fed at some point, bison burgers with plenty of spinach and tomato and mozzarella, but mostly that was three hours of hoeing and digging.
Then it was dark so I stopped.