When I emerged from the pool I thought I had a most viscous water clog in my left ear. Maybe after twenty years of breathing to the left my right ear is trained enough to shed water, but when the left gets plugged, it stays plugged. The ride home was interesting. I dashed inside for a drop of isoprophyl alcohol to break the surface tension: no dice. Huh.
Then I admired RDC's handi- and footiwork: while I was gone he had dug a ditch along the property line and stomped grapes all over the fill I had barrowed into place on Friday and Saturday morning. Besides a barrowload for the raspberry patch, there was nothing for me to do until the fill settled down so the sections could take more--nothing…for me…to do…on the house. It was very strange. So Blake and I settled on the porch swing to read Cadmus and Harmony with my head tilted to the left.
RDC was still muddy so I ran his errands inside, like to refill his water bottle and fetch scissors to snip open the silicone he was patching a gutter with. Every time I got up I noticed I was more disoriented in a way people with hearing loss must somehow accommodate. So I gave in completely to nappitude, bringing a floor pillow and the picnic blanket to the swing for more comfortable left-sided reading. Or napping.
I heard Blake greet someone, "wheet wheet!" and I thought RDC was on the steps taking off his boots. But no, I heard him from farther away, "Do you need me to sign for that?" I sat up, not quite awake yet, off-kilter. "It's what you've been waiting for," he told me.
The mailman stood at the mailbox by the door with a box. I grinned and slid it from under his arm with a grin and my thanks. And there were the scissors, fresh from silicone duty. There was no more sleeping.
I did get up, though, when the sun reached more than half the swing. I read for a spell in Vito before realizing it would go better if I weren't wearing sunglasses. I was really out of it. When RDC came in, he suggested an ickier cause of my hearing loss. The next step, warm water and hydrogen peroxide, did indeed fix me. Gross.
Blake and I then joined RDC on the patio, where he was grilling asparagus and bison bratwurst (the point of that eludes me--why disguise bison? But it was in the fridge). I took a bowl and gathered raspberries to snack on and sat reading before dinner--after chasing RDC around the backyard and swatting him with my book, which he tossed onto and then retrieved from the garage roof.
We left Harry Potter on page 178 and Blake very disappointed--two nights out in a row, three for RDC--and hopped on a bus toward downtown.
I feel a little disloyal to Old Lyme but glad too, because, not before time, I really like my city. I love being able to use public transit to a hopping downtown with a Pride Fest and at least something going on every summer weekend. The Pride Fest might have meant the bus turned around several blocks before Auraria, but it was a lovely walk, through Larimer Square with its chalk-paintinged street and over Cherry Creek.
The last time I came here--I wrote this between sets in a little notebook CLH gave me, so "came here" instead of "went there"--also the first time, in December to see Peter Gabriel, the bus dropped us at the Auraria campus and we hoofed the short distance to the Pepsi Center. There is no traffic signal nor even a pedestrian crosswalk between that last stop of a major bus route and this major destination. So we jaywalked. This time, I didn't know where in the complex the attractively named Universal Lending Pavillions at the Pepsi Center Complex would be but I figured a large tent would give itself away. It did. Will-call was obvious too, and overall I liked the Pavillions immediately because it was like the Fleet Pavillions in Boston where I saw the Cowboy Junkies with CLH. And because this place is right on the South Platte, there is a breeze. That's not so unusual for Denver in the evening, but it is for New England, so it was pleasantly reminiscent of the coast.
When we arrove, RDC wanted a beer. Despite Denver's having the highest proportion of brew pubs per capita in the country, Coors is still just up the street. So he got the only premium option, Killian's Red, which he described as Coors with red food coloring, and I got a water. Noshing being my weakness, I looked around in dismay at the foods offered. My sister would have been happy, but I need chocolate not salt. Finally, tucked away in a corner, I found an ice cream stand. Adequately supplied, we sat down just as Robert Randolph and His Family Band took the stage.
I only just learned about this band and I'm not sure if RDC has known about them for long. If I may quote William from "Almost Famous," he is incendiary. He and his 12-string steel guitar smoked. He and his band played only five songs, but they all evolved through jams. I wasn't sure of the titles, but setlists are why I brought the little notebook:
Then Susan Tedeschi came out. I've known about her only since January and I don't know all her song titles either. These might be obvious lines from the choruses:
This is ridiculous--neither the News nor the Post reviewed the concert, so I can't track down songs. In sum, good show, good guitar, glad Robert Randolph played with her, glad RDC liked her, startled to find out that her speaking voice is high and squeaky, considering how throaty and deep her singing voice is.
Spoilers abound, following in white text: Nothing that happens in the first 800 pages has anything to do with the series as a whole. This reminded me uncomfortably of Shelters of Stone, in which nothing that has anything to do with the series happens until the very end, when Ayla and Whinney both hatch and Ayla decides to become a shaman. Rowling does the same thing with Sirius that George Lucas does with Obi-Wan Kenobi, in stripping the protagonist of his last remaining parental figure, but as the exact parallel to Obi-Wan is not Sirius but Dumbledore, to lose Sirius instead of Dumbledore wasn't as bad as could be. Also, we barely know Sirius, since he hardly figured in Goblet of Fire and scarcely appeared in this either to any personal degree. Despite that Sirius's Animagus form was a big black dog named Padfoot, I remain fonder of Lupin. And of Mad-Eye Moody. In the final pages of exposition--Rowling also does the Bad Guy Gives Away Evil Plan thing--Dumbledore admits to making a mistake, failing in his protection of Harry by thinking as himself, as an old man, instead of as a young nearly-man, as Harry. He also describes Sirius as the one person Harry would go to any length to rescue--which makes me wonder why it was Ron, not Sirius, at the bottom of the lake in the final test of the Triwizard Tournament. My answer: because the reader knows Ron, and the reader knows Ron because Ron'd been there all along. He didn't trot into and then out of the story as Sirius did.
Dumbledore told Harry a lot but he still hasn't let on why Snapes can't have the job he wants so badly. And if he had a reason not to realize that that wasn't really Mad-Eye Moody last time, I've forgotten it.
My Usan edition seems to have been incompletely Usanized. Harry eats "sausages and mash" instead of "bangers and mash" but nor does he eat "sausages and mashed potatoes." There's a reference to the Sorcerer's Stone. But Fred and George sell candies that make you sick so you can "skive" off classes, and they "take the mickey out of" Ron for being made a prefect; a character called Mundungus is a fence and uses a slang word for "steal" that slips my mind--"scrog," maybe. Most obviously, Harry also puts on his trainers. That's not Rowling's fault of course but the publishing house's for Usanizing the text at all and then fast and sloppy to boot.
I'm certainly not fond of Rowling's excessive use of capitals when more expressive writing would better indicate emphasis. And she still uses more showing than telling.
Overall, another fun book that I continue not to believe deserves the analysis or accolades some give it.