Reading: something or other

Moving: walked to work

Watching: "Elizabeth"

28 November 2000: Weekly

I walked to work today; I hadn't since last Monday. A couple of weeks ago (which isn't that many walks, the way I've been slugging), I thought, "Gee, these batteries are lasting a long time." That could be because I haven't been walking to work much, eh? Last Monday I was listening to Grendel, second side of the last tape, three blocks from work, and Beowulf--still unnamed, though Grendel knows other men's names--finally has shown up and hacked off his arm, and the batteries died. So last night I remembered to charge the suckers, their unchargedness having been my excuse for not-walking Tuesday and Wednesday, and poor old Grendel died in three blocks. I need to get a new book today.

Then I saw a thing trotting along. It was vaguely canine-shaped but too small for me to notice regularly or call a "dog." Except there was no human in sight and this animal obviously was too small and therefore too stupid and much too poodle-ish to be out on its own. Despite its looking like a piece of cotton wool I might use to clean an engine with, if I cleaned engines, I checked its tags and carried it the few blocks to its house. I knocked on the door, waited a minute, then left it on its porch and told it to stay. It didn't follow me.

Several blocks later I saw a young woman walking a golden retriever puppy who wanted to meet me about as much as I wanted to meet it, but its human just dragged it along. She might not have had time for my excesses of rapture, but I didn't think making it yip by hauling on its choke collar was warranted. Way to make a well-socialized dog.

Some people just don't deserve their pets.

Just before I got to work, a woman stopped me on the street and asked for help finding 230 16th or so. She was at the corner of Sherman and 16th, 200 East 16th, and I was bemused at her lostedness. But she had looked at the 16th Avenue street sign and seen "1600 N" and got all nervous. I pointed at the Sherman sign, 200 E, and reassured her; such a good deed.

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RDC says the day after Thanksgiving is a day for slugging. This dates from 1997, when we lay on the living room floor and watched a "My So-Called Life" marathon on MTV all day. This is more surprising for him than for me. I told him it was time to change this tradition, because in 1996 we skied at Copper. We did motivate enough to walk to the library. I found For the Love of Books and Alison Weir's Life of Elizabeth I. I want Antonia Fraser to write one. Fraser won't have these syntactical hiccups that make me itch. I don't recall that Fraser assumed or concluded Mary's complicity in Darnley's murder.

Saturday I was going to walk to Cherry Creek North and get some Christmas presents and cards, but after doing the bills RDC concluded that any shopping had to wait until after the first of December. So instead I raked the yard and he helped me get more windows out of the garage rafters and I washed and hung those. After getting the twigs out of my hair and picking up Haitch from the airport, which was surprisingly calm, I recommenced slugging. We watched "Man in the Moon" and I confess myself confused by the last scene with Tony Clifton, a year after Kaufman's death. I fell asleep during "Lost Highways" right after Bill Pullman turned into someone else in prison. Haitch told me she didn't think it was a movie I would like and I was thinking, before I fell asleep, of how right she was, and so I was unsurprised when RDC told me he'd added it to his wishlist.

Sunday I measured the main floor and finally plotted it on the graph paper I've had tacked to the family room wall for months. What good this does me or us is unclear, since we have no idea about proportions and fitting furniture to rooms. I spent the afternoon on the futon in my study reading Elizabeth with Blake, a fine way to spend a cloudy cold afternoon. I've given up on "CBS Sunday Morning" since my slow-waking-up zone is removed from the television, but in the evening we did our usual "60 Minutes" "Simpsons" "Malcolm in the Middle" "X-Files." I skipped to "Titanic" during commercials and after "X-Files" "Shakespeare in Love" came on a movie channel. But we went to bed. We know how it ends.

I slathered the walls of my study with everything I could find to cover the Air Force blue before Thanksgiving. Right now "Starry Night" is on the one wall where I can find studs to hang eventual bookshelves. I'll put that on the ceiling if ever I do hang those shelves.

Thanksgiving: We rented a table and chairs since we made no decision about furniture last weekend. We are up one black sweater and down one dinner plate. "ER" is a soap opera and I don't care. Dexy and Clove brought their dog Maggie and Blake stayed on maximum cockatiel alert all day.

Maggie stayed outside while we ate dinner because she'd found something hideous to roll in (I hate outside cats) and Clove gave her a quick bath in the downstairs tub. With her outside, Blake was calm enough to eat, and he did stop panicking and flattening himself in corners, but when she was in sight, he watched her. He did not play or eat or sing or anything. In the evening, when we all, including him in his cage plus Maggie, went downstairs for movies and games, I let him out and put him on my shoulder, but he kept running up the furniture to its apocaninical point and I figured he was safer in his cage than scared and out of it (I'm bright like that) so back he went.

This does not bode well for our eventual dog. Sigh.