Reading: Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust

Moving: walked a bit in the park and some weights

Watching: "Conspiracy"

Listening: Cowboy Junkies

19 May 2001: Two parties

In the morning we briefly debated a bike ride, because the weather has been absolutely perfect lately--it's been spring, a season Denver usually gives a miss. But then we went for a walk in the park instead. RDC is feeling slightly traumatized because construction of the future space atrium at the Museum of Nature & Science has blocked the patio behind the museum and there's not so much room to enjoy the Best View of the City--the rose garden and Ferril Lake (a euphemism) and downtown including the Capitol, and then mountains mountains mountains. We strolled along and I saw, across the lake, tents and things, which reminded me. This is what I wrote to Beth:

I just had the best morning. I had forgotten all about this and so RDC and I were just doing our regular walk in the park when I noticed a Thing happening Over There. It was Bark in the Park, field day for dogs. They could finger-paint (paw-paint), go bobbing for biscuits, try obstacle courses (one yellow lab kept not wanting to go through a tunnel and its owner was determined that it would.) I remet the woolly black puppy named Mathilda I first met in April--I asked the owner what the puppy's name was, she told me, and I said, "You're kidding--wait, did I meet you a few weeks ago?" She must think I'm a loon--I told her I didn't have a dog but here I was at the Bark, which makes me a dog stalker. And I was, I was, I was! Lots of dogs. There was the Greyhound Rescue group and a bunch of pugs and one family that had Jack Russell terriers and St. Bernards, and I saw, but didn't meet, a dog that looked like a miniature Crash. Also a Basset Hound/Springer mix, basset-shaped but springer-colored, very odd, but cute.

It was the best. Dogs as far as the eye could see.

In the afternoon I did weights for a while and then we went to our neighbors' party. I like our block because everyone seems to know everyone.

At this party were four houses' worth of neighbors. It occured to me to ask the likely one how long he had lived in his house, and he said he bought it in 1980. So he knew the Fosters and told me more about my house. I somehow didn't ask Mr. Foster about the double bedroom; our current neighbor said it was the next owner who knocked down the wall to make two into one, and that the entrance to the back bedroom wasn't in the back landing as I thought but through the first bedroom. How annoying.

Anyway, the hosts had their dog, of course, and other neighbors brought their slightly lame Labrador, so it was a dogful day for me.

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In the evening we watched "Conspiracy," an HBO movie starring Kenneth Branagh about the Wansee meeting at which the Final Solution was sorted out. Colin Firth was in it as well, in a much more demanding role than either of his Mr. Darcys. It was in the style of a modernist play, very good. Branagh was as blond as he was in Hamlet and made an excellent villain. Of course, in the context he wasn't; he was these men's leader; but he still rode roughshod over any opposition.