Tag Archives: Life

Twelfth Night

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Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

After we spent all afternoon in Forest Park, bicycling, dining at the Boat House and enjoying the perfect springtime weather, he headed home only to quickly turn around and head back to the park for an evening of Shakespeare. I got Monday off from work due to a surprise power outage and the subsequent plant closure, an after effect of Friday’s storms. We rode with Joanie and met Pat and three of her friends in Shakespeare Glen. We picnicked until showtime and then enjoyed the play. It turned quite chilly by the end of the evening.

Be not afraid of greatness.
Some are born great,
some achieve greatness,
and others have greatness thrust upon them.

The play ended earlier then most Shakespeare Festival productions, which is a good thing since Monday night is typically a work night, early to bed, early to rise, don’t you know. Before I went to bed, I checked the employee hotline, which still had my building being closed without power. I went to sleep with dreams of another snow day in June, dancing in my head. I called again at six in the morning. The recorded message had been updated at 3:30 AM. I knew what it would say, even before I heard it, “normal operations have been resumed, all Saint Louis facilities are open and employees should report to work as normal.” It didn’t need to voice the following postscript, “and that means you, you lazy slacker”, I heard it anyway.

a young woman in love always looks like
patience on a monument smiling at grief

June Snow Day

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Alaskan Malamute - One Big Dog

Alaskan Malamute – One Big Dog

The phone rang at 6:15 AM this morning. I was in the shower, so Anne answered it. Normally, these early morning calls are for Anne anyway. Melissa, the sub-scheduler calls Anne at this time with last minute substitute teaching assignments. School is out for the summer, but there is still summer school, besides the central office works all year round. Anne has worked as the office receptionist already once this summer. She even worked there on the school district’s last snow day. The call was for me though. My boss called to tell me that the plant was closed. It had lost all power after Friday’s violent storms. The airport had been hit by a tornado, which had downed critical power lines.

Faced with an unexpected day off, I first went back to bed, but after my shower, I wasn’t feeling particularly sleepy. I puttered, then did the dishes, fixed the front door, mowed the lawn, shopped and went for a bicycle ride in the park, with my spovely louse. We did our turn and a half and then went for a late lunch at the boat house. We sat on the patio, under an umbrella, overlooking Post-Dispatch Lake. Besides the ducks and paddle boats on the lake, at the table adjoining us was a woman with an Alaskan malamute named Max. Max is the biggest dog that I have ever seen. He weighs 135 pounds. Ninety pounds is considered large for a malamute. Max appears even larger, because he is a rare long hair malamute. Only one in 200 malamutes is a long hair. Max’s other recessive trait is his gigantism, giving him quite literally a big head. Most Mondays are rather blah. Today, with its unexpected holiday was a blessing.

Metro East Bike Ride

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Storm Damage on a Edwardsville Bike Path

Storm Damage on a Edwardsville Bike Path

Anne’s iPhone powered ducks began a-quacking at six this morning. Since we signed up for this summer’s Lake Michigan shoreline bicycle tour, Anne has been on a tear to get in shape for this weeklong ride. She doubled her annual mileage in the month of May and her goal for June is to more than double it again. To this end we had the bikes loaded on the car and were pulling out of the driveway at seven. Our destination was Edwardsville, IL and Trailnet’s Route 66 ride. It wasn’t until we were down the block that we realized that this ride wasn’t scheduled until next weekend. We momentarily thought of turning around and going back to bed, but we pressed on regardless and decided to ride the Madison County trails instead.

We started cycling from the Collinsville trailhead, where the Metro East Parks and Recreation headquarters is located. This organization runs the Cadillac of bike trails, hundreds of miles of them. Their newest facet is a bicycle repair stand that comes complete with a suite of bike tools, all cabled to the stand. We headed north, towards Edwardsville. As we approached Edwardsville, the amount of debris on the bike trail increased. In Edwardsville proper downed trees blocked the bike path. We got by the first one, by carrying our bikes. Pictured is Anne standing in front of the second downed tree. The only way around this block would have been to crawl through a muddy and wet drainage ditch. We turned around instead. We encountered several more downed trees before we completed our loop back to the car.

On Friday night Edwardsville was hit hard by twisters. We were spared, but others were not. In addition to downed trees, there were many unplanted corn fields, flooded under rain water from Friday’s storm. After our ride, we had a light lunch at the neighboring Culver’s. We were home by noon and spent the afternoon lying on the couches.

Joy in June

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Joy

Joy

Friday night was date night, dinner and a show. Anne looked especially lovely. She wore a sheer full length silk dress with matching shawl and high heels. She was going to wear this outfit last year at our 40th high school reunion, but the weather didn’t cooperate then, so she had to wear another outfit. Not that the weather really cooperated last night, but at least it was warmer than during last year’s reunion. Dinner was at Cyrano’s, home of extra whip cream. The show was Opera Theater’s Pirates of Penzance, in the Loretto-Hilton, at Webster.

We’ve seen this Gilbert and Sullivan light opera many times in the past, but never seem to grow tired of it. In between dinner and the show Opera Theater offered a lecture on Pirates. We showed up late to it, but still found it very interesting. I was well aware of the satirical references to then contemporary British politics and culture in Gilbert and Sullivan’s dialog and lyrics, but this lecture revealed to me a whole new level of satire within their operettas. The women lecturer sitting at a grand piano, on stage, in Webster’s music hall, explained that not only was the book dripping with satire, but so was their music. She went line for line and compared portions of the music of Pirates with portions of Verdi, Puccini and other contemporary composers.

The bad weather that had hit Oklahoma earlier on Friday had been churning and turning its way across Missouri. I had been keeping a weather eye open on it all afternoon. The bad weather held off through dinner, the lecture and the beginning of the show. During the first act, while the female chorus was singing about the weather, How Beautifully Blue the Sky, the front hit. Other parts of Saint Louis were hit that night, but not Webster. The show went on, intermission and then the second act. We both thoroughly enjoyed the operetta. Afterwards, I fetched the Prius from its bunker and picked Anne up at the theater’s front door. We drove home in a driving rain. It stormed the whole night through.

How Beautifully Blue the sky
The glass is rising very high
Continue fine I hope it may
And yet it rained but yesterday
Tomorrow it may pour again
I hear the country wants some rain
Yet people say
I know not why
That we shall have a warm July
– How Beautifully Blue the Sky,
Pirates of Penzance

Saturday morning, there was no sign of storm damage at home. The sump pump ran off and on all night, but couldn’t prevent some basement flooding. By noon, the rain had ended and we went for a wee bit of a bike ride. We ended up at the Midtown Taste and Art Fair. This is the third year that this fair has been held and while it is certainly the most expansive of the three, it still has a way to go towards sustainability. At one time this midtown neighborhood was the auto mall of its day for Saint Louis. Many of the buildings on Locust were once auto dealerships. The Moto Museum is on this street. We were peering in through the front window of one of these former auto dealerships, when we were invited in. The building had once been a Velie dealership, a franchise of John Deere. Atomicdust is the current proprietor. They are a 21st-century marketing and design firm serving their corporate clients. I love what they did with the space.