missizzy

Ian is regressing. This week we saw the first visit of the cleaning ladies since Clarissa's death, and the moment their vacuum cleaner turned on, he was burrowed under my covers, which he hasn't done in response to them for years. They always insist on making the beds (even if we make them first), so he couldn't keep hiding there, but he found somewhere we couldn't find him for hours, another thing that had previously been a thing of the past. Yesterday we both left the house for an extended time, and he was extremely distressed when we left, and hid for much of the evening. He used to do that a lot when he was mad at us.
We in fact headed back to the Folger, now renovated enough to at least partially reopen, though we had to enter through their new(?) basement. We saw Winter's Tale, which was pretty well done, keeping true to the original play while integrating various modern dress elements in, and the actress playing Hermione was brilliant in her big courtroom scene. (A black woman, which also allowed said scene to reflect all too well on our current society.) Mom goes to see Quilters with some friends today, but being involved in an undergrad production of said musical has left me still feeling I've had enough of that one for one lifetime.
This morning, in anticipation of the office White Elephant exchange tomorrow, I gift bagged the last of the unwanted items from the mystery box I bought at Awesome Con back in 2017. I shall have to buy another one next year, so I shall have more items; the Call of Duty mug and Saul Goodman figure proved lots of fun in previous ones. Though this is an action figure of the white lead from the 80s movie Big Trouble in Little China, which I'm not sure anyone there will remember anyone. (At least one person on Tumblr has; I've read there since the Chinese sidekick was actually the stealth protagonist. It was the 80s, so...)
I also have not seen Ian all morning. I kind of hope he just comes in here when she leaves; it'll leave me much less anxious.

After waiting a week to see if Kaiser would call me in to get my booster shot, or even the clinic at the Pentagon would offer it to all personnel, and only getting a notice from the former that they were "adjusting our vaccine administration process," I ended up just getting it in the CVS yesterday morning while we there for Claritin-D. Moderna this time, since that was what they had. My arm is still sore as hell despite the painkillers, but so far it hasn't been that much worse than the first two shots. It's a weekend for staying in anyway, what with the temperatures outside.
Also a weekend for mourning Sondheim. I hadn't even realized he was *that* old, so it shocked me to see the news on my phone coming home Friday. I spent the evening watching videos of his songs, including my favorite song, "Being Alive, and "A Little Priest from the 2014 Sweeney Todd in Concert, which is more or less my favorite Sondheim production.

Agrippina at the Met was something of what you would expect for a modern-day staging of one of Handel's lesser but still stagable operas. To the modern viewer, it very much comes across as satire, and Met behaves as if there's no question that it was meant as one. It's very possible Handel might have put some satire in on purpose, though probably the audience of 1709 didn't really think about it too hard. The production had a modern setting, with a couple of blatant allusions to Trump, and a good deal of sexing up, including obvious incest in the opening scene. Joyce DiDonato centered the opera as the title character, but Kate Lindsey stole the show as Nero.
Also watched the final hour of the live episode of Critical Role yesterday. It certainly was very trying to wait an hour and a half for the show to start, and I really hope they choose a different venue next time, especially for the sake of those poor fans who had to wait out in the cold for so long. But wow was that episode worth it. Going to bed at the halfway point, I thought it had been good enough, but then it just got better. Also, I am officially hopelessly in love with Caleb Widogast.

Today we got to the Folger for the last time before it closes for renovations, there to see The Merry Wives of Windsor. We were supposed to go last week, but they had a power outage. Honestly, I wouldn't have minded if they'd just given us a refund. I've seen Merry Wives twice already. The first, a professional production, cut large parts of it out and wasn't too good. The second was at Sweet Briar, and still cut some scenes, but remained coherent and was pretty good, and between that and seeing the Met's broadcast of Falstaff, I sort of feel like I've seen enough of it for one lifetime. But we bought for the entire season, and it was a season of Falstaff.
Best to go while I still can, really. The Folger will still have a season next year, and one of their plays will even be held in a location we can easily get to, but the others we'll be skipping. Beyond that, well, who knows if I'll even still be in DC. It seems the purge of civil servants not loyal to Trump may be starting, and while I'm hoping it doesn't go down to my level this year, if he's releected, I'm going to have to start the job search I hoped I'd never have to put myself through again.

Come From Away was definitely the best thing I'm likely to see, this holiday week. I'd known the story about the planes diverted to Gander on 9/11 already, if only because of the extended piece NBC did on it during the 2010 Olympics. But this musical, a nonstop whole to the point it forewent an intermission, was what truly captured the people, place, and time, and all the complicated feelings that came with them. The music itself had a handful of high points, including "Me and the Sky," sung by a barrier-breaking female pilot who happened to be flying one of the planes involved. I'd seen it quoted on Tumblr already, but now I want to listen through it again.
I went into Rise of Skywalker somewhat spoiled, and my expectations not very high. ( For the most part, I actually enjoyed it... )
Since I had today off, this morning I went on YouTube and found Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, which I watched every year as a kid, and wanted to watch again in honor of Carroll Spinney. I found it does more than just hold up; there were things I only got as an adult, and I think I might even find it more heartwarming than I used to. And you're definitely never too old to love the music.
The Christmas movie tomorrow will be the new Little Women, which certainly has a promising cast. Mom also wants to see Cats. She's heard what's wrong with it, but I don't think she fully appreciates what we'd be in for. Even so I kind of want to see Judi Dench and Ian McKellen in it...maybe we should just buy the soundtrack?

Saw Henry IV, Part I at the Folger Shakespeare yesterday. Before the play we saw the exhibit about the building, which they're about to close for renovations; the theater might not get to have a season next year if they don't find a temporary venue. I've seen a lot of Shakespeare plays in my time, but far fewer of the histories, and I hadn't seen this one. They've been doing the less put on plays at the Folger lately. This was a pretty effective production, with an ambiguous setting, and a lot of truly excellent acting. Mom commented afterwards about how nowadays buffons like Falstaff make us think of Trump, which left me very grateful they didn't make this one look like him, but let him be his own more complicated self, with a good point about the pointlessness of war, bad a person as he happens to be.
We'd intended to get dinner at Noodles & Company afterwards, but it seems they are now a place that doesn't have everything their menu says they have. So we went looking for another place that serves Italian, and found an excellent if whitebread restaurant called Atlantis only ten minutes away. They served us too much food there, but it was very good food.

The Folger's production of Love Labour's Lost was pretty well done, but I still really don't care for the play. I don't know how much the whole premise impressed anyone even back then, and nowadays it makes you think about guys like Pence, limiting women's career opportunities just so they won't be tempted. And i'm speaking as someone who actually did officially declare herself celibate for three years in college and remained so for much, much longer, because being otherwise just wasn't worth the effort. Also modern understanding about health and such blows another hole in it. No wonder those men are acting so stupid if they're only sleeping three hours a night!
Traffic was so bad going on mom may start insisting we leave earlier next season, which we're already subscribed to. And when they're putting on The Merry Wives of WindsorHenry IV and Amadeus, both of which I'm much more interested in seeing.

In the end, the furniture all got delivered and assembled within one day, even when two of the guys didn't get cleared and had to sit the day out at Pentagon City. It's very nice furniture too, beautiful blue chairs and metal tables for the computers, an understated front desk, and similar.
Went to see the Met's broadcast of L'Amour de Loin today, and also bought my ticket for Rogue One next week. The story was absurd, even by opera standards, and parts of the very abstract production were too, but the music was fascinating, and the light show they had on the stage to stand in for the ocean was kind of brilliant. The main trio were all good, and Susanna Phillips even managed to make the ending pretty powerful.
I was sorry it was the same day as the Grand Prix Finale, though. Managed to get my recap of the senior event done tonight, but the junior event and the Golden Spin of Zagreb will have to wait until tomorrow(seriously, if Carolina hadn't been making her return there, I wouldn't have bothered with the last). Somehow there always seems to be an opera the same weekend as the GPF.
Not really reacting to the leaked CIA report, since it confirms what anyone who was paying attention pretty much knew already. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem likely to have any practical results...

This weekend I've mostly spent watching tennis, happy to have some of it to watch today and eagerly anticipating a 4th of July that allows me to be at home for the Super Monday at Wimbledon. I've associated the holiday with Wimbledon already, but will even more so now that it happens before the amount of matches happening thin out to final rounds. Yesterday Sam Querry's win over Djokovic, despite multiple rain delays, was a huge thrill that had me singing and tweeting about the world turned upside down, and today Tsonga & Isner's five-setter was another quality watch. Watching Coco V win today was fun too.
I did have to take a break from it yesterday, though, to go with my mom to the Folger and see Aaron Posner's District Merchants which adapts the story of The Merchant of Venice to 1870s DC. It turns Antonio into Antoine, a freeborn black making money off Reconstruction, Bassiano in Benjamin Bassiano, the son of a slave and her master pale enough to pass who has a huge emotional conflict over his decision to marry Portia with her initially thinking him white, Portia herself into a regular crossdresser who rails that she has to dress as a boy to study law and certainly shows herself to be a brilliant lawyer in the trial scene, but struggles with her own racism, Nessa and Lancelot into black servants who have their own views of their employers, Shylock into a sympathetic figure driven to be how he is by how the world has treated him, but a tyrannical father, Jessica into a proud Jewish woman who nonetheless runs off with a gentile out of sheer desperation to escape him, and Lorenzo into a louse unaware of his white male privilege, who does nonetheless care for Jessica, and ultimately it's him who converts rather than her! It was the kind of play that is determined to make you think about everything, hitting hard on issues that still affect us today, with maybe a few too many speeches, but it successfully redeemed the original story, and worked especially well with a DC audience. It's just ended its premiere run, and I hope it gets put on again.
Heartbroken over Joshua Farris' retirement, which has put a dampener on my excitement over the Grand Prix. Was it only a year ago he and Jason Brown were supposed to be the next great two and the next rivalry? Jason's commemoration on Instragram was both heartbreaking and heartwarming.

Went to the Folger today to see A Midsummer Night's Dream. Their latest production of it combines a generic modern setting with a genderswapping of all the theatricals except Peter Quince, a good deal of interaction with the audience(one highlight was Helena fleeing Hermia through the audience and apologizing to people she jostles), a lot of sound effects, modern music, and occasional modern lines(Hermia picks an odd time to realize Lysander doesn't have his inhaler with him), and certainly was funny, though it troubled me how they didn't seem to trust the original words to do the work. Getting there and back was a pain, though, since the blue line was only running every twenty minutes, although apparently most of the other trains were worse. On the way back, I saw more than one person try to force their way through closing doors to not have to wait twenty minutes, and that was in the underground stations; at the ones out the cold, the wait would be worse.
Got barraged by hello messages on OkCupid today. Not at all certain why. Have responded to some lately, but then there was one from a guy in India! That's probably not going to work out.