Suddenly Warm, Really Windy

Today was very warm and windy. Without the high winds it would have been a perfect day to ride and the fact that I was going to a presentation on the new season at our performing arts center would have made me ambivalent about missing a ride. But the high winds gave me a free pass. Some people are willing to ride when the wind speed is about 30 mph, but I am not. I'm a wimp.

Since my bike is still in the shop, I could argue I didn't have anything to ride although that wouldn't strictly be true. I'm not sure why my bike isn't ready (of course it is possible that they just haven't bothered to call and tell me that Nick has finished with it and I could pick it up). In any event, even though I can't ride the Dahon until they get the recall information straightened out and that bike fixed, I could have ridden the hybrid, which would have been more practical in this wind than the road bike anyway.

The new Krannert season has some interesting things including a Renaissance concert. I could have asked for more, but then we probably couldn't have afforded more than we picked out. Fortunately a lot of the things we want to go to have the choral balcony as an option, which makes the tickets much more affordable. With concerts from other groups like the Prairie Ensemble as well, we will have plenty of things to do. I just always wish there was more theater. And the opera choices aren't very good this year except for The Marriage of Figaro. Still, we will go to some of the Live Met broadcasts too.

I will be doing a set of four "workshops," they don't call them classes at Parkland continuing education, on the history of polar exploration this fall. I think I will do one on the last Franklin expedition, one on Peary and Cook, show 90 Degrees South about Scott, and do one on Shackleton's expedition. I am also supposed to do another study group, although this one will be different from the one I am doing now on the Wars of the Roses.

Today I went to see the Artists Against AIDS show. I liked some of the pieces but we really don't have any room in our house for more stuff. In fact, I want to get rid of stuff, not get more of it. That excludes certain kinds of books, of course. One of my projects is to start going through and clearing out stuff. Both Leslie and Peter broke things this week and while they were things I would like to have kept, it was one way of getting rid of stuff.

Things are still not as neat as I would like them to be, but better than they were. I suppose if I keep working at it, maybe I will get there eventually. I am not ruthless about throwing things away and I tend to procrastinate, which is a really bad habit in a wannabe writer. That's why my third installment on Calais still hasn't appeared on my other blog. Not that anyone is clamoring for a piece on Arthur Lisle.

I keep thinking I should have planned to go to Kalamazoo this year. Maybe next year I will. I miss seeing all my historian friends. When I was a kid and still celebrated Passover, we used to say "next year in Jerusalem" so maybe I should say "next year in Kalamazoo, or even in Leeds."