Dancing Around the Four Sides

Hazy sun, warm. Pruned tomatoes a bit yesterday; Chango helped by barking enthusiastically at two squirrels that were chasing each other in the trees. Still reading The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham -- Maugham traveled to the United States in 1910, and here is a short bit Maugham wrote later in life about visiting the American novelist Henry James (who was also just visiting the U.S., and who felt quite uncomfortable in his native land), and about how James insisted on accompanying him to an intersection to catch the streetcar from Cambridge to Boston:

I protested that I was perfectly capable of getting there by myself, but he would not hear of it, not only on account of the kindness and the great courtesy which were natural to him, but also because America seemed to him a strange and terrifying labyrinth in which without his guidance I was bound to get hopelessly lost ... The street-car hove in sight and Henry James was seized with agitation. He began waving frantically when it was still a quarter of a mile away. He was afraid it wouldn't stop, and he besought me to jump on with the greatest agility of which I was capable. ... I was so infected by his anxiety that when the car pulled up and I leapt on, I had almost the sensation that I had had a miraculous escape from certain death. I saw him standing on his short legs in the middle of the road, looking after the car, and I felt that he was trembling still at my narrow shave.

:-D

Still pleased and excited over last night's Sherlock, and very much looking forward to the next season, whenever it arrives.

Also, ( some last-moment musing and speculation on 'House' ...  )

Whatever happens tonight ... it's been an amazing ride. Not a valediction, but a valentine. ♥ to all of you.

So. Once again, let's get this out of the way first.

( Last night's 'House', the promo, and beyond ... SPOILERS  )

Cloudy and warm today. More tomatoes are ripening! Thanks SO MUCH to everyone who wished me a happy birthday yesterday. You guys are amazing. ♥ ♥ ♥ you all.

Okay, so let's get this out of the way right off the bat ...

( Two observations about last night's promo ...  )

TL;DR, I think there are mysteries yet to come, and if the worst happens, it'll happen, but it still won't be what we expect.

So. Beautiful and sunny here, probably need to run some errands but we'll see. Tomatoes are doing well although we lost some of the ripening cherry tomatoes to a caterpillar. Grrrr. Also need to clean up and tweak the fic I finished and send it to my First Readers.

And ... onward.

33 down, none to go. Done with the zaps. They gave me a certificate that mentions my "courage, determination and good nature." HA, HOW LITTLE THEY KNOW ME. *g*

Still reading -- finished Wade Davis' Into the Silence and it was GREAT. Am now reading Connie Willis' two-volume novel Blackout/All Clear, and am wondering, I am sorry to say, how it EVER won the Hugo and Nebula awards. And I'm a fan of Connie Willis -- her Doomsday Book is an absolute marvel, very well worth the read, and Passage is melancholy and beautiful and very strange. Blackout/All Clear ... not so much. As one reviewer said on Amazon, somewhere in all that padding is a great novel trying to get out. Oy.

( About last night's 'House' ...  )

And ... that's all I got.

Hot and sunny. Watered the deck plants and discovered, resting on the bare ground beside the coiled-up garden hose, a bird's egg. I think it belongs to a mourning dove, but how it got to that particular spot I have no idea. I mean, obviously something carried it away, but was it another bird? A squirrel? An opossum or a raccoon would've eaten it. I don't know. I put it back in the grass.

Vacuuming and watching the Little League World Series. I'll bet Wilson played Little League, until his mother realized he could hurt his hands or break an ankle or get hit in the face with a ball. Remember in the episode with the bumper cars, he said his parents never let him do that (drive bumper cars)? I think it's part of my headcanon that Wilson's mom and dad were crazy-overprotective and kept him from doing a lot of fun things.

Aaaaand I'm rambling. Back to vacuuming.

Cloudy and a very damp 72 degrees (22.2 degrees Celsius). It rained almost all day yesterday, with lots of lightning and rolling thunder. Naturally, the dog hated it and hid in her den the entire time. This morning has been better -- she's chased the squirrels away from the sunflower feeder three or four times, running them up trees where they sit and chatter at her.

Watched Alan Bennett's The History Boys last night and enjoyed it, although it was certainly darker than I had thought it would be, and there were several scenes where you could really spot the stagey underpinnings left from the transition from play to film. The pace felt a bit off, and characters would suddenly "stop" whatever they were doing and make a speech (in particular the scene with Mrs. Lintott acidly reminding a boy that one of the dons interviewing him might actually be a woman -- still, it was a great speech). The coda tacked on at the end felt very artificial also, although I imagine it worked well on the stage. The acting was uniformly terrific, especially by Richard Griffiths. One of the current leads in Being Human (the werewolf), Russell Tovey, played one of the boys -- he was really the only person I recognized in the movie. I read later that the part of Irwin, the "pinch-hitter" brought in to improve the boys' chances to win admission to Oxford or Cambridge, was modeled on Niall Ferguson, which amused me. There were aspects of the film that reminded me of Dead Poets' Society, albeit with a much more twisty undercurrent of sexuality.

I've also read now that Bennett's play is quite different in some respects from the film, so I've added it to my Shopping List on Amazon. :-D

Still plugging away on Bryson's At Home -- I'm a bit more than halfway through. Mr. N gets home from Minneapolis tonight, so need to do some housely stuff, including scrubbing the muddy paw prints off the kitchen floor.