As advertised, dateline Palm Springs.

The last week in Vancouver was quiet - a few last minute coffees and lunches with friends and colleagues, a last minute flurry to sign outstanding files at work, lots of goodbye hugs, and then on Thursday night, Gerry (otherwise known as The Juke Box Man) picked me up.  I stayed at his house on Thursday night, and on Friday morning at the crack of dawn, he drove me to Bellingham , Washington to catch my flight (he lives about 5 minutes from the border).  The weather cooperated:  it was pissing rain and very cold, making me extremely happy to be leaving for the south.

The flight is, as they all should be, uneventful, and faithful neighbor Michael was at the airport in Palm Springs to pick me up.  As has become the tradition, we went to Manhattan in the Desert for deli food on the way home.

And then, finally, home.  I had forgotten how great it looks.  Just in case you've forgotten too....

I just love it, inside......

...and out.....

So, I'll just say it one more time - you guys have a bedroom here with your name on it, should you wish to come.  And oh, by the way, it is sunny and 84 degrees....

After getting groceries and meeting the new park manager, I settled in to read five months worth of mail (easily dispatched), and then curled up with a drink and a book.  Art and Wally came over after dinner to make me feel welcome.  On Saturday, I visited friends, went to the library (just in case I didn't have enough to read...), and then neighbors and friends dropped over (apparently word had gotten out that I was home - must have been all that riding around with my straw hat and the top down....) and we smoozed til dark.

So, seeing as everything was fine (all infrastructure and operating systems, including wireless, television and phone, all working), it was time to leave again.  Really, this was pre-planned ages ago - Art and I were off Sunday morning....

....on the way to Las Vegas for a sectional bridge tournament.  The drive was a little longer than it might have been because of traffic, but between me reading articles to Art from the Sunday New York Times and just catching up, well, we did not run out of things to talk about.

The tournament is at Tropicana, but we are staying at Circus Circus, at the other end of the strip.  It was way cheaper (as in it cost $39 a night), and we have found over the years that it is nice to get away from the bridge action for some down time between sessions.

More on Vegas itself next time.  Meanwhile, I need my rest for tonight's session.  (For those of you keeping score, I think we picked up some points this morning....)

We will be here through Friday, so more anon...

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving!

I, of course, will save all my efforts - cooking efforts, that is - for American Thanksgiving, but I am grateful none the less, for friends, and work, and health and (mostly) good cheer!

"Last" lunch before leaving for Palm Springs with former colleague, neighbor and friend Eric

As you can see, we went to the local Indian joint.  After all, I am heading to the land of white bread next week (Mexican food excepted, of course), and I am trying to get my fill of ethnic.

Tuesday night I played "Kitchen" bridge (literally) in White Rock with, from left to right, Robin, Heidi and Diana.

It may have been kitchen bridge, but they are all good players, so it was good bridge, and we had a lot of laughs besides, something you don't always get at the duplicate club (some of those folks take the game way too seriously!)

Wednesday night was dinner and bridge with the boys, again, the last before Palm Springs (although it was agreed that they would come down for a bridge weekend in Palm Springs in February).  For a change, we had dinner at Milestones, a chain we can all agree on (not ethnic, I know, but sometimes you have to compromise to keep the peace).

Thursday - yet more bridge, at the club this time, followed by dinner (at the old stand-by Enigma), and one last theater evening with Tom.  It was one of our favourite theater groups, Fighting Chance Productions, doing - of all things - Carrie, the Musical.  Believe it or not, I had never read the book, seen the play, or even seen the movie, but you would have to be from another planet not to know what it is about.  The actors were, as always, great, great voices, lots of enthusiasm (they are so young!) and great choreography.  Nonetheless, I wanted to leave at the intermission - you know, it doesn't end well!!!  Luckily, Tom had the car keys, so we stayed, and it was actually quite satisfying.  (It is hard to get too invested in everyone getting killed by telekinetic powers, although I must say that for a little theater, they did a great job with the effects.))

It was supposed to be dreary and rainy all Thanksgiving weekend, but we managed to squeeze out another sunny day.....

(The geese going south even swim in formation!)

And as far as the last two days, well, I have learned to like walking in the rain.

And I am still grateful!!

Next post will be Dateline:  Palm Springs

Content

I'm back to my usual self, feeling that I am pretty lucky.  Nothing has changed, really, except my mood.  Luckily, my low tolerance level for boredom does not let me stay depressed/sad/melancholy for too long.

It has been a busy week.  Friend Leslie has a great crush on Bob Frazer, one of our local theater luminaries (okay, okay, I confess, so do I!)  In addition to his great acting (he was Shakespeare in Equivocation at Bard on the Beach this summer, as well as a number of roles in Cymbaline), he also runs a theater company called Osimous Theater.  On Tuesday night, we went to see their production of, of all things, Thornton Wilder's Our Town.  I haven't seen it for a million years, and was really not sure that it would hold up in this more sophisticated day and age.  But, it was Bob Frazer, so off we trundled, to a small church on Commercial Drive.

Dinner first, at a funky joint nearby (there is no such thing as a joint on Commerccial Drive that is not funky....

Then, off to "church".  It was, as you can imagine, a small venue, and this was a preview, so we actually got a chance to talk to the great man himself (talk about working a room, Hank, you and I don't hold a candle to this guy!) before the play.  Much to my delight, the play was charming, in large part, I think, because Frazer played the part of Stage Manager, holding it all together.  (don't bother trying to re-read it, as I did after I got home.  It plays much better than it reads.)  God, I love the theater!

Wednesday, a different sort of drama.  Heather, a former colleague, has more or less made herself scarce since she left work - was it a year ago or so?  Anyway, I ran into her on one of my walks, and she asked that I try to arrange a lunch with some of her old colleagues/friends.  And I made it so....

(that's Heather, third from the left, not to mention a better picture of Leslie).

She's had lots of changes in her life, and even an hour and a half wasn't enough time to process it all...

Thursday was the usual bridge at Duplicate Lite (god, I hate that name!) in White Rock (Robin and I came in 4th overall out of 25 pairs, not too terribly bad....), and then off to lunch at Crescent Beach, to celebrate our good playing, as well as Robin's birthday (yes, I know, we just celebrated a birthday, but that was Debbie's!)

Robin and friend Diana (above)

If you ever get out that way, the place is Thestis, and they make the best sandwiches on the planet, and as some of you know, I am definitely not a sandwich fan!

And lo and behold, we are at the weekend again, and the usual gang is at the usual place (Fisherman's Terrace in Richmond) for dim sum, the last before I go away.

And now, something a little different.  Those who know me, know I read a lot.  (I like to think of myself as an intellectual; in point of fact, I am better called a dilettante - I now a little about everything and not enough about anything.)  In any event, after reading Lovett's The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession, I moved on to The Impossible Exile, a biography of Stephan Zweig by George Prochnik.  Now, I know that is not a name that most of you are familiar with - it is definitely an Eastern European/Jewish thing.  He was my father's favourite author (more melancholy!), and, obviously, had to leave Europe in order to survive World War II.

Here's the "different" part.  I need to quote you from this book.

Talking about another Jewish emigre writer, Zweig says:  '[his] ceaseless activity was nothing but an opiate to cover up an inner nervousness and deaden the loneliness that surrounded his inner life..."   If that doesn't sound like a description of me and my frenetic life, I don't know what does....  I know, it sounds dark.  It doesn't feel dark, though, just explanatory.

Okay, here's more.  When asked why nothing was done about Hitler, he said that "....reverence for Bildung, that magically potent idea of holistic, rigorously intellectual character development, predicated on fluency in the canon of Western knowledge, had made it impossible for educated Germans to take Hitler seriously....it was simply inconceivable that this beer-hall agitator who had not even finished high school, let alone college, should even make a pass toward a position once held by a Bismark, a Baron von Stein, a Prince Bulow.  In consequence...even after 1933 the vast majority still believed that Hitler was only a kind of stopgap, and that the Nazis would prove a transient phenomenon..."

Okay, I guess non-Jews don't think about these things....  Just a few more.  Even though he studied with Herzel, the great Zionist, Zweig did not believe in a Jewish nation.  He hated nationalism of any stripe, and "....never wanted the Jews to become a nation again and thus to lower itself to taking part with the others in the rivalry of reality.  I love the Diaspora and affirm it as the meaning of Jewish idealism, as Jewry's cosmopolitan mission..."  Well, he certainly was right about that one....

When talking about the Jews as outcast from Europe, he noted that the Jews were no longer a community in the 20th century, and had not been for a long time.  "...They had no law.  They did not want to speak Hebrew together.  Only exile swept them all together, like dirt in the street:  bankers from their grand homes in Berlin, synagogue servers from the Orthodox communities, Parisian professors of philosophy, Romanian cabbies, layers-out of the dead and Nobel prize winners, operatic divas, women hired as mourners at funerals, writers and distillers, men of property and men of none, the great and small, observant Jews and followers of the Enlightenment....Why I?  Why you?  How do you and I who do not know each other, who speak different languages, whose thinking takes different forms and who have nothing in common happen to be here together..."   The injustice of anti-Semitism illustrated by revealing the total absence of common ground between the Jews themselves...

Okay, that's enough, you get the idea.  A very different biography indeed, told in terms of the times, not of the man.  Needless to say, it resonated.  Next, I guess I will read some of his books (they have been widely translated).  Meanwhile, though, I am stuck with what I have on the night table:  The Madwoman in the Attic; The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination, and an old one (I first read it maybe 25 years ago) by John Simon called Paradigms Lost:  Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline (I love the title, and it called me back to read it again).

Between those and trying to keep up with The Economist every week, well, I should keep out of mischief!  (And you guys wonder why I don't read on line.....)

....and time marches on....

Somehow, as soon as I made the plane reservation, my life has turned from Vancouver to Palm Springs, although I'm not leaving for two and a half weeks.  Not as much enthusiasm as in previous years, but I think that has less to do with Palm Springs than it does with my mood

Meanwhile, another week managed to zip by....

And another birthday, this time, Deb, the third of the unholy threesome from law school.   As always, we stopped at her place for a drink before dinner, and found her granddaughter, who immediately found me, the only person in the room who was not gaga over her, and climbed on my lap.  I thought it had to be immortalized.....

She was pretty cute, though, huh?  But then, I only had to deal with her for three minutes!!!  Then we were off, a new (for us) restaurant this time, Il Buca (and yes, I know the tense is wrong.  I actually forgot to ask what it means, but since the food, the wine, and the service were all fab, I didn't much care by the end of the evening....

...and the continuation of another tradition, dim sum with Richard for our respective birthdays ((it is a little early for his birthday, but he is off to Africa and I am off to Palm Springs, so...) , this time joined by his wife (and my friend) Linda, again at Kirin, downtown (when I say we are creatures of habit......although I understand our very favourite, The Victoria, is opening again next year....)

....followed on Thursday by (yet another) goodbye.  Zoltan and Robert, our IT guys, are leaving us, one of those government things - has to go out on tender, yatta, yatta, yatta, so, after 10 years, we had to lose two really great guys, who knew their stuff and were happy to put up with our complete disinterest in technology in spite of having to use it.  They were treated pretty shabbily, I think, but anyway, they are being pretty philosophical about it, and it was a great lunch (at Fog & Suds, a local pub, for those keeping track)
This is Robert.....

...and Zoltan (Zoli, but just to me)....

Friend Deb (a different one, although also previously seen on these pages) had an extra ticket for a concert series she goes to in White Rock,  I dropped by her place for a bit of dinner (that is the second time she has cooked for me - she may shame me into cooking yet!), and then off to the concert.  It was at a Baptist church, which held, I don't know, maybe three hundred people, and there wasn't an empty seat.  I knew a surprising number of the audience, some through bridge at Robin's house, some through Thursday bridge at the club, even a few colleagues from work.  Vancouver really is a small town that way, you trip over a lot of the same people.  It was nice,though, especially as the concert itself, while lovely, made me melancholy.

The pianist was John O'Conor, technically very good, although a bit cold for my taste.  Why melancholy?  He played some Beethoven Bagatelles, as well as the Pathetique, and Schubert's Sonata in C Minor. all of which my mother used to play....and yes, I remember that I didn't like my mother, but still, she was the one who taught me the piano (such as it was) and to listen to music, and to go to the opera from the time I was six, and a lot of time (30 years, in fact) has passed since she died.)  Anyway, the acoustics were lovely, it was a sweet concert, and a little melancholy never hurt anyone.

So, that was Friday.  Saturday morning, I was on the ferry to Victoria, for yet more melancholy, this time thinking about David.  I, of course, commuted on the ferry for years from Salt Spring Island, and the fog is melancholy-inducing anyway....

....took the bus into town, where friend Deirdre picked me up, and we were off for dim sum....

 

For someone who has been through the breast cancer, chemotherapy, radiation, losing her hair and her energy and her mind thing for the past six months, she looks pretty good, doesn't she?  Still tired, though, so after a bit of a walk in down town Victoria...

...we were back to her house for a nap (I, of course, was thrilled, since I love my naps).  Then off to see Lois and Alf in their new house.  And no, that is not their house.  But if you  have to stay somewhere while you are renovating, it is always nice to have a view....

And after a drink and a nibble at the local pub in Sidney, I was on the nine o'clock ferry home.  I bitched  lot about ferries and buses and the class of people on public transportation, but it was actually a lovely day.  (I am getting altogether too grumpy.  I am going to have to put a lid on it, or I won't have any friends to play with!)

I still have a few, though. and John, Dennis (yes, the bridge boys) and I went for a hike on Sunday at the UBC Endowment Lands.  It was a glorious, Indian Summer day, John did not get over - exuberant in planning the hike, and so a good time was had by all....

,,,,followed, of course, by lunch at the golf club....

...and yes, it was time to go to our respective homes for our respective naps.

Leaving me just enough time to do my Dotty Domestic stuff before the start of another work week (only three more before Palm Springs!).

I was going to tell you about my latest read, but will save that for next time....