Today was my 58th birthday. Maria had a surprise for me--we got a guided tour of the Royal Canadian Military Institute! Among other things, we got to see the seat the Red Baron was sitting in when he got shot down. Sergei, Malcolm, Krystyna and John S. were also there. Afterward, Debi joined us for lunch at the Midi bistro, where they put a candle on my profiteroles. Maria gave me an old copy of the collected poems of Lord Tennyson. (I'd been reciting "The Eagle" by heart.) And John S. has given me a gift subscription to the US history magazine American Heritage.
Elizabeth, whom I had lunch with last week, gave me a cute birthday card. She has nice handwriting (a dying art, of course).
Sunday I went to the singing group's rehearsal, which was going to start over an hour earlier, but when I got there it turned out that it had been cancelled because of the snow! (The email came just after I left, of course.) Oh well, I was glad to get out of the house.
Monday night I went to the Short Story Meetup. We discussed three more Chekhov stories: "The Student," "Anna on the Neck" and "The House With the Mezzanine."
The Thai history book is getting more interesting! Chulalungkorn was King around the same time as Meiji's Japan and embarked on a similar program of modernization and developing a nation-state, but while Meiji inherited from the shoguns a bureaucracy that made top-down changes easier, Chulalungkorn (also known by the shorter name Rama V) had to work more gradually and wait for many in the old order to retire or die. Which makes his achievements all the more impressive!
On Youtube I've been watching "Musical Hell," a channel with reviews of bad musical movies. I have to admit I have a soft spot for Xanadu, even the silly animated scene!
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