Semimonthly

    My blog has been sparse recently, but I'm trying to make it semimonthly now.  I couldn't think of a title for this entry and considered "October" (imaginative, huh?) but settled for "Semimonthly."

    Moira returned after spending a week or two in Kingston. (I bought that new fedora at Lilliput Hats while she was away.)

    For a while I got behind in reading my emails:  too many appeals from American progressives on the eve of the Presidential election.  But I got caught up, and now I'm trying to unsubscribe.

    A couple of days ago I gave the lawn one last mow before winter.

    The French Culture Meetup event where I played Debussy was so successful that I started a new Meetup for listening to classic music. (Next month we'll do Chopin.)

    The other day I went shopping to find a new pair of Stanfield's polo-style pajamas. (My old one had holes in the elbow and elsewhere.) I couldn't find it, but did get a belt and new socks.  Moira ordered the pajamas online, and they arrived the next day!  I also want to get new slippers.

    Last night I had dinner with Tianjie's history group. (We ate at the Turkish restaurant near Eglinton station.) Starting next week, our topic will be Meiji-era Japan.  I'm now reading A Concise History of Sweden for next month's discussion in my own group.

Cool weather

    The cool weather's finally arrived.  I stopped leaving my window open at night when September turned into October, though I could have waited a few more days.  Yesterday I went to a hat shop to get a new fedora for the fall (can't find the old one), but it wasn't open on Monday.  Now I just need to get up enough energy to mow the grass one more time...

    Last Tuesday I saw Francis Coppola's Megalopolis with John P. at the Scotiabank, in Imax. (Thursday I'm seeing Lee with him.) It's like an architectural folly, pretentious and vague but grandly colourful.

    Saturday I saw a cinemacast of the Metropolitan Opera at the Yonge & Eglinton.  It was a revival of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, one of my favourite operas!  The baritone playing the Four Villains was called Van Horn, which seems appropriate. (I actually think of them as nemeses rather than villains, because the latter term suggests the stories are about Hoffmann's conflicts with them, when they're really more about his inner conflicts...)

    Last month my History Meetup was about Woodrow Wilson, and tonight it was about Spartacus' rebellion. (Next month it'll be about Sweden!) Last month my French Culture Meetup was about Toulouse-Lautrec's art and this month it was Debussy's music. (Next month it'll be Flaubert's Three Stories.) Last month the French movie watch party was going to be Au Revoir Les Enfants, but I couldn't find a compatible DVD, so at the last moment I substituted Max Ophuls' Lola Montes.  This month it'll be Jean-Jacques Beneix' Diva.

    I had to quit on the Reading Aloud Meetup because nobody was coming.  But Maria and Sergey have become co-organizers so maybe they'll take it in a new direction...

    A guy called Tianjie has started an in-person History Meetup of his own on Sunday afternoons, and I've been attending it.  For the last four weeks we've been discussing 20th century China, but next week we'll turn to the Ottoman Empire.

    I started reading the Ebook of Mark Twain's frontier memoir Roughing It, but I've been so busy with other stuff that I stopped for now.

    For weeks I was stuck on Level 2328 of Candy Crush Saga, and I ended up quitting the game.  Tonight I wanted mention this here, but I returned to the game to make sure I had the number right, and couldn't resist playing it some more.  So of course, on my second try I passed it, and now I'm at Level 2333!  It looks like I'll be playing it some more after all...