Monday, March 11, 2013

Show And Takeout

The first day of DST, I managed to pick up Susan for our walk at 7 (really 6, I kept thinking).  Stopped for Aline at 11:30 and we drove to LBI for lunch at Buckalew's (Caesar salad for both of us and a Blue Moon for me), then went to Surflight.  Got good fifth row center seats and settled down to see  The First Five Years.
It proved to be a short, one-act, two-character play, with no spoken dialogue, all sung.  The young man and woman were superb and it was great fun to see and hear.  I saw and chatted with Bruce S. and Sherry S., formerly husband and wife, now friends.  Sherry founded Our Gang Players thirty-six years ago and Bruce played Rev. Harper and Mr. Gibbs--badly--in Arsenic and Old Lace. 
We enjoyed the show a lot--it lasted only an hour and a half--then strolled down to view the ocean.  Also drove down to the southern end of the island, where there's still a lot of debris and sand.  It's going to be a long time before the place recovers completely, if it ever does.
A. got a call on our way home from her sister, Susan, asking if we wanted to come to their next-door neighbor's for Chinese takeout.  I was invited and was happy to accept.  I know Diane, the neighbor, and have met the other woman who was there, Ann.
They're nice enough people, all from Brooklyn, I guess, and they welcomed me.  We talked about various inconsequential things, then Diane took orders, called for the food, and collected our six bucks each.  It was pretty good--nobody in China would recognize it, of course--and it was a pleasant enough evening.
But I always feel like a alien among the earthlings in situations like that.  We seemed to have no possible way to actually communicate with each other in anything but the code of strangers.  Television, bad knees, and talk of the past dominated the conversation and it was inexpressibly boring.  I probably bored the hell out of them, too.  Aline and I have a strong intellectual rapport, but there's no way in the world I could ever bond with the others except in the most superficial way. 
Not their fault and not mine.

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Wednesday

It was quite an enjoyable day after all the must-do-this, can't-find-that of the last few.  Changed the bed, washed the sheets, and jump...