We let the weirdness in

So as not to lose track—

R.I.P. Richard Griffiths. Everyone is quoting Uncle Monty, and rightly so, but I seem to remember him most recently and clearly as W.H. Auden in 1972 and the unimpressed actor arguing with his lines in Alan Bennett's The Habit of Art, which I still want on DVD if the National Theatre ever gets its head together. I did not know he was the hearing child of deaf parents. I never saw him in The History Boys. I should find out what he did most recently and watch it. And then I must know someone with DVDs of Gormenghast (2000).

Do you like radio theater? Do you like calzones? Okay, Eat at Jumbo's sells lots of things that aren't calzones, but that's certainly what I'm planning to order on Monday as part of the Post-Meridian Radio Players' season kickoff fundraiser for April's Spring Sci-Fi Spectacular II. The show will be a double feature of the latest Red Shift: Interplanetary Do-Gooder ("Crisis of the Cuddlykins") and a new adaptation of Them! (1954), running for two weekends and reprised at the MIT Museum as part of the Cambridge Science Festival, which I personally think is ridiculously cool. (While we're on the subject, buy tickets.) The last time Jumbo's and the PMRP ran this sort of thing, I was in Lexington and slightly out of delivery range of Ball Square. This time I'm wondering if I can actually just sit there and eat a calzone and watch people. It should be fun. Also, their calzones are really good.

This has been mostly an awful week. An example: Tuesday, I was woken at seven in the morning by roofers operating power tools on the other side of my ceiling. Wednesday, I was woken at seven in the morning by roofers operating power tools on the other side of my ceiling. Thursday, I slept at derspatchel's and we were both woken at nine in the morning by contractors operating power tools on the other side of his wall. I was too tired this morning to feel vindictive about the fact that I slept until half past noon and the only thing that woke me was Abbie resettling from the small of my back to my feet, but I probably would have muttered something victorious at the universe if I hadn't gone right back to sleep. Rob returned from the MIT Museum around one o'clock with finger puppets of Schrödinger's cat and Pavlov's dog and takeout from Mary Chung's. My family held a very minimalist seder tonight, because we couldn't either of the first two nights of Pesach; I am still glad of it. I make the charoses with my great-grandmother's chopper and bowl, tell the story a little differently each time.

I am starting to miss my books again.