spacefem

For complicated reasons (mostly involving travel), I have often had some Chanukah candles left over. I’ve saved them in a plastic bag in what I think of as not quite a junk drawer, which also has matchbooks, batteries, toothpicks, and pie weights. This year, I saw that I had a full box of the cheap sort of candles, but also that I had almost enough of the taller fancier candles. I’m trying to use those up, but I’m not sure that I have quite enough for the entire holiday. I also just realized I should really have separated the assorted leftover ones by height. I did part of that already and have now used up the last of the beeswax candles I bought one year. I didn’t particularly like those, because I think they burn too quickly.

I need to remember to put candles on my shopping list under the assumption that they’ll be on clearance sale just after Chanukah is over.

I was just too exhausted last night to write anything.

I’d had a pretty social day. I did do a bunch of household stuff in the morning. Then I went into the city to go to brunch and the theatre with a few Losers. (Losers are devotees of what had been the Washington Post Style Invitational, a humor contest that continues its afterlife on Gene Weingarten’s page.) We’d gotten about an inch of snow overnight but, other than crossing the street to the metro station which was a bit icy in spots, it was reasonably clear. It was, however, very cold and windy out. Normally, I would walk from Metro Center to Penn Quarter, but not with that wind. I had a long wait at Metro Center for the Red Line, but I’d left myself a lot of time, so I was still a little early for our reservation. We had a lovely meal - huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs) with salsa, tortilla chips, and avocado plus cafe de olla (spiced with cloves, cinnamon, and canela) - in my case. By the way, I am fairly sure that canela refers to true cinnamon, while what they refer to on the menu as cinnamon (and almost everything sold in supermarkets as cinnamon) is actually cassia. The food was all very good and the conversation was lively and far ranging.

We met up with the rest of the Loser group at the Shakespeare Theatre (Sidney Harmon Hall) where we were seeing Guys and Dolls, one of my all-time favorite musicals. I know every word and every note of every song from it and like most of them. I think the lyrics of “Adelaide’s Lament” are among the most brilliant comedy lyrics in any musical ever. (And Stephen Sondheim agreed with me on that.) While there are some rhymes I am not crazy about (e.g. in the title song, Biloxi doesn’t rhyme with Roxy, but hey, I’m pretty sure Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Benny Southstreet wouldn’t know that) and I’m fairly sure Frank Loesser never met anyone from Rhode Island given the accent he (and Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows) had Miss Adelaide use, the whole show works. My favorite song is “Luck Be a Lady Tonight,” but I also have a soft spot for “More I Cannot Wish You.” The combination of the book, music, lyrics, and choreography epitomizes everything I love about Broadway musicals.

This production had excellent performances. Julie Benko was note perfect as Sarah Brown and played well against Jacob Dickey as Sky Masterson. Hayley Podschun was spot on as Miss Adelaide. The whole show just worked for me. It isn’t the absolutely best cast I’ve ever seen for it - that would be Steven Pasquale as Sky Masterson and Phillipa Soo as Sarah Brown at the Kennedy Center Broadway Center Stage production a few years ago. (I’ve also seen the show on Broadway at least twice.) But it was still excellent and all of us enjoyed it.

By the way, I also ran into a storytelling friend who was seeing the show with a group of her friends. This sort of coincidence happens to me a lot. And I like that aspect of living in the D.C. area.