The Greatest Show on Earth

The usual morning yoga & workout routine, except that we leave a little early because of road closures. There's some marathon or some type of running race starting and ending at RFK. We have a lot of trouble navigating in and up and down and around and through it. We head south instead of up Massachusetts, but then we can't cross Pennsylvania on Potomac to make our way to I Street. We have to turn up Penn. We go to 8th and take that down to I, and get on 395 from there. We get off at 12th, thinking we can go under Independence, but 12th is closed and we have to turn on C. Fourteenth is closed at Independence, so we take Independence to 17th. There're cops blocking traffic on the southbound side of 17th, but we're cool to go north. Whew. That feeds us on to Connecticut and to Dupont Circle for Dawn's yoga class.

At my gym I watch This Old House while on the Stairmaster. Funny enough, Norm & Co. are working on a row house in DC.

Afterwards we drive out to Alexandria VW to get the car washed and buy a new gas cap. The manager of the parts department Fred is like a character from The Office, and he goes on and on about his Russian wolfhounds and how fierce and loyal they are.

We have a good ballet rehearsal, now having gotten the whole thing choreographed and memorized and now just rehearsing and fine tuning. Except that we didn't have rehearsal last week and now Dawn is cuing me at one point by touching my right arm whereas she used to cue me on the left. Takes a little getting used to it. Rosie's eye is astonishingly bloodshot red. She whapped herself in the eye trying to do too many things at once last Wednesday morning.

Kevin drops by just as we're about to have popcorn and beer. We're glad because we haven't seen him in a while. He tells us about his new gal, who's out of town at some horse event, and how he has to pick up her dog from the kennel tomorrow.

I go to make pizza dough in the bread machine and somehow don't seat the pan right. It makes awful noises and doesn't mix properly. It looks like how it did when I tried to make the wine and cheese bread, except this time it's only mixed for a minute or two rather than gone through the whole bake cycle and baked a useless brick. I get it reseated and reset and restarted, but the pizza's now going to take longer.

So we chow down but don't have time to get to the circus early to see the elephants like we wanted to do. Most years I get to see the elephants when I come up out of the Metro, but I haven't gone out that side of the station this year. Just forgot. But turns out they've got trailers parked so as to block the freeloaders like me who just gawk through the fence.

The circus of course turns out to be the hootingest good time ever. We get Bello this year, after having sorely missed him last year. He comes up into the stands when he arrives and shakes some hands. He comes up our row, and I get to shake his hand. I'm pretty excited. I mean, not quite as excited as when I met Chuck Berry, but still it's pretty great.

I wave and dance and cheer and we have a grand, grand time. I do so love the circus.

Later we meet Kate and her new boy Lance, who have also come to the circus. We have them over for water and other drinks, although I forget that Lance is on the wagon, but he's polite when he asks for just water. Dawn drinks vodka and orange juice and Kate & I have hot buttered rum. It's nice to meet Lance, whom Kate has told me much about. He's a fine looking lad and has a good scratchy voice.

I drive Kate and Lance to the Metro, taking them to Eastern Market by way of the Marine Barracks, which Lance has never seen. We slow down by the old gate and the guards start moving towards us menacingly, so we scram.