Apparently I get Sterling Hayden and Robert Ryan mixed up

Up early for our usual Saturday morning yoga and working out. There's a woman already on my regular step machine, so I have to try another one. The headphone jack doesn't work on the one I try, so I have to try yet another one. Then I can't find This Old House like I watched last week. I settle on some old movie with Sterling Hayden and Harry Belafonte robbing a bank. (Later research reveals that it's called Odds Against Tomorrow, and it's Robert Ryan, not Sterling Hayden.) I'm still feeling a little down, so I cut my weightlifting short and sit in the car and listen to music some.

Pick Dawn up and we go to the grocery store. There's work going on up on the roof, looks kinda like cement work. I decide that they're pouring the vault for the bank that they're installing. (Later research reveals that they're re-tarring the roof.)

Lunch is pita and hummus and olives, then we have a walk through stiff wind to ballet rehearsal where we start fine-tuning. Dawn is back to cue-ing me by first touching my left arm, but then Rosie works a little bit on the transition and we will now start intertwining our arms before we turn around. Rosie and Dawn help me figure out my soutenu turn, help me stop stepping out with my right foot and making it more of a chaîné. But it's also not quite a soutenu, or it's something of a modern soutenu, with my arms more sort of flowing downward rather than in a usual first position type deal. We're still not right on the timing at the end where I lift Dawn and dip her down and she flings her arms out at the final drumbeat.

The song we're using is Gone with Leaves from the Hero soundtrack, music composed by Tan Dun. According to Amazon, this particular track features Tan Dun conducting the China Philharmonic Orchestra, along with KODO, You Yan, Liu Li, Itzhak Perlman, and the Ancient Rao Ensemble of Changsha Museum. I think maybe KODO is Kodo, a Japanese taiko drumming outfit. Either You Yan or Liu Li is the woman singing, and let's go ahead and take a wild ass guess that it's Itzhak Perlman playing the violin.

Later I'm off to my Ma's to see about fixing some of the things found during the inspection. There are four items that maybe I can do. One is the leaky faucet on the side of the house, where the hose is also stuck on the bibb. I can't get it off. Next is the garage door opener, which is plugged in using a really long extension cord, since no outlet is in the ceiling near the unit. Then are two things in the attic, one being an exposed junction box and the other exposed wires of the attic fan. Really it all turns out that I can't really fix any of it. Or, rather, I could fix these things but I'm not quite sure what needs to be done to satisfy code. I could run cable from one receptacle and put another receptacle in the ceiling by the garage door opener. But then I'd either have to attach armored cable to the ceiling, and I'm not sure what code requires for that, or I could run shielded cable, but I don't have fish tape or even any experience with fish tape, since we have plaster walls at our house and haven't ever needed it. And I'm not sure which wires in the attic the inspector means. So I'm generally no help to Mom at all.

But I do help her with the day's New York Times crossword puzzle. It's a real bitch. It's one of those where you have to start or finish words off the grid, in this case using the word think. As in "thinking outside the box."

On my way to Mom's I stopped at two Goodwill stores and bought 3-ring binders. My woodworking magazines are getting out of control and so I'm going to use those plastic edge strips and hold them in binders. But I'm too cheap to buy new binders, and I'd really rather not steal them from work. I'm sure I've seen binders at thrift stores before, so I go looking. Sure enough they've got a lot. Some too small and some weirdly rusted, but I get 3 for ninety-nine cents each and one for fifty-nine cents. But then on my way home I stop at Staples for the Rubbermaid Plastic Edge Magazine Holders 12/Pack Item 261644. But I can't for the life of me find them, and then I can't find anyone to help me. Finally I get a guy and he takes a million years to seach the computer and eventually he tells me that they ain't got 'em. So I get home late and empty-handed and Dawn wonders where in the world I've been and what took me so long.

We make lentil chili and watch us some Forsyte Saga. We're pleased to discover that Ioan Griffud is in it. We've been watching him in the Horatio Hornblower series. There's this auto manufacturer Infiniti, and they make this SUV called the FX. There's the FX35 and the FX45 and I can't tell you what the difference between them is. But anyway I really like them. They're like really boss tough badass vehicles. Dawn hates them. Whenever I see one I point it out and call it "badass FX." In revenge, Dawn has decided that every time she has to look at one of these ugly vehicles, she's going to think of Ioan Griffud with his shirt off. "Ooh, Horatio," she says, with like this lascivious tone. And so now I think of the FX as the Horatio of SUVs. And Horatio is the badass of British naval officers in the Napoleonic wars.