The tree is gone. Mr. Tree Removal showed up about 45 minutes late (courtesy of a dead battery in some vehicle or other) and the ex-ornamental pear tree has been chipped and removed.
The yard looks much bigger, somehow. And they didn’t even leave the stump for my modern art project.
This morning started off well enough; I got to sleep in because I had an 8:00 AM dentist appointment. Once I got out of bed, though, things started going downhill.
I checked my voice mail at 7:30 AM and discovered that the reason the guy didn’t show up to haul away the remains of my tree last night was because he was coming by at 10:00 this morning. Fine; I’ll come back home after the dentist appointment. Said dentist appointment turns up a small cavity that will need to be filled. Joy, rapture. Plus, all the noise from the poking and prodding with metal implements aggravates my headache, which threatens to become a full-blown migraine.
I return from the dentist, take something for the headache, call my supervisor to update her on the situation, put dirty dishes in the dishwasher, put away some laundry. At 9:45, I realize that the strange noise coming from the roof is, in fact, rain.
I tried to call Mr. Tree Removal and got an answering machine. Left a message asking him to let me know if there would be a rain delay. Settled down to read a few pages of Patrick McGovern’s Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture. 10:00 comes and goes, as does 10:15, and 10:30. No sign of Mr. Tree Removal. Mr. Tree Removal’s “emergency” number is answered by a recording that tells me the number is invalid. Another phone call to work. Finally, I left a note on the door and headed out to work at 11:00, so that I could at least put in half a day. This knowledge does nothing to alleviate the headache.
If I do not hear from Mr. Tree Removal by tomorrow morning, Discount Lawn Guy will be getting some extra work from us.
Dance Kaleidoscope, Indy’s modern dance company, had its final show of the season–as well as its final performance at Civic Theater–on Sunday afternoon. The lead parts were danced by Butler University alum Andre Megerdichian and Lisa Long. (Congratulations to DK’s new apprentice, Jill Godwin, on her first season.)
Seasons is an original production choreographed by DK’s Artistic Director, David Hochoy. The production is an update of a medieval morality play that compares a man’s life to the seasons. Each season is set to entirely different music–Debussy for spring, the Beatles for summer, Astor Piazzolla’s tango music for fall, and music written on the death of Benjamin Britten for winter.
The first act, as one might expect, is highly energetic and even gymnastic at times. The show is physically demanding, and the dancers managed not only to make it look good, but to make it look easy. The Summer portion of the first act required the nonstop energy of adolescence, and combined music primarily from the White Album and Roots. Bright color and Hochoy’s frenetic choreography opened a window on the 1960s.
However, my favorite section was Fall, and not just because I like tango music; I also like dance with a sense of humor. The pas de deux I can only describe as the “Masochism Tango” left bits of costume all over the stage and is not to be missed. The entire Fall scene is an excellent example of why dancers need to learn to act–and DK’s, fortunately, have done so.
Next season, Dance Kaleidoscope will be performing downtown, at IRT (100 block of West Washington). Shows will include Scheherezade and Carmina Burana. I’m already looking forward to it!
Driving into work this morning, I saw that a neighbor up the street also lost an ornamental pear; not nearly so large as ours, though. Neighbor also got lucky–it fell away from the house.
Note to self: No more ornamental pear trees ever.
I had tickets to Dance Kaleidescope’s performance of Seasons for this afternoon. Figuring that Ed had the situation well in hand, I went off to the theater with my mom and without a second thought.
I returned to discover that a second sub-trunk had broken off the ornamental pear–in the opposite direction–which was hardly surprising as the first break tore away a good bit of the support structure for the rest of the sub-trunks. The remaining subtrunks were swaying perilously in the wind, Ed and my dad were standing outside, and Ed was shouting into the phone.
Naturally, the situation required further investigation. The largest remaining sub-trunk was perfectly positioned to take out a large section of gutter and possibly the window of the master bedroom; that had occurred to me before, but suddenly became a lot more relevant. Especially as our landscaping-knowledgable friends had stopped by earlier and suggested that we “sleep in the other bedroom” until the tree was down.
Fortunately, Ed found someone who could take down the rest of the tree in controlled-demolition fashion, within the hour, for a rate that was not unreasonable for extremely short notice on a Sunday afternoon. Said individual arrived promptly, and only got lost once trying to find our house (a noteworthy accomplishment, given that our house is in the middle of a maze). He promptly got his brother over with a bucket truck and chainsaw, and the brother demolished the tree in about 20 minutes while his kids played in our yard (well away from the chainsawing). The same person is also arranging for the inevitable cleanup, as there are several hundred pounds of ornamental pear in full bloom taking up a substantial portion of the yard. We’re left with about four and a half feet of multipronged stump. I was all for painting the stump blue (or pink, or orange–I’m open to suggestions) and calling it “modern art,” but for reasons that are beyond me, Ed refuses to go for it.
Even without modern art, I know we’re lucky; the house is untouched, nobody got hurt, and the tree won’t be able to fall on anything. Every once in a while, you can buy peace of mind, and even at the cost of a week’s pay, it was cheap.
I was minding my own business, putting off retrieving the final load of laundry and reading in my bedroom.
In the back yard, I hear crack…crack…whooshTHUD.
I peeked between the blinds, noticed that a large branch had fallen off one of our big trees, and started calling for Ed. Ed was engrossed in video games and didn’t even hear me. Finally, I got his attention and was rewarded with a “Just a minute.” Now, a minute in Ed Standard Time is usually between 5 minutes and never, so I didn’t wait for him and went out back to survey the damage for myself.
Now, let me back up a moment and say that we just paid someone to do a lot of tree-trimming and lanscape cleanup. One of the subjects of the cleanup was a huge ornamental pear tree with a trunk that split into four larger sub-trunks and a young mini-trunk. When I stepped out onto the patio, I discovered that three of the sub-trunks were still attached to the original tree, while the fourth was now lying across one of my large planting beds and parallel with the far edge of the patio. The break may have destabilized another sub-trunk, which would hit the house if it fell, but would probably “only” take out a big stretch of gutter and shingles, rather than causing structural damage. I would love to be able to save the ornamental pear, but not at the cost of the structural integrity of the house. I will, however, replace it.
So, where in the Indianapolis metro area does one buy new trees?
I had an email from an ex-coworker with whom I had the merest passing acquaintance–pleasant, mind you, just not a lot of opportunity to interact.
Well, it turns out that she’s also a refugee from the Project of Elemental Evil. She was putting her networking skills to good use, and asked for leads and advice. She took my advice despite the extended warning and disclaimer, and with a little luck, things will work out for her; I certainly hope so.
She also mentioned in passing that she’d seen my byline on Shotgun Reviews, (shameless plug!) and did I have material anywhere else on the web? I thought it was so cool that somebody besides my mom reads my material that in a fit of inflamed ego, I gave her the blog URL.
Then I realized that this passing acquaintance probably knows the me that writes the blog better than the me that walks around actually having the crazy experiences that I write about. This was followed by the ultimate duh moment, in which I realized that most of the people who read my blog know me only by my writing.
I’m not sure how I feel about that, but being me, I had to write about it.
Last night’s Planescape game ended like the setup for a joke. “A priest, a water elf, a winged ogre, a fire elemental, and three toads walk into Tradegate carrying a preserved corpse…”
Yesterday, Alisa and I took ourselves off to lunch buffet ($9, includes a soft drink) at the Thai Garden restaurant, on the 200 South block of Meridian St.
Yum. Or should I say, yum nur.
I’m always wary of establishments that add hot spices for the sake of making the food hot, rather than to enhance the taste of the food. (Which, I thought, is the entire point of spices, but then again, I think rain is wet.) Thai Garden’s food definitely has some heat–and you can add more with a choice of sauces–but it’s fabulous, and there’s no danger of a chemical burn. I was also pleased to see that the food is extremely vegetarian-friendly; in addition to labelling everything on the main buffet (which had several vegetarian dishes), there’s an entirely separate section of the buffet that’s all-vegetarian, avoiding cross-contamination.
There was honest-to-goodness jasmine rice, slightly sticky, in Basic Steamed (my preference) and Vegetarian Fried models. All kinds of noodle dishes; I wish I could remember the name of the one with extra-wide homemade noodles. Pad thai, vegetable spring rolls, gingered greenbeans, spicy mushrooms and broccoli…all delicious. I had intent to go back for curry, but just couldn’t manage it. The only complaint I could possibly make was that you can’t subsitute the comes-with-buffet soft drink for hot tea…and I was far too full and happy to complain.
I was going to say that I’m not one for memoirs, but hey, I read blogs, so who am I kidding.
Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, was very hard for me to read–not because it wasn’t well written, but because it was. (I’m haunted by the brief scene in which the women tell each other that compared to women in Somalia and Afghanistan, they live like queens–this against a background being persecuted for mere suspicion of wearing makeup!) Nafisi, a professor of English literature, left her place at Tehran University because she chose not to wear a veil. She formed a secret literature class with some of her female students, in which they read Henry James, Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Nabokov. The experience of reading novels seamlessly blends into the everyday experiences of women in the Islamic Republic. Fiction is not simply something one reads; it pervades everyday life–in the stories that the government tells the people, that the people tell each other, and that they tell themselves. Not that this is a new concept, but the background against which it’s set provides high contrast. I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. It might even prompt me to read Lolita.
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