A tale of three cities (probably Part One)

The first day of school requires a new outfit.

Washington, D.C. Tuesday, 30 August.

It takes me a little while to realize that something quite strange is happening. I look out and see books open. Texts are highlighted, underlined, marked up with Post-It notes. The students aren't just smart. They're prepared.

I'm going to have to up my game.

The only downside is that Georgetown is still requiring masks during class (except for instructors, as long as we stay six feet away from our students). Learning names is going to be difficult. After the first three class meetings I will know the names of the handful of students with distinctive hair, and that's about it. I absolutely hate not knowing names.

Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 31 August.

This outfit has started a new project that I don't quite understand -- something about videos to accompany a sort of great books curriculum for college students -- and they interview me for two different videos. There's a morning session of about two and a half hours, a lunch break, and then an afternoon session of another two and a half hours. The crew (producer, sound guy, and video guy) complain at one point that it's too cold in the room, but I am exceedingly well-lighted and wearing ten pounds of wool (not the ten pounds of wool pictured above, but a totally different blue suit), and I am not feeling that particular issue.

It turns out that talking for five hours about your favorite material is both exhilarating and exhausting. I'm fairly sure I got punchier as the day went on. No doubt my whole contribution will amount to three or four minutes of screen time, but it was worth the effort, and they even gave me a bit of an honorarium.

Tampa, Florida. Thursday, 1 September.

Maybe the 6:30 pm DCA-TPA flight isn't the best idea. By the time I get my luggage (TPA's baggage handling has to be the most sluggish of any airport I regularly fly into) it's past 10:00. My Uber driver is "three minutes away" for a solid twenty minutes before disappearing altogether. Fortunately, a second Uber driver actually shows up. We have a lively chat and I do finally make it home.

But I think from here on out the return trip will be on Friday morning.

Because of the Labor Day holiday, I get to stay home longer than usual. We decided to take advantage of the time by finally going shopping for kayaks. We've lived on a lake for a year and a half now: clearly it's high time.

We have the right half of the dock, The boat pictured belonged to the previous owner. Our half is empty except for two chairs.

The first visit to Dick's Sporting Goods is definitely unsuccessful: there's a sign on the door saying they're closed, and sorry for the inconvenience. On to the next nearest Dick's. We realize we have no clue exactly what we should be looking for. Oddly, though there are plenty of sales associates on the floor, not one of them comes over to help us, even though we are removing kayaks from their perches and sitting in them and clearly mean business.

Tampa, Florida, Friday, 2 September.

One of the great things about YouTube is that you can do a search for how to do something obscure and immediately find help. My stay in Paris was greatly improved by a search for "How do I open a bottle without a bottle opener?" "How do I choose a kayak?" was fairly straightforward. Armed with our new knowledge, we return to Dick's, choose our kayaks in relatively short order, and leave the store without having bought them thanks in part to the aforementioned elusiveness of sales staff.

By the end of the day we've placed our orders online: kayaks, paddles, and life jackets will be delivered in time for the next weekend.

St Petersburg, Florida, Sunday, 4 September.

The Canon for Music is away. I check the bulletin to see who the sub is. This can be very dicey, not merely because we're spoiled by the excellence of our own musician but also because highly competent substitutes who know the liturgy well are not easy to come by. Ah, it's a woman who retired recently after playing for many years at a large Episcopal parish in Sarasota. We're in good hands.

And, umm, feet.

It is my first Sunday with music in three weeks, since I slept through the morning service at the American Cathedral in Paris two weeks before and went to the spoken evening service at Christ Church, Georgetown, last week. So I am singing with extra fervor. There is no choir, and I am apparently audible well into the nave, at least when I'm singing harmony. Our parish administrator later describes the livestream as "the Thomas Williams Singing Spectacular."

It's maybe not quite that bad.

After the service I offer my sincere thanks to the sub and confess, "I was the overly loud tenor." "Not overly loud," she says, without missing a beat; "robust."

I like her.