This has been an odd, ragtag day. Monday is usually good. I start with a plan and try to allocate my time, but as the morning went on I started to get jumpy. Too many things to do, and I met obstacles. I have to get only 3 Visas for the big trip I'm going on; the cruise company will get the rest. So I begin by not getting online. My desktop was not on. So I moved over to my laptop -online - and started work, finishing my chapter on Forgetting. Finished and printed, and then I thought of a couple more things to say. By that time I had gone on to the next one on Comforting so my pagination is going to be wrong when I add stuff. Later.

Finally on line with the desk top and I pulled up the form to apply for the Visas, and it/they didn't have a province list for me to choose from. So I couldn't move on. I tried the phone number I was given but the person who answered spoke French only, with a bad accent, or I would have tried. Try later.

I'm going to Stratford again on Wednesday, the last time this season, and I will have seen EVERY ONE of the season. (Very time-consuming.) So I'm going to make crab wraps for a picnic - I checked the weather and it will be okay. I needed to buy crab meat (I buy pollock disguised as crab meat - cheaper, but good), and I was about to go to the store when a man came to restore the compressors (if that's what they're called) for my AC units that have been non-functioning all summer long as part of the balcony disaster project. So no store. I ordered early from Gateway Grocery (I love them; they carry for me!) for delivery tomorrow morning so I can make the crab wraps in time for the picnic Wednesday. The AC remote was breathing hard and I had new batteries but we (the AC man and I) couldn't figure out how to get the thing open to replace the batteries. Later.

My challenged son needs a will with a Henson Trust, that will allow him to have money (like from me, if there's any left, when I die), and I've been trying to arrange a meeting with the lawyer but we have been delayed and put off several times and it happened again this week. Later.

I wrote my blog late last night and I knew it needed checking but I went to bed instead and corrected it this morning. So then I didn't feel like writing a blog for today's date until later. Like now. Here I am. Nothing accomplished.

Maybe later.

Another day at Stratford, this time to see Christina, The Girl King, by Michael Marc Bouchard. Fascinating. I must read the play (translated from the French (Canadian) by Linda Gaboriau. I read the information about Queen Christina of Sweden but I'm having a little difficulty relating what I learned to the spin Bouchard has put on it. Apart from the historical accuracy (or in-), I'm also having trouble distinguishing between the writer's and the director's input, and also with the playwright's rule-bending. There are certain rules - well, maybe guidelines - for playwrights that it pays to observe in order to make things clear to the audience. Well, Bouchard has two different people addressing the audience, stretching the allowance for narrative speaker (a no-no, in any case, according to Robert McKee) and then the protagonist addresses an invisible person (not the audience, who is un-co-operative. Not great.

But the play, as I said, is fascinating, because of the subject. Bouchard has packed a lot of different issues into a two and a half hour play, some of them more thorny than others. I have to read the script and think. But the production is fine and the costumes splendid. Stratford continues to be a designer's theatre. I do wish the actress (Jenny Young) playing Queen Christina were more robust and less petite and adorable-looking.

Then I went to bed.

After all, tomorrow is another day.