"Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue..." (Hamlet)

Yesterday we went to the most dreadful, deplorable, dismal, atrocious, woeful, abominable, execrable, pitiable show I've ever seen, been a witness to, or sat through. It was called "Noises Off," but I would suggest that a number of loud boos to put on some noise from the audience wouldn't have been inappropriate. The actors kept running up and down stairs to an upper level with four doors, ran in and out of the doors there and also opened and closed several doors on the lower level of what supposedly was the inside of a large house. Their lines were delivered with loud English accents and Rho and I couldn't understand a word we heard. It was wise of the playwright to provide two intermissions--one of 15 minutes, the other at 10. This gave ticket holders time to get to the rest rooms to throw up before returning to their seats for additional punishment of observing the actors coming in and out of all the doors and slamming them closed. It was a farce, but a damnable poor one. The Marx brothers would have been a sight better. We have tickets to three more shows in the series at this theatre, and hopefully there will be an improvement. I'm looking forward to "Evita". I expect it won't be done in Spanish. And one more problem; perhaps the man who sits in front of me will be guillotined in the interim so that I can at least see the action.

On Friday night we went to "Karaoke Night" in the clubhouse. For some unknown reason we belong to the Boomers' Club who were sponsoring the evening. After some club business and reports and information about future events, the Karaoke host--a hired professional with professional Karaoke equipment--his aid, a young lady, played dance music and many "Boomers" took advantage of it. Then the host played a few line dances and Rhoda got the chance to do some exercise. Finally, the Karaoke part of the program got under way. There were about 300 people there and every table had a book with all the songs in alphabetical order with little pieces of paper for those who had motives to sing to write down the title of their song. I got to sing my "signature" song, "If I Were a Rich Man". The problem was that several lines in the middle of the song were left out, and as the words on the screen reached that point it skipped the lines and went to the lyrics that come after them, so I was thrown off for a few seconds, but I finished on time. No. There were no prizes, just a string of Mardi Gras beads.

Well, Obama, the right man was finally elected and Thanksgiving is on the horizon. And then in December, the cruise, and Hanukkah, and Christmas, and who knows what else? The Fates are in charge of all this. And for those who are not familiar with these hags--they are three Greek Goddesses of Destiny and Fate. Otherwise known as the Moirae, these timeless old hags weave the threads of destiny that control your life. The original spin doctors. They are: CLOTHO who spins the Thread of Life, LACHESIS who allots the length of the yarn, and ATROPOS who does the snip (the final one). All the good and evil that befalls you is woven into your destiny and cannot be altered even one jot. You may find this a little unfair, but there's not much you can do about it. Even the rest of the Greek Gods cannot escape their destinies.