I mentioned in June that Keiko Matsui was coming to St. Louis, and I thought about scoring tickets to see her. Which I did.
However.
We did not make it up to St. Louis to see her tonight.
I might have mentioned, or perhaps I did not, that we’re replacing the fireplace and flue liner on our lower level. The flue liner pulled away from the fire box, and the fire box itself was warping from the heat–I think at one point the fire box had blowers to blow some of the heat out into the room, but they have not worked since we’ve owned the house. So we decided to replace it, and not with a smaller insert–we have a lot of brickwork around the fire box, and a small insert in it would have looked undersized. So of course we went with the irresponsible most expensive option.
To be honest, I’m not sure my beautiful wife was very gung-ho on this trip. This autumn, her days have gotten fairly busy with immovable client calls, and the overnight getaways have become sometimes bothersome. So when we learned that the installation was going to be more difficult than they thought and that they would be back today to finish. However, it rained today and will tomorrow, so nobody was going to climb on the roof today, so…. We could have gone, I suppose, when I learned that they were not coming, but my wife is working from a resort an hour away, and we’d both resigned ourselves to not go.
Ah, well. There’s always March, when Wynton Marsalis is in St. Louis. When I asked her a while back what her bucket list concert was, she said Wynton Marsalis. So he’s not only bringing the Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra for a night (hopefully with Ashley Pezzotti!) for a night–which I got tickets for even though it’s also in the middle of the work week, but also playing his fifth symphony that weekend (but I could not buy tickets for in time for her birthday).
At any rate, I am a little sour on it because my lower level has been tented off for a week and will be tented off for another x. My wife has been working remotely remotelier because her office is next to the room where masons spent two days breaking bricks, where the fireplace installation people spent a day banging on cast iron, and because I have been called upon to awaken early to unlock the back door (they’re used to leaving the doors unlocked, perhaps for weeks, for access). Because I’m at the mercy of the contractors’ matching schedules and the elements. And because I’m generally sour.
Ah, I will have a good story about it–maybe even a post to be named later–and I will, presumably, have a working fireplace this winter (now, about getting some wood…). But, tonight, I lament I did not see Keiko Matsui.
