Was out & about yesterday making some food deliveries to seniors and while I was reminded about the challenges the city faces in clearing away so very much snow (my little Civic handled it like a champ!), I also saw:
- a gentleman in a city-issued dayglo-yellow vest very carefully helping a woman who was struggling through the plow drifts with a cane and 2 laden shopping bags. She was floundering with every step, yet he didn't seem to be rushing her at all.
- a bus driver who tried to signal traffic to stop so a walker-using passenger could get safely across the street after getting off the bus.
- the lady who had a Christmas card for me when I brought her delivery by.
And I got to be a little bit of a hero because I was able to "fix" one woman's electric can opener. I've never owned an electric one myself - a regular one is cheaper and takes up much less space - but I finally managed to get it to work after wiping every surface I could manage with a paper towel. I was a little surprised by the fuss the organization folks made over my success, but of course a working can opener was a big deal for this woman. After all, what good is canned food if you can't get the cans open?
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Blizzard!
It started snowing Friday night and didn't stop until late Saturday night. This morning I measured 18" in the front yard, and that wasn't even a drift! Things I'm grateful for, given the way we got clobbered by this storm:
- that the Chief had made a grocery run early in the week;
- that he managed to get out of the area before things got too bad;
- that we didn't lose power (and heat!);
- neighbors who helped me dig my car out (the snowplow ridge came to within 6" of the door handles); and
- the friend who called to see if I needed anything, knowing the Chief was out of town and assuming my asthma was a concern since I didn't make it to church; and
- a day off work tomorrow so my "shoveling muscles" can recover a little.
Would be nicer if I were snowed in with someone, but the phone works just fine, everybody and their brothers seem to be spending a lot of time on Facebook updating their status and such, which gets pretty entertaining, and I've got 4 new movies that just arrived a week or so ago.
I spent too much time doing what I always do when "the weather outside is frightful" - I cooked! Lemme tell you, simmer oxtails on the stove for 7 hours and you barely have to look at 'em to get the meat off those bones! The recipe calls for frozen mixed vegetables, of which we had none, so I added frozen peas, green beans, and sliced up some carrots instead. I took some of that soup over to the neighbor who made chicken noodle soup for the Chief when he was so sick with the flu.
I also pulled some pumpkin out of the freezer and made 2 loaves of pumpkin bread, one of which I took, still warm, to the shovel-wielding neighbors. Still some thawed pumpkin left, so I went online and found a recipe for pumpkin pancakes. Three guesses what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow, now that I get to sleep in and can have a nice, leisurely breakfast.
I also cooked some turkey for dinner last night, and have pre-snow leftovers. Add that to the cooking-frenzy output and I now have way too much food for one person to eat before it starts to spoil. I'm hoping to get a friend or few to come by for a meal, will take the rest of the pumpkin bread to work on Tuesday, already gave half the grapes to the shoveling neighbors, froze half the soup I didn't give away, but I'll have to do more if I don't want all this food to go to waste.
- that the Chief had made a grocery run early in the week;
- that he managed to get out of the area before things got too bad;
- that we didn't lose power (and heat!);
- neighbors who helped me dig my car out (the snowplow ridge came to within 6" of the door handles); and
- the friend who called to see if I needed anything, knowing the Chief was out of town and assuming my asthma was a concern since I didn't make it to church; and
- a day off work tomorrow so my "shoveling muscles" can recover a little.
Would be nicer if I were snowed in with someone, but the phone works just fine, everybody and their brothers seem to be spending a lot of time on Facebook updating their status and such, which gets pretty entertaining, and I've got 4 new movies that just arrived a week or so ago.
I spent too much time doing what I always do when "the weather outside is frightful" - I cooked! Lemme tell you, simmer oxtails on the stove for 7 hours and you barely have to look at 'em to get the meat off those bones! The recipe calls for frozen mixed vegetables, of which we had none, so I added frozen peas, green beans, and sliced up some carrots instead. I took some of that soup over to the neighbor who made chicken noodle soup for the Chief when he was so sick with the flu.
I also pulled some pumpkin out of the freezer and made 2 loaves of pumpkin bread, one of which I took, still warm, to the shovel-wielding neighbors. Still some thawed pumpkin left, so I went online and found a recipe for pumpkin pancakes. Three guesses what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow, now that I get to sleep in and can have a nice, leisurely breakfast.
I also cooked some turkey for dinner last night, and have pre-snow leftovers. Add that to the cooking-frenzy output and I now have way too much food for one person to eat before it starts to spoil. I'm hoping to get a friend or few to come by for a meal, will take the rest of the pumpkin bread to work on Tuesday, already gave half the grapes to the shoveling neighbors, froze half the soup I didn't give away, but I'll have to do more if I don't want all this food to go to waste.
If you suffer from holiday stress...
Saw this strip cited in someone else's blog: if you hate the holidays, or even if you just find them stressful, check it out.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Surfacing briefly
Taking one night off in the middle of over 2 weeks of rehearsals & shows. Mother Goose opened Thursday. Not a perfect show, but none of the glitches was serious and the audience didn't seem to care. It's been an education (and fun!) doing panto, in which the audience is almost another character among the dramatis personae. They boo & hiss the bad guys, cheer the good guys, warn them not to listen to the evil queen or that there's a ghost behind them - kinda weird to be booed, not applauded, when you finish a number, but when you've just finished being all creepy and spooky, that's a good thing, at least in panto.
Got to my first blocking rehearsal for Grand Duke and was reminded why I enjoy working with this director. She got a lot of movement and business roughed in very quickly, ran it a few times. This is gonna be fun.
Thinking about what to audition for next. One local company is doing Mikado; I'd only do that show again if a miracle happens and they offer me Katisha (I anticipate some stiff competition). I wouldn't expect them to consider me for Pitti-Sing - they'd have no trouble finding young mezzos. Moon Over Buffalo also sounds like fun; three roles I'd go for, though I have no idea how stiff the competition would be.
TW came down w/ the flu Wednesday. Because we've both had our seasonal flu shots, we're assuming this was swine flu. He wasn't too miserable at first, but by the time I got home Friday (after getting a swine flu shot & a Tamiflu Rx), his fever was up to 103.6! This was at 5 p.m.; I ended up missing the first half of Act I because I wasn't about to leave until TW's doctor's office called back. Fortunately, he didn't need to be seen, so I changed the sheets, made him put on clean pj's and set him up with plenty of fluids and such before I left. By yesterday, thank God, his temp was down to 99.x, and when I got home from work today, it was finally, blessedly normal! Tonight he even ate a full meal, after having little or no appetite even yesterday.
A friend is having a reading of her one-act tonight but I opted to stay home. Nice to have a night at home for a change, instead of racing home, inhaling dinner, and flying off to the theater an hour later, or even having a more leisurely dinner before heading to rehearsal. And given that I have choir practice tomorrow and then Mother Goose performances thru Sunday and another Duke rehearsal Monday, if I didn't stay home tonight, that would be 17 days without a break! I really need one night when I get to bed before 11 p.m.
Got to my first blocking rehearsal for Grand Duke and was reminded why I enjoy working with this director. She got a lot of movement and business roughed in very quickly, ran it a few times. This is gonna be fun.
Thinking about what to audition for next. One local company is doing Mikado; I'd only do that show again if a miracle happens and they offer me Katisha (I anticipate some stiff competition). I wouldn't expect them to consider me for Pitti-Sing - they'd have no trouble finding young mezzos. Moon Over Buffalo also sounds like fun; three roles I'd go for, though I have no idea how stiff the competition would be.
TW came down w/ the flu Wednesday. Because we've both had our seasonal flu shots, we're assuming this was swine flu. He wasn't too miserable at first, but by the time I got home Friday (after getting a swine flu shot & a Tamiflu Rx), his fever was up to 103.6! This was at 5 p.m.; I ended up missing the first half of Act I because I wasn't about to leave until TW's doctor's office called back. Fortunately, he didn't need to be seen, so I changed the sheets, made him put on clean pj's and set him up with plenty of fluids and such before I left. By yesterday, thank God, his temp was down to 99.x, and when I got home from work today, it was finally, blessedly normal! Tonight he even ate a full meal, after having little or no appetite even yesterday.
A friend is having a reading of her one-act tonight but I opted to stay home. Nice to have a night at home for a change, instead of racing home, inhaling dinner, and flying off to the theater an hour later, or even having a more leisurely dinner before heading to rehearsal. And given that I have choir practice tomorrow and then Mother Goose performances thru Sunday and another Duke rehearsal Monday, if I didn't stay home tonight, that would be 17 days without a break! I really need one night when I get to bed before 11 p.m.
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