Wish me luck!

Tomorrow I have my first audition since a year ago April! I think I've made some strides vocally, and when I had my last lesson before my voice teacher went on vacation 2 weeks ago, she declared my current audition piece "ready to go".

Tomorrow it's all about the details - being careful about what I eat (some things give me indigestion or crud up my lungs); eating dinner early enough for the digestive juices to finish before the audition starts; getting and keeping my voice warm; finding an audition outfit that's comfortable, flattering and dance-able; and remembering the finer technical points of my audition piece.

I'm looking forward to it - it's like a tiny performance, and I've made enough vocal progress to give me the self-confidence to enjoy strutting my stuff. The audition includes learning a dance combination, which I always enjoy, so that'll be fun. I may run into folks I know (at least one friend is auditioning, though I don't know which night), but even if I don't, I don't expect to get too nervous. There is that one role I'd love to get, but I'm going in not expecting anything, realizing I might not even be offered chorus. My voice is big enough that I like to think I'd be offered at least chorus, but that's the thing about auditions - until you get in there and hear the others, and unless you go to all the audition sessions to hear everyone, you don't know what the competition is.

The last time I auditioned for this company, they were doing Cabaret and I was hoping for Frau Schmidt. (I had thought about asking to be one of the Kit Kat Klub dancers until I saw the audition combination - my knees wouldn't have liked it one bit!) I thought I sang pretty well, but the woman who followed me not only filled the cavernous room with her voice but "sold" the song beautifully, too. She got the role. I don't mind at all when that happens; I walk out of the audition already knowing they'll cast someone perfectly suited for the role, so there's no anguished waiting to hear.

Last year's audition for Mikado involved no anguished waiting, either, but for a different reason. I left knowing already that I was gonna get a lead - it was simply a matter of whether I'd be offered Pitti-Sing or Katisha. And even when the director called me and initially offered me Katisha, she let me persuade her to give me Pitti-Sing instead! How often do we get to choose which role the director gives us?! Probably only once, so I guess I've made my quota. ;)

So if you read this before 7:30 p.m. EDT Thursday, Aug. 10th, send some good vibes my way.

Good news about the septic system!

Chief just talked to Gary, the contractor. The septic guy started working on our system yesterday, so unless we hear otherwise, we can plan to go out to the cabin this weekend. The weather forecast sounds perfect - sunny, temps only in the 80s and low humidity. Cabin, here we come!

Better make this quick

Eesh, what a day. The problems started, oh, late last night - I didn't manage to fall asleep until midnight or so, then was awake again at 2:30, 4, 4:30 when the Chief's alarm went off, 5, and then my alarm went off at 5:30.

Schlepped an extra 10 miles to a class, only to find that it had been cancelled due to insufficient enrollment. I didn't get a cancellation e-mail because I wasn't officially enrolled, just observing (I'm trying to get certified to teach it), and wouldn't have seen it anyway, as I was home sick yesterday. So I wasted an hour and most of a gallon of gas on a pointless trip.

Tried 2 or 3 ATMs, all of which refused my card, claiming they couldn't read the mag strip. A colleague suggested moistening the offending mag strip, which worked.

When I got to the office around 7:45 a.m., Outlook wouldn't load. When I called the help desk, I got a recording telling me the server was having problems. Estimated time of restoral - 9:30, nearly two hours later! Fortunately, rebooting eventually took care of things, but it certainly did nothing for my already-stressed-out mood!

Comfort food and a glass of wine for dinner helped some, as did the Chief's pre-dinner call to his mom. She sounded less tired than usual, and we found a new topic to discuss, which is always nice.

Early to bed tonight - I need to sleep for more than 2 hours straight!

Reasons to love The Muppet Show

Omigosh, I'd forgotten how funny they could be! I'm still working my way thru Season 1 on DVD. They hadn't hit their stride yet, and some of the material was just plain weird, but you can see where the greatness came from, all right.

Here are a few clips from later seasons:

Muppet Human Sacrifice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXr1OSTVAs0

Love Story (how Andy Williams kept a straight face for most of this, I'll never know!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jln5ygwElLo&NR

Kermit finally loses it w/ Miss Piggy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zapTDYj4sY&NR

Looking forward to Thursday

Thursday's the big day - my first audition in over a year! I've already got a "clean" copy of my audition piece for the accompanist (my working copy is very heavily marked up) and just printed an updated theater resume, so all I need to do is woodshed a few technical things in my audition piece. I'm hoping my French class (2 nights a week thru the end of August) doesn't conflict with rehearsals, but if it does, well, it won't be the first time conflicts have knocked me out of the running for a show. I just hope I audition well enough that they'll remember me favorably the next time I audition for them. (And there will be a next time.)

If I don't get cast in this production, there are plenty of other shows to audition for. I've got my eye on something in at least one other show, which doesn't audition until October. Ah, audition season - all those tempting possibilities...

"Getting to know you" and construction progress

The "block party" out at the cabin yesterday was fun. The hostesses did a wonderful job, the turn-out was pretty good, considering how many of the homeowners are weekenders, the weather was cooperative (not too hot, not too buggy) - everyone agreed it was a wonderful idea and we should do it again. I know I told at least a few people that the Chief & I hoped to have a party once the cabin addition is finished. With luck, that'll happen while it's still nice enough for the party to spill outside.

With the septic still out of order, we stopped at the cabin only long enough to pick up a couple of chairs for the party and check out the construction progress. The entire addition has been painted (except the picture railing, which isn't up yet), the new bathroom has linoleum, and they've started putting down the "hardwood" in the new bedroom. Narrower slats than we'd expected (the sample in the store misled us), but it sure looks pretty!

Urinetown

I'm planning to audition for a community theater production of Urinetown this coming Thursday, so last night I went to see a production of it put on by a company of young performers (youngest were in grade school, oldest a rising college sophomore) to get an idea of what I was letting myself in for. I'm glad I went! Not only because I found that I liked the music and found the show funny, but also because the performance was quite strong, even for opening night. (First night w/ an audience tends to do funny things to one's timing.)

Most of the problems I had with the performance are really just minor quibbles. For example, the compressed age range of the performers made for some interesting casting; the villain looked more like the heroine's older brother than her father, for one thing. All the leads wore headset mikes, which was sometimes a problem. I've never worked with that kind of mike and know nothing about the technical aspects of it, but many of the leads had moments when the volume was just right but, when they were in the meat of their vocal range, they were blowing out the sound - too much volume, almost to the point of distortion. Which was a shame, because this cast had some wonderful voices in it.

I left wishing I were a guy so I could play the bad guy! He has what I thought last night was the funniest song in the show ("Don't be the bunny" - even the title is funny!) and the actor was a quintessential villain. Other roles I'd love but will never be cast in - Little Sally, which is a big part with some of the funniest lines in the show. I didn't much care for the heroine, but maybe that's just the way it was played. One role it's not unrealistic for me to hope for is Penelope Pennywise. She gets some great music (including the first solo of the show, "It's a privilege to pee") and is a meaty character role. Wonder how many fellow auditioners I'd have to arrange conflicts for in order to get the role? ;) But there are other roles that get good featured bits, and the music sounds like it would be so rewarding to sing that I'd even take chorus.

Checking a list of roles culled from the site for this week's auditions, I see that last night's company gave several "baritone/tenor" roles to women. Not surprising; I noticed last night that the females on stage outnumbered the males. Wonder why guys aren't into theater? Given the current demographics, you could sell it as a great way to meet girls.

Something else I noticed last night was the make-up of the audience. Probably because last night's company was one targeting young people, probably 2/3 of the audience looked to be in the same age range (high school/college), with the remainder being parents and other supportive middle-aged and older types. Definitely a partisan crowd, as witnessed by the many audience members carrying bouquets and the vocal reactions at the curtain call.

This theater was in a high school, but not like any high school I ever saw! The kids who perform in it will be spoiled for community theater - this place was huge! I'm guessing it seats upwards of 500 people, and the stage was perhaps twice as large as that used by any community theater production I've ever attended or been in. Heck, it looked bigger than at least one of the local professional theaters! I would've loved to get a tour of the backstage area to see what kind of wings, flyspace, dressing rooms and tech areas they've got.

Are we there yet?

We knew when we started this whole addition/rehab project that, like every construction project, it would take a lot more time and more money than original estimates. Sigh. But we had a foundation over 2 months ago and yet there's no flooring in the addition yet. Apparently the painting is finished, but the contractor called yesterday to tell us there was some problem w/ the engineered flooring (pseudo-hardwood) we'd chosen for the new bedroom and we'd have to pick something else. Didn't we do that a few weeks ago w/ the linoleum? And the septic guy can't even come look at our system until next week at the earliest, so we don't have a single functioning bathroom, and there are fixture boxes all over the kitchen table, and there's a thick layer of construction everywhere, and the living room furniture is shoved over to one side in an only marginally comfortable arrangement... We'll be SO glad when the cabin is back to being a vacation place instead of a construction site!

Neighbors out there are having a block party this weekend. We were only going to go if we had a working septic system, but then decided we weren't gonna let a miserable plumbing problem spoil our fun. Seems a bit wasteful, gas prices being what they are, to drive 2 hours one way to go to a party, but we'll also stop by the cabin to check the progress, and maybe pick up some corn from a local produce market. (The corn we got last time was sweet as any candy; I love corn season!)

Too darn hot!!!

Ayiyi! With highs near the 100-degree mark for the 4th or 5th day running, heat indexes predicted to be 110 or higher (!) today, and a Code Red ("air quality unhealthful") declared, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I woke with a migraine today. Or rather, the migraine woke me and, to add insult to injury, woke me at 4 a.m.!

Several hours later, the Imitrex has worked its magic. I'm staying home today; not going in to work, not going to French class tonight, not going anywhere that doesn't have cooled, filtered air. I might do a little bit around the house, but we've raised the thermostat to conserve energy (as it is, I dread getting the next electric bill!) and I don't fancy incurring another heat-induced migraine! I think today's agenda is gonna be heavy on drinking of iced beverages and watching more Muppet Show episodes, with maybe some Rocky & Bullwinkle thrown in for variety. The living room is on the north side of the house, nice and shady, so it'll be the coolest room in the house.

Learning the hard way

Our weekend at the cabin was cut short by an apparent failure of the septic tank's drain fields. The septic tank was full of water, not just waste, as a result. This means that until we get the drain fields fixed somehow, water can't go down the drain into the septic tank because there's nowhere for the water to go. We learned this morning, the hard way, that showering in the lone functioning bathroom upstairs caused both the back bathroom and the new bathroom shower drains to back up and flood, and some of that water ended up in the new basement, too. Sigh. Our contractor came out to have a look and told us the drain fields were the problem. He's going to try to get the septic company to come out and take care of the problem, but no telling how long that'll take. In the meantime, we won't be going out to the cabin when we don't dare flush the toilets, take a shower, or do dishes or laundry. They're having a block party next weekend which we may have to miss - especially given the way gas prices keep going up, we don't feel like driving all that way for a party, just to turn around and go right back home again. We're crossing our fingers that they'll be able to get the drain fields fixed by the end of the week.

In other news, the sheetrock "mud" is done (covers the joints between slabs and the sheetrock nails) and has a coupla coats of primer on it. The utility room is mostly done, though the molding & baseboard got pretty dirty when they put it up and the molding around the window needs to be redone. (They used the old molding and neither cut it to size nor painted it. Looks really bad!)

Casting call

A's having another sing-in in NJ come September. Because 60-some of the 70-plus attendees had requested one role or another and there are definitely not that many roles to go around, she did her casting by lots. I'll be doing Buttercup's Act II music in HMS Pinafore. It'll be interesting to share a role; I know the woman doing Act I so maybe we can work out some silly theme. My voice teacher & I are traveling together, which should make for a much less tedious drive. Only trouble is, since we're both mezzos and used to singing harmony, who's gonna sing melody? I suppose we'll have to draw straws; whoever gets the short one has to sing melody. ;)

One last voice lesson this week before auditions next month and the post-Labor Day sing-in (Chief & I are on vacation the week after Labor Day). Guess I'd better make that lesson count!

The sheetrock's up now

Back to the cabin this weekend. The sheetrock's up in all the new and rehabbed rooms. We were both surprised at how much smaller the new rooms look now that you can no longer see one room through the joists of another. On the other hand, the white of the sheetrock makes things look fairly bright, even when it's cloudy. We're both getting itchy about how long this is taking - it may not be done for at least another month! - but it is exciting to come out and see appreciable progress. We'll be back out the next two weekends and are really hoping that the back bathroom will be usable again by next weekend, if the not the following weekend. (It's a pain, not to mention something of a safety hazard, to stumble up the tight spiral staircase to the lone functioning bathroom in the middle of the night.)

(OK, I give up trying to make the Before and After pics line up next to each other instead of offset.)

"Don't call us, we'll call you"

Perhaps this is appropriate as fall audition season nears...

Code Red

"Air quality unhealthy"! If you like breathing hot (near 100 again today), swampy, toxic soup, this is the place to be today. Hearing that, I asked the Chief if he'd do grocery duty for me so I could reduce the time I'd have to spend outside. Fortunately, it was a short list this week so he didn't have to spend too much time on it.

Asthma doesn't control my life, but at times like this, it does dictate what I can and can't do. I had planned a few post-work errands; to minimize my time outside breathing sludge, the only one I actually did was putting gas in the car ($2.96/gallon at Sam's Club, up from $2.92 last week but still cheaper than anywhere else along my usual rounds).

This is the problem with summer - oppressive heat, high humidity (not tropical but still quite wet), and rotten air quality. I guess I should be glad we don't live in, oh, LA, downtown Manhattan, or some heavily industrialized city. Then we'd really be breathing sludge in July and August!

Heat advisory!

Too darn hot! I don't know if we set any records, but the heat was certainly stifling. Walking into the kitchen from outdoors, the kitchen felt almost cold despite being about 82 or 83 degrees. I tried not to listen too carefully to the weather forecast, but couldn't help hearing that the highs are supposed to stay in the upper 90s for at least another few days.

The Chief watered the flowers again tonight; we're trying desperately to keep them from drying up completely, and we're mostly succeeding, but the impatiens are very definitely not happy!

Maybe tomorrow I'll take my potted impatiens and put them into the bed where my pansies & violas were. That'll fill the holes and make the bed look less pathetic, and maybe the impatiens will do better with some room to grow. And water, of course; thirsty impatiens really are very sad-looking.

The Alliance Francaise, where I'm taking my French class, is in a part of town with lots of very nice houses, many of which have very nice gardens. I was noticing tonight, though, that a lot of those flowers are looking less than their best now that the heat has set in. It's interesting to see which ones seem to be holding up and which are suffering. Of the ones I can identify, the petunias and other sun-loving plants all seem to be thriving, while the impatiens and other shade-lovers are considerably less pleased with the heat.

Garden update

Here's how my experiments are going so far:
- The mazus reptans (see photo) is thriving! It's slowly putting out runners, so I may well just take some cuttings to propagate for the rest of the driveway. Our summer weather is just starting to get serious (consistently very hot), so perhaps it's a bit premature to get excited about this, but it certainly looks promising.
- The rain earlier this month beat the living daylights outta the bed next to the front door. Between that and the local fauna digging it up, there's precious little left. :( The pansies and violas are completely gone and only 3 or 4 torenias are hanging in there.
- The impatiens I put in flower pots on the front steps are looking very sad and leggy. Part of the problem is that some neighborhood critter insists on digging in the pots, but I'm wondering if perhaps they've gotten rather root-bound.
- The impatiens on the south side of the house are hanging in there, but I think they get a little too much shade there. They also need faithful watering now that the heat has set in for good. They'll survive the summer, but I think I'll try something else there next year.
- The torenias I planted on the north side of the house aren't doing as well as I had hoped. The ones along the fenceline are hanging in there, but I've about given up on the batch planted near the side of the house. Part of the problem is the beating they took from the heavy rains before the Chief put up some drip-edge to redirect the run-off on that side of the roof, and the gate to the back yard (a double gate, one side of which swings over that patch) just made things worse. I think I'm just gonna plant a bunch of ferns on that side and be done with it.
- And the allium I planted last fall never came up - not one single bulb! I'm assuming something ate them all. I won't try planting that again.

That's some expensive rug cleaning!

Chief & I took our latest acquisition, a 3.5'x5' Tabrizi rug dating from perhaps the 1950s, to one of the local rug shops for cleaning. The cost to clean it and repair the knots at one end will cost nearly twice the original purchase price, but that was so low that we really can't complain; add both costs together and it comes to about what the rug would appraise for.

But that's not the whole story. We decided to let the woman running the place show us a "few" carpets, in case we saw one we might like for the entryway we'll have once the cabin addition is finished. She had 3 male staffers hopping, with two of them peeling back one carpet after another on this or that stack, while a 3rd took the ones we liked and spread them out for viewing. In the event, we ended up with 8 carpets thus displayed, all Persians (Sarruk, Shirazi, Kermani, Qashqai, Qomi - all spellings very approximate). Wow, did that look wonderful! And our tastes are sufficiently similar that it was easy for us to get down to two carpets, both Qashqais.

It can be dangerous to go shopping with someone so like-minded, though. We went back and forth between the two, talked about where this one or that one might go, and ended up buying both of them. As I said, a very expensive carpet cleaning!

And there's a further potential hazard to our bank balance; the merchant's lease was not renewed (the building has a new owner who doesn't want to deal w/ retail establishments) and the husband wants to retire, so they'll be having a going-out-of-business sale starting next month in hopes of selling their entire inventory before they have to move out at the end of November. If we go, we'll probably buy - the wife apparently does all the buying herself, and we both really like her taste!

Gotta plug this.

I did a show (my Shakespeare debut!) with this company a little over a year ago. They do "concept" productions of Shakespeare but otherwise tend to be faithful to Will's intent ("Entertain 'em, dammit!"). If you can, go support them. I wasn't able to make the original run but am hoping to get to this, especially as I heard very good things about the production.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Part of the DC Capital Fringe Festival
Sunday, July 23, 7 PM
Saturday, July 29, 12:30 PM
Woolly Mammoth Theatre - Rehearsal Hall
641 D St, NW, Washington, DC 20003
www.rudemechanicals.com for tickets and details

Picture rail!

Our 56' of picture rail (for the new bedroom at the cabin) was delivered this evening! This will be cool - it will substitute for crown molding and be a spiffy way to hang pictures without having to put a bunch of holes in the new walls. They've got some pretty darn fancy (and expensive) hooks for that purpose, too. Now that we've got the rail, I can start writing off to find out which hooks will fit the size rail we've got. It seems that all picture rails are not created equal, any more than any other kind of trim. Sure would be a pain to get a dozen or so lovely hooks, only to find they won't fit on the rail.

Encore une fois

Tonight was my first session of an 8-week class - intermediate French review at the local Alliance Francaise. Tough neighborhood to find parking, but a nice, safe-looking neighborhood, so that'll be OK. It's been years and years since I've had any occasion to use the French I learned in high school and college, but I found that, at least tonight, I was tripping over holes in my vocabulary, not grammar, which is encouraging. There were only 7 of us tonight, including one brave soul who'd learned his French by enseignement a distance (distance learning), so he'd had little speaking practice. He's an engineer, two of my fellow students have worked for the World Bank, three are students brushing up their French prior to pursuing graduate studies; a nice, diverse bunch.

Our instructor is from Grenoble and speaks with nice, clear diction at a pace I only rarely had trouble following. Again, given how long it's been since I've used any French, I was relieved I hadn't completely forgotten how to hear it.

Construction progress

Not as much progress as we'd hoped (the lack of flooring held up progress in the utility room & back bathroom, for one thing), and a few things need fixing, but most of the wiring and a major chunk of the plumbing are done. It was interesting looking at all the "spaghetti" and figuring out which boxes will be outlets, which will be light switches, and which will be thermostats for the baseboard heaters. The doors and sidelights are in place for both the front and deck doors, so now we have that many more keys to keep track of. We also got a look at the basement (although on the way back home we realized there are NO electrical outlets down there because we completely forgot to ask for them - oops!). The Chief has already asked me about curtains for the basement doors so no one sees what "toys" he has there. ;)

We have a problem with the plumber, who apparently isn't too great at following instructions. We had bought shower fittings (handle controls rather than knobs, and a pole-mounted adjustable-height shower head) for the two bathrooms, which our contractor says he showed to the plumber. However, the plumber went ahead and installed a junk knob control in the new bathroom's shower, and the water supply pipe is very high; we don't see how it could possibly work with the hose for the adjustable shower head. We've already told the contractor that we do not expect to be billed for the plumber to install and then remove the shower control that didn't belong there.

The water supply for the pedestal sink will have to be moved, too; in its current position, the sink will be crammed into a corner, so that righties would be forever banging elbows on the wall when trying to shave or brush teeth.

On the whole, we're pleased with how things are shaping up, though we're eager to have the construction over so we can clean up, decorate & furnish, and just enjoy the new space. We've got paired windows on 3 corners, so the views are very nice. We'll need to come up with some good, heavy curtains so we'll be able to sleep past dawn, but the Chief has been talking a lot about getting a nice little Victorian settee so we can sit there w/ our morning coffee and just enjoy the view. His Victorian chair is already slated for the new bedroom; it's just a matter of deciding where it fits best.

Making progress

I've been taking voice lessons for several years now, even counting the gaps every August for my voice teacher's family vacations, other gaps for illness, work emergencies, etc. I usually tape my lesson, then listen to the tape in the car on my way home. (I decided a while back not to tape the vocalizing; I'm not a masochist!) For the longest time, this was truly an exercise in humility; it was at least a year before I would hear parts I didn't hate, and at least another year before I started actually liking the odd note or phrase. Today as I was listening, I realized that I liked (or at least didn't cringe at) everything on the tape! I expect it will be a while before that happens consistently - asthma is great for screwing up vocal production - but I'm excited that all the time and money are paying off!

Even better, we've spent my last few lessons working on helping me find my "belt" voice (think Liza Minelli or Ethel Merman) and today's tape tells me I'm getting there. This is brand new, so I still have to remember the particular techniques for my "belt", but as long as I do, the sound is consistent - yee-ha! Power's never been a problem for me, just controlling the sound so it's listenable. My upper range can still be shrill or strained if I let my technique slip, but the lower range, always reliable, is now becoming strong and solid. This is exciting!

Now I'm really getting psyched to start auditioning for the fall season, if only to show off my "new" voice. :)

What was I thinking?

I've got a dentist's appointment at 2 tomorrow (routine cleaning), followed by a voice lesson at 4:15. Will the dental work stretch my jaw for better vocal production, make it so sore I won't feel like singing, or make no particular difference one way or the other? "Tune in tomorrow for the next thrilling installment..."

A minor construction setback

Our contractor called tonight to say that the flooring we picked out last fall for the rehabbed bathrooms has been discontinued. Since the power was out, cancelling our at-home plans for the evening, we went to branches of both the major Home Improvement Centers to look at flooring. Neither had a very impressive selection but one of them had a "selection" that was truly pathetic; probably no more than a dozen choices, of very similar styles and colors and not the best quality. So tomorrow it's off to a couple of flooring stores to see what we can find.

An end to darkness

And about time! The usual summer squalls blew thru the area yesterday but, being of unusual intensity, knocked out power to much of the area. We lost ours around 5 p.m. and didn't get it back until noon today, then had it go out again around 5:30, to return around 9 p.m. As a result, we didn't do anything for the 4th; our friends' pre-fireworks ice cream party was canceled (downed power lines in their neighborhood made it too dangerous) and with no electricity, we couldn't watch A Capitol Fourth on TV. So the Chief went to bed early (he'd been up on the roof doing some patching and gutter cleaning in the 90-plus-degree heat) while I read by flashlight and listened to the booms of local fireworks. Couldn't see 'em because of all the trees in our neighborhood, but boy, could we hear 'em!

One good cause among many

A coworker of mine has a daughter with leukemia. This will be their third year walking to raise funds for blood cancer research. I'm in on this because I've seen what my coworker has been through as her daughter has endured too many trips to the ER, too many long hospital stays (the chemo makes her more susceptible to germs and when she gets sick, she gets very sick indeed), and of course the chemo itself. The Light the Night Walk is not a cure in and of itself, but every dollar raised gets us closer to a cure. Please check it out.

Wow!

Chief and I are spending the weekend in the Heart of America - the clan is gathering to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary! Quite an accomplishment and a remarkable milestone, especially given that, with all my dad's health problems 2 years ago, we weren't too sanguine they'd both make it to this day. Yes, lots to celebrate and lots of festivities, chief among them being the clan portrait and the party. Of course. Gotta have a party! You don't stay married for 50 years, raise 5 kids, start and then sell your own business, and survive some life-threatening medical problems without killing each other and then not honor the achievement! So congratulations, Mom & Dad, and everyone else who's managing to make a go of it. (This is my 2nd marriage, so I certainly don't take staying together for granted.)

Enough, already!

We've gotten twelve inches of rain just since Friday, with more on the way! According to this morning's paper, our little town (now a suburb of the big city) had 15 houses condemned due to flood damage. The area as a whole has gotten an average of 13 inches of rain since Friday; we usually get 39" of rain all year. That means we've gotten roughly 4 months' worth of rain in 4 days. We're setting rainfall records all over the place; this is far and away the most rain the area's ever gotten without the aid of a hurricane or tropical depression.

Methinks the drought may be over...

Rain, rain, please back off!

We don't want it to go away entirely, as we were headed into a serious drought a week ago, but it sure would be nice if we could get all this rain spaced out a bit more. We've had perhaps 10 inches of rain since Friday night, with more on the way! Really messed up the morning commute for a lot of people today (the Chief's usual 30-minute commute took over 2 hours!), what with all the road closures and train cancellations due to flooding and even a mudslide! Power outages closed some buildings, and of course there were more than the usual number of accidents, despite all the folks who stayed home because getting to work would have taken more time and aggravation than it was worth. No to mention the ones who stayed home to deal w/ flooded basements and defunct sump pumps. We were lucky; we only lost power for about 20 or 30 minutes last night, and the water in the basement was minimal.

Anyone got Noah's e-mail address?

We're under roof!

Chief & I went out to the cabin this weekend and were pleasantly surprised to find it's under roof! No doors on the entryway yet, just heavy plastic, and nothing but framing inside, but it's under roof. Nice, big windows on 3 corners (the 4th corner is the bathroom) and an entryway with plenty of room to remove muddy or wet things before coming into the cabin proper. Chief & I took a marker and signed our names and the date on the inside of one of the exterior panels. I hope that will be covered by drywall (maybe even painted drywall!) the next time we get out there, but I took pictures of our signatures, and it'll be fun knowing they're there.

We spent most of the weekend at (one of the 2 big home improvement centers/HICs; they don't get named unless they pay me for the endorsement!). We stopped at HIC #1 on the way out Friday night to get dimensions for the pedestal sink going into the new bathroom. Our contractor came by Saturday morning, answered some questions, and gave us some "homework". As soon as we got a bite to it, it wasback to HIC #2 (different store, same franchise) to look for the sink (no luck), arrange for a vanity & top for the rehab of the back bathroom, check that the flooring we'd liked in our local HIC store was also available out there, and similar errands. Got most of the rest of our errands done, then back to HIC #1 to get the sink, which they had. We also ended up getting a medicine cabinet to go above it; darker than I'd have chosen, but we liked the style. The Chief found some lights for the new basement but the few on the shelf were not exactly in pristine condition, so we just scribbled down the item info and left. Sunday we went back to HIC #2 for the errands we'd forgotten on Saturday; getting the info on both floorings ("slate" for the entryway and engineered hardwood for the bedroom), deciding whether we wanted flat or textured ceiling paint, and picking paint colors for the 2 colors for which we had paint chips from other stores (now our contractor or the painter can get all the paint in one place). We also found that this store had 3 of the lights Chief wanted for the basement, and we also picked up a ceiling light for the utility room and pairs of "sconces" to go either side of the mirrors in both bathrooms.

Before we left the cabin yesterday, I wrote out notes for the contractor (item & model numbers for the flooring, paint colors with names & color numbers for the new & rehabbed rooms, number & placement of electrical outlets & light switches, etc.) while the Chief took everything we've bought to date (lights, door handles and locks, exhaust fans, the medicine cabinet & pedestal sink, ceiling fan...) and piled them according to room, with each box tagged. Unfortunately, in the process, we realized that one of the sconces didn't match the others! We had to go back to our local HIC anyway (paperwork for a rotted window at home that desperately needs replacing), so Chief grabbed the offending sconce and the relevant receipt and was able to exchange it last night. And as if he hadn't seen enough of the inside of this HIC, he stopped by on the way home from work tonight to pick up brochures for storm doors for the cabin. That's six trips to three different stores of the same HIC franchise in only 4 days! =:o

*$%^#@!*%^! asthma!

After 2 weeks of perfect weather, our luck finally ran out. Sunday was hot and hazy; summer weather. Monday was a Code Orange day ("moderately unhealthy" air quality) and yesterday was Code Yellow ("moderately unhealthy for sensitive groups", such as those of us w/ asthma). I'd been off my maintenance inhalers for so very long that I was out of the habit of using them, so I spent yesterday feeling that all-too-familiar chest tightness. I managed OK at work, but by the time I got home, I was tired and a bit crabby from the effort. As I pulled up, a neighbor's daughter was cutting the grass for her elderly dad. I'd've gone over to say hi, but knew the grass "fumes" would only make my asthma worse, so I had to restrict myself to waving and going straight into the house. What really ticked me off was that I was supposed to go w/ the Chief to his parish council end-of-year picnic but because they'd probably be eating outside, I had to stay home. Poor Chief - he listened patiently (or maybe just pretended to) while I griped about having to limit what I do and miss out on stuff just because of the wretched asthma. I shouldn't have to choose between fun and breathing!

Today was another Code Yellow and the cumulative effect has been no fun at all. Wheezing and coughing, and wouldn't you know, I had to give a short briefing at a big-deal meeting. As we were going in, my boss asked if I wanted a cough drop or some water; when I told him it was the asthma acting up, he knew enough to stop. (Some people have some pretty curious ideas about what might help an asthmatic.) However, my asthma did ease up enough that I was able to get through my presentation without coughing. Thank heaven for small favors, I suppose.

Everybody sing: "I hate New York"

Chief and I were in the NYC area to visit his family. I found myself, yet again, thinking that I'd hate to have to live there - the traffic, the crowding, the concrete, the grime & trash, the crazy drivers (even worse than here! =:o), and the way you have to drive for what seems like hours to get away from all that. Even the Chief says he wouldn't want to move back to the area. And the prices! Gas there was running $3.4x/gallon, vice $2.8x in NJ. Yes, there's lots to do and see, but not enough to entice me to live there.

Antiquing we will go...

If you like browsing antique stores & second-hand shops, it's great to be married to someone who's similarly inclined. I sometimes find myself saying yes when the Chief asks if I feel like hitting an antiques mall (e.g., when we were in Cape May) rather than having to persuade him to go with me. This weekend we were in NYC to visit his family (we were relieved to see his brother looking well just 2 weeks after surgery for kidney stones) and swung by the neighborhood second-hand store. I've previously found a large-ish cameo brooch at a very reasonable price, which will come in handy should I ever need it for a costume. (That's what I mean when I refer to "costume jewelry".) I've also found a few nice, soft handkerchiefs for a dollar each. However, yesterday was the most productive trip to date: the Chief spotted this charming Victorian chair in excellent condition for less than half what a "real" antique store would ask. The carving is well defined, with no bits broken off or even split. The upholstery is recent but inoffensive, and the construction is quite solid - barely creaks at all when you sit on it. This latest acquisition will probably end up in the bedroom we're adding out at the cabin, as it's a perfect height to sit on when donning or doffing shoes & socks.

Fun with English pronunciations

One of the listserves I subscribe to, Savoynet, includes anglophones from several different countries, so the subject of pronunciations recurs often/frequently. The latest iteration of that thread has been mentioning English-language names with pronunciations that aren't exactly what one might expect. One contributor refered us to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_names_in_English_with_non-intuitive_pronunciations - fun stuff! One thing makes me a little nervous, though - you can edit this page. I can't help but wonder if there's someone at Wikipedia who edits the edits for accuracy.

That was fun, if too short

We have a small, informal chorus at work that I sing with when my schedule permits. Today they had a SummerFest and asked us to sing. We did a 20-minute program of patriotic favorites, ending w/ all four verses of the Star-Spangled Banner. (Take a look and you'll see why verses 2 thru 4 are almost never done - doggerel!) We were crammed onto a stage barely big enough for us all to stand, and it had a canopy low enough that folks standing more than a few yards away probably couldn't hear much, but it was fun.

Theater weekend

Ushered opening night on Friday. I doubt I'll ever become a fan of Princess Ida but the company did a great job - wonderful choral sound and very funny in all the right places. The costumes were lovely, the set worked well, and lots of interesting stage movement in the big numbers. I thought the female principals as a body were stronger than the men, but the men were hardly bad singers; I just liked many of the women's voices more.

Sunday I went to see another local company's How to Succeed in Business... Boy, is that a dated show! All the women, and I mean every single one in the show, are secretaries, and all the men are executives. The female lead's big number is "Happy to keep his dinner warm" - definitely very much a product of its time. Not an A-list musical, but the company did a great job, as I've come to expect from them: good voices, good costume design, and the thing that keeps me coming back - the production numbers! Only a couple of them in this show, but they were great; the company gets some real dancers (as opposed to singers or actors who move really well or dance a little) so the choreographers can do some really impressive stuff - lifts, tosses, backflips, all kinds of stuff that is impressive on tv but really impressive when it happens 20 rows away from you.

Back to working on my 06-07 season spreadsheet...

It's officially summer.

For all that we've been able to turn off the a/c and leave the windows open all week (most unusual for the first week of June - we're enjoying this special treat!), I know it's summer - I saw my first firefly last night.

It's the little things

Finally finished (I think) sewing for this show. Today's project was a small one - headgear for the 3 women dressed as maids in Act I. I used an oval relish dish as a template to cut out 3 ovals, attached white lace around each to create almost a pillbox-hat effect, then used the last little bit of lace to make a rosette for each little hat. Worn far enough forward on the head that the front lace hangs over the forehead, they should be quite fetching. I wasn't too sure about the rosettes so I only attached one, but when I delivered the finished products to the Costume Goddess and "modeled" the one hat w/ the rosette, she seemed delighted with the result. From her, that's high praise!

She also told me that, after seeing M in his sash, the lighting guys dubbed him "the French Ambassador". :D

I'm ushering the show tomorrow, Opening Night. I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing straight through, as well as seeing how my home-made accessories look from the back row. Those little touches can make a big difference. And if the two hems I did in a hurry last night aren't perfect, well, as long as they aren't as wildly uneven as they were before I redid them, I won't worry about it.

Bragging on myself

Yes, I know it's a tiny thing, but indulge me. I made a wide sash for one of the principals - 2" strips of red, white and blue sewn together to make a 6-inch-wide sash. I fitted it on M the other night to get the proper angle at the shoulder, see how it needed to cross at the hip, and check the length. Yesterday I sewed the fringe on the ends and made a rosette to be sewn onto the hip, then got everything fitted on M last night (rosette placement, tacking the sash where the front & back cross to make sure they hang well). I was very pleased with the result; the sash and rosette "read" very well, at least from halfway back in the audience, the trailing ribbons on the rosette lie exactly in line with the ends of the sash (pure serendipity but I'm not complaining!), the decision to double up on the fringe was a good one, the sash doesn't shift around or ride up on M's suitcoat - much more rewarding than straight hems or solidly-sewn fastenings that no one will ever see.

Someone else's Hell Week

Yesterday, despite interference from the universe (broken sewing machine needle and both local sewing shops closed, for starters), I got my costuming "homework" mostly finished and delivered to the theater last night. I also stayed long enough to finish the tenor's Act I jacket (hem the lining, attach a lapel carnation, and sew on too many buttons) and collect more homework for today. The Costume Goddess and her second-in-command have planned things well and been very successful in recruiting slaves, um, acolytes to do their costume bidding. The first dress rehearsal is tonight and all the major pieces are finished. (In shows where, as in this one, a majority of the costumes are new rather than from stock, people often don't have their costumes until the final dress, or even opening night!) Now it's down to tweaking; dressing the ladies' Act I hats, securing hems and fastenings, etc.

While I really miss being part of a show, I don't miss having to make the nightly Tech Week rehearsals, which tend to be exhaustingly long and tedious as the cast adjusts to working on the set instead of in a rehearsal hall. As a costume flunkey, I can come and go as I please and the costumers are grateful for my contribution to the cause. But after seeing some of the ladies' dresses, I do wish I were in this one. That's one of the things I love about community theater - playing dress-up! :D

Anagrams

Quote of the day (on the subject of anagrams), from wordsmith.org: "If you torture words enough, they confess to anything." To play with anagrams, go to http://wordsmith.org/anagram/ and have fun.

That was fun!

Last night we went to see a community theater production of The Wizard of Oz which was based heavily on the movie. The cast was enormous - 40 children, and a total of 52 castmembers! It was also very much a community theater production: several siblings among the children, and many of their parents either on stage or backstage. In some respects it resembled a recital by the local school/dance studio, but in general it worked quite well.

It's been a long time since I saw the movie; I had forgotten how very much music there is in it, so the music director certainly had his work cut out for him. There were one or two slightly ragged places, but given the amount of music the cast had to learn, I thought they did an excellent job. This production even added at least one bit (The Jitterbug) that was cut from the movie and another number the director wrote to cover a costume/make-up change during Dorothy's return to Kansas. That extra number worked quite well and I'm sure was helped by the littlest singer, who repeated the refrain several times (surprisingly big voice for such a tiny child!) while the others exited.

The audience was full of families with small (perhaps 10 and younger) children, which was good to see, as community theater audiences, at least at the shows I attend, seem to have an ever-increasing median age. The director had the actors make several entrances and exits through the house, not just the wings, which both involved the audience members more and solved what had to be some pretty hairy traffic problems backstage, with all those cast members.

The music sounded good, the "crowd scenes" on stage generally worked very well, and the costumes for the principals were quite good. I was particularly impressed with those for the Tinman, Scarecrow and Lion. The Lion's suit looked quite good (in that small house, you can't get away with too many shortcuts), moved well, and allowed the Lion to move well. The Tinman's suit was an impressive reproduction of the movie version, and I was amazed at how much the poor guy inside was able to move (though he seemed to do more kneeling than anyone else, which had to be difficult in that suit).

The hall has new mikes, which have a wire that comes around the side of the face. I found them a visual distraction and unnecessary. Unless the quality of their sound reproduction was extraordinary, I didn't hear anything that sounded like it was being picked up on a mike. (The performing space is a concert hall, not a theater, so I'm assuming it's designed for optimal unmiked acoustics of what's on stage.)

All in all, a fun show full of laughs; just what I needed after the past couple of weeks. (Friend2 needs a mastectomy, but the Chief's brother had his surgery and is home recuperating.)

The prayer list is growing by leaps and bounds

Where to start? Let's see:

• Friend1's husband had reconstructive foot surgery back in March. Friend is helping husband relearn how to walk while still working full time.
• Friend2, stationed overseas, had to return to the States for needle biopsies about a week ago after a suspicious mammogram. Scheduled for surgery next week, type of surgery to be determined by the biopsy results. Her family, of course, is still overseas because they couldn't afford that many plane tickets.
• Neighbor's daughter (also a friend of ours) just moved in w/ our neighbor because of his failing health. However, she won't be there for the next couple of weeks, as she's having major abdominal surgery next week and will be recuperating someplace where she won't have to deal with steps.
• Friend3 had facial reconstructive surgery which turned out to be much more painful than she was prepared for. Couldn't sleep because everything was so tender, and the swelling and bruising were also much worse than expected.
• Friend4's 90-ish mother fell, went into the hospital, had a heart attack while there. Was finally moved to a nursing home over the weekend.
• Friend 5's mother died unexpectedly last Thursday.
• Chief's mother called the other night to say his brother was in the hospital with kidney stones. This is day 3 and we're still waiting to hear the test results, and whether he'll have to have surgery or they'll be able to zap the stones w/ sound waves.

Today was the capper. We were all herded to together for a "mandatory" meeting. Turns out someone who had been working in another section of the office (I didn't know him) was found yesterday, had apparently died over the weekend of gunshot wounds that appeared to be self-inflicted.

I'd really like to hear some good news for a change. Please? Pretty please? Or at least no more traumatic news for the rest of the year; I've already had my fill!

Now that we have the permits

... things have started to move out at the cabin. When we got out there this weekend, we found the cement-block foundation in place and the basement floor poured and curing. No rain predicted for the next few days, so the concrete should be cured by now. Next step will be laying the floor joists for the addition and tying them into the existing structure. They could have the whole thing under roof by the end of June, and the whole thing ready for furniture and decorating perhaps as early as the end of July!

But of course we had to throw a wrench into the works. Part of the project includes rehabbing the downstairs bathroom to replace the 30-year-old harvest-gold tub/shower combo, which not only puts the UGH in "ugly" but is starting to crack and leak. Oh, and of course the only way to get at the plumbing for it involves removing a kitchen cabinet on the other side of the wall. (Whose "brilliant" design idea was that?!?) In discussing ways to install a shower stall while leaving room for proper plumbing access, the Chief suggested swapping the bathroom w/ the utility room across the hall. Out came the measuring tape and we decided that was the way to go - the utility room is a few feet longer and a foot wider, so that will be the new bathroom and the current bathroom will become the utility room. Because of course nearly everything currently stored in said utility room can be moved to the basement of the addition. There you are, out of your difficulty at once. But of course it remains to be seen how much we've just added to the price tag of this "little" venture...

We've got avian tenants at the cabin.

A pair of sparrow-sized birds have decided to build a nest above the kitchen window out at the cabin. This must be a recent move for them, as we noticed them several times collecting bits of dried grass and such. (Once I noticed one of them trying to pick up several such bits. Birds' beaks not being designed for such maneuvers, it was rather interesting to watch it try to figure out how to keep one bit of grass in its beak when it tried to pick up another.) Although, come to think of it, the nest as a whole didn't look all that new. Maybe they're just remodelling.

I have no idea what kind of birds they are, and of course they would never hold still when I ran for the bird book. They're also apparently very camera-shy, as they were nowhere to be seen when I had a camera in hand. (Or maybe they're just being uncooperative.) At any rate, they're about the size and color of sparrows, though one (the male?) is black-capped or -headed. The dark coloring seems to come down to perhaps its neck, so I don't think it's a chickadee. I'll have to try to get some pictures the next time we're out there.

Somebody's got a big new toy!

The Chief stayed home from work this morning to await delivery of a table saw, a purchase he's been researching and dreaming about for at least the past year. He ordered it online a week or two ago, and today was the big day. There's now a huge box near the kitchen door, waiting for him to open it up and tear into it (and figure out how the heck he's gonna get that big, heavy thing down the basement stairs!). Not sure what he's going to pick as the maiden venture for this thing, but I do know he's gonna have a lot of fun with it.

My toys are smaller; the biggest one is an electronic keyboard, which probably doesn't weigh much more than the dolly needed to transport the new table saw. But that's OK. If he's happily building stuff with all his power tools, maybe he won't notice when I go off to rehearsal. ;)

Lots of sewing and gardening lately

I've finished my 3 dresses for the show and was very proud of myself for figuring out the costumer's sleeve variation on the blue dress without benefit of written instructions and only a sketchy phone explanation. The Costume Goddess was having another costume-sewing party today so I took the blue dress with me. I ended up not doing much - sewed up a pair of elastic-waist pants and pinned a hem - because they have a four-footed feline allergen. However, I did leave w/ some "homework" so I'm hardly slacking off.

On the way home, I stopped to get some flowers for the flower boxes we bought last night to hang from the deck railings. Because the deck actually gets some sun most of the day, I got to buy sun-loving plants - geraniums, alyssum and lobelia. The plastic stake in the lobelia claims they like part to full shade but the info I find on line tells me they like full sun. So I planted most of the lobelia in the flower boxes but two in the driveway (dappled sun to full shade) and we'll see which spot makes them happier.

Some local varmint is gonna end up in a soup pot if it isn't careful - at least 3 times this week the same pot of impatiens has ended up tipped over. The pot's plastic, so it won't break, but getting knocked sideways and its dirt scattered has got to be traumatic for that poor impatiens. Short of installing surveillance cameras, I don't expect we'll ever learn the identity of the culprit or culprits, let alone catch it or them, but I sure do wish the neighborhood critters would leave my flowers alone!

Planning for my next theater fix

I fully expect that by fall the Chief will revert to being a Theater Widower. After doing no theater at all for a year, I'm compiling a spreadsheet of which local theater companies are doing what this season, which shows are musicals, who's directing, and audition & performance dates, trying to determine what shows I can do when and how many I can cram into the season. Though the Chief may have to deploy at the end of the year, in which case I'll probably only do one fall show in order to be able to spend time with him before he has to leave.

The 04-05 season was my record - 4 shows. This number is quite low compared to one friend of mine, who always seems to have one show in performance as she starts (or continues) rehearsals for another. And yes, she also has a full-time day job. When does she sleep? You'd have to ask her.

Today's word

is terpsichorean. (Sorry, Maryland fans, I don't believe it's etymologically related to your beloved 'terps.)

terpsichorean (turp-si-kuh-REE-uhn, turp-si-KOR-ee-uhn, -KORE-)
adjective: Of or relating to dancing.
noun: A dancer.[From Terpsichore, the Muse of dancing and choral song in Greek mythology.]

The word Terpsichore [turp-SI-kuh-ree) is the feminine form of terpsichoros (delighting in the dance), a combination of Greek terpein (to delight) and khoros (dance), which is ultimately from Indo-European root gher- (to grasp or to enclose) that's also the source of chorus, carol, choir, garth, court, and garden.]

So I guess Terpsichore would be my muse - though I'm not much of a dancer, I do enjoy it, and I've loved "singing choruses in public" since I was introduced to the choral arts in grade school. Interestingly, if this site is to be believed, it seems that of the 9 Muses, only Urania and Clio had little or nothing to do with the arts. The others are all described as singing or supporters of poetry or some such.

Sigh; it's always something.

We've begun the long ordeal of adding a bedroom & bathroom to our weekend place ("the cabin"). The permit requests were submitted in January or February; they finally came through about 3 weeks ago. Tonight we got a call from the contractor telling us that the septic tank has obviously not been cleaned out in several years. How odd; I know we paid to have that done when we bought the place 4 1/2 years ago. So now we have to pay, again, to have the darn thing cleaned out so the contractor can dig it up and replace it with a larger one. (The current tank isn't rated for the larger bathroom total we'll have once all this is finished.)

But the good news is that the section of deck where the addition will go has already been removed and the footers for the addition are already in place. Our contractor will try to have someone clean the septic tank tomorrow so he can get moving with all this. The Chief may go out on Saturday to check on things and take some pictures.

Theater envy

Went to the board meeting last night for a community theater company I've worked with for several years. Five of the 8 of us are in rehearsal for the company's June show or something else. I'm so jealous; it's been nearly a year since I did Mikado, and I haven't even auditioned for anything because of my work schedule. The withdrawal has been hard. I've gotten over the DTs, but I still crave my fix.

Since my schedule didn't normalize in time for me to do the June show, I'm sewing costumes for it. Or at least I'm supposed to be; I'm still hunting for one or two bits & pieces for my sewing machine, like the box w/ the zipper foot in it. The Chief straightened up the basement while I was on the road, you see; I was lucky I could find the sewing machine!

But I enjoy sewing costumes, and am looking forward to seeing them on people. The dresses are full length and full-skirted, in a fabric that will flow beautifully (at least the 3 I have to work on). They'll eventually have "drapy bits" and some sorta spiffy trim; can't wait to see them "in action". I've already arranged to have Tech Week off from work so I can sew in the green room during rehearsals, making last-minute adjustments, putting on finishing touches, and the like. Best of all, our costume designer is a real pro - learned the ropes in the costume workshops of NYC, has designed patterns for a major pattern company for years, and even has her own line of costume patterns. I call her the Costume Goddess and feel privileged to work with her.

Ah, that's better.

We now have pots of very cheery impatiens on our front steps, torenia filling the holes in the pansy bed and in a few test patches on the north side of the house, and my 4 mazus reptans in the driveway.

I'm impatient; I want the mazus to start spreading, or at least show signs of spreading, right now! However, we got some rain Sunday night and drizzle much of yesterday; maybe it's wishful thinking on my part, but at least 1 or 2 of the mazus look like they're a bit, oh, fluffier or something.

Today's horticultural vocabulary word

... is torenia. I'll have to check the little plastic spike w/ the full name, but this might prove to be the ideal flower for the north side of the house, which gets no direct sunlight once the trees get their leaves. It reportedly likes part sun to full shade, spreads to about 12", tolerates less-than-ideal soil - all conditions that pertain on the north side of our house. I planted 16 (4 each of 4 colors) of the little darlings this afternoon, half of them in a patch near the side of the house, the rest along the fence. If they turn out to like that spot, I'll definitely be buying more. The flowers look to me like something between a snapdragon and a viola, so I used a few to fill a few holes in the pansy bed, too. Check this space in a month or two to see how they're doing.

Getting psyched for tomorrow

Stopped by the deluxe nursery (not the neighborhood one) after work today. Probably spent too much, and they didn't have pansies or osteospermum, but I came home w/ lots of impatiens to go into the pots on the front steps, some more to fill the gaps in the pansy bed, and 4 plants of mazus reptans to test in the center of the driveway. As the Chief helped me get everything out of the car, he asked "only 4?" I explained that, at $7 a plant, I was going to start w/ four and see how they do. If they die, I may well just go with cuttings from the vinca on the side of the house. But if the mazus does well, I'll go back next year and get more.

Tomorrow the Chief plans to dig up the center driveway strip and fill it with proper dirt, after which those mazus plants go in. If they do what we want, they'll thrive and spread, keep the dirt in place, and be a heckuva lot better looking than the weedy junk dirt that's there now.

What was I saying about that new toy?

After a couple of weeks, we decided the new phones weren't working out - the signal strength needed a major dose of Geritol! So last night we went back to the Verizon store and traded our LGs for Motorolas. We won't get a good test of the signal strength until our next trip to the cabin; here's hoping it's better, 'cause we only get one trade-in on the phones.

Grandiose gardening dreams

I'm probably biting off more than I can chew, but I've been searching for groundcovers to plant in the strip down the middle of the driveway; something esthetic that will tolerate a lot of shade and will keep the dirt in place. Found a wonderful gardening site in my electronic explorations: . "Paggers" has some very nice photos of the incredible variety of plants in her garden, their names, research she's done into them (she seems to be very conscientious about getting the names right), and descriptions. As an amateur who's got a heckuva lotta gardening to learn about, I find the articles helpful without being too technical, nor do they talk down to those of us with little knowledge in these things.

As a result of finding her site and some others, my shopping list for the nursery now includes:
- mazus reptans or creeping veronica (veronica umbrosa) to fill in the patch of dirt down the center of the driveway
- the spider variety of osteospermum (just a few to go into pots on the front steps)
- a few impatiens to go into pots alternating w/ the osteospermum pots
- pansies and violas to fill the gaps in my pansy bed

With any luck, I'll be able to find everything in one place and the plants won't die on me. If whatever I put in the driveway dies on me, I can always fall back on cuttings from the vinca and pachysandra we already have.

Some days ya just can't win

Woke up w/ a migraine (actually, it was probably gearing up last night around bedtime); meds and caffeine took care of it after an hour or two, but then it came back this afternoon, requiring more meds and caffeine. My stomach didn't love that.

Today's pollen count is close to 800 for trees. Wouldn't ya know, the Allegra refill I ordered last week still hasn't arrived, and I took the last one Saturday night. I got a 3-day stopgap supply Monday, but finished that off this morning, so I had to make yet another trip to the pharmacy, this time for a 2-week supply. That refill had better show up soon!

Between allergies and migraines taking all my energy and wind, I was forced to punt choir practice. Not fun; because of all that traveling, tonight's would have been the first practice I'd managed to make since, oh, November or so. I had to cancel this week's voice lesson, too. As a result, I'm going thru some major singing withdrawal; sure hope the pollen count is low enough by Sunday that I can sing rather than croak.

Thank God I'm married to a wonderful husband; I called him this afternoon while waiting for the meds to work on the 2nd migraine and asked him to put the turkey (parts, not a whole birtd) in the oven when he got home. When I got home from work and he saw the state I was in, he didn't just put the turkey in the oven, he fixed the whole dinner.

Must be Monday

My last day off before heading back to the work routine. When I went out to my car to start my round of errands, I turned the key and nothing happened. Nothing. Not even that "you left your lights on, fool!" click. Back into the house I went to call AAA; couldn't find my card without a great deal of searching, and then it was the old one, that expired last year. So after I called for a jump, I had to call a different number to request new cards.

When I finally had a running car again, I went over to the local nursery to inspect their annuals. Nice impatiens, but not much variety in their pansies, and they didn't have any of the "spider" variety of osteospermum that we'd seen in Cape May and wanted to try.

I had planned to do my grocery shopping at the commissary but haven't found the paint scraper to remove the expired stickers and replace them w/ the new ones. With the trees pollinating their little heads off right now, I may have to have the Chief do that for me.

Don't know what today's pollen count is, but it's gotta be in 4 figures; every time I've opened the front door, I've been seized with another sneezing fit and my eyes start burning worse. Poor Chief; he's giving the crabgrass its first haircut of the year and will have to take all his clothes straight to the laundry room and himself straight to the showers to get all that poiso-, uh, pollen off. Otherwise, I'll have one miserable night ahead of me. I love spring, but OH, how I hate pollen!

On the road again...

First it was work, then it was pleasure.

Last weekend I got to the cabin for the first time in months! I went out Thursday to get things in some semblance of order, the Chief joined me Friday afternoon, and my parents arrived that evening for the weekend. They loved it, of course, and are already talking about coming out in the fall to see the addition (assuming it's done by then - the construction and sanitary permits, applied for in January or February, were only granted last Friday).

This weekend the Chief & I went to Cape May, NJ, for a long weekend. The (very gusty!) breezes off the ocean seemed to blow the worst of the pollen inland; I was merely sneezy, not incapacitated, despite all the time we spent outside walking around looking at the beautifully restored buildings and some lovely gardens. Oh, and listening to the ocean and watching the whitecaps. We drove up to the Wildwoods one day and strolled along the nearly-deserted boardwalk. The few things open seemed to be getting their pre-season fix-ups; nobody seemed to be open for business, or perhaps we were just too early in the day.

We also walked thru a model home on a lark. Four stories, 3 houses from the beach (although, as tightly packed as those places were, it might have been only 1 or at most 2 houses from the beach in a "normal" neighborhood), 3300 sq. ft., 4 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths, huge kitchen, hardwood floors throughout, and even an elevator! The sales office was closed (good thing - no "vultures" wanting to get our names & address), but someone we ran into who was also having a look said he'd heard those places were going for "1.8 to 2.2". I guess he couldn't bear to utter the word "million" in there. The Chief enjoyed himself greatly by calling my folks and telling them about this little townhouse we'd looked at, as if we could actually buy the thing!

The next weekend is gonna be spent at home for a change. After seeing all those Cape May gardens, many of them every bit as shady as ours, we've got lots of plans for our yard...

You know you've been doing too much travelling...

...when you don't think to check the date on the milk before pouring. My morning coffee ritual consists of pouring my mug at least half full of milk, adding a bit of sugar, nuking it, and only then topping up w/ coffee. I definitely wasn't awake this morning because it wasn't until I got to that last step that I noticed the consistency of my skim milk was more that of buttermilk. Bleah!!! Thank goodness I'd just bought a fresh gallon of milk, so I still had milk for coffee.

Not the news I wanted...

... but not unexpected, either. Once again I'm not getting promoted to the next GS grade. Sigh. The demographics are absolutely killing me; those of us stuck in the bottleneck have to do at least twice as much as anyone at other grades to break outta that logjam. Frustrating, discouraging, demoralizing (fill in other adjectives here)... I can't help but think of what the Red Queen told Alice (chapter 2, Through the Looking Glass): "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

At least this year all of my managers seemed concerned about helping me break out of the logjam for next year. My first-line manager has a pretty specific plan and the next level up offered to help me work on my package to play up the things I've done that make me stand out. This is the first year I've ever gotten any feedback that would actually be helpful, though of course I won't know just how helpful until we go through this exercise again next year.

OK, enough whining. Now I can quit wondering "is this the year?" and get back to work.

Something to look forward to...

Got some new DVDs today: Galaxy Quest and, as a splurge, the entire first season of The Muppet Show! Now the hard part - deciding which to pop into the machine first...

Dreading my performance "feedback" session tomorrow.

The dreaded moment comes tomorrow - I get the "feedback" on my annual exercise in futility; um, I meant, my performance review. For those of us paid on the government's General Schedule, "promotion" refers to getting raised to the next GS level w/ a concomitant salary increase. (The paltry annual "cost of living" increases don't keep up w/ inflation and pale in comparison to what Congress votes themselves every year.) At my agency, promo money has been very tight for the past several years; our chief of staff professed herself "delighted" that of the 71 people at my GS level in my organization, they would be promoting 7 or maybe even 8! At this point my number of years in grade exceeds my grade, hence my reference to the annual exercise in futility. Nothing quite so demoralizing as being told "sorry, we wanted to promote you but ran out of money before we got to your name." Not very helpful, either; "work on your proofreading" or "you need to work a bit faster" I can control, but I can't do squat about how much money Congress allots our agency for personnel and how the higher-ups then divvy it up among the organizations.

So after all this time, I'm looking forward to getting tomorrow's session over with. No matter what they tell me, they aren't gonna like my reaction. If they didn't put me in, they'd better make sure there are no sharp or heavy objects within reach! If they did but I got weeded out along the way, well, I won't be happy. And even if the news is good, it's been too long in coming. I'll have to try to look pleased while thinking, very loudly, "it's bloody well about time!!!!"

Not whining about this new toy

Will wonders never cease - got new cellphones for the Chief and me and am not complaining about having to learn how it works. (See November comments on figuring out how to make my iPod and digital camera do their tricks.) Yes, I admit it did take me several minutes to figure out how to enter names into the Contacts list, since the user's guide doesn't tell you the trick to getting past the first letter assigned to each number on the keypad, but the rest of it really has been pretty easy. Once I got the letter thing down, I got my entire family's phone numbers entered in about 10 or 15 minutes, have already changed the ringer (the default setting was really, really obnoxious!), gave the Chief's phone a test call, and changed the wallpaper so we can differentiate our otherwise-identical phones at a glance.

Lesson learned - forget the Verizon Wireless store! I went there first, waited 45 minutes, then had to leave before seeing a salesperson because I had to be somewhere else. After that other business was taken care of, I went to the Verizon "kiosk" at the Circuit City about 2 blocks north. What a difference! Far more ambient noise and visual clutter, but the helpful and pleasant Carla was able to take care of me right away. I was able to settle on a model, get the new contracts (another 2 years!) signed, the new phones programmed, and get on to my next errand in less time than I wasted in the Verizon store.

"We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog..."

Did you miss me? ;)

With any luck at all, work will now get back to normal - no more intensive (and intense) traveling and something resembling a more normal schedule and workload. (8-hour days and 5-day weeks would be lovely!) To celebrate what I fervently hope is my last business trip for a very long time, I'm taking off the whole rest of the month. I'll probably spend a lot of it getting caught up on things like laundry and maybe even doing some baking, partly to mark the return to normalcy; I will definitely be making my annual pilgrimage to the local nursery for annuals.

Last year's "stop-gap" pansies faked me out; all but 2 of them not only survived the winter but thrived. I haven't the heart to rip them out when they're so bushy, bright and flourishing, so I'll probably only get a couple of impatiens plants to replace the pansies that didn't make it. (Unless someone would like to suggest another colorful gap-filler that's compatible w/ pansies?) The apartment complex behind us finally took out the enormous, 4-story-tall tulip tree that was so rotted it had become a major hazard. It'll be interesting to see how the additional sun affects how the dogwoods and other trees do this year. All those crocuses I planted last fall bloomed and faded while I was on the road, but the Chief got pictures for me. The new daffs seem to be doing well so far; I think it's still too early for the allium to make their appearance.

The ground has settled very unevenly in the wake of last year's plumbing excavation, so it looks like we'll soon be buying a lot of dirt and filling in all the uneven places. Much of the grass seed didn't come up, so that'll have to be taken care of, too; neither one of us much likes seeing all that bare orange clay. Ugh!

Enough procrastinating; time to start unpacking...

Another technological baby step

I had a nice bit of birthday money to spend so I actually bought an iPod today. Not the Nano; I wanted the additional storage. 30 GB is probably overkill, but given how much I want to load, I doubt it would take me long at all fill up the 2 or 4 GB available on a Nano. As for why I shelled out all that money, I figured it was a much more efficient way to take my music on the road with me than my Walkman, travel speakers, and a stack of audiocassettes. (Yes, I admit it - I even own LPs that I bought new, not from a thrift store.)

Now to figure out how to get this thing working. I'm impatient - I want to know how to use my new toys (the iPod, my digital camera, etc.) without having to go through the learning process. Not that I resent the owner's manual, I just resent the time it takes to figure out how to make my new toy do its tricks. Ah well, enough whining. As a former supervisor used to say, "Suck it up and drive on."

Thanksgiving in Florida

... just feels weird. 80 degrees and gorgeous on Thanksgiving Day? No, it's supposed to be cloudy, dreary, and maybe in the 40s. Actually, the weather was perfect just about the whole week we were there for Thanksgiving w/ my snowbird parents. The only hard part, of course, is leaving those balmy 80-degree temps to return to a clime easily 50 degrees colder! Brrrrrrr!

I'd been so preoccupied with other things that I'd never considered the possibility of seeing hurricane damage. My first reality check was as our plane was landing and I spotted an entire housing development with bright blue roofs. "How interesting and what a pretty, tropical color," I though to myself. This is Florida, after all, where the houses are often painted in bright colors - why should the roofs be any different? Then I noticed other onesie-twosie blue roofs, and the penny dropped fully when I saw partial blue roofs. In other words, I was seeing tarps covering damaged or destroyed roofs.

Once we landed, we hardly saw a single tree that hadn't lost at least some of its foliage; some had been stripped entirely, though not as many had been snapped off as I'd have thought, given all the wind damage. Broken or missing signs, piles of storm debris, boarded windows in many of the buildings, hand-lettered "Yes, we're open!" signs on otherwise empty-looking buildings - Wilma left not a block untouched, though a few buildings apparently survived relatively unscathed. What also surprised us was how long people had to wait to get power restored; waits of as long as 2 weeks weren't unusual!

All in all, it makes me realize just how very lucky we were to survive Hurricane Isabel a few years ago with only a 2-day power outage and some demolished bushes. It could have been much, much worse!

Domestic is all well and good but...

Can't wait until things at work settle down so I can get back to auditioning, rehearsing and performing. As it is, all I have time for are domestic pursuits - playing in the mud, planting bulbs and pansies, making the occasional pot of soup, baking, and too little reading. I enjoy all these things, but they don't get me out of the house and connecting with others (sorry, giving the cashier my grocery coupons doesn't count). And while the larder's full and the laundry's getting done (and even folded!) fairly regularly, I've been feeling kinda boring. After all, no one cares that I'm caught up with laundry & grocery shopping, and most folks aren't really all that interested in my little spurts of gardening - it's not like I'm breeding rare, priceless orchids or anything else out of the ordinary.

More color

There's something to be said for waiting. The nursery had end-of-season pansies for only $1 each. I bought 10, all different, and planted them as soon as I got home, while there was still a little bit of rapidly-fading light. They're now occupying the bed Chief worked up on Sunday. Since the dirt was already enriched and worked over, it only took about 10 minutes to get all my pansies planted. Can't wait to see how they look in daylight...

Spring color, part 2 of 2

Well, I ran out of bulb-planting time last week - only got the allium bulbs in. Today was absolutely gorgeous - sunny and in the 7os! Chief & I took advantage of the superlative weather to spend several hours out in the yard.

When I wasn't helping him with his projects, I dug holes - LOTS of them! - and finished planting all my bulbs. All 50 daffodils and all 90 crocuses! If you're fortunate enough to live somewhere with real dirt (black or brown, loamy, full of earthworms), this may not sound like so very much work. However, in our area that means digging all those holes in clay and working in some proper dirt and probably some bulb food, for insurance. I think most, if not all, of the Eastern Seaboard must sit on this red-orange clay. Makes great bricks, I suppose, but not something you want in your garden. You really have to put your back into it to dig up your garden and you absolutely have to work in some peat moss, humus, sand, real dirt, or other soil enricher (usually over at least 2 or 3 successive years), then hope for the best.

A few hours into it, I looked at how very many bulbs I still had to plant and thought "I'll have to finish this another time". But when I started planting on the side of the yard where we had the plumbing excavation back in August and realized the clay wasn't nearly as dense there, I started digging broader holes and putting several bulbs in them (one hole got at least a dozen crocus bulbs). So while I planted 140 bulbs, I did not dig 140 holes! However, I did expressly tell the Chief, "If I ever want to buy this many bulbs again, stop me!"

For his part, he dug up a flower bed, sifted the top few inches of dirt through a box filter he'd made himself to get rid of the rocks, roots, and other trash, then dumped the dirt back into the bed and worked in a 20-lb. bag of enriched dirt. This to get it ready for me to plant some color, so I'm off to the nursery later this week to get some pansies as stop-gap color. Come spring, though, that bed's earmarked for impatiens.

He also raked up nearly all of the last of the straw the excavators put down after the plumbing "adventure", bagged up the straw for the lawn trash pick-up, dug up a lot of the dirt and redistributed it (it's been settling very unevenly), put down lots of grass seed, and watered the lot.

Now we're joking about filling the tub with Ben-Gay and marinating our overworked muscles in it. Wonder just how stiff I'll be tomorrow...

Medical maintenance

What a week this has been. In addition to yesterday's mammogram retakes, I went in Monday for a blood test, which came back normal for everything they were looking at (cholesterol, blood sugar - the usual suspects), and this afternoon it was back to the dentist for some fillings. Never my favorite thing, this was worse than usual because he was working on wisdom teeth, so I had to keep my jaw open so wide I thought my jaw would separate. Maybe by tomorrow it'll feel normal again. And I'd forgotten how the anesthesia travels to weird places, like my ear and the bone under my eye on that side.

I guess it's true: after 40 it's all patch, patch, patch.

HUGE sigh of relief!

Got my retakes done today. OUCH! Today I learned that "do over" mammograms involve a smaller plate (i.e., stretching and flattening only part of the breast) and greater pressure. Or at least that's what it felt like. They did both the diagonal and horizontal takes, but the radiologist was able to see enough from those two that I didn't have to do the sonogram. If I'd had a vote, I'd've had the sono first, in hopes of being able to skip the mammo! But the news is good - just fibrocystic tissue, which made for a slightly anomalous initial mammogram, but nothing worse. Nothing serious, nothing scary - we're going out to dinner to celebrate, and I'm hoping the restaurant has champagne!

"It certainly entertained the gapers."

Well, the furnace guy collected a new story this afternoon. We told him we needed someone to go into the crawl space under the house and check the ductwork because we know we've got a hole or break or something there from the raccoon. We told him the story and at first he just laughed in disbelief. "Raccoon?!?"

You see, a year ago August we had gone to bed w/ the kitchen skylight open. In the middle of the night, a juvenile raccoon, presumably smelling whatever we'd had for dinner that night, came walking across our roof toward the source of the aroma and fell into our kitchen because the skylight screen wasn't designed to hold any weight. "Then up on the roof there arose such a clatter, we sprang from our bed to see what was the matter." As we ran from the bedroom into the kitchen, the raccoon ran from the kitchen into the bedroom. We immediately shut the door and called Animal Control. I gotta hand it to them, we had an Animal Control officer there at 4 a.m., probably called from a sound sleep, no more than 45 minutes after the arrival of our unwelcome guest. We told him how said guest had made his entrance, whereupon our officer carefully slipped into the bedroom with his cage at the ready. Guess what? NO visitor! AC officer and Chief moved the bed (and all the shoes and sweater boxes stashed under same) to find the little rotter had pried up a floor vent and crawled into our ductwork! We never did smell it, so we know it didn't die in there. Chief noticed the next time he did yard work that a slatted ventilation grill in the crawl space had a section broken out. Given that and other evidence, we assume our probably rabid little friend took advantage of a join in the ductwork to make a break for freedom and eventually make its way into the crawlspace and thence into the neighborhood at large.

The next couple of times we had the system checked, I tried to get the tech to check for a break in the ductwork but they never did. I think this 3rd time was the charm; Chief even showed the tech where he'd nailed mesh over the grill to keep the critters out, because they've pulled down some of the insulation under the house for nesting or other, more nefarious purposes. Someone's supposed to call us tomorrow to arrange to repair the ductwork. Good thing - with all the gloom-and-doom forecasts about how heating prices are going to shoot up this winter, we DON'T want to be heating the neighborhood, or even the crawlspace!

Spring color, coming right up!

Well, not literally, at least not yet. I took today off work to take care of various business; getting the furnace checked out, running errands and - drum roll, please - planting lots and lots of spring bulbs. How many is "lots"? 175! I've got 35 Allium bulbs - new flower for me; can't wait to see how they work out - 50 assorted daffodils, and 90 assorted crocus bulbs! I absolutely love crocuses - they're my "hang in there, spring is coming!" flower.

I had planted about 200 assorted bulbs (snowdrops, anemones, grape hyacinths, miniature daffs, and crocuses, of course) across the little slope in the front yard several years ago, but most of them quit coming up. Don't know whether disease or insects got them, but now I get to spend a happy couple of hours digging holes and planting what I know will be a wash of color come spring. And because the package tells me the allium comes up in late spring, I'll be getting color for a while - first the crocuses, then the daffs, then the allium. Or maybe the daffs & allium will come in together. I don't care - it'll be fun to see what happens, and what colors and varieties I get.

Maybe it's not so bad after all.

I talked to my doctor this afternoon about the results of my first mammogram. She said it showed some thickening of the tissue, and a "questionable masslike area" but no calcifications, which is a good thing. There was also some "blurring", which is part of why they want to do another, magnified mammo, with a sonogram for independent confirmation, I suppose.

After talking to my breast cancer-survivor mom last night and learning this today, I'm feeling much less worried about the whole business, although I'm still not exactly looking forward to getting another mammogram so soon.

Ladies, do your self exams!

Pray for me!

Been catching up on a lot of medical "routine maintenance" lately - dentist, allergist, mammogram, annual "date w/ the stirrups". No fun, but some things ya just gotta do. Most of the follow-up has been merely tedious (e.g., flu shot, 2 cavities to be filled).

However. I had my mammogram last week and learned today from my HMO that they want to "re-image" my left breast and do a sonogram of it, just for good measure. My mom had breast cancer several years ago, so the implications of "re-imaging" are scarier than I care to dwell on.

I'm scheduled to go back for more pictures next Wednesday. That means a full week of fearing the worst. I'll happily take all the prayers and good wishes you can spare!

Festivals

Reading back, I see I wrote that the fall festival "always seems to get good weather". Not true this year! It was raining steadily when we woke up Friday morning and didn't stop for good until late Sunday morning. The festival parking is in a field, so when Chief asked about going later in the day or even waiting until Saturday, I insisted on going as soon as possible, before the mud got axle deep in the lot entrances. (Trust me, dislodging a car mired axle-deep in mud is not quick, not easy, and definitely not cheap!)

Unfortunately, the weather definitely affected attendance by both visitors and vendors; the crowds were even lighter than we expected, and there were a number of empty vendors' spaces. A shame; this is definitely one of the better shows. It's large enough to be interesting but small enough to be manageable (not like some that cram hundreds of vendors into the county fairgrounds, for instance), and because it's juried, you can be sure that all the vendors make all their own things. No dishtowels reconstituted into a different shape or anything. And what I enjoy almost as much as seeing all the lovely, well-made things is getting the chance to talk to the makers about materials, techniques, what got them interested in (woodcarving, weaving, ironwork...), and so on. Several of the vendors are also re-enactors and wear their period clothing and are happy to explain the old techniques of barrel-making, why they use this particular breed of sheep for the wool in their sweaters, or where they managed to find the tools to make their instruments. Because the people are invariably emotionally involved in their craft, they always tell a wonderful story about it. That was one advantage to Friday's rain - because the crowds were so light, I think the vendors were happy to have someone interested in their work. The woman doing the Swedish weaving (basketweave throws with multi-colored embroidery) was good enough to show me how she did the patterns on the throws, the woodcarver answered my husband's questions about which woods were easier or harder to work with, the woman with the braided rugs was quite proud of the fact that in the past 5 or 6 years she's completed 160 rugs (her goal was 125!) and the cooper shifted easily from telling us the history of the "barn stars" he makes to the barrels he also makes. Well worth the price of admission!

By contrast, the apple butter festival was a disappointment. I think it suffered by being visited so soon after the other. This festival may not be juried. It was certainly more eclectic, with a lot of vendors the Chief described as "aging hippies"; my term was "New Age". As with the other, the rain hurt them; we saw a lot of empty vendor spaces, though we couldn't tell whether they hadn't shown up, or had merely decided to cut their losses and go home early.

And with all the rain, I didn't even pull out my old camera, let alone my new one. Maybe the next time we're out at the cabin...

"Spam" is a 4-letter word.

I really, really didn't want to do this, but may yet be forced to. Lately, nearly all the comments to my blog have been from spammers. This is really irritating; my blog is NOT intended as a place for some anonymous scam artist or self-promoter to make a fast buck. Not to mention that my ego is a little dented; the 2 or 3 readers I have aren't commenting, while the spammers have no qualms whatsover about butting in and making irrelevant, self-aggrandizing sales pitches disguised as comments. I suppose I should be grateful that at least they've been clean. So far.

Please, don't make me use word verification.

New toy!

My digital camera arrived today! Three guesses how I'll be spending the rest of the evening (well, after I bake an apple cake and deliver some "neighbor debt payments"). This is good timing because the Chief & I will be going out to an autumn foliage festival Friday and an apple butter festival on Sunday.

The Friday fest always seems to get good weather, perfect for driving around and looking at the scarlet of the sugar maple farms. I just hope they got enough rain this year to make the leaves turn bright colors before they turn brown and drop off. The festival has lots of crafts workers, furniture makers and the like, and draws large enough crowds that it inspires the neighbors to have little stands of their own for quilts, home-made baked goods, produce, and the like. The apple butter festival is smaller, but equally fun - I want pictures of the HUGE kettles they make the apple butter in. They often let little kids stir the stuff, but have to put them on a stool so they can reach, because the kettles are big enough to hold 3 or 4 toddlers.

I'm hoping the "Gourmet Termite" will be there again, too. The first time I went to the apple butter festival was while the Chief was deployed overseas. Among all the watercolorists, other artists, goodie sellers, and the like was an older gentleman with an old van he'd converted into a mobile woodshop! Calling himself The Gourmet Termite, he made custom signs while you waited. I had him make a sign for our cabin, selecting a sign template from among the many he offered, giving him the text and letting him know the local emergency crews mandated house numbers at least 4" high. While he worked on it, I nosed around the van, which was a marvel of ingenuity. Ship's cabins are marvels of efficient use of space, but this van easily rivalled them for efficiency. He had a shallow set of shelves in the back end of the van that stored what looked like various types and sizes of drill bits, while the body of the van housed his sign templates, paint, varnishes, and other supplies. The Chief would really love seeing the van and talking to the man when he's not busy. Although, come to think of it, I'd have a hard time tearing him away - he might want to sign up as an apprentice! :D