A year ago I ginned up a list of "maybe possibly kinda sorta" goals for the end of 2009:
hang some pictures at the cabin - the Chief & I got several hung over the summer
hang some pictures in the living room at the house - nope, not a one
expand my crockpot repertoire - oops, forgot about this one
start dancing again, at least a little bit - too much theater to squeeze this one in
maybe start using the gym at my new building - did start out with this one, though it only lasted until April
expand my musical/theatrical horizons - nailed this one - learned that "woodgrain" technique, learned age make-up, performed in a new musical for the Fringe Festival
This shows you why I don't generally bother with "resolutions". Pictures in the living room may happen this year, but not until the dust has settled from the 2-bathroom-1-bedroom-closet remodeling project. Heck, once that's finished, we may go on a picture-hanging spree, since we'll be rearranging furniture anyway.
New crockpot recipe this year? Maybe - I'll hafta ask the Chief to go thru my crockpot cookbook and pick something he'd like to try.
Maybe I'll try yoga - I know a fair number of people who love it, and the neurologist even suggested it for migraine relief (although simply cutting out caffeine has already done wonders).
Was out & about yesterday making some food deliveries to seniors and while I was reminded about the challenges the city faces in clearing away so very much snow (my little Civic handled it like a champ!), I also saw: - a gentleman in a city-issued dayglo-yellow vest very carefully helping a woman who was struggling through the plow drifts with a cane and 2 laden shopping bags. She was floundering with every step, yet he didn't seem to be rushing her at all. - a bus driver who tried to signal traffic to stop so a walker-using passenger could get safely across the street after getting off the bus. - the lady who had a Christmas card for me when I brought her delivery by.
And I got to be a little bit of a hero because I was able to "fix" one woman's electric can opener. I've never owned an electric one myself - a regular one is cheaper and takes up much less space - but I finally managed to get it to work after wiping every surface I could manage with a paper towel. I was a little surprised by the fuss the organization folks made over my success, but of course a working can opener was a big deal for this woman. After all, what good is canned food if you can't get the cans open?
It started snowing Friday night and didn't stop until late Saturday night. This morning I measured 18" in the front yard, and that wasn't even a drift! Things I'm grateful for, given the way we got clobbered by this storm: - that the Chief had made a grocery run early in the week; - that he managed to get out of the area before things got too bad; - that we didn't lose power (and heat!); - neighbors who helped me dig my car out (the snowplow ridge came to within 6" of the door handles); and - the friend who called to see if I needed anything, knowing the Chief was out of town and assuming my asthma was a concern since I didn't make it to church; and - a day off work tomorrow so my "shoveling muscles" can recover a little. Would be nicer if I were snowed in with someone, but the phone works just fine, everybody and their brothers seem to be spending a lot of time on Facebook updating their status and such, which gets pretty entertaining, and I've got 4 new movies that just arrived a week or so ago.
I spent too much time doing what I always do when "the weather outside is frightful" - I cooked! Lemme tell you, simmer oxtails on the stove for 7 hours and you barely have to look at 'em to get the meat off those bones! The recipe calls for frozen mixed vegetables, of which we had none, so I added frozen peas, green beans, and sliced up some carrots instead. I took some of that soup over to the neighbor who made chicken noodle soup for the Chief when he was so sick with the flu.
I also pulled some pumpkin out of the freezer and made 2 loaves of pumpkin bread, one of which I took, still warm, to the shovel-wielding neighbors. Still some thawed pumpkin left, so I went online and found a recipe for pumpkin pancakes. Three guesses what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow, now that I get to sleep in and can have a nice, leisurely breakfast.
I also cooked some turkey for dinner last night, and have pre-snow leftovers. Add that to the cooking-frenzy output and I now have way too much food for one person to eat before it starts to spoil. I'm hoping to get a friend or few to come by for a meal, will take the rest of the pumpkin bread to work on Tuesday, already gave half the grapes to the shoveling neighbors, froze half the soup I didn't give away, but I'll have to do more if I don't want all this food to go to waste.
Taking one night off in the middle of over 2 weeks of rehearsals & shows. Mother Goose opened Thursday. Not a perfect show, but none of the glitches was serious and the audience didn't seem to care. It's been an education (and fun!) doing panto, in which the audience is almost another character among the dramatis personae. They boo & hiss the bad guys, cheer the good guys, warn them not to listen to the evil queen or that there's a ghost behind them - kinda weird to be booed, not applauded, when you finish a number, but when you've just finished being all creepy and spooky, that's a good thing, at least in panto.
Got to my first blocking rehearsal for Grand Duke and was reminded why I enjoy working with this director. She got a lot of movement and business roughed in very quickly, ran it a few times. This is gonna be fun.
Thinking about what to audition for next. One local company is doing Mikado; I'd only do that show again if a miracle happens and they offer me Katisha (I anticipate some stiff competition). I wouldn't expect them to consider me for Pitti-Sing - they'd have no trouble finding young mezzos. Moon Over Buffalo also sounds like fun; three roles I'd go for, though I have no idea how stiff the competition would be.
TW came down w/ the flu Wednesday. Because we've both had our seasonal flu shots, we're assuming this was swine flu. He wasn't too miserable at first, but by the time I got home Friday (after getting a swine flu shot & a Tamiflu Rx), his fever was up to 103.6! This was at 5 p.m.; I ended up missing the first half of Act I because I wasn't about to leave until TW's doctor's office called back. Fortunately, he didn't need to be seen, so I changed the sheets, made him put on clean pj's and set him up with plenty of fluids and such before I left. By yesterday, thank God, his temp was down to 99.x, and when I got home from work today, it was finally, blessedly normal! Tonight he even ate a full meal, after having little or no appetite even yesterday.
A friend is having a reading of her one-act tonight but I opted to stay home. Nice to have a night at home for a change, instead of racing home, inhaling dinner, and flying off to the theater an hour later, or even having a more leisurely dinner before heading to rehearsal. And given that I have choir practice tomorrow and then Mother Goose performances thru Sunday and another Duke rehearsal Monday, if I didn't stay home tonight, that would be 17 days without a break! I really need one night when I get to bed before 11 p.m.
I've now been caffeine-free since Tuesday. After being awakened around 4 a.m. 5 days running with nasty headaches, my doc referred me to a neurologist, who told me that pattern was classic for "rebound headaches", when the body finishes metabolizing caffeine. Four in the morning?!? When I hadn't had much caffeine, and none of it after 10 am? Apparently so. This is particularly weird because mine isn't a big caffeine habit - I fill the cup halfway with milk, then top up w/ coffee, so I'm getting no more than the equivalent 12 oz. a day of straight coffee; less caffeine than in a 12-oz can of Mountain Dew.
Since Tuesday morning I've had no caffeine that I know of - only herb teas or decaf coffee, haven't had any chocolate. The "withdrawal" headaches have only been an occasional nuisance, not the constant I'd feared from seeing others go cold turkey from caffeine, though yesterday's did segue into a migraine.
The doc recommended a couple of books, one of which outlines a "migraine diet", which I'll definitely try. He also said yoga has been shown to help, and there's a yoga studio near our house; guess I'll check out their class schedule. It's much too soon to tell how all this will affect my migraines, but I've got my fingers crossed.
I've wasted a bit of time this weekend trying to find someone who'll cut my hair for my Locks of Love donation. The first two times I donated, I just went in, got my hair cut, and done. This time? Not so easy, for some unknown reason or reasons.
Attempt #1: Called the salon around the corner, which I haven't patronized in lots & lots of years. I thought I had made a 4pm appointment w/ Matilda, but when I got there, I was told Matilda had already gone home for the day. I took in the spanish-language program on the tv, looked around & realized I was probably the only person there not a native speaker of Spanish, saw how many people were waiting (for their turn? for the person they'd brought there?) and realized that perhaps the person who took my name didn't understand "appointment", only the time I was asking about.
Attempt #2: Called the salon I used last time, where the woman had done a particularly good job (20 miles away, which is why I didn't call them first). I was told that donation cuts are done on a walk-in basis only; probably because they do it for free, so paying customers get first dibs. Fair enough. So I drove over there after church this morning only to find a different salon there! I tried to reach TW to have him check the address (which of course I'd left at home, along w/ the phone number), but no luck, so I went into the salon anyway. The gentleman working alone had obviously never heard of Locks of Love and couldn't take me anyway, so I drove back home, having wasted nearly 2 hours in the process. Once he realized what I was trying to accomplish, he did say that what I was trying to do was nice. I wish now that I'd had the presence of mind to give him the donation instructions I'd printed out.
Plan C: Call the place again, find out exactly where they are, landmarks and all, and try again next weekend.
I've just been grossly overscheduled - Mother Goose rehearsals Monday thru Thursday, then my February show had its first read-through last Friday and a chorus rehearsal Sunday. Tonight I have the night off, then Grand Duke rehearsals tomorrow & Sunday, Mother Goose Monday and so on. Load-in is the day after Thanksgiving, set build that Saturday, then it's Tech Week. My poor husband really will be a theater widower for a while there, as Mother Goose has a pretty heavy performance schedule - Thursday thru Sunday for 2 weekends, with 2 performances on Saturdays. And since I put in for my end-of-year time off before I even auditioned for Mother Goose, I can't really take any time off to recover.
As if my Tech Week schedule weren't full enough, I have a class at work that Wednesday and am called for jury duty on Thursday.
So if you don't hear from me for a while, I'm probably at work, in a theater, asleep or perhaps in a padded cell...
Spent a good chunk of yesterday in the kitchen - made a big pot of veggie-beef soup, this time w/ some oxtails. The oxtails were disappointing: 1) They were supposed to thicken the stock but that didn't happen; 2) I had to trim a LOT of fat off the pieces; and 3) the meat was very tough and difficult to get off the bone. The soup's still good, mind you; it's only that the oxtails were not a particularly successful experiment. The only problem is that TW bought 3 1/2 lbs of the stuff, which I had divided into 4 smaller portions; 3 of those are still waiting in the freezer. Maybe I need to look through our cookbooks for an oxtail soup recipe so I can use that stuff up.
The pea soup I made for TW turned out every bit as thick as he wanted. He was insistent that it be "thick!" so I made it w/ 8 cups of water instead of the 12 cups the package instructions called for. This stuff was so thick, it would make traditional oatmeal seem runny; I dubbed it "pea sludge". TW was delighted with the results, though I did have to add back quite a bit of water when I heated it up for dinner tonight.
In honor of Veterans Day, go to http://www.letssaythanks.com/Home1024.html and pick a card design to send to some servicemember stationed overseas. You don't get to pick who gets it or even which theater it gets sent to, but someone somewhere will get mail out of the blue letting them know their service is appreciated.
From my e-mail. I've seen this before, but it's particularly appropriate today. Thank God for all those down the years who've served, whether conscripts or volunteers; God bless them and their families and friends. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I put my carry-on in the luggage compartment and sat down in my assigned seat. It was going to be a long flight. 'I'm glad I have a good book to read. Perhaps I will get a short nap,' I thought.
Just before take-off, a line of soldiers came down the aisle and filled all the vacant seats, totally surrounding me. I decided to start a conversation. 'Where are you headed?' I asked the soldier seated nearest to me. 'Chicago to Great Lakes Base. We'll be there for two weeks for special training, and then we're being deployed to Iraq.'
After flying for about an hour, an announcement was made that sacklunches were available for five dollars. It would be several hoursbefore we reached Chicago, and I quickly decided a lunch would help pass the time. As I reached for my wallet, I overheard a soldier ask his buddy if he planned to buy lunch. 'No, that seems like a lot of money for just a sack lunch. Probably wouldn't be worth five bucks. I'll wait till we get to Chicago.' His friend agreed.
I looked around at the other soldiers. None were buying lunch. Iwalked to the back of the plane and handed the flight attendant a fifty-dollar bill. 'Take a lunch to all those soldiers.' She grabbed my arms and squeezed tightly. Her eyes wet with tears, she thanked me. 'My son was a soldier in Iraq; it's almost like you're doing it for him.'
Picking up ten sacks, she headed up the aisle to where the soldiers were seated. She stopped at my seat and asked, 'Which do you like best, beef or chicken?' 'Chicken,' I replied, wondering why sheasked. She turned and went to the front of plane, returning a minute later with a dinner plate from first class. 'This is your thanks.'
After we finished eating, I went again to the back of the plane, heading for the rest room. A man stopped me. 'I saw what you did. I want to be part of it. Here, take this.' He handed me twenty-five dollars.
Soon after I returned to my seat, I saw the Flight Captain coming down the aisle, looking at the aisle numbers as he walked. I hoped he was not looking for me, but noticed he was looking at the numbers only on my side of the plane. When he got to my row he stopped, smiled, held out his hand, and said, 'I want to shake your hand.' Quickly unfastening my seatbelt, I stood and took the Captain's hand. With a booming voice he said, 'I was a soldier and I was a military pilot. Once, someone bought me a lunch. It was an act of kindness I never forgot.' I was embarrassed when applause was heard from all of the passengers.
Later I walked to the front of the plane so I could stretch my legs. A man who was seated about six rows in front of me reached out his hand, wanting to shake mine. He left another twenty-five dollars in my palm.
When we landed in Chicago I gathered my belongings and started todeplane. Waiting just inside the airplane door was a man who stopped me, put something in my shirt pocket, turned, and walked away without saying a word. Another twenty-five dollars!
Upon entering the terminal, I saw the soldiers gathering for their trip to the base. I walked over to them and handed them seventy-five dollars. 'It will take you some time to reach the base. It will be about time for a sandwich. God Bless You.'
Ten young men left that flight feeling the love and respect of their fellow travelers. As I walked briskly to my car, I whispered a prayer for their safe return. These soldiers were giving their all for our country. I could only give them a couple of meals. It seemed so little...
A veteran is someone who at one point in his life wrote a blank check made payable to 'The United States of America' for an amount of 'up to and including my life.' That is Honor.
Yeah, I know, long time no see and all that. Maybe I'll get caught up, but in case I don't - TW and I took a nice, long vacation in Yorkshire, where we had surprisingly decent weather, saw a bunch of really cool old stuff and I gorged visually on the lush scenery. We got home Thursday, then hared off to the cabin Friday afternoon to try to recover.
Panto rehearsals kicking into high gear - runs starting tomorrow night, load-in the day after Thanksgiving.
Got a comprimario role (i.e., named chorister) in Grand Duke, which starts Fri/Sat/Sun rehearsals this Friday. That means that, unless the chorus gets a bye somewhere, I'll have a rehearsal EVERY DAY between now and Thanksgiving! =:o So if you don't hear from me, it's because I'm at work, at rehearsal, or trying to get a little bit of sleep. Pity my poor theater widower - he won't be seeing much of me until the panto closes Dec. 13th.
Fall was particularly colorful this year, and the sugar maples were downright spectacular.
My sister-in-law's mother had been living with her, my brother since they bought their house over 13 years ago. Docs didn't think she'd survive to see them married 6 months later, but she defied the odds and lived long enough to see my bro & SIL bring home and start to raise not just one but two kids, who doted on their Granny. Granny finally succumbed to her many serious health problems a couple of weeks ago. My poor SIL is having a really rough time of it, given that as a nurse, she was the primary caregiver and for the last year or two, had made it a full-time job. Worse, she buried a beloved aunt the day after her mother died. Pray for the family, please.
And after not having much time to follow FB or friends' blogs, I started getting caught up tonight and learned that a friend lost his girlfriend's mother, then the girlfriend herself, barely a week apart! They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but given this kind of double whammy, who wouldn't prefer to be a weakling! Please pray for G, too.
But life goes on. L&D became grandparents again yesterday morning - bouncing baby girl, 7 lb. 10 oz and "long" (the beaming grandpa didn't say how long, just that she's tall).
Yesterday the remainder of the Jonathan apples became applesauce (too long on the counter instead of in the fridge had them getting a bit mealy) - oh, how wonderful the kitchen smelled! It was a team effort - I cored the apples and threw 'em in the pot with some cinnamon, nutmeg & ground clove (no need to add sugar), and the Chief ran the results thru his food mill to sieve out the skins and most of the seeds and things I missed when I was prepping the apples. Yummy stuff!
Today our errands included a fill-a-few-holes grocery run so I could make chicken tetrazzini. Now we've got a big pot of the stuff in the fridge, all ready for tomorrow's dinner. We also picked up a big slab of salmon on a big, fat sale, so dinners this week will probably alternate between the salmon and the tetrazzini.
The tetrazzini takes a while to assemble, even if you don't count the time to cook the chicken or turkey for it, and the cream it calls for (I substituted half-and-half) isn't exactly heart-healthy, but after all the raw weather we've had lately, I really wanted some comfort food, and the Chief isn't big on soup.
Oh, and I bought my very first bottle of sherry for the tetrazzini. I had no idea there were so many options - very dry, medium-dry, cream... I haven't tasted the stuff yet, but I suppose I'll do that eventually, if only out of curiosity piqued by reading so many novels that mention the stuff.
Tuesday the Chief & I ended up ordering a new washer & dryer from Sears; front-loading washer, so we splashed out on the pedestals for them so we don't have to bend over quite so far when loading & unloading them. The new items came today; with the pedestals, they don't clear the ductwork by very much at all! (Our basement has a low ceiling, which means the ductwork is so low that a 5'6" person can't walk under them on tiptoes.) We were told that the doors for the washer & dryer would swing in opposite directions so you don't have to work around the doors to transfer laundry from the washer to the dryer. Well, yes, they do open in opposite directions, but because of where the water & gas hook-ups are in our basement, we'll now "get" to work around both doors. Ah well, it's not as though we're doing laundry for a big family; we usually do only a couple of loads a week.
The old dryer is still in place because today's deliverymen aren't certified or authorized or whatever to do the gas disconnect/reconnect. They did do a great job of getting the 27"-wide machines down the stairs and into the basement thru the 29 1/2" doorway with nary a scratch, however, so we're happy.
The new machines, like all the machines on the market these days, have electronics running the show, so they chirp and sing as they go about their business. Until we have a chance to put them thru their paces, though, we won't know whether we'll be able to hear all that upstairs, nor whether we'll find it annoying, soothing, cheery or just different.
The Chief just put a "test" load in the washer to see how it works. We may have to relearn how to do laundry, since everything we've read says a front-loader takes longer to run, but spins out so much more water than a top-loader that you don't need to run the dryer nearly as long. As long as it does the job, though, I'll be happy.
The Chief & I just got back from a lovely long weekend with friends in the Outer Banks of N. Carolina. I now understand why it's such a popular vacation spot - it's lovely, and not as heavily commercialized as so many of the popular beach towns along the Maryland/Delaware/New Jersey shoreline. We got to see lots of pelicans, herons & egrets in flight, as well as the usual shorebirds.
Our friends have a place down there which they rent out during the high and shoulder seasons and which is nice and airy. Not on the water, but you can see both the ocean and the sound from it. The Chief has always wanted a place near the water, and while the cabin had satisfied his wish for a vacation place, now he's talking about selling it to finance a beach place. As always, he picked up a few real estate magazines, and we'll probably contact our friends' agent. Friends of ours at church also have a place down at the Outer Banks, so we'll be asking them a few questions about their experience too.
Now the latest plan/pipe dream is to retire to somewhere between Williamsburg and the Norfolk area, with a beach place at the OBX. However, if we vacation someplace else appealing, all that could change again...
I just learned that auditions & callbacks for the show I want to do next will be held while the Chief & I are on vacation. I've already e-mailed the director & MD about scheduling an audition, but I might end up having to sit this one out, or just doing chorus (since I've done shows with both of them before, they'd let me do that without auditioning). I know I could get into the ensemble, but I want to do more than that. It would be ever so much fun to get the character mezzo role, but now that I won't be able to audition alongside the other contenders for that role, well, let's just say I don't fancy my chances.
On the bright side, though, if I don't do this one, that frees me up for other shows running at about the same time.
We got new, casement windows installed in the blank wall in the kitchen last week, and replaced the narrow little sash window over the kitchen sink with a larger, casement window. The lovely thing about casements is that when you open them, you get the benefit of the full window opening, not just half of it, so they bring in all kinds of wonderful breezes. We also had the same contractor replace the siding on the back of the house (the addition the previous owners had put on). Looks much better now.
The painters started scraping old paint on Monday, started priming yesterday, and the first of the actual paint went on today. Even though they're still priming. I'm not sure what they're methodology is, but as long as they do a good job, we aren't going to worry about it too much.
As if we weren't spending enough money, the transmission in the washing machine died on Sunday. I went down to transfer the first load of wash into the dryer to find that it was still sodden - the spin cycle no longer spins. Monday a repairman came out and diagnosed the bad transmission. The machine's too old to make it worth the cost of the repairs, so last night found the Chief & me in Sears checking out washers. Such a romantic date! :p
... and catching up here. Another apple cake just came out of the oven about half an hour ago, so the house smells pretty darn good. The Chief made chicken soup with the carcass from the roast chicken from the other night, and he whipped up a batch of Moroccan carrots with a little coaching (and some cumin-hunting - the bottle had fallen off the spice rack).
Got another audition, for G&S's The Grand Duke, in a couple of weeks, trying to pick something to sing. One suggestion, the fan song from Mirette, is reminiscent of one of the 2 big songs of the role I'd like, but a) I only heard it for the very first time last night and 2) the song doesn't really grab me. Ah well, I have a few other possibilities and 1 or 2 more lessons between now and then.
Got some nice feedback at panto rehearsal the other night. We were going over all the chorus' music (I really like a couple of the original songs - well written both musically & lyrically), one of which starts with us rather than the accompaniment. The MD said we'd probably need it led by a chorister with a strong ear - looking & pointing directly at me. Some of the music has some tricky syncopations and intervals, really testing whether you're paying attention. I was sitting close to the piano, where I could hear the accompaniment readily. Apparently our accompanist could hear me, too, because as we were leaving, she said as she passed me that it was nice to work with "real musicians". I don't usually consider myself a "real musician" as my only music education has been what I've picked up in choirs and voice lessons, but I guess it's enough that I can hold my own in these rehearsals.
Made an apple cake this afternoon with some of the 1/2 peck of granny smiths the Chief brought home last week. Didn't make the house smell as good as usual only because it's a gorgeous day and we have all the doors & windows wide open.
I also tried Beth's Oatmeal Cookies. The batter was rather liquid, so after the first 2 cookie sheets when into the oven and I saw how much the cookies spread, I added probably 1/2 c. of flour to the remaining batter. I wasn't thrilled with the results but they aren't bad, and the Chief thinks they're just fine. However, I also have an Outrageous Oatmeal Cookie recipe I cut out of the paper this summer which it says was adapted from a Starbucks recipe. It calls for a variety of dried fruit - regular & golden raisins and dried cranberries. The Chief is a purist about his oatmeal raisin cookies, so if the first attempt turns out otherwise OK, I may be asked to omit the cranberries in future.
Part of the cake will go across the street to a neighbor whose birthday is coming up on Wednesday and who loves this recipe as much as the Chief does. The cookies will go to the beach with us next weekend, to share with the friends who will be letting us share their beach house for the weekend. I'll also make another apple cake for the weekend - I went ahead and cut up the necessary apples while I was prepping them for today's cake - especially as she's the one who gave me this version of the recipe, which has become my favorite of the 3 versions I've tried.
