Clever doc

Thursday I almost included a bit of fingertip among the dinner ingredients. The doc who steri-stripped it told me I'd have to keep it clean & dry for 5 days. In addition to more steri-strips, he gave me a few exam gloves, with instructions to cut off a finger and slide it over the "patient". So far it works just fine - I waited until after showering to change the "glove" and was surprised to see how well it worked. And it's so easy - no trying to juggle ointment & bandaids w/ one hand.

Yes, it's too early to think of Christmas but...

The leader of my church choir has been soliciting music suggestions for the Advent & Christmas seasons. One of our members, after protesting that it's still August, still summer - too soon! went on to suggest a parish Christmas carol party. Any interested parties could just show up in the church social hall, free to bring instruments, voices and perhaps snacks, and we could sing ourselves hoarse. I think that sounds like a WONDERFUL idea! I sure hope it happens.

I don't know if the Chief would come - he's not much for singing. However, if I can assure him that some of the parishioners will be bringing their babies and toddlers, I'm sure I'd have NO trouble persuading him to attend with me.

Is Facebook "ruining" blogs?

Have you noticed that some of your favorite blogs aren't being maintained as they once were? Ever wonder if perhaps the writer is posting status updates to Facebook instead?

When I go days (or a week or more) without a blog post, it's usually due to one of these reasons: 1) nothing new to write about ("geez, again with the plants!"); 2) too busy, or busy recovering from being busy, to write. I don't have internet access at work (Uncle Sam doesn't want us checking Facebook or shopping on line on the taxpayer's time), but obviously lots and lots of my FB friends do, or are still on summer break or otherwise have more time for FB than I do. Seeing how often some of them update their status makes me wonder if that's taking the time they used to spend blogging...

Another FB phenomenon I'm sure you've noticed along with me is the number of FB "friends" who are people you don't know all that well, if at all. Sure, we all have someone we can call in the wee hours in a crisis, but how many of your hundreds of FB friends fall into that category? Some of my FB friends are people I did a single show with, X years ago. That's OK, as long as they don't mind that I've blocked all the quizzes and nearly all the apps. But I do wonder sometimes why someone I haven't heard from or laid eyes on in a number of years wants to "friend" me - (brings back of hand to forehead with a melodramatic flourish) am I nothing more than a notch on their FB belt? :-)

Rearranging the furnit-, um, flora

Chief mowed the front lawn today, decided it was too humid to do the back. Instead, he decided this would be a good day to plant the hellebores we bought a coupla weeks ago. (North side of the house, so at least we were working in shade.) He dumped in a big bucket of compost and 2 bags of real topsoil (the stuff we'd bought at the exchange was mostly clay!), mixed it all up, then dug holes so I could install the hellebores. I also moved another one over from another bed. One of the new hellebores was looking awfully sickly; we're hoping it'll revive now that it's properly planted.

The Chief had dug up what's probably lilies of the valley and moved them to build the bed we just populated. I took the displaced plants and put them in the hole left by the hellebore I moved, then dug up a fern that was hanging in from last year and put it in the bed along the driveway. Assuming it continues to hang in there, it'll be the first of a variety of ferns I want to plant in that bed. Ferns will certainly be an improvement over the weeds that occupy most of that bed, along with some vinca and a few daylilies.

Where did the evening go?!?

Came home from work and started right into food prep: Brownies for work, salsa for the weekend, veggie lasagne ditto, involving lots of chopping, shredding, grating and other mutilation of vegetables. More friends at the cabin this weekend, need to make sure we can feed the vegetarian as well as the carnivores. But why did I think it would be no big deal doing all this in one night?

Doing our part for the local economy

The Chief and I are planning to put some new windows in the kitchen and went out Friday after I got home from work to see the finalists. We're getting casements! Only "lunch money" more than double-hungs, which surprised me. From there, we went for dinner at my favorite Italian place, where I had the fettucine verde. Spinach noodles, big chunks of eggplant, plenty of ricotta - I love it so much, I almost always order it when we go there. Last stop Ikea, where we got a heapie-cheapie bookcase to use as shelving in our bathroom at the cabin, some $10 folding chairs that we'll use for the open house in a few weeks, and a throw rug to put by the back door to catch the worst of the dirt we track in.

Yesterday we stopped by Borders on the way to E's birthday party because I had several gift cards burning a hole in my pocket. I ended up with 4 CD's (2 musicals, 2 Ella Fitzgeralds) and 6 or 7 books. It was FUN walking outta there with a big bag of goodies, nearly all of them for me! (I did get a few books for friends' new baby.) And I still have one more untouched gift card...

This afternoon, the Chief decided on the spur of the moment that it was time to restock our wine supply, so off we went to buy for ourselves and for the open house. We also stopped in at the Base Exchange to look for a few things. We ended up with a bright yellow metal colander (my grandmother's has long since earned its retirement), a few kitchen gadgets for the cabin, and 3 more CDs, including a 3-disc Dorsey Bros. set. The Chief then wanted to check out Barnes & Noble, where I bought yet another CD and a book for myself and one for a gift. We also stopped into Williams-Sonoma and found tattersall tablecloths on a HUGE sale - nearly 80% off! We took our half-price tablecloth to the register and learned that it was further reduced, so we went back & grabbed the other size and ended up getting both for less than the marked-down price on the larger one. (This is where the textile junkie does her "got a HUGE deal!" dance.)

The things for the cabin are in their "staging area", the books are shelved, the CDs have all been loaded on my iPod, and I can't wait to finish my library books so I can dig into these new ones.

Happy Birthday, both of you

The Chief & I went to a 50th-birthday party Saturday for a friend I've known since we were in our 20s, and I've known E's wife almost as long. Some of the other guests were people they've known even longer. They were smart and ordered in BBQ, then supplemented w/ add'l sides and a wonderful carrot cake from a bakery. (We contributed a home-made peach pie.)

Today I went to a 60th-birthday brunch a former colleague threw for herself. I was a little apprehensive about going when I realized I wouldn't know anyone but the birthday girl (the Chief didn't even know her, so he opted to stay home), but I needn't have worried. I ended up having a nice chat with one woman who promised to e-mail me her pie crust recipe (calls for vegetable oil for the shortening, and soy milk), and a friend or cousin of the birthday girl who teaches "everything!" music at the elementary school level but is also interested in language. Talking food, music, language - lovely! M decided to do this at her synagogue to accommodate the crowd of 40 or so, and they put on a nice little brunch spread - bagels, cream cheese, lox, hummus, some wonderful baba ghanouj, a mixed-greens salad w/ strawberries in it, then an excellent sheet cake & make-your-own sundaes. M's 2 sisters presented a slide show of old family photos starring M - I think we all loved seeing her in ringlets, Mary Janes, and party dresses.

It was fun seeing the similarities & contrasts in the 2 parties and their honorees, and I'm glad I was able to attend both. Happy birthday, both of you.

Touch of theatrical withdrawal

I gotta get to a show soon. I haven't seen anything since my Fringe show closed a couple of weeks ago, and because of planned travel there's no point in my auditioning for anything yet, which makes it a bit sad to have to delete all the audition notices that have started hitting my Inbox. :( A local company is doing Gypsy - maybe the Chief & I will go see it so I can get a theater fix.

Peachy

The Chief bought more peaches this week; a LOT more peaches (3 quarts). Not as ripe as the last batch, but now that I'm once more in possession of the "good" peach pie recipe, I'm sure they'll bake up just fine. Though I still can't find my pastry cloth and rolling pin sock...

Come by the house in a few hours - it'll smell wonderful!

Parties and perambulations

All of a sudden we're looking at a nice string of parties and travel. This past weekend was the block party with our cabin neighbors. This coming weekend brings a 50th and a 60th birthday party, we're planning an open house out at the cabin for Labor Day weekend, and hoping to host my parents there the following weekend.

Travel includes a long weekend trip to Williamsburg, another long weekend at the Outer Banks, and our week-and-a-bit vacation in England, which takes us within shouting distance of holiday trips to NYC and KC.

I don't see how I'll be able to do any shows that open before December at the earliest, which means the Chief won't become a Theater Widower again for a couple of months.

Flora & fauna

The Chief & I spent the weekend at the cabin, the highlight of which was the 4th annual block party. The hostesses managed to get the one nice day of the weekend, and temps barely in the 80s - perfect for lounging around under the trees and visiting with part-time neighbors. We also met a couple who own a place a block or two over and who sided their home with log siding a few years ago. The Chief was very interested in hearing about how they did it and took the husband back to our place to get his opinion on our doing the same. After they'd been gone a while, the wife & I went back to find them. I ended up giving her a tour of the place. She admired the quilt I'd found for the upstairs guest room (see below); turns out she does a lot of needlework. I'm hoping to get a chance to see her wares; might be suitable for Christmas presents.


We saw a lot of deer this weekend, several hummingbirds (makes me want to load up our feeder), and even some wild turkeys wandering across the road as I was heading home. No woodpeckers this weekend, but that was my first turkey sighting in 2 years, so that makes up for it, I guess.

We went over to the nursery again and left with 4 more hellebores and a walnut sapling. The walnut is only a couple of feet tall; a "volunteer" the squirrels planted in one of the pots meant for sale. The nurseryman got it for free, so he gave it to us as a "free to good home". Now to find out what we need to do to make sure it doesn't up & die on us (like the parsley plant I bought and managed to kill).

Florida-lush impatiens!

When we used to visit my parents in Florida when they were doing the snowbird thing, I used to be terribly jealous of the magnificently lush impatiens they had down there. We'd come home, I'd wait eagerly for late March to get my own bedding plants, but my impatiens never got as big or lush. Last year, in fact, they barely got a foothold; we never did figure out why they fared so poorly.

This year, however, has been a banner year for my impatiens. We had a very cool, very wet spring that lasted well into June, and even at the end of July we've had very few days with highs in the 90s and have enjoyed relatively low humidity. My impatiens seem to be loving that - they're the biggest, lushest flowers I've ever had - I may even have to move a few because they're crowding each other so!



Better still, I have a bonus - some tiny little volunteer violas (I think) that somehow managed to sneak into the impatiens bed and hold their own against the bigger, bolder flowers. Can you make out those tiny little splashes of yellow & blue amid all the pinks?

Thoughts on directors

Most of the shows I've done have been musicals or operettas and in nearly all of those, I've been in the chorus/ensemble. I've learned a lot watching how the principals did their thing, so that when I was cast in a small role, with 75 lines (Comedy of Errors, Abbess Emelia), I wasn't completely at sea (even if I did keep waiting for the rehearsal accompanist to show up). Aside from a comment from the director during the "cut-up" rehearsal ("I don't know where that came from, but keep it!"), I didn't get much in the way of direction. Since I had one of the smallest roles in the show and the 2 romantic-lead couples pretty much carried the show, I didn't think much of it. I did have a scene with one of the female leads in which I thought she was misinterpreting the language. The director said nothing, so I did the same. To this day, I don't know if the director was just that hands-off or really didn't realize the error.

When I got my first lead, as Pitti-Sing in The Mikado, I similarly got very little specific direction. In that case, I think that was largely because the director had her hands full, as she was also playing Katisha. I did go up to the AD at one point and ask her about a scene in which I felt a little adrift; she reassured me that my instincts were just fine, but she'd say something if she thought it necessary. It probably also made a difference that the director realized I probably knew the show better than she did, having done it once already and seen several productions of it. At one point during the run, she even teased me that "you probably could play just about any role in this thing!"

I thin the most direction I ever got was playing Mae Peterson in Bye Bye Birdie. There was one scene the director kept running because we just weren't giving him the right reactions. That was about the physical interaction; I don't remember getting any direction about line readings, though I did ask about a couple of pronunciations as I worked on a New York Jewish accent.

In fact, looking back, I think all the directors I've worked with have avoided giving specific line readings (at least in my hearing), even in cases where I thought the actor in question was either doing it incorrectly (that one Comedy of Errors scene) or that a different reading might have served the text better or been more in character.

Being fairly new and inexperienced in having lines to give, I think I'd feel more comfortable if a director would address my line readings, whether to tell me I'm on the right track or to tweak an emphasis here or an intonation pattern there. Not sure if that's driven by insecurity, a desire for more attention, or just my love of all things language.

Similarly, I'd welcome suggestions for ways to bring the character to life physically as well as verbally - a gait, a gesture, posture, etc. At least let me know if I tend to, say, thrust my head forward or to stoop in certain situations if those don't suit the character or, worse, affect my vocal production.

I wonder if this kind of general, hands-off style is typical of all directors, or just those in community theater. Looks like it may be past time for me to sign up for an acting class or two and get some insight.

Fruit pies are in season

I baked a peach pie Wednesday for the Chief's birthday, and an apple pie yesterday. The peach pie wasn't a big success - had to use a recipe with almost no seasoning, so I had to guess at what and how much to add, and I didn't have the thickener (instant tapioca) it called for, so it was pretty runny. It didn't help that I added too much water when making the crust, so it was pretty soggy. Fortunately, the Chief had scored some wonderful farmer's-market peaches, so the peaches themselves tasted MAH-velous!

The apple pie was full of Macintosh apples - turned out a little dry for my taste, but the Chief thought it was absolutely fine, claiming he doesn't like "juicy" pies. I watched the water when making the crust this time, and used butter instead of milk or an egg on the top crust, which made it nice & crisp.

But I sure would love to know where my pastry cloth & rolling pin sock are hiding. I have dishtowels that will do in a pinch for the pastry cloth, but I need my rolling pin sock to keep the dough from sticking. Ah well, I managed, and the Chief never noticed the difference.

"Get out of Hell free"

My Fringe show has closed and cast & crew have all been given our "get out of Hell free" cards. The last show was the worst - a leaky pipe had shorted out half the sound board, so that we could only just hear the higher-pitched notes in the sound track. I think we should've given the audience a refund and a sympathy card for suffering through our attempts to sing along with a sound track we couldn't hear. The reviews were just short of scathing - the reviewers did keep in mind that they were reviewing people, with feelings, who were painfully aware of their shortcomings. I just checked the ratings of the 100+ Fringe shows - on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being "Pick of the Fringe", we were one of 4 shows to get a 1.

One lesson learned from this - I will do my utmost to avoid at all costs doing another musical with a canned sound track. Even when I did a show with our 2 accompanists behind the set, they could at least hear us well enough to adjust when we got out of synch with them. The best situation is a conductor you can see, waving that magic wand that keeps us all together (assuming we're paying attention to it, of course), but after this, I've learned NEVER to take live music for granted, even if they're placed where we can't see them. As someone else mentioned, it's easy to understand why the Broadway performers supported the musicians' strike!

Other lessons
- Check the MD's credentials to make sure he or she has done this before, successfully.
- If they can't come up w/ an audition accompanist, ask whether there'll be a rehearsal accompanist. If not, don't audition. (I admit it - trying to learn my music from an mp3 was a huge challenge, which I never met to my satisfaction.)
- Try to work with companies that tend to get an audition turn-out greater than the number of roles being cast. Stiff competition for roles tends to produce better performances than little or no competition.
- Working with the playwright can be challenging if said author/lyricist/composer can't maintain a degree of objectivity about his/her "baby".
- Theatrical talent and savvy can come in teenage packages.

Domestic perfume?

TW's birthday is coming up, but he decided he didn't feel like going out to dinner last night after all. Instead, I made one of his favorites - pot roast, with homemade mashed potatoes and Moroccan carrots. That and a bottle of wine made for a very nice dinner, and the smell of the pot roast as it simmered in the crockpot all day permeated the house - yummmm!

Over too soon!

That was quick! My cabaret workshop has come & gone; Monday thru Thursday working on mic technique, patter, delivery, arrangements, etc., culminating in a little performance & reception for family & friends last night. I think we all sang the best of the week. I'm even pretty happy with how I did, despite forgetting a few chunks of the 2nd verse of "Distract Me". There were more friends in the audience than I'd expected - not just my husband, our songwriter neighbor and another neighbor, but my last voice teacher (one of my classmates is taking from her) and a few theater friends. I always feel better knowing I have friends in the audience.

It was fun: the 10 of us in the class had ourselves a little "love fest", cheering each other on; I enjoyed the singing despite my memory lapses; working with our brilliant accompanist made me feel like a pro - I wanna do this again! Fortunately, our instructor e-mailed us all to say there'll be a "weekend intensive" version coming up sometime this fall. I responded immediately, asking to know the second a date is decided so I can keep that weekend free.

I'm in love!

The accompanist for this cabaret workshop is brilliant. He's been able to play with apparent ease everything we've thrown at him (20 songs in a pretty wide variety of genres), has the style of each, can improvise intros, bridges, vamps and endings, and gave me a couple of little delivery tweaks that are perfect for one of my songs. He plays with joy & enthusiasm, and absolutely radiates his love of this stuff. The man's an absolutely gifted accompanist, too - when he's playing with you, you'd swear he's breathing right along with you.

Can you tell I'm a fan? :D

FUBAR

Shoot me now! Today I gave what was easily my worst theatrical performance EVER. I have the first vocal entrance in the first musical number of the show; I couldn't tell where we were in the music, so I completely missed that entrance. And it went downhill from there. Late or missed vocal entrances, actually forgot a bit of choreography (and at least 3 people told me they were wondering where I was, because I was the one they were cueing off of, heaven help them!). Fer cryin' out loud, I even skipped a costume change, which made me late for a subsequent entrance because changing out of the wrong costume took longer than changing out of what I should have been wearing. Which meant the rest of the cast had to ad lib until I got out there. And by the time we got to the last musical number, we were having a helluva time hearing the music (apparently, if it's loud enough for us to hear on stage, the audience can't hear us over the music), so I was screwing up right, left & center.

I know, I know, I'll do better tomorrow. Lord knows, I've got nowhere to go but up! But right now I just want to pull out of the show, move to some remote location (I hear New Zealand's nice) and lie low until today is forgotten.

The one good thing is that TW didn't come to see the show, so he didn't have to witness me going down in flames. At this rate, I don't know if I'll let him see it; too mortifying.

That was good.

Wednesday I went to a cabaret performance by the woman teaching the cabaret workshop I'm taking next week. Tech Week-induced scrambled brains meant I got there just in time for the last few songs, but I really enjoyed those few. L has an incredibly versatile voice and is a wonderful performer. Now I'm seriously psyched for this workshop next week; gonna be fun!