Random Bits

Is all over my town.

There are two ways to exit my neighborhood to the south, and two ways to the north.  In both cases you have to get to the main road and head east or west on it before you can actually go north or south.  About six weeks ago, one of the routes to the south (westerly) was closed for bridge repair - the most convenient one to my bank, to the closest Stop and Shop, to the closest Whole Foods, to the main Post Office.  Its just a CONVENIENT way to leave my neighborhood.  Closed until (at the very least) Fall.

Okay, I can still go west to go south - I just have to go alllll the way around.  About ten to fifteen minutes out of my way depending on traffic (tertiary roads, highly traveled, and looping back to where you were, just on the other side of the closed bridge). Annoying but do-able.

Leaving my neighborhood the up and around way to the west, there are traffic signs indicating a traffic pattern shift starting tomorrow.  Road crews are going to be doing a widening project, so traffic in that direction is going to be even worse - they expect heavy usage and major delays.  I go that way ALL THE TIME.  I don't want more construction happening there!

Getting out south and east is the same traffic pattern as usual, but getting IN south to the easterly direction they've put in another detour to do some sewer repair - also going to take a couple of months to complete, but totally messes with the traffic pattern in the other spot.

Going to the north east or west is still clear of construction, but getting out of the neighborhood to head towards civilization (Mass Pike and Route 9 are both *just* south of my neighborhood) is getting annoying and time consuming.

I am super happy my town is doing much-needed repairs to its roads and infrastructure (water mains, sewers, etc.) but having it all happen at the same time is a little... weird!  There are like four bridges closed in my town for repair.  Orange DETOUR signs are up everywhere.

On the plus side, a bunch of pot-holey roads have been repaved lately, so there is that.

On the minus side we've had two weeks of plus90 degree weather, I do not envy the construction crews working outside in this weather.  This week should be marginally cooler (mid eighties instead of mid-to-high nineties).  But I'm off ADVENTURING to Europe mid-week anyway.

When I was a small child, my maternal grandparents (both now gone - each lived into their nineties, but they are at rest) lived in a charming little house on Cape Cod.  The "Orleans" house.  The one on Harbor Hill.  It was a charming little Cape - I remember they had red walls in the living room.

This past weekend my mom and I were going through family letters and photos (her cousin is looking for photos and now I have a few to scan and send to her).  Mom made a comment about the space my grandmother made for me.  My brother got the bedroom, and I got the bed shoved in an upstairs alcove dormer area.  The hallway between the two bedrooms.

It has *never* occurred to me that that was a weird set up.  That me sleeping on a cot in what amounts to a hallway was in any way strange.  My mom's perspective was that I was (possibly purposefully) shafted because my grandmother did not want to put me in an actual room (and as I recall they did have another room - a little sewing room the cot could have just as easily been put in there).

At the time I thought it was kind of cool - my grandmother had set up a cozy little corner with a table and lamp and she always left a book for me to read.  Although looking back it was kind of odd that people were always traipsing through my "room" because it was in all actuality a hallway.

Then came the two years my grandparents refused to talk to my mother - or any of the rest of us (family Drama with a capital D) and after that time my brother and I never stayed overnight with them anymore.

Then my grandparents started to move around the cape - every couple of years they bought a new house.  Until my grandfather sold his last house to my dad. 

Ballet and sense or even plot do not go together.

I run the light board for a performing arts studio's shows three times a year.  Their Nutcracker, the Spring recital, and their Spring Ballet.

This year the ballet was "Don Quixote" which bears very little relation to the story of Don Quixote.  No.  I challenge you to find the plot.

All I got was there is this guy who occasionally has fits and visions and the young lovers (who have no much to do with out title character) are continually running away from her father who sold the girl off to a rich man.

I don't know where the gypsies come into it, or why Don Quixote and his sidekick are running around threatening things and people with a sword and a spoon.

Our sound guy and I kept looking at each other and asking "huh?" and our answer was inevitable "Because Ballet!"

Anyway.  It did mean I got home late enough to have missed the Tony awards, but I did catch the opening number online today.  Gotta say this is EXACTLY why I love the Tonys and am all "meh" about the Oscars.  And since NPR's Linda Holmes put it SO MUCH BETTER than I ever could, I urge you to read the whole thing:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/06/10/190308942/the-tony-awards-is-this-the-greatest-awards-show-opening-ever

but I quote part of it here because I want to say, yes, THIS! RIGHT HERE:
"The next time you're tempted to give an Oscar host a pass on the basis that it's an impossible, can't-win job, and that the lazy, easy, corny, toothless humor that passes for patter is a fundamental of the awards format, and that the jokes can't be better and the numbers can't be better and the hosting can't be better and the crowd can't get excited, keep in mind that that's exactly what people who want to keep making lazy awards shows want you to think.

Sure, theater people have an advantage with musical numbers, but if you run the Oscars and can't figure out how to do for and with love of film what the Tonys are doing for and with love of theater, you are terrible at your job and should hand it off to someone else."

It has been a while since I have done this -but not because there was nothing to blog about!  There has been absolutely too much going on in my life to blog about, actually.

I am living in the Boston area, and the events of last week's marathon bombing and manhunts hit pretty close to home - in that I am in the area of Watertown all the time, and life last week was a bit surreal.

I did manage to get to CraftBoston on Saturday, though, which was pretty nice.  EVERYONE was out and about on Saturday, probably to make up for Friday's "Shelter-in-Place" order. I work from home, so it was no real inconvenience to me (and I am outside the "Shelter-in-Place" radius, anyway).  I just worked as usual and watched the 24-hour no-commercials network news later in the afternoon.  I am sure when the lockdown went out in the very early morning they didn't expect it to last all day, but even way out here in the 'burbs the police were asking everyone to stay off the roads if they didn't need to be out and about.

I am glad they caught the suspect.  As a suspect in such a wide-reaching crime and in federal custody, I am certain the wheels of federal justice will move but they will likely move away from here. I don't think anyone in the greater Boston area could impartially take part in any kind of justice in any way - from judges to clerks to anyone.  We were all too much affected by his actions.

In other, more personal news, rehearsals continue for the show I am in which goes up in a couple of weeks.  We're going to add more props, set dressing, and costumes this week, and our crew is in as well to get prepared for next week's tech week (the show is On Golden Pond, and I play the daughter of the couple.  Or y'know, for those that have seen the movie, the Jane Fonda part).

So, life After the Boston Marathon Bombings is continuing on as usual, which is the only and best thing we can do.

Ugh, I feel like I've done all the things.  ALL THE THINGS.

How is it February ALREADY? 

I'll be in Orlando in March for work (ten days! Hey - gotta be warmer than below freezing, it'll make a nice change). 

And last week, entirely by accident, I was cast in a show.  So I'll be on stage in May (which means no MISTI-con for me, oh, well).

I am spending six days with my parent's neurotic, crazy, very sweet but rather large Labrador Retriever, Max. My folks went to South Carolina this morning because starting tomorrow there is a reunion of his Navy ship. He served on board the destroyer the USS Knapp in the fifties - in fact he was a member of the crew when it was decommissioned and he was with her through the process until she was mothballed. She wasn't sold for scrap until the early seventies - she had been decommissioned once before right after WWII and recalled to service for the Korean War.

Anyway, I guess they have these reunions every once in a while. My dad isn't even sure he will know anyone there - the ship was built in the early forties and mothballed in the late fiftes - so not quite fifteen years of service (it was decommissioned and mothballed for nearly five years of that). But all told, with a crew complement of over 300 men in the years she was active a lot of men served on her. And the reunion is for anyone who ever served.

Max has spent the day tailing me from room to room and lying as close to me as he can get. He watched my folks drive away this morning and I think he is a little bit unhappy they're not here and his regular rhythms are all messed up. To add insult to injury I haven't been able to let him out in the yard since this morning because the lawn service came around 1pm and put pesticide on the lawn. Hopefully we'll get some rain like it has been threatening and tomorrow he'll be able to go out whenever he gets anxious.

Its gonna be a long six days...

Unexpectedly saw my nieces and nephew Sunday afternoon.

L, my three-and-a-half year old nephew asked me, in all seriousness, if I had a "daddy" - and I replied I do, and he is standing behind you, and you call him Grandpa.

No, he said, sort of garbled (he was eating a chocolate "gingerbread man" at the time), at your house, do you have one?

I must have looked as confused as I felt because B (newly minted eight and obsessed with my single status) piped right up and said, he wants to know if you have a husband! o.O O.o

Cue awkward silence.

No, L, I do not have a husband. Or a "daddy at my house."

Is B infecting her little brother with the notion I need to be paired off? Is he just curious because everyone else in his life comes in pairs and he is confused why I don't? I mean, my parents (my mother described herself today as happily married), L's parents, K's folks - L's other grandparents, K's brother and his wife (while not "happily married" and possibly headed for divorce, they are still a pair as far as L knows).

And me. The lone singleton.

I should ask K if any of her other sister-in-law's siblings are single and if they get the third degree from B also - or if I'm the lucky one to have all that intense scrutiny on me.

Periodically something brings home to me that while I am able to sing... I sing in a very limited kind of way.

Had a road trip last weekend and I popped "Big River" in the CD player... My range and Huck's ... well, pretty much the same. Yup. Teenage boy. *sigh*

On the plus side Huck's music in the musical is pretty damned awesome. "Waitin' for the Light to Shine" is both an awesome ballad *and* a rockin' hard driving song. "Worlds Apart" is probably the best non-lovers love duet I've heard. And "Leavings Not the Only Way to Go" rips your heart out. And in each and every one of them the part I can sing most comfortably and reach 95% of the correct notes? Huck's.

And yes, I can growl out "Guv'ment" along with John Goodman - but there isn't a ton of musicality needed for that.

One of the things I really wish I could do - and do really well - is sing. Oh well. Maybe in my next life.

Grocery shopping tonight turned out to be an experience (of course I would forget to get the ONE item I absolutely positively NEEDED, but I digress). My supermarket has self checkout. More then that it has scan-as-you-go shopping. When you are a scan-as-you-go shopper, you can check out at the self checkout and just scan your store card and it pulls up your already scanned order and you pay, and are out the door really really quickly.

So I did my shopping and got to the bottom of my list (I didn't realize I forgot that ONE IMPORTANT ITEM until I got home. Bygones.). I got in line for the self checkout as normal. Only two self checkout lanes were open, one with three guys in line, one with a couple of girls checking out and one other guy also in line with a very small cart of stuff (he had maybe six items in his cart. Maybe.).

I got in line behind him. The girls are about seventeen, obviously new to the whole checkout thing, but I am okay to wait - holidays y'know. The other lines had more people. The girls are having trouble with the concept of weighing their produce on the scale - they kept taking it off the scale before it was completely finished and erroring the system. Which called the guy who handles all the self checkout lanes over to void and re-ring. The girls were obviously getting things Mom (and/or Dad - whoever the adult is who cooks and shops) had forgotten (I don't know two teenage girls who would get three large bunches of asparagus).

Finally the young man who worked there came and rang in the last of their cart, and left them to pay (via credit card). One girl finished bagging while the other was trying to navigate the payment process. It told her to sign the signature pad next to the scanner. She couldn't figure out where the "pen" to sign was. She got that point, and then tried signing the wrong signature pad. She got more and more upset until I realized she wasn't following the directions and didn't know what to do.

Then I found myself saying something I've never even heard my mother say. I ducked around the guy in front of me and said "here, honey, sign right there and press done" pointing at the signature pad that is right under her hand (in her defense she was faced with three different electronic pads and the signature one is the smallest and least obvious).

I called her "honey" wtf? When did I get all maternal and shit? That is just Not Right.

The guy and I exchange good-natured eyerolls as if to say kids! as the girls leave giggling. He checks out in good time (he had about five or six bags of bread rolls and that was it), and then so do I. All I had to do was scan my store card and pay - so even with groceries for the next week it took about three minutes for me to check out.

Of course I would pick the shortest line that took the most time. I seem to have a knack for it. Oy!

Flying to the San Francisco Bay (Fremont) area tomorrow late afternoon. I'll be in Fremont Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday - flying home on the red eye Thursday night into Friday morning, and then flying to Orlando, FL on Saturday (home Monday night).

So! I'll be online, but likely doing a million other things at the same time (Tuesday I expect to be offline for a good part of the day).

Today we finally gave L (who turned 3 this summer - when he and his mom and sisters were on the Cape) his (un)birthday gifts. We had a little party with lunch and cupcakes. And then we played Sardines and Hide and Seek. K (my S-I-L) hid first for the first game of Sardines (one person hides, everyone seeks, and as each person finds her they join her in her hiding spot). She hid in the laundry on top of the dryer. My brother found her first and squeezed himself into the space next to the washer. I found them next and had to quietly displace a couple of the dirty clothes sorting hampers to join them. And then it took a good five minutes for anyone else to find us.

After that we played plain (unfancy) hide and seek - and both my brother and my dad cheated by moving spots. My dad was actually very clever. He left his slippers in the middle of the floor in the living room, and (as seeker) I came into the house from the deck and cleared the kitchen/family room first, and after I'd passed by he snuck into the kitchen behind me to sit on the floor next to the door. My brother just chose a really uncomfortable place to hide and it took so long for someone to find him he moved.

All in all it was a very enjoyable day. And now I gotta pack for BOTH trips.