Last hot day for a while?

My mom is melting! And I can't really do anything about it. At least the hot weather broke a smidge yesterday and is supposed to break again either tonight or tomorrow - or Sunday at the latest. Yay for living in a cooler clime! Though in hotter climes, AC is de rigueur. I try to convince mom that going downstairs is cooler, but she remains in her room most of the day. At least she does have windows and a good sized fan! (Everytime I use that work, I think of fans (short of fanatics) and want to make some comment like "besides me" 'cause I am her fan - most of the time.)

Had my first staff meeting at The Smith yesterday. Yay communication!

And it was a "dark" day for the Opera. I feel a little guilty that I didn't go out of my way to do anything with any of the Opera people. I thought this morning, or was it last night, that it would have been nice to invite Al to dinner at our house. But that would have entailed getting mom dressed - and in this heat, I have been avoiding that even more than usual. Tonight, though, she will have to wear clothes as she is coming to the opera with me! Yippee.

What did I do with my day off? Caught up a little on writing (no blog, I know - until the opera is over, I don't know how blogful my life will be - ok, speaking of blogging, I don't seem able to see comments anymore without going to each page and looking for them. I don't know what is up with that - I need to write to the blogger help people and see if they can shed some light on this issue for me). Made dinner that was, somewhat, from scratch. Played a bit. Oh, had that Smith meeting. Helped mom navigate the tv as well as helped her watch a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie. Looks like she actually only likes two of them - Top Hat and Gay Divorcee. Mom has a memory of Fred Astaire dancing on the walls and ceiling of a room - turns out that was from a 50s movie called Royal Wedding - we don't have that in our collection - yet.)

Since I didn't write yesterday - let me think - what the heck happened. Oh, right, we had Tech/Dress Rehearsal for the Opera, Don Pasquale. It went very smoothly. Sure there were glitches - a lot of the curtains were slow - probably my mistakes for not calling them soon enough. I need to anticipate them a little since the curtain is massive and takes a little bit to get it going. And the performers had a few missteps, but overall, very smooth. It really is an easy show, which isn't a bad thing. I hope we get an audience!

I hope everyone is well and happy! And keeping cool!

Late post - day and time

Physically a bit on the tired side yesterday. The call for the opera was 11 because we didn't really have a lot to do - just rehang a few pieces of set decoration. Ha! Al decided that it was time to clean the stage area. Sigh. Had I known this, I would have planned it - asked David and perhaps someone else to come in - started earlier and all. But that wasn't the case. So Al and I did it all. If it were up to me, the theatre/stage area would be this clean after every show. And perhaps before every show (production/event). But it isn't up to me. Yet. At least I have been educated in how to run the air conditioning system. A little bit. That is a good thing.

When I was back at home for lunch, I sat and chatted with mom for a little while she ate her lunch. But I could barely keep my eyes open. Yes, I am looking forward to the opera being over. Not in a bad way, but so that I can get more beauty rest.

Monday was a really long, full day of rehearsing. Luckily for mom, Jenny, the aide, came. After a lot of prodding, mom allowed Jenny to dust off the top of her desk. That is great! It was getting thick there. Now if we can just get her to do more dusting in mom's room. And vacuuming perhaps. I would really like to do a deep cleaning in there. And get her a different bed. And I am toying with getting her an air conditioning/window unit. I don't know how much they cost. And to think I had three or four of them down in the house in NC that I abandoned to my friend Ted - or did Paul end up with them. Who the heck knows? I certainly don't!

Mom likes the lemon bars that I made. I think she is tired of watermelon though. I wonder, do coconut and watermelon go together? Hmm. I like coconut but never think of it. Dinner Monday night was frozen Bertoli's pasta dinner. Tuesday was take-out buffet from Ling Ling Chinese Buffet. I am, mostly, looking forward to having time to cook again.

Brain Doubly tired now...

I just wrote a decent post - not great or anything, but decent. I hit save. It seemed to save. But each time I hit publish, nothing happened - well, not what was supposed to happen. So I hit save again and then left the page to see if I could figure out what was going on. Well, I figured out what wasn't going on. My post wasn't being saved. Sigh. So, let's start again, shall we? Joy and Rapture.

I haven't been able to focus on much except for the opera just now. It is very time consuming, enervating and takes over my life a bit. As does any show, actually. I think it is hard on my mom when I am away as much as I need to be for this production. I am not in her head, but I get the feeling that she feels extra special lonely when she remembers that I am out of the house. I basically drop in a few times a day and then go to bed.

Here is a fairly typical day: starts with rehearsal at 10 which goes until 12. Then when I manage to extricate myself, I head home to create lunch for mom. At 2 rehearsal starts again, so back to the rehearsal space. Rehearsal generally stops at 5. Then I have to zip home again - usually with a shopping trip to Wegman's being required - to make dinner. When I am home I try to give my mom some quality time. Doesn't usually work, but I try. Then around 7 I am supposed to be back at the theatre. Optimally, I would be earlier to each of the rehearsal sessions. But I am also picking up one of my staff - and there is travel time and parking time and such that eats into the time. Suffice it to say that I feel like I have little time for mom or for me recently. Rehearsal ends at 10. Actors may not be called or they might be let out early, I get to go to every rehearsal and stay till the end. Yippee! It makes for a long day.

Mom asks me what I do during all of that time. Not an easy answer, really. In this show I am the stage manager/tech liaison and general dog's body for Al the director. Let's look at today for example - I fixed a piece of furniture, moved a lot of furniture, raised and lowered a lot of drops, helped hang a set piece, unknotted a coil of fishing line, photocopied a prop for the show, and tried to pay attention to what was happening on the stage. Physically demanding, mind tiring, and all around intense work, interspersed with times of doing little. And things change from day to day. Luckily, I really do enjoy doing just about anything related to theatre. My favoritist thing, as I have probably said many times, is direct. Maybe again one day...

One of the upsides to this production, this year I am actually hanging out with some people from the opera after rehearsal. I don't get a lot of adult companionship most of the time here in Geneva. Not that these are dates or anything. Just getting together for a beer and talk. Yay!

All of this is to explain why my brain is tired and I haven't been blogging as awesomefully as I normally do. Your understanding and patience is appreciated!

Cloud Atlas anyone?

Sometimes I get a little carried away with my responses to my Daily Challenge posts. Too many words. Not as many (or as boring, I hope) as some of my connections on there. But still, I feel like my 200 words was easily accomplished and don't feel like I have any more left for my blog post. Yet, I mostly struggle on and attempt to come up with more verbiage.

Last night's movie was Cloud Atlas. I enjoyed the movie. It was really, really long and I admit to taking one break from it - nature called. The stories were all interesting, the actors all did a good job, visually it had a lot of great moments. I guess I will have to read the book at some point. (I just looked and my library system doesn't have a copy on CD. Hmm. We will see what happens here...)

More thoughts on things to do in the future. Move to Canada - Toronto or Montreal - Toronto because it is not that far from Geneva. Montreal, because Cirque headquarters there and I could again try to find work with them. Or move to Las Vegas for the same reason - though I think I would rather work a touring show or at the home office than work a show in Las Vegas. Find some other circus to work with. I could also start trying to find backers again for Sirius Theatre.

After rehearsal last night, I went to Parker's to watch Al, the director, eat. Ok, that wasn't my primary reason for going. I like Al and enjoy hanging out with him. I had a beer or two while he had dinner. It had been a long while since I was last in Parker's. Certainly not my favorite place in town - but it wasn't terrible. I noticed on the way out that they had Dogfish Head 90 minute - I am guessing it was on tap. Which means I will have to go and have at least one beer there sometime soon. 90 minute doesn't last long, usually.

Cooking to do

I have things I would like to do in the kitchen and I am busy not doing them. Like making lemon bars. I just like lemon bars so would like to try my hand at them. One day. And I have a seedless watermelon that desperately needs to be de-rind(ed?) so that just the edible bits are left. Which is everything since it has no seeds. And I am not doing that either. Sigh. Maybe I will get to them both. One day soon.

Wednesday night, as I was putting out the recylcing - which didn't get taken last week because it was July 4th - I decided to be a little ruthless - I put out a large bit of the pile of mom's New York Review of Books newspaper like things. Yay! If, after mom leaves the house, I leave the house too - because as I noted, so far, there is nothing keeping me here - and I am not, surprisingly, getting any younger - then I need to clean it out a good bit - either to rent it or to sell it. I would prefer to rent it for the time being, as I have a lot of stuff that I am not going to find it easy to let go of - like my pool table and my GiJoes and having the house means that there is storage space for stuff. Hmm.

Wednesday night I dreamt that a woman (who I knew in the dream, but upon waking didn't recognize) asked me out before I could get up the nerve to ask her out. Made me wake feeling hopeful. Then again, I often feel that hopeful. Until I eat something. Weird?

Wow, Thursday night was surprising and depressing, all at the same time. After rehearsal for the opera, I was determined to go to Red Dove to have a beer and to say hi to Sarah in her new position as Thursday night bartender. So despite there only being one seat available again, at least it was a corner chair, which really made all the difference. As soon as I walked in, though, I saw lots of people I knew, which was mildly surprising. And they all said hi, which was nice (not surprising or depressing). But they were all in couples - which was the depressing bit. Add to that the fact that Jessica no longer works at Red Dove - which is good for her and sad for me - well, it wasn't an optimal experience. One of the couples did buy my beer for me - that was surprising and nice. Almost made up for the seemingly "rub it in your face that you aren't in a relationship" aspect of the night.

I ate a whole sleeve of saltines while watching Star Trek (original series - only many episodes left to go). Yup. For no particular reason. Well, except that if I didn't eat all of them, there would have been some left, which would have necessitated some sort of storage or they would have gone stale. Few things are worse than stale saltines. I did notice that the sleeve was at least 10 saltines less full than similar sleeves had seemed to be in the past - another example of product amount shrinkage to maintain the same price point. Sigh.

Mom's current memory is "A noisy noise annoys an oyster!" How cute is that? Not one with which I was familiar.

Mid Week Madness!

From the title, one might be thinking that something exciting or crazy or at least midly interesting and out of the ordinary might have occurred. Well, nope, that just isn't the case. Just had to put something there...As long time readers of this blog know, my life is, well, not that over the top right now in terms of thrills. Still, it wasn't a bad day. Few are.

I had thought I was going to spend the afternoon and evening in rehearsal for the opera. But that didn't happen. As I was starting to pack up (I take my laptop) to go to afternoon rehearsal, I noticed a call from the director - Al - saying that they were taking the afternoon off. Yippee! The next rehearsal segment was at 7, which was fine by me.

At 5, there was a "volunteer appreciation" event at the Smith Opera House. I was surprised at how many people there were! I hadn't really realized just how many volunteers there are who help out around the place. A lot of familiar faces were in attendance. There was yummy food, from Club 86 I think I heard someone say, of which I had a decent amount. I even had a piece of cake! Awards were given out, speeches were made. Apparently I am going to take over for David as Technical Director or Production Coordinator or some such thing after he leaves as I was introduced to the volunteers as such. Not sure what all that entails at this point, but I do hope to find out sometime.

I didn't get out of there as early as I had thought I might. That, combined with me being full-ish from grazing at the party, made me reconsider my food plans for the evening. Not in a huge way - I just decided to give mom some leftover salmon for her protein rather than a pre-cooked chicken from Wegman's. I think I will do that tonight instead. I still got veggies and some other things at the grocery store and hurried home to prepare them for her before heading to rehearsal.

The opera is progressing nicely. I love rehearsals. I really hope that I will do some directing in the not too distant future. How that will work with the time I need to devote to mom, I don't have a clue. After rehearsal, Al and I roughed out the rehearsal/production schedule for the next few days. I love making schedules!

Sneaky Me

I am a sneaky Augustus. Devious even. Yup, that about sums it up. When mom and I were at my sister's in Maine the other week, we were talking about coffee. Mom loves coffee (ewww). She would drink it all day if she could. At 10 at night, she asks for coffee. Much as I love her, I am not going to give her coffee at 10 at night. Even Decaf coffee. Personally, the idea of decaf coffee (isn't that an oxymoron) sounds horrible. And somewhere, a long time ago, I read that to make coffee caffeine-less, the processors used a lot of icky chemicals - making decaf coffee even ickier than regular coffee. That all being said, I do know that caffeine does affect my mom's stomach. Sometimes her "sick stomach" feeling is nothing more than a result of unmitigated caffeine, causing an over caffeinated stomach. I do my best to give her food when I give her coffee - a lot of food. I think it helps. But, here comes the sneaky bit, since I am trying to avoid mom having "stomach" issues, I broke down and bought a tub of decaf coffee and have started mixing it into her regular coffee! I am not sure what the percentage is - but I plan to increase the amount over time. I wonder if Gevalia offers decaf coffee. I also wonder if I ought to stop the mail order coffee deliveries from them. I probably ought to...

I had another epiphany-let the other day and finally acted on it. As some of you know, I listen to audio books in the kitchen (primarily). I have destroyed a few playback devices so far, probably from putting the books on pause and leaving them that way for 12+ hours. That can't be good for the machines. Though there must be some sort of digital way for machines to remember where they are on a CD rather than a physical way that most of them seem to use. Whatever. With the current CD player, I have been stopping the disc and turning the player off - conserving power and hopefully conserving the life of the CD player. That would be nifty. Anyway, my memory is ok. Not awesomely excellent. I tried to remember what track I was on (and about where on the track I stopped) but was not doing a great job at it. So, I have this perpetual calendar (that often languished next to my bed - unused for months) and thought - heck, it has numbers that I could set to the correct track. Which I did. And it works pretty well. Or at least has so far! Yay!

The daily recap - what day was it? Oh, yes - Tuesday. The biggest news was that I walked downtown to Red Dove for a beer last night, sauntered in, found the place packed to the gunwales and turned around and walked home again. Yes, there was one seat at the bar, but I just didn't feel like being there. But I had a great walk. I do like walking, fortunately. Yippee! Other than that, nothing too interesting of note.

Oh well, one semi-interesting note. I went into the Smith to work with David for a little bit. Dimmers are being rented for the Opera and we needed to guesstimate how long the cables would need to be in order for there to be light! I don't understand how the whole system is wired - where the cables run etc, but we did what we could. Hopefully it will be sufficient for the lighting company to do what they need to do.

Ok, that really is it for interesting stuff. At least for now. We don't want this to become too exciting a post.