Weird Dream Channel

It is opening night for a show I am in. I am looking at my lines for two of the scenes I am in, and get the feeling something is wrong. I put that aside as we are called into the green room by the stage manager, a woman IRL I have worked with a few times, but she is much younger here. The director blusters in, wearing a dark suit & vest with a bright red tie. His name is Aldo, and IRL he directed a couple of shows I was in in the 1980s, but he passed away a few years ago. He makes a short speech saying he is not really here, he just needs the college credits. As he is saying this, he is suddenly dressed in overalls and is wearing gold rimmed glasses.

He is done, and I go back to my two looseleaf pages of script, and realize that the scenes I am looking at (one per page) actually are two parts of the same scene, and I am cast as both a member of the courtroom audience and as the defendant. Or one of the defendants. Bottom line is I have lines at the same time in both roles. My audience character is supposed to respond to my defendant character. Well, not exactly respond. The person next to me in the audience wakes me up to hear the testimony of the defendant character.

It is opening night, and this is an awkward time to discover this. I am debating whether to tell the SM or the director. It is clear we have never done a complete run-through of the show, otherwise this would have been caught earlier. I am still looking at the yellow-highlighted lines, holding one page in my left hand and the other in my right, when I wake up.

ต้มข่าไก่

ต้มข่าไก่ Dhom Ka Gui, which is often spelled Tom Ka Gai, is Thai coconut chicken soup. Last week in the cold and rain of Berkeley it rejuvenated me, and reminded me of just how much of a comfort food it is. And it is incredibly healthy - very little sodium, lots of lime juice and lemon grass and after all it is chicken soup.

So since I am on a Thai cooking jag, I went out and got the ingredients, and made two batches at home today, about 1/4 was dinner and I am still yummified. Very quick and easy to make, and delicious. I think I would like it better as duck soup, but was too lazy to go to the Chinese restaurant for take-out roast duck. And had not thought of it until after my two trips to Ranch99.

The recipe was out of Nancie McDermott's Real Thai , IMNSHO the best Thai cookbook ever written.  Nancie was in my Peace Corps/Thailand group and this is her first cookbook - she has since made cookbook writing her profession.

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The continuing saga of preserved turnips took another step forward, I think, this morning. I unpacked the turnip shreds from the brine (the recipe said >12 hours, it was more like 15) and since I did not trust the plastic peanut butter container I'd used for that step for the next step, I went out in search of Mason jars. Came up empty, but bought a big pickle jar, emptied it into an even bigger pickle jar, washed it out and plopped in 4 garlic cloves, the turnip shreds and filled it with white vinegar. That will sit on a shelf for a week or three. I may need to dilute the vinegar with water, but maybe not.

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While I was on the pickle run, I also got some more eggs, so maybe tomorrow I'll whip up some Pot Thai. Need to do that soon so the chives and basil don't spoil.

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Took a break and went to Starbucks, only to find them closing early. Continued on to the late night one, found a spot to sit, logged in on the netbook for a little but mostly read from a book I bought at BASFA last week, Michael Palin's Hemingway's Chair. I figured a book by this Monty Python alumnus ought to be interesting, and it is. Superbly written, and the chapters are short which somehow makes it harder to set down.

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Plans for tomorrow:
Call PA Medical Foundation to find out what the bogus $500+ charge at the end of my bill is about. Looks like they are charging me for Blue Cross payments which I already made through my paycheck.
Do the laundry
Check the job listings