Long Day, Short entry

It takes about 3 hours to drive from my place to Morro Bay. I left at 9, got there at 12:30 with one rest stop. Left over half of the worst alleged chicken fried steak I have ever tried to eat, at a place called Carla's Country Kitchen, 213 Beach St, Ste C, Morro Bay, CA 93442-2098. They fried the most gristle-infested cut of gray beef-like substance dipped in egg. The service was horrible, as well. Veggies were broccoli and it's evil white cousin cauliflower, steamed to almost a liquid. Mashed potatoes was a baked potato slammed with the business end of a meat tenderizer. The gravy was okay.

Then to the Antique Emporium on Hwy 41, through the store to the back where there is a lovely garden. I was there for the Redskunk Gypsie Swing Band's concert/garden party. Opening act was called World's Finest Apples, from Sacramento. With a name like that one would think they were from Wenatchee, WA.  As soon as I saw the accordion, I was concerned. But he played well, so did the bass (except for the one time he tried using a bow, when he was painfully flat). The rest of the group was forgettable. Molly Reeves, who is lead singer for Redskunk, sat in on a couple of tunes, which added a LOT. Molly's mom recognized me, and we had a nice chat about Molly's Grandma Janice, who has been stalking me and everyone I know on Facebook. Janice is retired and lonely and somewhere in Virginia, way far from friends and relatives, so FB is her social network.

I has not heard Redskunk play in about a year, they have improved a lot, especially the drummer. The violinist still looks 14 and is oh so pretty. Molly has stopped reddening her hair, IMHO a mistake. They sang several original songs, all enjoyable. The trumpeter Justin (who is a fellow train fan, too) continues to be amazing. They all held their own and more with the solos.

So the bad news is it was the hottest day of the year in Morro Bay, and the venue had no shade where one could see the band. The audience was in bright sunlight, the band was in a cave-like alcove. They positioned the speakers at head level, and there were two wooden posts in the way. Impossible to get a photo of the whole band. Difficult to get any good photos of them. I did get a few great audience shots.

Photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/sets/72157631136993774/

I was counting on them ending at the posted 4:30 time, so I could get home before dark. They didn't, but people started smoking cigars, which drove me out at that time. Wish I could have chatted after with the band members, but cigars are a deal breaker for me. Way too many people were smoking cigarettes too, I had to move a few times to get out of the pollution trail.

Drove home with a stop in Soledad for Starbuck's restroom and a mocha, and cheesy poofs at CVS. Those kinda tasted like they were dipped in kerosene so they ended up in the garbage at the Bernal Shell station, where I stopped for gas (370 miles, 9.9 gallons - I could have made it home without the stop, but the car needed washing).

Home by 8:30 or maybe 9.

Made the Thai ginger limeade while processing photos. It has quite an after-bite. I think I'll use it as a mixer with soda water.

Plans for tomorrow:
Haul a lot of stuff to Goodwill (already pulled them out of closets).
Maybe haul some electronics junk to ABC storage's recycling dump
Meet J for coffee at 5
AG rehearsal at 8

Mostly got stuff done

Slept in. On purpose. It was a long Saturday. Didn't get dressed until after scanning the 1989 photos and finding the ones from 2004, 2008 and 2012 which needed to go with the Friends of Thailand article. Found a small pile of 1975-77 pix which are too many to scan by hand, I'll have Costco do them. Ed & Umapon's wedding, some of my fellow volunteers in teacher training - teaching English to Thai high school students. I donated one quiz question:
Do you walk to school or bring your lunch?
Also some field trip or other we went on in training.
Too much other stuff on my plate right now, I need to wait a bit till I can bring all my slides in to be scanned. And even then it will be in batches, by album.

Finally got showered & dressed & drugged and bananaed. Attacked the 4-foot-high pile of Stuff in the livingroom, shoved the towels into one lawn trash bag, costumes, a couple of old suit jackets and assorted clothes into another, shirts & jeans cutoffs into a third, bedding and curtains into a 4th, and put three comforters and two blankets into my old lady wheeled grocery basket. Moved the car out of the garage and up to street level, and schlepped all that stuff - it took 3 trips and major amounts of sweat.

Returned the cart to the apartment, petted Domino, and punched the Goodwill location into the GPS. The first turn was wrong - it was sending me to one of the smaller ones in Santa Clara. Tried again, and it sent me toward an even smaller one inn Palo Alto. It did not have the big one in MV-Sunnyvale, so I faked it. The big one makes it easy - donation area is to the side of the store, lots of parking space, but they now have it set up so you drive into it in order, and they take you 3 at a time. What took an hour to get collected, schlepped and into the car took 1 minute to unload. I don't stick around for the receipt - experience has shown that I will not have enough deductions for this to make a difference.

Home, next item on the agenda was to haul electronics to the recycle station, but I decided to do that Some Other Time. Relaxed a bit, spent some time with Domino walking across my lap. Checked FB. Set up the Tivo to record 49ers games (I thought it was already, but Wishlist failed, and decided I needed to see games in low def two days after they were played).

Then to Starbucks an hour before Janice was meeting me, and studied lines. I think I know them now. We'll see this week when we run Act I without books. I have only had one rehearsal for my scene.

8 pm rehearsal for 30 minutes to run the number I was having issues with. This is the one where they had me dancing a doe-si-doe box step with another non-dancer. The AD talked me into trying it the way we had blocked it, and he would decide from there. Tough to do because my partner non-dancer was not there. I was not able to convince him that it was stupid to have me make a lightning costume change and show up as another character downstage. He quibbled about the center stage part - but it doesn't really matter - I'm in the front row, flanked only by leads.

After we ran it once, he removed me and my invisible partner from the box step.

They will find out at dress rehearsal that the costume change won't work. It would have been much smarter of them to admit they were wrong now, and avoid the train wreck. But smart and this production staff won't usually be in the same sentence. The producer who assured me at the start that I would not be dancing told me during my debate with the AG that I should trust the extremely experienced and talented production staff. He's telling this to someone with 50 years of theater experience? Jesus on a tadpole.

One thing they have done well is stick to their schedule, so we were out of there by 8:30. Almost. SInce the whole cast was there the social director (yes, we have one, maybe two) felt obliged to ask if it was okay if we had a taco truck for the cast party. WTF? This is the party which is held the day after closing night/strike. October 7. I will not be there, so I don't care what they do, but to keep us late at a rehearsal to ask this?

There was another announcement, but it was even less important.

So. I'm home, my linen and bedroom closets are much emptier, I cannot believe how much stuff I had which should have been recycled before my last move. And there is still more. T-shirts which no longer fit. One with holes in it which I bought a replacement for (which is in a box headed my way, presumably, around the time I move). 

Got email from the woman I met on the boat trip in Phuket, asking me to friend her on FB, but all she sent was a hotmail address. The <> had her Thai surname, but when I looked that up, there were two of them, the one in Phuket may be her but has a different first name. Of course the first name she gave me ("Apple") is her nickname, so maybe that is her real first name on FB. I wrote back suggesting she friend me, but she replied she couldn't find my name. So I sent a friend request to ปรียภัทร์ สุวัฒน์พัฒนากูล (Boripaht Suwanapanakul). We'll see what happens.

Plans for tomorrow:
Team meeting
1 pm mover rep at the apartment
AG rehearsal at 9 pm.