Another opening, another show

Slept in big-time.So did Domino. Till almost noon, I think. Today was sleep deprivation neutralization day.

Updated the firmware (there were 5 binaries to load) on the in-dash unit, and now it doesn't see the ipod. Boo, hiss.

Drove to the new apartment with copies of my last 3 pay statements, proof of renter's insurance and to get a copy of the checklist they gave me which had how much $$ I needed to pay up front, and it turns out the reason I couldn't find it is there is none. I was confusing them with Marina Cove, the place I changed my mind about. 

They needed the insurance paper, but not the pay statements. And they had written the amount of $$ on a post-it. All this after I had looked through my "office", the file cabinet, and entirely emptied and re-organized the trunk of the car looking for it.

U-Haul, bought a bunch of boxes, then home to watch some football and relax. I also fired up Photoshop and built a macro to auto-color, auto-tone and auto-contrast the scanned slides. I'll need to make a manual pass and white balance many of them, but this was a great start. I think I will wait till after the move to send them the next batch.

Got to the theater 5 minutes early, but there was no parking in the cast/crew lot. An event at the garden house next door took up most of the spaces. 

It looks like they will be pulling the same crap on me before every show, rehearsing the big dance number after vocal warmups. They really need to do dance warmups with the dancers, because during vocal warmups I am getting too many views of dancers' fat asses as they stretch and do splits. It is not a pretty sight.

And then 10 minutes before curtain they called us out to the loading dock for more bullshit, and "A Moment". They have a sign-up sheet, one person each show can share a moment with the cast/crew/orchestra. This time it was the director, whose moment took the whole 10 minutes to not say anything, really.

The show started about 15 minutes late, mostly because the box office cannot handle a full house.

The insane producers forced another change - they had the overture cut to just the first tune. Idiots.

The show went well, but the orchestra was way too loud and the conductor was on uppers - all the numbers were way too fast. Even the better dancers were complaining.

Very well-stocked gala reception, laid out to guarantee mobs instead of lines and blocked pathways. I saw lots of friends, some of whom did not see me. One of them, I thought was Liz Barbour, who starred in Kiss Me Kate with PA Players, but she insisted she had never done that show. She answered to "Liz". She looks like that woman. Oh well, I guess not.

On the way home I stopped off at Lucky's, which did have the kind of baby wipes I was looking for.

Plans for tomorrow:

Watch some football.
Matinee
Maybe I'll get in some Starbucks time

Matinee Day

But first things first. Today's OCD moment had me scanning in the photo page from all of my passports. What brought it on was wanting to have a high-rez image of the page which had my entry and exit visas for Israel and the UK after my Peace Corps service. Mostly to remind me of when I left Thailand.  The answer is mid-June 1977. Got to the UK in December of that year.

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Today's chores were changing the litterbox cartridges, and taking out the garbage. Threw out a whole filebox's worth of stuff from when I edited the Norcal Peace corps Assn's newsletter, it included many 5.25" floppy discs. The group has copies of all the newsletters, and no use for the files, as they have since become an online publication. I haven't been a member since about 2002.

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Watched some of the Raiders game. Boring. Brunch (I stayed in bed till 11) was a banana and some pistachios.

Went to the theater a little late, but still found parking. The show was sold out, apparently several bus loads of elderly people made up a big chunk of the audience. They were not as loud as the last two nights, and they laughed at different jokes and gave applause to different characters at the curtain call. Last night's favorite comic relief was Mr. Whitney, the almost blind, always drunk wall street tycoon. Today it was Erma, the nymphomaniac floozy with the Brooklyn accent. They are both, IMHO, superb in their parts. They also liked the ingenue more than the leading man and leading lady. The leading lady has come a long way, but the bottom line is she just isn't Reno Sweeney.

About 10 minutes before curtain, this group has an annoying tradition of gathering at the loading dock for announcements and The Moment. Today's Moment was by the leading lady, and it made me think of lemmozine, aka Blind Lemming Chiffon:

~ Come to the Edge ~

Come to the edge, he said.

They said: We are afraid.

Come to the edge, he said.

They came.

He pushed them and they flew.

Christopher Logue

My part went well enough. I *hate* matinees. It is just too surreal to be under the lights inside when outside it is a bright summer day.

Every year the group raffles off the opportunity to have a walk-on role with a line or two, for every show. They decided to give the winner for this show her appearance today, as a substitute for a woman I walk across the stage with. She had four lines. This is her second go winning the raffle, so she was ready. Her name is Maureen, she is retired but not much older than me, and she looked great in the costume they found for her. She said her lines well, on cue and with one more rehearsal she could easily have taken over the part permanently. I was relieved. The woman she replaced got all of us to sign a program which we gave to Maureen after the show (she watched Act II from the audience).  Apparently she also had 10 friends and relatives at the show. Kewl.

No more performances till Friday, so I expect to be at BASFA tomorrow, and will start packing the apartment Tuesday after work. I can box up the CD and DVD collection for starters. And the file cabinet. And the parental 78s and vinyl collection.

In my search for passports, I found a treasury bond Dad gave to me (and identical ones to my sisters) a long time ago - maybe 20 years ago - in case we needed funds to get to their funerals. When the time came, I didn't, and the bond had not quite matured. I ought to look it up online and convert it to something tax-free in my IRA or brokerage account if it has matured.

Mars Curiosity has started sending back 3D images, and somehow the paper glasses I keep near the computer are gone. Amazon to the rescue.

I also did some reality checking on the VCR's warbling audio. It's doing it on all the tapes. I suspect the problem is not the VCR but the capture card in the PC. One way to narrow it down is to connect the VCR to a TV set. Maybe later.

Home after the show, found a workaround which lets the in-dash car unit operate the ipod. Frozen spaghetti and meatballs dinner with corn cobettes and two Klondike bars.

Spent some time watching the 49ers stumble around. I don't care what anyone says, Alex Smith is not an NFL-quality QB. He is saved by running backs and a field goal kicker. Time to bring in the first backup, who looked much better in the pre-season.

I'm at the Mercado Starbucks, where they have the A/C set to stun. Not enough eye candy to hang out very long.

Plans for tomorrow:
9 am team meeting
BASFA
Generally be very happy that rehearsals are over.