Littering – not just for students anymore

Well, here is an interesting thing I learned: it is not necessarily the students who like to leave their litter in my yard. The students are mostly gone because of the Colleges having closed down for the pandemic and yet new trash is still appearing along my fence and in my front yard. Come on people! Littering is so 1960s! Just stop it already. Sigh.

I just saw a trip that I am dying to go on: Argentina, Brazil, Patagonia. Anyone want to give me $2000 to do it?  – I would like to add the side excursion to Chile, though, so I might need a bit more than the $2000. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? I didn’t receive a “stimulus” check so, my bank account is smaller than many people’s.

Social distancing kills! Ask the three stink beetles that I socially distanced from water and food. I try not to kill anything if I can avoid it. But when I learned from a Science Uncorked event that Stink Bugs were bad for the environment, the next three I captured, I socially isolated to death. Does that make me a bad person? Probably…

I am trying to get my house in some semblance of order. I will admit that during this time of weirdness, I have let a few things go. Like clothes in my bedroom. How can I have so many clothes? I am not a clothes horse, I don’t really care about clothes, and yet I have too many. Mostly shirts and things. I don’t really have enough pants. But cargo pants are now out of style, so they are harder to find. Maybe I will go to a thrift store at some point and see if the fashion conscious have let go of some of their cargo pants so there can be more for me!

Anyway, I had two piles of clothes – all clean and mostly folded, sitting in my room. A small pile on a chair and a larger pile on my blanket chest. After putting away the clothes on the chair, I transferred the clothes from the blanket chest to the chair. It is, after all, five or six steps closer to the closet! And, after much laborious effort, all the clothes have been put away for the time being. Who rocks?

HH’s piles are neater and probably more effective than this pile…

Sleeping Schedule is awry

Not really sure why, but I am not feeling well rested lately. I’m pretty sure it is not malaise. Overall, things seem to be going pretty well. Fingers crossed, that continues.

On the play reading side, we will be doing Facebook Live presentations of Zoom readings. Somehow I ended up with one reading on the first day of the readings and one on the last day of the readings. My poor actors in the second set will have to just hang around most all of May waiting to even rehearse. Luckily my first play is only four people, so we ought to be able to knock that out pretty easily. The big stumbling block will be the technology. Any Zoom experts out there who would like to give me a few tips? Or anyone want to be a guinea pig for me to play with the tech before I use it with actors? I think there is a YouTube tutorial about it. We shall see if that helps set my mind at ease. I do know that tech usually comes easily to me and that familiarity will make it less stressful. So, let’s get cracking! Oh, wait, I need to hear back from my casts, which I hope will happen soon.

On the life side, nothing too exciting to report. I had a nice hike with a friend the other day. That was a good thing. Getting out and about is healthy, especially in this time of weirdness. And my handy helper (HH) (I think I have mentioned her name before, but I am not sure if that is ok with her or not – maybe I ought to ask her – and ask if she would like her business name put out there – she does great work…) came and did some work this week as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog. She left me a list of things that I could work on to help keep things progressing. So I went into the attic and got out a box to sort. Pictured is the box! More electronics! Woo hoo! I thought I had collected all of the electronics in the house, but obviously I hadn’t. That is just the way here things are here at Chalet Schoen-René.

I am planning on making crescent roll pizza pockets tonight for dinner. My HH mentioned them the other day and the idea appealed! I bought some crescent rolls (the ones in a can that you roll up on your own) and have all of the other ingredients in the fridge just waiting to be used. Yes, I am drooling already.

And that’s all the news for today. Time for me to get sorting and then make some dinner!

Oops, just looked at my bank balance thinking I would pay some bills. Guess that is going to have to wait for a bit. Sigh.

Yay electronics! So excited!!

Progress!

We are making progress at Chalet Schoen-René. My handy helper continues to be handily helpful. Besides cleaning, she has taken on the task of going through mom’s clothes (and other stuff) and figuring out what to do with them. Lots of cool piles. As anyone who knows me well, knows that I love putting like with like and sorting things in general. And untying knots. And tying cherry stems in knots with my tongue. Yes, I can do that. Though I haven’t in a while. Hmm, wonder why that is. Anyway, there is progress being made here on moving things out of the house. Slowly, but slowly. Go tortoise, go!

Turns out that I like to perform. Who knew? For a long while there, I was working really diligently on the piano. Then, I stopped being so diligent and went into maintenance mode with a little bit of pushing the envelope (learning new pieces) tossed in. To, er, not playing at all. For a long time I couldn’t figure out what had happened to cause me to stop practicing even the ten minutes a day that I was practicing. And then it dawned on me. A few months ago, I sat down at a foreign to me piano and tried playing the song I know best on it – that I have been playing off and on since I was 14 or maybe even 12. (I learned it near when The Sting first came out – I wonder if that movie holds up…) And it did not go well. At all. I mean, terribly. And I was not amused. And just like that I stopped practicing. Sigh. Maybe I will get back to it. Anything is possible!

Who likes to get up early and why? I don’t like getting up early, mainly because I like staying up late at night. And this morning, when I got up earlier than I normally do, I discovered another reason for not getting up early. It is colder! Maybe in the summer, that would be a good thing, but since it is still late Spring, no thank you. Brrrr.

Piles that mean something to the piler for sure…oh wait, there are labels! Yay!

 

Almost Forgotted!

I was sitting, reading and realized that somehow (somehow?!?) I had managed to forget about posting a blog post today! Heaven forbid that you, my friendly reader, would be deprived of the honeyed words that flow from my fingertips into your eyes. Is it because today was an exciting day? Hopefully? Nope. It was because it was kind of like my Sunday. No real commitments and so the day just got away from me. Oh well, we are all here now.

My life is filled with fantasy just now. Not the sexy kind, sadly, but the prosaic kind. I finished the first of the Shannara books and have started the second. And on TV (shorthand for whatever I happen to be watching on whatever device – boy life has gotten complicated – I remember when there were just three channels to choose from and only a TV to watch them on…) I finished the Shannara Chronicles (that bear very little resemblance to the books so far as I can tell). So, I started another fantasy series called The Letter to the King. So far, it is fodder. And that is about as far as I can go to recommend it. It is again based on a book, but I had never heard of it. Oh well.

My power went out last night! It was raining quite a bit and suddenly, around 10:20 pm (or 22:20) the power in the house went out. Well, half the power. I ignored the fact that my wifi was still working – both the router and the modem, which meant that there was still power in the house. Instead, I called NYSEG and they suggested I go down and check my breaker box. I saw one breaker tripped. But there was no indication (or indicator) that the larger, main breakers had tripped. So I flipped the first little one back off and on again. And when nothing happened, I flipped the first large main breaker off and on again and, voila, we had light! Yay. Yes, I probably should have checked that myself before calling NYSEG, but I wasn’t thinking totally clearly. Life is that way, sometimes.

When in doubt, post a selfie – I was smiling on the inside…

 

Back in the saddle again

It really has been a long time since I directed anything. A loooooong time. The last time I actually directed a project was in the 1990s. 1998, I think. A production of The Pirates of Penzance back when I was living in California. Part of the reason I left CA was to start a theatre company. Which, so far, hasn’t been started. (If anyone wants to know more about it, or if they happen to know someone who wants to invest large sums of money into the venture, please let me know!) During the ten years that I was in NC, I did some theatre related things, but did not direct a play. Then, after moving back to Geneva, I again did lots of theatre related stuff, just no directing. Damn MFA wasn’t paying for itself! But, here we are, I am back in the saddle again. Sure, it is only two staged readings for a local theatre company, but anything is better than nothing. And it is a start!

Luckily, as I was lying (not laying dammit) in bed this morning (er…) I had an epiphany on how to cast the shows. Spreadsheets are our friends! We had over 70 actors audition. A few were non-starters so far as I was concerned. A few were people who were talented, but I didn’t have enough roles or appropriate roles for them. So they were also easy to weed out. We had a huge number of young women audition. I would guess a solid third of the auditioners. We did not have a lot of men audition. Which seems to frequently be the case. Where are all the male actors hiding? Probably in LA hoping to be discovered. And very few middle aged men auditioned. Sigh. Anyway, the biggest stumbling block was the men. We spent less than two hours to cast 19 short plays with 9 directors. All in all it went pretty smoothly. As one of the directors pointed out, it would have been much worse if we had been casting fully realized productions and not “just” readings. Tonight, the cast list goes out and then tomorrow we get to start working with our casts. Tuesday we will have another director’s meeting (sigh) to discuss play order and technical issues. So exciting!

It has been raining steadily most of the day. And it will, apparently, continue to rain through most of tomorrow. Yay rain. April Showers, don’t you know. Tuesday looks like it will be a pleasant day. And then again the following Saturday looks pleasant so far. Here’s hoping! I am really looking forward to being able to get back out on my porch consistently.

Weird country visits to one of my posts again – one view from India and one from South Africa! World Wide Appeal!

Classy! Using my printer as a stand for a light – the better for people to see me when I am Zooming with them! I can’t remember when or where I got this lamp – but I think it cost me a dollar…and the bulb is low energy usage! Woo hoo!

 

I feel like I’m forgetting something

Not a feeling I enjoy, feeling like I’m forgetting something. And it feels like it’s something important. Like I have left the car windows open and it is about to rain. Or a bill that must be paid to keep the wolves from the door. Sigh. It will come to me or it won’t.

Directing, it seems, might be like falling off a bicycle. Even if you haven’t done it in a while, it comes back to you. And it still hurts and might need stitches. No, wait, that’s something else. Regardless. We had a good meeting last night. I think we got a lot of things worked out, which is good. Today, later, (which is why I am writing and posting this blog earlyish) (oops, forgot to post…) we have a marathon audition session 4-8. Someone said 70 some actors. Eeek. It ought to be interesting. I have never done online auditioning. Nor have I had to fight over actors with this many directors. The last time I had to have the actor fight it was only with two other directors. One was a faculty member. Guess who go their first choices. Sadly, the faculty member. Grrrr. Anyway. We shall see what happens. In any case, it will be interesting.

More weird dreams: I have had two dreams recently of mom smoking a huge cigar. The first time, she was almost finished with her cigar. During the dream this morning she was just starting one. Is that weird or what?

I started watching Penny Dreadful last night on Netflix. The first seasons are streaming on Netflix. I hope that somehow I will be able to watch Game of Thrones sometime. Anyway, last night on Fresh Air, the media critic said that Penny Dreadful was good, so it must be true. It is a little heavy on the horror side of fantasy for my taste, at least in the first episode. I will watch a couple more and see where it goes. Interesting characters, cool period of history, decently written from what I saw. Huzzuh.

I have (had) at least two of these. One from the old days, and this one. And this new one broke first! Go figure.

Feast or Famine

Either I have lots to write about (I made notes during the previous day perhaps) or not much of anything. Today, is a feast day. Still, I don’t want to write everything about everything, because then there won’t be anything about anything in future blog posts. Ok, not true. Still…

Last night, I watched a tear jerker movie called The Book of Henry. I must have seen the trailer or preview on some other movie and asked for it in a moment of weakness. Actually, I am glad I rented it. Great movie? No. Good movie, sure! Naomi Watts played the mom, Sarah Silverman (which surprised me) played her friend in a small supporting role. I won’t go into the plot. Suffice it to say, many tears were shed. And in the time of weirdness, a few tears need to be let out to keep them from possibly bursting forth at an inopportune moment.

The other note I made, was that my current batch of garlic bread is more like garlic croutons. Sigh. I guess I could spin that into an entire blog post if I tried. But wait, there’s one more subject to bring up before calling it a “post.”

I am getting back into directing in a light way. As long time readers may recall, I read plays for the local theatre group: Geneva Theatre Guild. I read a lot of plays. I mean, a lot. They received a couple hundred and I read half of them. 100+ plays. I wonder how many the next person wrote. I will have to ask to see. I bet there might be some (people who are running the program or in the Guild) who read as many or more. Maybe we shall see. Anyway, since I don’t have my mom anymore (sniff, sniff), I don’t have many constraints on my time. And that was a large part of the reason that I haven’t been doing any directing: a perceived dearth of time. I had toyed with the idea of putting in a proposal for directing their summer musical, but because of the weirdness, I don’t know if it is going to happen and, honestly, I just didn’t feel motivated to do it. My little brain thought it would be good to dip a larger portion of my foot into the theatrical stream before leaping in. Speaking of which, do you go into the water somewhat gradually, or are you a leap right in sort of person? I go gradually until I decide that I can take the plunge. When that is possible, as it isn’t always. But, surprisingly, I have digressed. The foot in is directing a couple of unstaged readings. If anyone wants to discuss the differences between a staged reading and an unstaged reading, feel free to inquire inside. Tonight I have a meeting to talk about the process. Tomorrow there are auditions – and I think I need a lot of cast members. I ended up with two decent size casts – no two handers for me, though I think that 8 of my top ten were two handers. (I may be exaggerating a smidge.) More as it develops.

I finished reading The Sword of Shannara this morning. It was ok at best. Now on to the second book in the series, as it was the one upon which the first season of The Shannara Chronicles TV series was based. Loosely, apparently. Sigh. All of this is making me want to read The Wheel of Time series again.

Feast for lunch – lots of leftovers that I am trying to eat up –  I got too full to fast. Sigh.

Wooshi

It is weird how sometimes my phone learns words quickly and other times it takes forever. For instance, in communication with a friend, she came up with the word Wooshi. And we started using it. And both of our phones learned it quickly. Meanwhile, I have been using huzzuh instead of huzzah for years and my damn phone keeps trying to replace it with just about anything else. Banana even. Ok, maybe not banana but you get my point. And the reason I like huzzuh better than huzzah is…does anyone know? Reminds me of a kid’s game, which I won’t talk more about because that might give away the reasoning behind my choice. And we can’t have that.

It is, yay, another cool and wet day here in Geneva, NY. Chalet Schoen-Rene continues to percolate along on the exciting trajectory on which it finds itself. I have accomplished a whole lot of nothing today and that is totally ok. I will, come hell or high water (love that phrase for some reason), at least get a blog post written. (This one…) Back a few years ago, I wrote a blog post (or three or four – I had four or five blogs going at once at one point) every day for a year. One way that I kept motivated and inspired was by taking at least one photo a day. Which I am not doing this time. I am toughing it out. Though pictures do help when inspiration is lacking.

By the way, I think it is cool when someone does the “one picture of themselves a day for as much of their lives as they can” thing. I wonder, if someone started doing that back as soon as photography became main stream and continued through today what that would look like. So cool. I feel sorry for the kids of tomorrow. They won’t have pictures of when they were a kid that they can thumb through and stimulate their memories with. How many people are good at archiving their digital photos so that they can be looked at forever in the unknown future? Sigh.

More signs of spring – now if only the weather would warm up consistently…

 

 

I will come up with a title later (or not)

As I mentioned a long time ago, in a blog post far away, one of the hardest parts for me as a blogger is coming up with a title for each blog. I think dating them is a copout. And then, when I have to repost my blogs on Facebook (thanks, FB) I have to come up with a second title. Well, I don’t have to, but I like to. Well, I don’t actually like to, I feel that it is cheating to use the same title again. I know, I am strange.

To sell or not to sell, that is a question. We have gotten to a stage where we can begin to sell things from the house. And I am torn about it. Mainly because it isn’t mom’s clothes, but some of mom’s accumulated sewing stuff that is first on the chopping block. I know that I will never sew anything that would require one eighteenth of what mom had accumulated through her lifetime, and yet, I am finding it emotionally difficult to pull the trigger. As someone pointed out (Ernst I think), once you sell something, it’s gone. Sigh.

Space-X got another set of satellites into orbit and landed a booster again. And this trip marked a re-use of a fairing! How cool is that? And for those not following Space-X doings, SN-4 might be getting ready for pressure testing already! Third times the charm! If the pressure tests go well, next step is a hope, kind of like Star Hopper did a while ago. Fingers crossed!

Once again, I thought of lots of great things to write about throughout the day and I was bad and didn’t make note of them. Well, poo. Hopefully some of those thoughts will return. Eventually…

This is the clock that I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post – exciting, huh?!?

And I guess I didn’t come up with a better title. Oh well, life is that way sometimes…

Amusements

In this time of social distancing, what are we doing for amusement? This thought, and a thread I am writing with a friend, got me to thinking about theme parks and amusement parks. Personally, I like modest roller coasters, bumper anything (boats and cars are all that actually come to mind…) and flumes! I love flumes. Not the short lumber jack flumes, but larger, longer, more varied flumes! Of course, to enjoy a flume requires a day be extra sunny and extra hot as most flume rides end in a huge soaking splash. Still, I love them! Any recommendations on great flumes will be taken under advisement. When I get my electric RV and start to travel the states and probably Canada and who knows, maybe even Mexico and points South, one of the things that I will be blogging about is amusement parks and theme parks. And breweries and brew pubs. And pool halls. And miniature golf places. Sigh. I hope all of these will still exist in the future.

I think people have a weird idea about the “stay at home” guidance. In some places, where the population density is high, it makes a lot of sense not to go out of your space in case you might have to interact with people at distances of less than 6 feet. I get it. That makes sense. Not that 6 feet really does that much good, but it is better than nothing, so why quibble. Anyway, in places where population is less dense, going outside ought to be perfectly fine. It isn’t like there are huge clouds of the Covid-19 virus hanging around in the atmosphere of the world that one might walk through and become infected. One can walk and be out and about, just not in a crowd. So, take your dog for a walk. Go for a hike (or a stroll). Get out and let yourself experience some open air once in a while. Just my two cents.

Had a weird dream last night. We have this little travel clock that we got back in the 70s I think. Maybe the 80s. Who really remembers? Anyway, I dreamt that I was hiking around a park. It felt sort of like the Grand Canyon, but it could have been any park. I went down on a ledge and left the clock there. Hmm…

How much garlic is too much garlic? This is what I put on one loaf’s worth of cheesy garlic toast – probably 8 small and medium cloves