The Pekoe Story, Part I

Here's how it all started. About 5 years ago - or maybe 6 - Debbie sent me the following e-mail because she finds Dave-the-cat-guy's (see all my previous whining about the name "David" elsewhere) writing style humourous and after she shared a few of his missives, I became a fan as well. So one day in March of 2000, I got this one, which, while not as humourous, gets the point across:

For those of you looking for a more permanent feline companion, may we present Mister Kitty? Mr. K is about 14 months old, a neutered male orange tabby, and is, simply, a love. He's one of the few cats I've ever met who actually enjoys being hugged. In fact, if he feels he's not getting enough attention, he will climb up onto a convenient table or countertop, wait for you to pass, and--basically--throw himself on you, purring and rubbing against your face. He's very good with other cats; in fact, he needs at least one other kitty for play and companionship. Mr. K really is one of the two or three most affectionate cats I've ever met (and y'all know that I've known one or two), and he's quite handsome to boot (photo available on request). Again, if you have any interest at all, please let me know.

So I forwarded it to Mollie. I suggested that we foster a cat and she suggested that I just go ahead and adopt "Mr. Kitty." So I wrote to Dave-the-cat-guy:

Hi David -

My name is Leta and I'm a friend of Debbie who forwards to me some of your e-mails about cat rescue [and your comments on "Tosca," which really helped me to understand the opera better when I saw it]. Until recently I was dating someone allergic to cats so I didn't think it would it send a positive message if I got a cat for the house, but he and I are now just Very Good Friends. So I would be very interested in getting more information from you about become a Cat Fosterer. Kind a kitty rental or try-before-you-buy.

Here is the situation at my house: I live in Silver Spring in a medium-sized house with a housemate [Mollie] and her dog [Max]. Max is 13 and doing the arthritic, grouchy-old-guy thing. Because of the arthritis he rarely leaves the first floor of the house, so any cats who wanted to avoid him could do so easily. He has lived with cats before and while he doesn't understand them he's willing to peacefully co-exist. For the next 6 months or so Mollie also provides day care in our house for three little children, two of whom are about 2 1/2 years old and one who will be 2 in June. The children are also pretty much restricted to the first floor but are themselves lively [very lively] and affectionate and used to pets.

I grew up with Siamese cats [still my favorite breed], so I'm well aware of what goes into maintaining cats in the style to which they can very easily become accustomed. I'm also aware that they are pretty useless when it comes time for household chores, unless you consider hissing at the vacuum cleaner and hiding under the sofa to be useful.

Mollie and I have discussed it and we thought that I should talk to you about adopting Mr. Kitty [who can resist the concept of assault friendliness? As Deb can tell you that's my basic M.O., anyway] and about me serving as fosterer for an additional cat. This way Mr. Kitty can have friends to play with - and new and different friends over time - but I don't have to permanently commit to two cats right away. If Mr. Kitty has already found new employment, then we should just talk about me becoming a fosterer.

I went to meet "Mr. Kitty." Dave-the-cat-guy warned me that Pekoe had developed an aversion to Kitty Fairs and might not be Mr. Personality if he suspected that this was another blind date dressed as a casual gathering of humans. But, ha ha!, I'm smarter than that, so I just ignored the cat and chatted with the people. And even though, oddly enough, this is a tactic I am completely unable to deploy around men I find attractive, it worked a treat with the cat. Before long he was climbing up the back of the sofa to get more up close and personal. Within an hour, he was in his cat carrier, his few belongings were packed, and he was on his way to a brand new life.

To be continued..... Stay tuned for exciting scenes from the next episode of "The Pekoe Story!"

Next time on "The Pekoe Story" -- Pekoe hates riding in the car!

Surfacing

Two tech weeks, back to back. A cat with medical problems. Lots of work at work. Let's just say that it hasn't been a very quiet time in my own personal Lake Woebegone. Phone calls have gone unreturned, ditto a fair bit of e-mail. Scheduled activities have been pushed around and rescheduled. My home grows ever filthier.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. "The Emperor's New Clothes" opened on the 5th, so I stopped driving to Herndon for those rehearsals. And "The Cocktail Hour" opened on the 11th, This coming week is still action-packed, but I think I'll actually be home on Wednesday to watch "Law and Order." David and I get to go to a movie tonight.

And there was great rejoicing.


PS - And I still can't sleep.

How to decorate a set

An e-mail I sent to my Dad the other day --



Below is a link the press photos for "The Cocktail Hour." If you look carefully at the last picture (the cast gathered around the piano), you can see my high school graduation picture (the one on the left) and your mother's picture (the one on the far right). Hidden behind my graduation picture is one of yours & Mom's wedding photos with all the grandparents.

This is the second show that I've done at the Stage that needed family pictures, so this is also the second show that all three pictures have been in. In fact, it was the need to dress the set for "Independence" that got the wedding photo and your mother's portrait framed, which I'd been meaning to do for years and had never gotten around to. For "Independence" we also had Mom's, Sara's, and my baby pictures, which used to hang in Gram's house. Aunt Dotty gave them to me after Gram died and they usually hang in my bedroom.

By pure coincidence, the colors used on the walls in "Independence" matched the tinting in your mother's portrait (a kind of dusty yellow and sage green), so it looked completely at home there.

I pretty much hate every picture of me, so I hate these press photos, too, but I really enjoy having real pictures of my family on the set.


http://www.ssstage.org/PressKit/index.php

It's Children's Show Tech Week!

My kid's show, The Emperor's New Clothes (bringing nudity to a children's theater near you!), opens on Saturday. The way it goes at Elden Street is that the mainstage show has complete use of the theater until they open. The Weir, the show under which we are running, opened this past Friday, the 28th, for instance. So once, they have their opening performance on Friday night, we get the theater Saturday during the day and can stay there until actor call - around 6:30 or 7:00 pm. However, before we leave, we have to put away anything of ours so that the the Mainstage show can have their evening performance. Fair enough - they have to strike anything moveable so that we can do our thing during the day. And we have the theater to ourselves for the week and can leave our set up.

We had a dry tech, which is when lights and sound are set and cued without the actors present, on Sunday. Dry techs are both good and bad, but I prefer to give the cast a day off before we start a week of rehearsals. It gives them a chance to do laundry and tell their families that they love them. And will miss them. I actually like Tech Weeks because it's when everything comes together - lights and sound and costumes and set and actors. You can actually really see the show you are going to have, for one thing and for another, I love the intensity and comraderie of spending that much time together. If you have a good cast (and I do) those days are just golden. Hard work but golden.

Tonight we were running the pre-show music and randomly someone would hear something they liked and would shriek and run into the theater and sing along and maybe dance. (And what it must do for the teenagers on my crew to watch the old people dancin' up a storm....) Richard, among his many talents, can dance. So he and I did a modified jitterbug - modified because he can dance I cannot and because the music wasn't really right for it, but who cared? It was fun. And I danced, like a wave on the ocean...

We have only one more rehearsal because The Weir has a performance on Friday night. So we'll run the show and I'll give My Last Notes because I don't give notes during the run. And then we'll strike our set and give the theater back until Saturday morning when we face The Kids. We'll have two shows each Saturday (11:00 and 2:00) and one each Sunday (2:00) until the 20th. But after tomorrow night the show belongs to the cast and to Sally (my Stage Manager) and Jen (my Sound Designer) and the rest of the crew. I'll be a tourist, attending as many performances as I can and seeing everything that I didn't clean up. Seeing blocking mistakes I made, directorial choices I messed up, seeing everything I did wrong. And adoring my cast because they are so adorable. Who do I have a crush on for this show? All of them. Well, all of them but when he makes his entrance in his costume for the procession to show off the New Clothes, I love Richard the best because he wears that costume with such good humor and grace.

And once this show is up I go directly into Tech Week for The Cocktail Hour. Back-to-back Tech Weeks. Hmm. Ask me on the 12th if I still like Tech Weeks.

One for the English Majors

I was typing something for my boss today and noticed that he had written "Transition [adjective] [noun] ..." and I asked if we could make it "Transfer [adjective] [noun]....." He agreed.

In this world of corporate-speak, this tiny victory is a lit candle in the vast darkness. The Professional Organization of English Majors will be so happy.

So you want to be a director

Holly's rule - If it makes the director laugh, it stays in.

Leta's corollary - If it the makes the producer laugh so much she snorts, it definitely stays in.

How to weird yourself out

1. Take the contact lens case that you've been carrying around in your purse for the last couple of years to the kitchen.
2. Drop the case into a clean coffee mug.
3. Pour boiling water over the lens case until it bobs around in the water.
4. Watch all the crap that was on the case settle to the bottom of the mug.

Ick.

Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks passed away yesterday. MSN has a good article, but my memorial was to read one of my favorite essays by Sarah Vowell, Rosa Parks, C'est Moi, which I first heard on public radio on This American Life. It made me buy Sarah's book, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, just so that I could read that essay out loud to people, or make them read it.

Anything I could say about Rosa Parks would be utterly banal. I was born long after the Montgomery bus boycott and have never known a segregated society. (That's one for those "incoming freshmen have never known a world without CD players" lists. When I was an incoming freshman, I had never known a world that would prevent a child from going to school with me because she didn't happen to be white. Thank you, Mrs. Parks.)

I'll stop here because, while to quote Tom Lehrer, it takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee-house or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on, having to this well-fed, Montgomery County, white girl speak out against racism isn't saying much. I'll leave it to the people who know what they're talking about and have more to talk about worth listening to than I.

My readers - to quote Casey - rock

Thank you, Sir Dennis & Anonymous!!

I posted a few days ago that I would love to have the url for the most famous eBay wedding dress sale of all time.

Sir Dennis was unable to find the Wedding Dress Guy, but found another fun listing "My-Ex-Husband-is-Gay-Heres-the-unlucky-wedding-dress" and "Anonymous" found the Snopes.com listing for the Wedding Dress Guy that both verifies the story and debunks some of the more memorable bits of the listing. And also contains a link to a listing about "reflectoporn." I swear, I learn something every day and I never expected to learn about "reflectoporn." (Don't follow the link unless pictures of nekkid weirdos really improve your day. Just a suggestion.)

Thank you both! Now I have a nice, lasting link to the eBay wedding dress guy and to a woman who now sings Freda Payne's "Band of Gold" with real sincerity.

Heads Up, NPR

The downside to Autumn would, of course, be that it is also pledge drive time at NPR. Technically, at NPR member stations.

I completely understand the need for the pledge drives and I contribute when and how I can. Not as often or as much as I should, but there are lots of good causes that don't get as much as I should give them (just ask Janice, the minister at my church). And I have friends who work for NPR and I think they should be paid their salaries. And I have a big, geeky crush on Scott Simon, so I definitely believe he should get paid. And Les told me that one of his favorite stations failed to meet their budgetary goals often enough and had to sell out. We don't want that to happen.

But.

I hate, hate, hate it when in order to push the guilt button I get called a thief and a mooch. So I have a rule. My standard donation - when I can - to my local NPR station is $20/year, but I deduct a dollar every time I am accused to stealing by tuning in without writing a check. This morning Nina Totenberg used the word "Freeloader" twice in one paragraph - so that's $2 fewer of my dollars going to NPR. Using this system, some years NPR ends up owing me money.

In order to save NPR some badly needed dollars, I often dive for the radio dial as soon as I hear anything that sounds like pledge drive patter (PDP). And I'll return a dollar to the pot if I hear a good argument (like how much it costs to carry the shows I like, or how small a percentage of the operating budget comes from the government).

I really do like the new protection racket approach to the pledge drive - "pay us now and if we get enough money we'll shave a day off of the pledge drive." Sort of "Nice radio station you have here. I'd hate to see anything happen to it." Brilliant. Works for me. I'll leave the cash in a dead tree in the cemetary, but please don't hurt Marketplace.

And I like pledging via the internet during one of my favorite shows, so I often pledge during Car Talk or A Prairie Home Companion. Especially as they make really fun arguments for pledging. And never call me a freeloader.

I may post how much money I ended up sending in this year, but, in the meantime, operators are standing by. Please pledge now.

Chestnutty

It's Autumn, when a young (....) woman's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of Autumn foods, like parsnips and turnips and chestnuts. Foods closer to the sage end of the herb/spice/condiment scale than lemon.

I found a couple of good recipes the other day for foods with either chestnuts or parsnips in them and one - Mercy! - for Chestnuts, Brussels Sprouts and Parsnips which for me is a real hat trick, as I love them all. (Note to David, don't worry, the recipe says that there's only 1 gram of saturated fat per serving.)

As I was gloating to Rich about this miracle, he told me about Chestnut Spread, or Creme de Marrons. (Note: My absolute favorite fun fact about the Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston movie The Bodyguard is that her character's name, Rachel Marron, pretty much meant "Brown Brown.")

I found the spread on Amazon and have added it to my wish list because, well, just read: This sweetened puree of chestnuts is delicately flavored with vanilla. It is a wonderful addition to pastries with its nutty richness and creamy texture. Mix chestnut puree into butter cream frostings, fondants, fillings of all types, and cake batters or just eat plain with creme fraiche. Or This sweet and smooth spread is a delicious topping for your morning brioche or your evening ice cream alike. If you have never tried this before, it is like a honey of creamed chestnuts. Even that description does not do it justice.

Rich says he found in the international section at a Safeway once but who do I trust more, Safeway or Amazon?

I have a whole cook book of chestnut recipes and it's time to start stocking up on those spiffy little brown beauties.

And as soon as I find a menu that contains caramel, chestnuts, ginger, parsnips, pine nuts, rosemary, spinach, and turnips, there will be no living with me.

My consuming passion

Carol and I had a tea party a couple of weeks ago. Theoretically, it was a "tea tasting," which is to a tea party as a wine tasting is a to pub crawl, maybe. Anyway, we used lots of little tea pots (Carol has some truly amazing tea pots, I just have quite a few) and tried mostly green or white teas with names like "Drunken Concubine." It was a very successful day outside of the learning curve for using the little spoutless pots, which involved pouring nearly-boiling water around in the place in a rather profligate manner, and much tea was enjoyed.

It turns out, by the way, that the way to use the spoutless teapot is one of those important life lessons - you pick up the pot in one hand, pull the lid back slightly with the other, and pour with an outward appearance of confidence. No hesitation! No half-measures! Commit! This is your choice and your have chosen it! She who hesitates wears hot water.

The most amazing part of the tea-tasting (for me, anyway) was that Carol brought this tea that unused looks like a large hazelnut, but once it is droped into a (preferably clear glass) tea pot it opens into what looks like a lotus flower.

We're going to have another tea tasting sometime soon and we're going to invite Chris. Chris is a Jasmine tea kind of guy, so I'll get to try some teas I don't usually drink. It is good to step off the usual path.

* * * * *

Someone asked me once what teas I like. The short answer is that in general I prefer teas that are named for people or places & meals (King Richard, Irish Breakfast).

Earl Grey is an exception because usually teas named for people don't have orange oil in them and I'm not big on citrus in my tea. Then again, for years I wouldn't drink Constant Compost and now I like it, so, you know, things change. I still call it Constant Compost, of course, because let's face it, "rind of oranges" is compost.

I like black teas, green teas, and white teas. I don't like flavored teas, especially fruit flavored tea which, if it were colder and thicker, would be appropriate to spread on toast. I don't drink tisanes, which are herbal infusions that contain no tea, (Or as I like to call them: boiled weed water. Heck, "tisane" is from an Old French term for barley water - what does that tell you?) so most of the Celestial Seasons catalogue is absent from my tea cabinet. Rooibos, or "red tea" is not tea. Tea is Camellia sinensis, Rooibos is aspalathus linearis - see how they aren't the same thing?

* * * * *

But the best tea news of the day is that thanks to some unflinching scientists who were willing to go the distance in pursuit of hard knowledge over casual cliché , Carol, Chris, and I will be spared the mistake of using the Chocolate Teapot.

TTFN, Paul

Good grief. I thought I posted this 10 days ago, but Blogger thought it was still a draft. Perhaps Blogger knows better than I do...

* * * * *

Paul at The Sun Keeps Rising was my first and best "next blog" click. I found him very shortly after I started writing and I left my first comment about a week later. Oddly enough, that comment is sandwiched between a comment from his Mom and his Step-Dad, both of whom I now read. (Actually, I read most of the folks on his blogroll.)

David likes to tease me by assigning nicknames to the people I talk about a lot - "your boyfriend," "your crush," etc. Paul was "your penpal." When I demurred, he said "Check Paul's blogroll. Is there anyone on it who he doesn't know personally besides you?" Well, no actually, at the time there wasn't. Which I found completely flattering and it improved my day for at least a week.

I was once at Starbucks and a young lady at the next table was talking to a friend and to her Mom about starting as an RA and what that would entail. She left the Starbucks with Paul's url scribbled on a scrap of paper from my purse. ("There's this guy I read who's an RA in Wyoming....").

Paul is going to start student teaching and students these days are very apt to Google their teachers. Shauna shut down her blog after she got Googled by parents who didn't like that she was writing about her job and, therefore, her students. And Shauna is quite possibly the most postive human being ever. So you can imagine that having a blog and teaching can be, shall we say, incompatible.

But, dammit, I'm really, really, really going to miss reading The Sun Keeps Rising. Fortunately, Paul has my e-mail address and I have his, so it's not like when a favorite tv show goes off the air and all one has are the re-runs. (Actually, I won't even have the re-runs. When he deletes the blog, it'll be completely gone. Blogger is pretty thorough that way.)

And so, like a clip from a favorite episode, here for my nostalgic pleasure is the first exchange via comments that I had with Paul. The scene: He had written (and I quote) " (someone ask me why "Birth of a Nation" was the most damaging film ever made, even ahead of Nazi propaganda. Go ahead, ask me). " So, in my snarky little way, I wrote: Yes, why is that? Especially as I always thought that "Flashdance" was the most damaging movie in all history. (Snarkiness aside, I saw "Birth of a Nation" in school when I was in junior high, although I don't remember why.)

So Paul wrote a nice, long, intelligent, irate post about Birth of a Nation during which he accidently used the interesting constuction "thiefs." Here's his opening paragraph, which changed forever how I refer to Leonardo DeCaprio, and the comments exchanged between us. Just because both still make me laugh.

Okay, Dearest Readership, I agree that "Flashdance" is pretty bad, though if pressed I'd rank the 1996 godforsaken pile of shit version of "Romeo and Juliet" starring Clare Danes and Leonardo Di-Crap-io right up there. Only movie I've
ever walked out of.

Leta said...
Okay, I am forced as a former English major and current pedant to do this, so I apologize. Thiefs?

I stumbled across your blog when I was mousing around and really enjoy reading what you have to say. Count me among your readership.L.
6:49 AM

Paul said...
Ya got me. I thought I remembered scenes depicting theivery; I could be making that up. I have a fairly active imagination.

Anyhoo, I edited it out. P
7:53 AM

Paul said...
*thievery, not theivery.

Jesus.
7:54 AM

Paul said...
OH GODDAMMIT!

It just occurred to me that you might have been questioning my spelling of "thief" in the plural, not whether they existed in the film.Ugh.

12:26 PM

Leta said...
Well, yes, it really was just the spelling. On the plus side, the name "Leonardo Di-Crap-io" is going to amuse me for the rest of the day and your points on "Birth of a Nation" are well taken.Have a stress free weekend......L

And speaking of eBay

If anyone still has a working link for the best eBay auction ever - the one where the guy was selling his ex-wife's wedding dress and he modeled it himself - please, please send it to me.

American 15, French 45

I really must spend more time on eBay. And I really must not bid on this auction.

Thanks to Siobhan.

My very own Mondegreen

When my sister and I were about 5 and 8, respectively, we were staying at my grandmother's in Ohio. Gram decided that we should learn another night-time prayer besides "Now I lay me down to sleep," so she taught us both "The Lord's Prayer." So far, so good, until the night that Sara refused to say it because "We're only praying for Leta."

Puzzled, Gram asked her what she meant. "It talks about Leta and not about me!"

"When?"

"The part where it says 'And Leta's not in temptation.' Why doesn't it say 'Sara's not in temptation?" Why am I left out?"

So everytime I say that prayer in church, I always say "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and Leta's not in temptation..." I would like to say that I do it that way as an homage to my sister, but really, it's just a little joke that Lord and I have. Especially as I am so very frequently in temptation.


Temptation, oh, temptation!
Were we, I pray, intended
To shun whate'er our station,
your fascination splendid?
Of fall whene'er we view you?
Head o'er heels into you?
Head o'er heels, head o'er heels,
Head o'er heels into you?

(W.S. Gilbert, The Yeomen of the Guard)

Yet another use for Google

As a tired phrase meter.

Type in a short phrase and if there are more than 5 pages of results returned, you've got a cliche on your hands.

I'll have what he's having

Robert Siegel on NPR today interviewed Charles Martell regarding having his cheese - Stinking Bishop - mentioned in the new Wallace and Gromit movie.

Wow. Charles Martel.

It may be a smelly cheese, but if it can grant nearly eternal life, I'm having some.

Sure, he's had to stay under the radar - he's added an "l" to Martel, moved to Gloucestershire, and lost his accent, but in an obvious nod to history geeks everywhere, he kept the name that he's carried all these centuries.

Forget the Stilton, pass the Stinking Bishop.

Lady Mondegreen

It's probably just me. Maybe it's because I spend too much time these shuttling between Aspen Hill and Herndon. Okay, it's not that, because I've always heard it this way. Even when I had never heard of a certain theater company.

Most mondegreens, I can shake once I learn the real lyric. Like in REM's "End of the World as We Know It," I now hear Time I had some time alone, not, oh, Time I had some Tylenol. And in Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers," it's definitely Jeux sans frontieres, not She's so funky now. (In the interests of full disclosure, these are not my actual mondegreens, but the real lyrics have imprinted on me to the degree that I can no longer remember my actual mondegreens.)

The exception is REM's "Man on the Moon." Just to review, the real lyric is: Hey, Andy, are you goofing on Elvis? Hey baby, are we losing touch? But, even now,years after learning the real lyric, when that song comes on the radio, my brain will only supply me with Hey Andy, are you goofing on Elden Street....

I've decided to accept it and sing it that way. REM will never hear me, so they don't care. And the folks at the Elden Street Players will probably never hear me and they already think I'm weird, so it's not like it going to hurt my reputation with them or anything.

Life Less Ordinary

"Life Less Ordinary" by Carbon Leaf is my favorite song right now. I look for it on the radio, pecking at the tuning buttons like some kind of hypnotized chicken until I (all too rarely) find it. I like the whole song, but that parts that caught my attention were these lyrics:

The night you came into my life
Well it took the bones of me, took the bones of me
You blew away my storm and strife
And shook the bones of me, shook the bones of me.
By the way, I do know why you stayed away
I will keep tongue-tied but...

Honey understand, honey understand
I won't make demands
Honey understand, honey understand
We could walk without a plan.

The first is just a really spiffy lyric. The second is a paraphrase of something I've said to more than one person: "We're grown ups. We can have any kind of friendship we want." People get too tied up with expectations - we should be more willing to walk without a plan. Someone I used to know told me that a relationship is a process, not a thing. When I am my better self I remember that.

So, just for me, and because of the people they remind me of, here are the entire lyrics.

Live a life less ordinary
Live a life extraordinary with me
Live a life less sedentary
Live a life evolutionary with me

Well I hate to be a bother,
But it's you and there's no other, I do believe
You can call me naive but...
I know me very well (at least as far as I can tell)
And I know what I need

The night you came into my life
Well it took the bones of me, took the bones of me
You blew away my storm and strife
And shook the bones of me, shook the bones of me
By the way, I do know why you stayed away...
I will keep tongue-tied next time

Live a life less ordinary
Live a life extraordinary with me
My face had said too much
Before our hands could even touch
To greet a 'hello'(So much for going slow...)
A little later on that year
I told you that I loved you dear
What do you know?
This you weren't prepared to hear
I'm a saddened man, I'm a broken boy
I'm a toddler with a complex toy
I've fallen apart, since the ambush of your heart

The night you came into my life
Well it took the bones of me, took the bones of me
You blew away my storm and strife
And shook the bones of me, shook the bones of me.
By the way, I do know why you stayed away
I will keep tongue-tied but...

Honey understand, honey understand
I won't make demands
Honey understand, honey understand
We could walk without a plan.
Honey understand (honey), honey understand
I won't rest in stone all alone
Honey understand, honey understand
I'm all ready to go
But you already know...

Live a life less ordinary
Live a life extraordinary with me.
If I could name you in this song
Would it make you smile and sing along?
This is the goal: to get into your soul
If I could make you dance for joy
Could that be the second-chance decoy?
The bird-in-hand I would need
To help you understand?

The night you came into my life
well it took the bones of me, took the bones of me
You blew away my storm and strife
And shook the bones of me, shook the bones of me
By the way, I do know why you stayed away
I will keep tongue-tied next time

I crack me up.

Like most extroverts (and most egomaniacs) I like to make people laugh. Of course, the best is when I can make David laugh. And the double-plus good is when I can make him laugh so hard that he has to hold the phone away a bit while he does that Alan Alda-y big laugh that I like so much. I got one (bordering on two) of those tonight, which reminded me of some other things that made people laugh recently. Here they are in no particular order.

1. Talking to Jill today about the newsletter which has some formatting stuff that used to drive her crazy and now drives me crazy, I said "Yeah, well, as we Episcopalians like to say, Oy."

2. Talking to David about almost mentioning this blog to someone higher up the food chain at work, I said that when Mike told me that next year he's taking his vacation during year-end just to avoid Year-End Madness, I nearly said "Yeah, I posted about that on my blog," but I caught myself in time and said "Yeah, I told some people ---" David was really amused at the euphemism "some people" as a subsitute for "anyone on the internet."

3. David was explaining to me that there are several colorful metaphors for the need to pee first thing in the morning and the effect that this has on men. A moment's thought would have made it obvious that of course there are colorful metaphors for that. Anything involving that particular piece of anatomy is going to involve colorful metaphors. Heck, that piece of anatomy probably generates more CM than it does carbon-based off-spring. Anyway, as I say, David mentioned one or two of them. So I asked if when we buy our huge estate we could call it "Morningwood." And then he barked with laughter while holding the phone away for a bit. Ahhh. Life is good.

Yeah, okay, not the last word in comedy, but they made people laugh. So -- I'm here all week, folks, and let's be good to the waitstaff.

And, boy, am I flattered

Any show, any role, any time, any place -- An actor I know speaking of a director I know.

I got the best compliment of my directorial career when I was casting The Emperor's New Clothes ("Finally Including Nudity in the Children's Theater!"). Amy, who has worked with me in 21 Pairs of Sneakers and HMS Pinafore drove down from Columbia, Maryland to Herndon, Virginia to audition for me. This is about 100 miles round-trip and includes the always-interesting-and-not-in-a-good-way-beltway and the you-(literally)-pays-your-money-you-takes-your-chances-Dulles Toll Road. For an unpaid show for children that lasts about an hour. And Amy gets up before 5:00 am, so the trip home from rehearsal would feel very late at night to her.

We were taking a short break and Amy and I were chatting. Or rather, I was chatting. Amy was obviously contemplating how crazy she would have to be to agree to do the show. So I let her off the hook. We'll work together another time, but I'm going to stay flattered forever that she made that drive - and actually considered doing the show - just because she likes working with me.

Wow. I mean, like, --- wow.

Happy New Year!

My company "celebrated" year end on Friday and some of us in the Contracts/Finanace area are sending "Happy New Year" greetings to each other today.

And, of course, tonight at Sundown begins Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

In both cases the books are closed on the old year and a new year is begun. Time to finish up, to reflect, to cast out. Save the good, discard the bad. (Is it a coincidence that the festival of Discardia finishes today? I think not.) Time to take on better ways, better choices -- a fresh, clean start.

Apples and honey and clean, new file folders to all!

L'shanah tovah.

(Next week from Ask an Episcopalian - "What is Yum Kippur and should I wish my Jewish friends a Happy Day of Atonement?")

Translation

I work in an office. I play in theaters. And yet there is common ground:

An interview is like an audition;

A second interview is like a callback;

A CFO is like a producer;

and -- most importantly, at least in the use of colorful metaphors by normally mild-mannered people -- Year End is just like Tech Week.

Original Celebrated and Curiously Ginger

I was at Target the other day picking up some of life's little necessaries when I found a new-to-me flavor of Altoids. Yep, those wily Brits have introduced Ginger Altoids. There's even a bit of ginger root and ginger flower (zingiber officinale) posing on the cover. Of course, the sketch of the ginger root looks rather like Ernest Shepherd's illustration of Tigger from the original Winnie-the-Pooh books, but no matter.

I actually hate original Altoids, largely because I hate strong mint flavors which hang around long enough to affect every sip of tea or water for the rest of the day, so I pretty much avoid Altoids, but ginger ones! Well, I had to try the ginger ones.

You know, they're pretty good. Ginger is one of those flavors that is good either strong or mild and the Altoid is like a little, teeny, tiny, itsy-bitsy, beige, chalky, ginger snap. And as the gluten-free ginger snaps I tried recently were neither very gingery nor very snappy, this may be as close as I come for a while to ginger snapping goodness.

And, just by the way, here Ginger Reed does not sound like a stripper's name.

A little heads-up

Said by me at last night's blocking rehearsal for The Emperor's New Clothes:

"Ohh, I feel an anecdote coming on."

So at least now my cast will know what to expect from me. I'm just afraid that they'll expect a similar "time for a quickie mental nap while Leta rambles" indicator and it's not likely that they'll always gets one.

Men who bird and the women who love them

Tanya was out today so we had a temp named Linda. Unlike some of our temps, Linda had the foresight to bring a book. (I say this as someone who spent a couple of years temping and know what it is. To not bring a book is to risk spending the day reading the company's previous annual report. Possibly more than once.)

I asked Linda what she was reading, expecting it to be a mystery or something equally light and interruption-friendly. Conceive of my surprise when she showed me that it was Pete Dunne On Birding. So I asked if she's a birder and she told me that her boyfriend is a birder. Hmmmm. Well, we were as Ruth and Naomi after that, comparing how to us and our nearsighted eyes, all birds over 20 feet away (i.e., most of them) simply look like, well, birds. They have no decernible characteristics, like yellow bibs or blue bills or what-have-you. And how the females all look like brown birds with no discernible characteristics at all, really. And how our menfriends keep insisting that there is a difference between sparrows - House Sparrows, Song Sparrows, Office Ledge Sparrows, yeah, yeah, yeah.

She told me the funny story about how when she first began noticing birds there were a whole bunch of them in her yard and she excitedly woke her boyfriend to identify them because they could have been anything and they were ... robins. "You woke me up for robins?" So I told her about the time I was describing a Mourning Dove to David over the phone and refered to the bird's "teal green eye-liner."

Linda was able to add to her life list on a recent trip to Malawi. She said that it took her several months to get 30 or 40 birds here in the States, but that she added a 103 in Malawi. So I told her that David said that I'm good birding karma and how we saw a Barred Owl on a trip to Accokeek.

Conveniently for both of us, I still had in the car - and was able to copy for Linda - an article that David found for me when I pointed out that naming the birds after the male's characteristics seemed a trifle sexist, not to mention completely unhelpful when one is observing a female, say Red-Winged Blackbird, which is neither red-winged nor black. Hmpf.

The article, by Margaret Van de Pitte and entitled "The female is somewhat duller," makes my points at greater length and indignation than I did and the letters in reply were often more indignant still. Great fun. (Sample quote: "For example, how many obviously female birds have been featured on the cover of this magazine? Not many.")

Next time we need a temp, I'm going to ask that we request Linda because she and I have a real bond now.

Dusting

ALINE: Zorah is very good, and very clean, and honest, and quite, quite sober in her habits: and that is worth far more than beauty, dear Sir Marmaduke.

DR. DALY: Yes; beauty will fade and perish, but personal cleanliness is practically undying, for it can be renewed whenever it discovers symptoms of decay.

W.S. Gilbert, The Sorcerer

Dusting - like making beds - is one of those chores that are seemingly undone as fast as they are done. One can use Endust or Pledge and grab some of the dust, but so much of it ends up in the air and settles back as soon as one moves on to the next dusty object, like flushed birds settling back into a tree. But still I dust. Not very often and not as often as my grandmother would have thought appropriate, but I do dust. And a couple of times a year I gear up to dust the top floor of David's house. (Note: David's house is at all times and in all places tidier than mine. It's just dusty.)

I dislike dusting less than he does, so I gather up the supplies (because while he does not enjoy dusting, he is well equipped for it) - Endust, a feather duster, a cloth, and damp paper towels - and have at it. Some of the surfaces are easy - spray, wipe, and go - and others are filled with enough tchotchkes to make my little old lady St. Louis relatives proud. And I'm lazy enough that tchotchke land is given a thorough feather tornado which removes the dust from the knickknacks and puts it gleefully into the air. The areas around the electronics have grey felt shrouds that are so satisfying to remove. Look! Wood!

My mother is a member of the anti-dusting crowd, so I used to cluck at her and dust bits of her house. Of course, she also doesn't believe in bedmaking, so she's obviously morally lax. She once told me that the only two people in the world who cared if her bed was made were me and my grandmother. Probably true, but even so, an unmade bed looks like an unmade bed.

Bed making, dusting, dish washing, weed pulling - all of these are impermanent, but the payoff is the immediate satisfaction, which - like personal cleanliness - can be renewed whenever it discovers symptoms of decay. So this morning I have been dusting. I didn't get the entire top floor, but at least the bedroom would make my grandmother spectre happy.

And maybe knowing that David's house is not only tidier than mine but now less dusty than mine will encourage me to dust at home tomorrow.

Coming and going

An important rule of theater is that if you entrance is deep into Act IV (or what substitutes for Act IV in modern American theater, Act II short scene umpty-ump) then the memorableness of that entrance must be a square of the number of minutes it occurs after the Act II curtain. Michael Willis is currently appearing in "After Ashley" at Woolly Mammoth theater and in a show chock full of excellent performances, his was a real eye catcher. He strolled in complete with walking stick, Panama Hat, and savoir faire as though the late Truman Capote had never left us. Actually "strolled" doesn't really describe his locomation, which savored of a runway model wearing several times your annual salary on her back. As every other actor was doing the "I'm not on yet so you can't see me" approach, his lordly, well, mince would be too strong a word but I can't think of a better one, caught and held the eye.

Interestingly enough, he also got the best exit I've seen in quite a while several months ago during "Melissa Artic" when he got to bring to life the best stage direction in all of Shakespeare.

Reason enough to see this play

The Rude Mechanicals (guess on whose work they concentrate?) sent the following plug to one of the local theater lists. It's enough warm the hearts of pedants everywhere.

Who says history has to be interesting? The Rude Mechanicals questionably present "The Life and Death of King John" on Friday and Saturday at 8PM, September 23rd, 24th, 30th, and 31st. By saving on the cost of printing "and October 1st", they are able to charge a mere $10 for admission. Another of Shakespeare's top forty plays guaranteed to transport you to Laurel High School's Seller's Cafetorium where the stifling heat, deafening air conditioning, excruciating chairs, and penultimate performance will simultaneously stupefy, mesmerize, paralyze, and euthanize you. Come see why this so seldom performed play is so seldom performed as it is so seldom performed so well.
www.rudemechanicals.com

"Bring a book!" - The Baltimore City Paper
The Sellers Theatre
Laurel High School
8000 Cherry Lane
Laurel, MD

Ren Faire

"Hmmmm. Did you hear about that priest being murdered on Misbegot Bridge?"

Carrot looked shocked. "Not old Father Tubelcek? Really?"

Vimes stopped himself from asking: "You know him, then?" Because Carrot knew everyone. If Carrot were to be dropped into some dense tropical jungle it'd be "Hello, Mr. Runs-Swiftly-Through-The-Trees! Good morning, Mr. Talks-To-The-Forest, what a spendid blowpipe! And what a novel place for a feather!"

Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay.

McCall, Sara Joy, Mario, Paul, and I went to the Renaissance Festival on Monday. We did extremely important Ren Faire type stuff, like eat food that comes on a stick (you can actually get cheesecake on a stick at Ren Faire. No kidding.), watch Shakespeare Skum, run around looking all cute in our we-actually-have-these-in-our-closets-we're-that-geeky wenchy outfits, etc, etc. (Okay, technically, Mario and Paul did not dress out. And certainly not as wenches. Just wanted to clear that up.)

Anyway, so no shit, there we were, wandering around Ren Faire, when I started seeing folks I know. I used to do that all the time, but lately I haven't seen anyone I know at the Faire who isn't working the Faire, but this time I saw Chort & Paula, Graymael & Amanda, and Trevor & company.

But the best part, the part that made me think of Brett, the you-can-see-this-coming part, was when I was sitting and watching Shakespeare Skum. I glanced around and saw across a crowded crowd someone I was sure I recognized from ... my high school. Which would be odd because he lives in New York these days and, well, they have their own Ren Faire, so it's not like he needs to drive a couple hundred miles just to go to ours. But I kept staring and he kept looking like Dave-from-high-school. (Sigh. Of course his name is David. David is a root word that means "man." All men are named David. Even Graymael. Well, except the ones named John, like Chort and Hjalti. But that's not the point.)

So while we were waiting for Sara Joy and McCall to return from the necessary, I wandered over in his direction and with every step, he looked more like Dave-from-high-school. And when I got within range he saw me and recognized me. After thousands of years and everything. He's married now with a young daughter and they are in town visting his brother, who still lives in the area. We didn't have time to catch up more completely, but I gave him my e-mail address and phone number and with luck we'll talk more soon.

Are you going to Renaissance Faire?/Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme./Remember me to one who is there./For he is an old friend of mine....

Amazing Generosity

We are surrounded by the kind and the generous, but it really becomes apparent in time of crisis.

During the Rwandan Genocide, my step-Mom, Audrey, who is a nurse, joined a group called the International Rescue Committee and spent six months in Tanzania working with the refugees. I"ll write more about that some other time, but it's been 11 years since then and I am still amazed that she put her life here on hold for six months, packed up, and lived halfway across the world because she couldn't take watching the suffering on television without doing something to help.

The two things from that time that stick most in my mind were both from letters that I got from her. One arrived after she got the Christmas box that I sent, which contained things like a book (ever see the episode of M*A*S*H where someone got a book? That's how valuable books are in places like refugee camps), a small container of shower gel, some hard candies, and a pair of clean socks. Audrey wrote me a thank you letter and told me how much everything was appreciated and that she was "saving" the socks for when Dad came to meet her after her tour was over because the red clay in the soil got into everyone's clothes and wouldn't really wash out. I have a drawer full of clean white socks and get new clean white socks anytime I want with very little effort.

The other was when Audrey wrote and told me that it had been a good week because infant mortality was down 20% that week. Infant mortality is just not a part of my daily life. Burying babies is not something that I have to do. Every time I get a real good pity party started the back of my brain asks me how the infant mortality is going in my neighborhood. I'm amazingly lucky to live the life I do and I owe part of that sense of gratitude to Audrey's incredible generosity and character.

I think that Rosellen and Audrey would get along very well for reasons besides both being quilters, nurses, grandmothers, and gardners. Rosellen wrote a beautiful post about finding an unfinished quilt that her grandmother had started that I had to forward immediately to Audrey. Go read that post to see what she did with it. And then the two posts she's written since then.

Their generosity goes far beyond writing checks.

A new book!

If I happen to be on my way home - or actually at home - at 11:00, I usually listen to "As It Happens," a news and events radio show from the CBC. As an American who lives in a busy metropolitan area, I can't get over AIH's tendency to sound like the Mayberry newspaper. They actually, literally, once spent 10 minutes interviewing someone whose cat was stuck in a tree and got rescued.

Listening to AIH reminds me of that George Carlin routine about the differences between football and baseball:

(Threatening growl) "In football you wear a helmet."
(Happy lighthearted voice) "In baseball you wear a cap."
(HLV) "Baseball has no time limit: we don't know when it's gonna end - might have extra innings."
(TG) "Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go to sudden death."

(TG) "In the US, you have congressional districts."
(HLV) "In Canada, you have ridings."

While in no way under-rating their professionalism or their jounalistic ability, AIH always struck me as a kinder, gentler form of radio news. So when the CBC started a lock out which put AIH on hiatus, I was sad. On the other hand, during the lock out (the CBC is referring to it as a strike and or a labor dispute, employees are calling it a lock out), the CBC is running a program called "Ideas" which basically spends an hour on whatever random topic the Magic 8 Ball chose for the day. We got to hear about ice cream the other night, I've heard a couple of shows about radical philosophers from small, poverty-striken island nations, and, best of all, I got to hear an hour on Edna St. Vincent Millay, who was - after Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel - probably the subject of the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it will ever be anybody's pleasure to read.

At the beginning of the hour the only thing I knew about Ms. Millay was that she wrote "Justice Denied in Massachusetts" about the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti which contains the incredibly haunting line "We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain." At the end of the hour, I knew a lot more and was resolved to actually order Marion Meade's Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties.

It arrived today! I have auditions tonight (please come read for me), but as soon as I can, I'm zooming home to read about Ms. Millay, Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, and Zelda Fitzgerald. I read bios of Sara & Gerald Murphy and Dorothy Parker recently and I actually recognize some of the people in the pictures in Bobbed Hair without having to read the captions.

A new book! A new book!

Why David sometimes takes me to group events

David and I went on a little nature stroll with a naturalist from the Audobon Naturalist Society and about a dozen other people. I call it a "nature stroll" because if the point is to admire the flora and fauna, then you don't walk very fast or very far. In fact, I don't think that we actually really got out of sight of the parking area, but that's not the point.

So, anyway, we're admiring a Silky Dogwood and its lovely blue berries and Stephanie is teaching us about it Socratically (i.e., by asking questions). She tells us many cheerful facts about Silky Dogwood and points out that it is a member of the nightshade family* and asks, "so what would eat this?"

"Um, wealthy, elderly relatives?" said the girl who grew up reading mystery stories.

For a more grown-up, mature account of the day, see David's post on the subject.


*as are potatoes and eggplant.

She may live in her own little world, but it's a kind and thoughtful world

"Knock knock!"
"Who's there?"
"Control Freak. Now you say 'Control Freak who?' "


Okay, let's start this by saying that we tease Lisa a lot. To her face, behind her back, over the phone, via e-mail, on the internet - if there is a medium for expression, Lisa's friends have used it to make fun of her. And she's a very good sport about it (which is why we are all not dead and ground into a very fine powder). Mainly we tease her about being a little, teeny, tiny, you-wouldn't-even-notice-it-really bit of a control freak.

Like when she was pregnant and announced that the baby would be born on December 1, several days before his due date. Which Layne was because - as we put - he knew what was good for him.

Or like when she tells us something with perfect sincerity that, in fact, is completely untrue. And we just nod and smile. (A reaction that serves my friends as well as Lisa's very well.)

One time she said something that was so outrageous (I don't remember what) that I had to ask if the weather was always nice in her little world and without missing a beat (or getting crabby), she said that, yep, the skies are blue and the grass is green all the time. (At least it is if it knows what's good for it.)

So, anyway, I went down to Lake Ridge on Saturday evening to babysit Layne while Lisa was singing in VLOC's G&S By Request. (Layne is now nearly four and cute as a button. A really cute button, not just some run-of-the-mill button.) When I got there she had something in the oven and was puttering around getting ready to leave for the theater. When the oven dinged, she told me that she'd made a coffee cake and I could have some that evening and the rest had to leave with me because left over coffee cake is too much temptation. And I said "Oh, thank you, but I really can't have any." And then she showed me the package that said "Gluten Free!" all over it. Lisa doesn't normally shop at Whole Foods, so she went on the internet to find a gluten-free coffee cake mix because when she asked me what I missed the most on my new diet, I said coffee cake. She also got me cookies and a scone mix. She probably ordered them the day I agreed to watch Layne.

The coffee cake was actually pretty yummy. And I got to have some of the left over on Sunday morning, which made a nice treat before David and I went nature walking.

And she and husband Kerry and Layne are growing zucchini this year and she gave me this gye-normous zucchini to take home. I only have about two-thirds of it and I swear those two-thirds weigh a couple of pounds. And it's about 9 inches long and about 4 inches across.

I know the coolest people. I really do.

This really happened, I swear

Ira and I were hanging out in the Starbucks on our way to one of his Tech Week rehearsals when we ran into Eve. We chatted for a bit and - as usual - Ira started making fun of me. (I am so put upon.) And Eve, bless her because this really, really improved my day, said "Hey! You can't talk to her like that! She's popular! People like her!"

Joking or not, it made my whole day.

So take that junior high school!!

My audition notice

I sent this to several theater-related e-mail lists in the area. Now I'm lighting candles that the Theater gods will send me lots of good auditionees.

I'm directing "The Emperor's New Clothes" for the Elden Street Players' Theater for Young Audiences. I need 5 or 6 people (men and women, ages 16 and up) for a fun hour-long show for kids.

Performances will be Saturdays at 11:00 am and Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 from November 5 - 20.

Auditions are Tuesday and Wednesday, September 6 & 7 at 7:30 at The Town of Herndon's Industrial Strength Theater (269 Sunset Business Park Drive, Herndon, VA).

The benefits to doing shows for children:

* They are the most appreciative audience ever.

* The shows are short and fun.

* Chase scenes are aerobic.

* The rehearsal schedule is pretty light, too.

* No kid ever told a "lobby lie."

* No performances on Friday or Saturday nights, so you can (if you're me) go see other shows on those nights.

* It's a chance to grew the audience (and auditionees) of tomorrow.

* When kids ask for autographs, they aren't looking to sell them on eBay or being ironic.

* Herndon is a completely cool place to hang out. Okay, that may be a stretch.

* It's "The Emperor's New Clothes," so you can make up fun lies about doing nude shows for children.

* If you have a skill - like juggling or doing magic - that your other directors won't allow you to include when you do Chekov or Tennessee Williams, it can usually be worked into a children's show.

No need to learn a monologue, just show up in Herndon on Tuesday or Wednesday.

It'll be fun!

Leta

www.eldenstreet.com

If dusting can count, so can this

I didn't think I got a lot of exercise until I realized that I exercise all the time. If one counts applauding as a little upper body/lower arm workout, then Leta the Constant Audience Member is good to go. What a relief; I was afraid that I was sedentary.

Fill 'er up

I bought gas this morning on my way in to work for $2.85/gallon. Which makes this morning officially part of "the good old days" because every station I have passed since then is over 3.00 per. I must have caught the good folks at the Mobil before they raised their rates and I'm grateful. I'm also grateful that I drive a little car that can go 350-400 miles on a tank. And the folks in Europe have been paying over $4.00 per for some time now, so we're just catching up to everybody else.

On the other hand, my new hobby is laughing at the folks who decided that they needed Hummers to tool around the suburbs.

I'm going down to Woodbridge on Saturday where gas is usually pretty cheap. I'll report in on what constitutes "cheap" on Sunday.

Humperdinck & Sullivan & Jones, oh my

Coincidence? Or a deliberate attempt to drive G&S fans randomly nuts? Now we know. I found this in an interview with Engelbert Humperdinck in the Palm Spring, California "Desert Sun":

QUESTION: I was surprised to read that Gordon Mills [Humperdinck's manager] didn't realize the original Engelbert Humperdinck wrote "Hansel and Gretel." He just saw the name in a book and decided it was the perfect name for you.

ANSWER: That's right. We both had no idea it was "Hansel and Gretel." He did that with two other people he managed. He did it with Tom Jones from the "Tom Jones" character, and he did it with Gilbert O'Sullivan. He managed all those people.

For all my non-opera readers, the original Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921) was the composer of an opera-for-children version of the famous fairy tale based on a libretto that his sister wrote for her children. The Regina Opera page devoted to Hansel and Gretel starts out with a "no, not that Engelbert Humperdinck" and Gilbert & Sullivan fans have had to do the Big Sigh and "no, no" ever since "Alone again, naturally" came out in 1972.

And now, of course, I have Carol Kane's voice stuck in my head saying "Humperdinck! Humperdinck!! Humperdinck!!!"

Mr. Mills has a lot to answer for.

Mobile

Here's an e-mail between me and my Dad:

I just talked to Bill and they are all OK. Some damage to Bay House and yard, tree limbs down at house in town, no air conditioning (I guess that really means power is out) but phone works.
Could have been worse by far!
Love,
Yore PoP
On Aug 30, 2005, at 2:38 PM, Leta wrote:
> Any news from Bill or Linda about how our Southern relatives are faring right now?

Bill and Linda are my uncle and aunt. And the Southern relatives are pretty much the whole rest of Dad's family. Dad grew up in Mobile, Alabama and I've visited there on several occasions so when the good folks on NPR talk about Route 10, well, I've been on it. I've gone wading in the Gulf (and I'll post the picture that Grandaddy took of me doing it if I can find it).

I've got relatives in Mobile, Atlanta, Norlens (or - if you insist - New Orleans), and a bunch of other places where bacon grease is a condiment and kudzu covers anything that doesn't move at least every twenty minutes. So the pictures are pretty scary. Dan Gretch just reported on Marketplace that Mobile is pretty hard hit - he saw a Winn-Dixie that was open even though it had half its roof missing.

Hang tough, Mobile.

The only good spam is Monty Python spam

Well, it's finally come down to it. I received nine pieces of comment spam during the last twenty minutes. And while I won't borrow too many practices from my medieval forebears, rest assured that during the benign and enlighted Leta regime, spammers will be roasted - slowly - in a cage - over an open fire for the amusement and edification of the populace.

Come on, admit it, you've gotten enough spam by now that you'd all turn out in droves on the day. I would and I'm both a squishy-headed liberal and anti-violence. But my work e-mail is so totally hosed that I get a new piece of spam every six minutes there. Every. Six. Minutes. I log into my work e-mail before I go to bed just to clear out what's arrived since I left the office. I was away from computer access for a week once and it took me an hour and a half to delete all the crap that built up while I was away.

However, That Glorious Day has not yet dawned and Blogger believes that I will get less comment spam if I turn on the word verification feature, which requires folks to type in a nonsense word in order to prove that they are actual human beings before their comments will post. So I've done that. Because I love getting comments and I hate getting comment spam.

But I'm collecting coals and lighter fluid for the Endless Spammer Bonfire. And I will not forget.

Basil (not Fawlty) & Flowers

On my desk right now is a nice, big bunch of basil brought in by my co-worker John and a lovely vase full of flowers sent to me by David. My desk has never looked better. Or smelled nicer, for that matter.

At your service

David, for all of his fine qualities, is simply too damned self-sufficient. In general, he does favors for me and there aren't many that I can do for him in return. Well, the favor-returning gods have finally smiled on me.

David's Explorer (Alberta) has developed what he and I believe to a mild case of vapor-lock. If he starts Alberta in the morning and drives to work, she is happy to start right up when he leaves in the evening. If, however, he drives to some section of the Washington and Old Dominion Trail and leaves Alberta there for a couple of hours, she sometimes becomes, like the wizards and the butts in the urinals, cranky and hard to light. So a few of his hikes have had "waiting for the guy from AAA" as their finale. His mechanic couldn't seem to reproduce the problem and mechanics can't fix what they don't observe, so he and I have been waiting for the inevitable day when Alberta would become obdurate when he needed to be somewhere or when he wasn't convenient to home.

Thursday was the day.

I was down in Tysons Corner (Virginia) having dinner and a production meeting with Mary Ann, who is my producer at Elden Street for The Emporer's New Clothes (auditions September 6 & 7 - please come and read for me!!) - when I got a call from David. Sure enough, he had stopped at Panera for a quick dinner before his rehearsal and Alberta chose not to start. He walked the mile or so to rehearsal and called me to ask if he got a lift from someone at rehearsal to my place, could he stay with me and Metro to work in the morning?

Sure, but as I was out and about anyway, how about if I come to his rehearsal after my meeting and collect him, stop by my place to feed the cat, and we would stay in Reston so that each of us could get to work in a reasonable amount of time in the morning? (The commute via Metro or car between Aspen Hill, Maryland and Vienna, Virginia is beyond icky. The commute via car between Reston, Virginia and Silver Spring, Maryland isn't too bad.)

So I got to see a bit of one of the early-ish off-book rehearsals for Book of Days, got to hang with Casey for a few minutes, and got to hear the whole "how we got engaged story" from a couple of David's other castmates.

David started mapping out his options, re: Alberta, and I signed on to be his chauffeur for the weekend, should he like to have one.

He bused into to work and home on Friday. Saturday after he went to the studio, I met him at the Shady Grove metro and took him to Alberta. She started right up, of course, so we drove to his house and parked her out front, stopped for a quick lunch and then I took him to his Tai Chi class. After Tai Chi we stopped for a slightly less quick dinner and then we went to see Longacre Lea's production of Energumen and The Real Inspector Hound. Neither one of us and seen Inspector Hound in years and years and this production didn't let us down. It's an enormously fun script.

Sunday we headed up to the Stage to see the second weekend of the One-Act festival, hit the grocery store for salad makings (and ice cream for me), and headed home for a nice, relaxing evening of a Gunsmoke radio broadcast and the Phillies-Diamondbacks matchup at the BOB.

Of course, before we did the grocery store/dinner/game thing, we stopped by the WOD Trail, I put on my trainers, and we did a brisk-for-me, slow-for-David two miles. Got to see a hummingbird and a goldfinch, some crows, and, uh, other birds. The Jewelweed is in fine shape this year as well as the Poke Weed and the Joe Pye weed. I suggested that Joe Pye weed was named by someone familiar with the Ann of Green Gables books, but that remains mere speculation.

All in all, a lovely weekend and I got to do something nice for David.

For instructions on how to induce vapor-lock in an otherwise healthy vehicle, write to me privately......

Telling me what I already know

Much More Emotional You have: 55% SCIENTIFIC INTUITION and 77% EMOTIONAL INTUITION

The graph on the right represents your place in Intuition 2-Space. As you can see, you scored well above average on emotional intuition and about average on scientific intuition.Keep in mind that very few people score high on both! In effect, you can compare your two intuition scores with each other to learn what kind of intuition you're best at. Your emotional intuition is stronger than your scientific intuition. Your Emotional Intuition score is a measure of how well you understand people, especially their unspoken needs and sympathies. A high score score usually indicates social grace and persuasiveness. A low score usually means you're good at Quake. Your Scientific Intuition score tells you how in tune you are with the world around you; how well you understand your physical and intellectual environment. People with high scores here are apt to succeed in business and, of course, the sciences.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 0% on Scientific You scored higher than 99% on Interpersonal

Link: The 2-Variable Intuition Test written by jason_bateman on OkCupid Free Online Dating

Mabel Osborne

From Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters (1916)

Mabel Osborne

Your red blossoms amid green leaves
Are drooping, beautiful geranium!
But you do not ask for water.
You cannot speak! You do not need to speak—
Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst,
Yet they do not bring water!
They pass on, saying:
“The geranium wants water.”
And I, who had happiness to share
And longed to share your happiness:
I who loved you, Spoon River,
And craved your love,
Withered before your eyes, Spoon River—
Thirsting, thirsting,
Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love,
You who knew and saw me perish before you,
Like this geranium which someone has planted over me,
And left to die.

Gluten-free fun facts

We should learn something new every day. In the past few days I have learned some new things about Celiac Disease. Feel free to share them with friends or use them to impress people at parties.

1. In England "Celiac Disease" is called "Coeliac disease" and could result in something called "gut cancer."

Long-term non-treatment of Coeliac disease is associated with throat cancer, gut cancer and nutritional deficiencies, such as anaemia. The most common complication of the disease is osteoporosis, since the absorption of calcium is reduced significantly.

"I'm so glad to be gluten free" by Abigail Wild, The Herald, 22 August 2005.

Can you picture Dr. House telling a patient "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you have Stage Four gut cancer. There's nothing we can do."

2. The Gluten-Free Certification Organization - the folks who will have my back on the whole labeling thing - was developed by the Gluten Intolerance Group (GIG) in cooperation with the Food Services, Inc., a subsidiary of the Orthodox Union (OU), the world's largest and oldest kosher certification agency.

"Food Services, Inc. and the Orthodox Union are pleased to be included in this key development on behalf of those who for health reasons are required to be gluten-free," declared Rabbi Menachem Genack, Chief Executive Officer of the OU. "The OU's standard of excellence in kosher certification is recognized worldwide. OU field inspectors are deeply familiar with modern food technology and with the intricacies of industrial food manufacturing equipment, which will be applied to their work with Food Services, Inc. We look forward to this opportunity to use our expertise on behalf of the gluten-free consumer."

"New Food Safety Program - Independent Certification Program for Gluten-Free Food Processing" by the Gluten Intolerance Group on Foodconsumer.org.

And considering how persnickity Jewish dietary laws are supposed to be, this makes me quite happy. If inspectors, following guidelines that the OU find acceptable, say that there is no gluten in a product, then there ain't no gluten anywhere in it and possibly not for a few inches around it. Unlike our government which allows you to not list the flour that you rolled the chocolates in to keep them from sticking together because what the heck, the flour isn't in the stuff. There is no "what the heck" at the OU.

Okay, that's it for today. More fun facts as we learn 'em.

No, I'm not taking Pekoe

Tanya and Cathy - two of my co-workers - are participating in a walk for Howard County (Maryland) Spay and Neuter and animal awareness programs. Animal Advocates of Howard County are sponsoring a Walk for Paws on October 8th. They are dog people and I wouldn't be surprised if Tanya took one or both of her German Shepards, which got us contemplating me bringing Pekoe, the fabulous orange tabby:

"Pekoe! Come here! No! Don't kill that little dog. Just becuase he's smaller than you doesn't make him prey." (Fabulous orange tabby that he may be, Pekoe is still a solid 12-pounder and a bit of a thug. When he lived with Blue, Pekoe's ambition was that Blue - who was four times his size and weight - would die blind and soon. Peek still regrets that he didn't make this come to pass. He did, however, terrorize Rusty, Jean's very cute and friendly Dauchshund such that Rusty wouldn't come out from under the wing chair for several days.)

"Pekoe! Come on! It's time for the walk! We're all walking this way, Pekoe. We're walking - now. We're not lying sunning ourselves on the pavement now. Come on, Peek."

"Pekoe - get down. I am not carrying you through this walk. No! Do not hang to me with your claws. Get down and walk."

Yeah, definitely much easier just to pledge $10 and let Tanya and Cathy do the walk.

The Lazy Little Blood Donor - part 1

I've been - off and on - a blood donor since college. Markland, the medieval reenactment and good times group I belonged to, would round up folks everytime there was a campus blood drive with loud announcements that the faithful should "Bleed for the Militia!" (Campus groups got some kind of credit, even if it was just shinier halos in the afterlife for participating in pro bono activities). And I'm O Negative, so I'm very popular at blood donation centers. I forget how much I've given but it's somewhere around 3 gallons by now.

I don't do it as often as I should - certainly not the every eight weeks that Stacey does - but I'll certainly participate in the ones that fall into my lap, like the ones that Jill would organize at work. And now Glenn has organized one via the Reston Community Players, so this morning I'm going to finish my coffee, steal the last of David's cranberries to have for a post-bleed snack, and head over to RCP's rehearsal hall to Bleed for Community Theater!

Come into the garden, Maud

I have five medium sized pots on my patio and have started a decent-ish container garden. The year before last I tried tomatoes and discovered that my condo-ghetto neighborhood is actually just crawling with deer. Hungry, tomato-eating deer, darn them. The parsley and the spinach did pretty well, though.

This year I left one pot lie fallow, filled one with rosemary, and one with moss roses. One has the day lilies that Stacey gave me from her yard, which bloomed beautifully. And the last has the lilac that I bought not long before Mollie and I left the house on Pierce Drive. I had meant to plant it to replace the hideous thing I had cut down but we ended up moving before I could so it spent several months living indoors in a pot, which is not to the liking of most lilacs. It should have died, but, like Tiny Tim, did not die. All right, lilac!

I planted the moss roses pretty late, but they are doing just fine and growing like Topsy and the rosemary has really taken off as well. I'm on a big rosemary kick right now (along with ginger), so it's nice to have some fresh to use when I cook. (When, of course, I'm home to cook...). And it just smells nice out there. If I'm home during the daylight hours - which happens about as often as finding money in the street - I open the sliding glass door, let the cat roam about a bit, and do some garden maintenence: I pull the grass out of the pots and out from between the patio bricks, deadhead stuff that needs deadheading, throw stuff into the compost that needs composting, turn the pots a quarter-turn, and brush Pekoe so that we can have orange cat hair all over Aspen Hill instead of all over my condo. Or rather, in addition to all over my condo. Pekoe eats grass, wanders and sniffs around the condos on either side of me, and flops over on the patio for a stretch out on the warm patio bricks.

I'm not using anything like Round-Up on the patio bricks because I'm encouraging the moss that is considering growing between the bricks. There's no mortar there and the moss looks pretty, so why not. At some point I need to make some moss starter which is sort of like sour dough starter - take a good sized handful of moss, break it up, and dump it onto a bucket of warm water. Let it steep, maybe adding a bit of yogurt to encourage the whole process, and then sluice it over the bricks. Add time and rain and voila! Nice, moss-y stuff between the bricks. (Thanks, House and Garden channel!)

I started the compost by scavenging some bricks and bits of two-by-four on my walks around the neighborhood and marking off an area under my dining room window and next to the patio. It's not very large, maybe 12 x 24, but I'm only one person and I'm never home, so 'twill serve. Anyway, I toss anything compostable there and the maintenence guys mow over it when they forget it's there but they mainly leave it alone. I don't add chemicals or turn it because the secret to my gardening is benign neglect. Thrive or die, that's the rule here in Leta's Little Green Space. So far, so good.

One of my co-workers grows lovely basil every year, so I don't have to grow basil, I just wait for his to appear in the office. I think I'll take him some rosemary. And Cate, too. Cate, Brett, and Charles are having me to dinner next week and fresh-from-the-pot rosemary is such a lovely hostess gift, don't you think?

So much for her happy ending

Easily the best line in the "waif-y singers who take themselves too seriously" catagory. At least if you're trying to really capture that annoying, self-righteous, teenager vibe.

"Let's talk this over; it's not like we're dead."

Makes me laugh every time I hear it.

One seriously delighted cat

Long, long ago Mollie bought Pekoe (the fabulous orange tabby) a cardboard box filled with corrogated cardboard and lighly scented with catnip. He went berserk and spent the rest of the evening licking the box lid and racing up and down the hall and the stairs.

It's gotten pretty beat up in the intervening years and was starting to fall apart, so I stopped at Trader Joe's on Saturday and got him a new one. He recognized it immediately and got so excited that he jumped up on it as I was taking the lid off and began to scratch and lick and roll around like a crazed kitten. And I hadn't even put in the catnip yet. Still haven't.

The best thing is that his new box is a "doublewide" so instead of merely perching on it, he can sprawl out and really be one with his box. Pictures will be posted once I take them. And have them developed. And scan them. But until them, just click on the link and mentally add one blissed out orange tabby.

Cat scratch fever

Medical Update

Well, the short answer is "yes," I have Celiac Disease. Color me glum. On the plus side, living my life as though I'm permanently in Phase II of the South Beach diet should result in me fitting back into clothes that have been mere memories for the past decade. And that's the only plus side.

So I went in for my second "Is this or is this not Celiac Disease" snoop around, which was an endoscopy, which is a biopsy whereby the medical team puts fairly horrible light rock on the stereo (something Phil Collins-y whiney), gives the patient a heaping helpin' of Valium (to offset the horrible light rock, I assume), and then threads a tube with a camera and snippers down the patient's throat. Which, oddly enough, was not that bad. I was afraid that I would choke on the tube or gag violently or something, but nope, after that Valium hit I couldn't have choked or gagged even if they'd put Celine Dion on the stereo. Hmmm. Perhaps that explains the Phil Collins...

They asked me to open my mouth, said please swallow, said thank you and we were off to the races. They went for a stroll through my upper GI tract and I dozed. I probably drooled, too, but they were too nice to make fun of me. They took their biopsies, woke me up, and sent me on my rather drowsy way. David took me home, for obvious reasons.

I rescheduled my follow-up appointment a couple of times but there's only so long that one can put it off. My doctor was all bright and chipper as he gave me the handout about my new life-time annoyance. And (I love Google) I already knew most of what he was about to tell me, although he was able to clear up the whole oats mystery. Oats are considered risky for people with CD, not because they have gluten, but because they are often grown near or with or on top of (or something) wheat which leads to contamination. I guess I can have oats if I grow my own.

Do on your own activity for the Reader: the next time you are in a grocery store try to find gluten-free processed food. Remember, "malt" counts as gluten.

Starting in January food containing wheat will have to be labeled as such, but "gluten-free" and "wheat-free" are not the same things because there's gluten in rye, barley, spelt, kamut, and triticale.

Oh, and another on your own activity: Get tested for Celiac Disease. It's a simple blood test. Finding out that you have it is not much fun, but not finding out until you have lymphoma and osteoporosis is much less fun and 1 in every 133 Americans probably has CD. Most of them don't know it. If you have any Irish ancestors, go get tested. Apparently, the hugely-potato and almost-no-wheat diet of the Irish for a couple hundred years helped create the problem.

(I gave that last little speech to my neices, Cheryl and Angela, at lunch today and once again proving that our family leans towards high intelligence/low wisdom, they said that if getting tested means not having pizza anymore, they'll just skip the test, but thanks. We'll see.)

And it turns out that different counties have different gluten-free guidelines. The Canadians, a wise people with their priorities straight, have decided that 12 years in an oak cast renders whiskey a gluten-free product. The US isn't so sure. I'm going with the Canadians on this one, she types, with a tot of Dewars in front of her.

I bought a book called The Gluten-Free Gourmet because it actually had some recipes for things that didn't call for "guar gum" and "xanthan gum" both of which sound like something that comes from Monsanto instead of something that comes from my kitchen.

But in the meantime, if you drop by my place any time soon, you're likely to leave with lovely parting gifts ~~ a box of Bisquik, a cereal bar, or maybe my highly valued jar of Wheat Germ.

And we're back in ---5 ---4 ---

I've been on a cruise! And I have a new job at work! So .... dude, update thyself.

Well, it's been a not very quiet couple of weeks in Silver Spring. The admin staffer who supported our contracts department decided to leave the area and I was approached about taking over her job, which is a really cool job and includes fairly important work. (I won't describe it in detail, but let's just say that if I don't do my job well, people don't get paid and we don't collect money for work we've done. Both of which, as we all know, suck.) So, anyway, I said I would be delighted to take that postition and commenced learning that job, while doing my old one, while one admin staffer was on vacation, and after another had left the company. "May you train in interesting times..."

Here's a rough picture of how the job offer discussion went:

I was sitting at my desk one evening waiting for a phone call from Gaye about where/when we would be having dinner. I normally finish my work day around 5 and it was around 5:45. Mike (our CFO) stopped by my desk and said "When are you leaving? Oh, wait, you're probably leaving now. Never mind."

"No, it's okay, I'm waiting for a friend to call. What can I do for you?" (Clock watching is for people who never make personal phone calls or send personal e-mails from work. I am not one of those people.)

"Can you come down to my office for a few minutes?"

"Sure." (Said nice and casually. What I was thinking was "Why is Mike firing me? He's not my boss. Why isn't Laura firing me? I don't want to get fired. This sucks!!!") Then I realized why I couldn't find the shoes I had been hunting for. "Uhmm, is it okay if I'm not wearing any shoes? I left them at the at the front desk."

"No problem. Come on."

("Oh, my. He's going to fire me when I'm barefoot. That's just so wrong!") And I told him how whenever Jim catches me wandering around in my stockingfeet he always asks me doesn't the company pay me enough to buy shoes and how's it's a long-standing joke between us. You know, sort of whistling on my way to the scaffold.

So imagine my surprise when he offers me the job supporting the contracts department. It's a lateral move, but the company already pays me pretty darn well, so that's fine. I was pleased and flattered to be considered and they do interesting stuff. It meant that I was shifted from the admin department to the contracts department, so I will no longer do a bunch of stuff that I really enjoyed, like being Leta the Coffee Girl (I did actually enjoy this. Go figure.) or doing all of the supplies ordering (which I also enjoyed), but I get a very spiffy new computer and a much nicer desk and a cool group of folks to work with, so unless they decided to fire me while I was gone, I'm really enjoying the new job, even though I miss the old one. Our admin staff is a good team and I liked being a part of it. It's weird not knowing what's going on with them or sitting at the front desk for Tanya when she's on break, but I'll get used to it.

And, of course, one of the reasons why they wanted to get me in contracts is because it's pretty well known that I am always there. I'm almost never sick, I come in no matter what the weather, and - thanks to my mortgage - I no longer take-out-of-the-country vacations. So, naturally, Gaye's and my cruise was scheduled for my second full week in the Contracts Department.

"Cruise? What cruise?" I hear you cry. Why, the cruise that Gaye and I took to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. "Oh, that cruise." I'll update about that too, but not right now. (And, yes, I realize that Canada is, technically, out of the country. But not several-hours-on-a-plane, out of the country.)

Other exciting events since July 19th...

Brett and Cate and Charles moved back from England!! Hurrah, hurray!

Stacey had a birthday, so I took Stacey & John & Samantha & Charles & Cate to see "Schoolhouse Rock Live" at ESP, which was enormous fun. And I met Marty's daughter, Caitlyn, who has the same birthday Stacey does, so I introduced them.

I found a script that I like for "The Emperor's New Clothes" which means that Mary Ann can order scripts before the auditions (auditions: September 6 & 7, it'll be fun!).

And I'm about to spend two weeks remounting "Perfectly Good Airplanes" for the Stage's One Act Festival. (We go up August 19 - 21.) I'll have a couple of weeks after "Airplanes" closes and before "Emperor" auditions which I think I'll fill with seeing non-theater friends. And having a normal kind of life. Or as normal as I am llikely to have.

Coming soon --- more exciting updates! And travel pictures!

Attention all English majors ---

Today's "must read" post:

http://maryann.blogspot.com/

Just drop whatever you are doing and surf on over. (I don't know how Mary does permalinks, but it's today's post is entitled "You Are Parties.") I, of course, left a comment with my own relevant anecdote.

We've all been there. We'll all understand. And she will feel our understanding and be comforted.

My misspent youth sometimes comes in handy

This morning David was telling me that Karen, his director for Book of Days, brought some Hoppe's #9 gun cleaning solvent to rehearsal last night. (A plot point concerns the smell of a clean gun versus a fired one.) David said "It smells like.... "

"Like gun cleaner."

"Yeah." And then he paused and looked at me.

"I was in the rifle club in high school." (And, I shared a house with Mollie for several years and we'd watch tv in our not fabulously well-ventilated basement while she'd clean her musket.)

"Oh."

So we talked about my firearms experience a bit and eventually a thought trickled through his brain. Leta has handled firearms and claims to have been a decent shot. (A decent shot, not a great one. I was in the rifle club, not on the rifle team, after all.)

"Yep. So keep that in mind the next time you want to make fun of me."

Bet he doesn't make one of those jokes at my expense that he thinks are funnier than I do for at least the next 18 hours.

A decent interval

A decent interval is not so much distracting as bracing: too much passive spectating can numb the mind as well as the body.

Or, as Jeff puts it, the mind can only absorb what the ass can endure. Apparently, I am not the only theater-goer who judges theaters by the intermssion. A recent article in the Telegraph considers both the rise of the 90-minute, no intermission shows ("Art," for example, which, truth be told, clocked in at the Stage at a consistent 78 minutes) and grand theater and grand opera with intermissions practically long enough to catch another show nearby.

I usually come down on or near the long intermission side because (as we all know) I go to theaters for the concession stands. Good intermission treats will help make up to me for some poor choices on stage. Well, maybe not really, but I'm less likely to be cranky about it.

But the point remains that shows like "Art" or Betrayal need to stay on track. The Pavilion benefits from a short chance to catch your breath before you plunge back into the sometimes icy waters of Pine City.

The same blog from which I got the initial link has a comment with links to two other roughly related articles. Is it a bad thing that plays are getting shorter and smaller? Are important bits being left out in order to get the "punters" off to dinner? It depends on the play. The Mercy Seat says what it has to say in 90 minutes and more time spent with these people isn't going to tell you more. LaBute didn't ask a lot of questions and he has time to answer the ones he asks (or answer them as fully as he intends).

And, she writes with dread, in the day when all theater is viewed on our mobile phones, 90 minutes will be considered way too long.

Via The Playgoer.

Stupid Rain

I'm normally a big fan of rain. Especially rain that comes with thunder and lightning and a greeny-grey sky. All good things. Lots of big clouds in 200 shades of grey. Love it. Improves the water table, chases away the bugs, breaks the humidity.

But not when I'm watching Shakespeare outdoors. Honestly, has this weather no consideration at all?

I've never seen The Merry Wives of Windsor before and the cast includes an actor I've recently started watching (Bruce) and an actor I haven't seen for years and years -- and years (Lewis). I think that the last time Lewis and I were in the same room, movable type had just been invented, so I was kind of looking forward to saying hello afterwards even though I can't imagine he would remember me. (Oddly enough, the first time I saw Bruce was when he did a reading with Nigel, another actor from way back in my checked past. Hmmmm.)

Anyway, I told Bruce after Humble Boy that I would get up to Baltimore to see him play Ford in Merry Wives. So, acting on one of my casual lobby promises ("I'll come and and see it!" - I should have that embroided or as a tattoo somewhere, I really should), I had a nice seat on the lawn, a nice glass of a local red wine, a pleasant stranger to talk to, and there was going to be a basket raffle at intermission. My kind of evening. But no, it was not to be.... (that's called foreshadowing, by the way).

On the other hand, I got confirmed something that I've noticed recently -- if I am sitting near the front and it's a small house, actors will talk to me. I must look especially engaged or something, but it's happened a few times recently and I find it utterly charming. (In fact, when I saw Side Man recently, Chris asked me afterwards if I'd noticed that he'd been talking to me. Of course I noticed!! It's probably one of the reasons the damned show made me cry!) Merry Wives had lots of asides to the audience and Bruce and Lewis played a fair number of them to me. I know, you're thinking "Sure, Leta, sure they did. Whatever you say." Fine. Be that way. Because they did. Bunch of fun-spoilers, that's what you people are. Kill joys.

Now I can imagine that Bruce might possibly have been thinking "Is that the woman who saw me at the Stage Guild and said she'd come to see this? I think it is. Oh, Lord. Do I have a stalker now?" and Lewis could have been thinking "Does that woman look familiar? Did I know her? Maybe in the late 18th century?"

Or, more likely, I got their attention because it was a Thursday night with predictions of heavy rain and therefore a pretty small house, so I may have been the only unfamiliar face in the "crowd." And because I wasn't a little kid. And because I looked rather fetching in my new purple Ann Taylor Loft tank shell. Let's never discount the power of a new Ann Taylor Loft purple tank shell.

And then the rain got serious. As the producer pointed out in his opening remarks, the show is a pretty active one for the cast and running and jumping about on a wet stage is just stupidly dangerous, so when it was clear that it wasn't going to let up for a while, they called it. I wish they'd hung in there because it cleared up about 15 minutes later. Damn.

Damn, damn, damn, rats.

A Gilbert & Sullivan education

I attended a performance of Take Me Out at Studio Theatre recently. It was a thoroughly delightful show (with or without the cute, nekkid guys), funny and touching. It's not often that I'm thinking as the cast is leaving the stage "No! Come back! I'm not done applauding!"

And while I loved the show enough that I'll probably buy the script, one of my favorite moments had nothing to do with baseball, the many levels of men's relationships, nekkid guys, loyalty, or embracing diversity. Well, unless the diversity we're talking about embracing is the inclusion of 19th century word geeks in so-called normal society. Because it's possible that I'm the only person in the audience who appreciated this exchange:

A: Are you fleering at me?
B: Fleering? Why do you always talk like you live a hundred years ago?

The only other place that I have encountered the word "fleer" is in Patience:

(Chorus of Dragoons) ~
Now is not this ridiculous, and is not this preposterous?
A thorough-paced absurdity - explain it if you can.
Instead of rushing eagerly to cherish us and foster us,
They all prefer this melancholy literary man.
Instead of slyly peering at us,
Casting looks endearing at us,
Blushing at us, flushing at us, flirting with a fan;
They're actually sneering at us, fleering at us, jeering at us!
Pretty sort of treatment for a military man!
They're actually sneering at us, fleering at us, jeering at us!
Pretty sort of treatment for a military man!

And in case you were wondering, perhaps not having had the advantages of a G&S education:

(flîr)
intr.v. fleered, fleer·ing, fleers
To smirk or laugh in contempt or derision.
n. A taunting, scoffing, or derisive look or gibe.
[Middle English flerien, of Scandinavian origin.]
fleering·ly adv.