endless_musings

**Disclaimer** The views and opinions expressed in this post are my own, and do not reflect the views or opinions of my employer. DO NOT RESHARE ANY PART OF THIS POST WITHOUT PERMISSION. Thank you.

This post covers the weekend.

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FRIDAY

Up early to do laundry. I found a Dirt Devil in the guest bedroom and vacuumed the carpet, and generally tidied up. Breakfast, folding the laundry, working on Foodie Finds. Kinda chillin. Running around yesterday to try and rescue my packages was a bit stressful, and a slow morning was appreciated.

In fact it turned into a splat day. Aside from walking to H-E-B for nonfat creamer for the Aunt and rushing downstairs to catch USPS when tracking showed my other package was being delivered (I caught them this time, yay!), I didn't do much else tried to nap, talked with the front desk about where to park my rental car, chatted with Jameson who is currently working on the Snowball Express event. I'm so proud of him, every day! This event is very heartfelt, and everyone at Disney is putting in their best to make it extra special.

Anyway, carpool to the theater, and a lovely normal show.

Afterward the band had a hang at a bar close to the hotel. Unfortunately on a Friday night in Austin with the huge University of Texas student population out to blow off steam, it was rather crowded! Tim (trumpet) found a pizza place that had good cocktails and beer and was being ignored by the students so we moved there.

The reason we had this hang is because soon it'll be the Christmas layoff for half the band (Dallas is another Rule 24 city). Gary (drummer) is taking his vacation at that time as well, and on Sunday we'll have a substitute flutist because Dane will be out getting Lasik surgery. Today and tomorrow are pretty much the only days where the whole band is together until the new year.

DAR (our MD) gave a lovely speech about how he enjoys working with us and appreciates us...he is the BEST boss I tell you! And not just because he showers us with compliments, but because of his actions. He advocates for us, listens to us, and supports us..and believe it or not, not all MDs do that! I think I truly can speak for all of us when I say that we all very much love having DAR as our MD!

Tim (trumpet) also gave a little speech thanking DAR for all of the above. We had drinks and pizza (I had a hot toddy, yum!) and companionship and good convos around the table. Best of all I didn't have to scream over music or extroverts to be heard :) It was a really great band hang, and I'm so glad that Dane (flute) organized it for us.

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SATURDAY

I was up early and my throat was sore, I am hoping that it's just from the acid/alcohol in the hot toddy because come ON, I have already been sick like 3x this year, and my Aunt is coming to visit!! Geez!! But it's easy to get run down when you live this lifestyle. It's been very cold in the pit, hard to sleep because of street noise at the hotel, and topping that off with a late night and alcohol probably wasn't the best life choice.

Anyway, at this point I've tried all of my Asian goodies, so here are the reviews for those!

Roasted Plain Yogurt: 9/10 This was delicious, just slightly sweet with a caramelized sugar flavor and extremely smooth creme brulee-like texture. I did a little research and found out that this yogurt is "roasted" by putting it in wooden barrels which are heated in a charcoal fire, and that caramelizes the sugars and gives it that lovely golden color. Absolutely would buy this again.

Mushroom Black Pepper Crackers: 8/10 Savory, earthy, peppery crackers. The only comparison I can think of right now is those Chicken in a Biskit crackers, though the flavor was different. The crackers were very light, crispy, and delicate. Enjoyed these a lot and would buy again.

Strawberry Sandwich Crackers: 4/10 These were the bummer, lol. They are pretty much as-seen on the package, just saltines with strawberry creme inside. But the "creme" was very grainy and not very strongly flavored, and the crackers didn't even have salt or anything. There are better Chinese tea cookies out there, I'd skip these.

Butter Flavored Peanuts: 7/10 These had a weird vanilla-like aftertaste, and have little or no salt, so they didn't evoke "butter" like I thought they would. They are still tasty, but just kinda bland and not as standout/unique as I'd hoped. Good but probably wouldn't buy again. (No pic, they're just peanuts :p )

I'm always grateful to get to try new things whether I end up liking them or not!

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On to Saturday. Took it easy in the morning and hydrated (I only had one drink last night but the sore throat freaked me out) and took care of some adulting tasks online until it was time to carpool to the theater. Two shows, and since traffic is so hideous here I packed dinner and opted to stay at the theater during the break.

The first show was good, and in this 2,900-seat house we were nearly sold out! Between shows I walked around the campus a bit (which I remember having done last time I was here too) as the sun was out and the weather was less-chilly. Then dinner and researching potential places to take my Aunt here in Austin.

The second show was also good, and for Broadway Cares afterward they had an actual prop for sale! One of the mugs from the "Gaston" number, signed by the entire cast! It was going for $750. I wonder if anyone bought it!

Harry-Francis-as-Lefou-and-Stephen-Mark-Lukas-as-Gaston.-Disneys-Beauty-and-the-Beast.-Photo-by-Matthew-Murphy.-c-Disney-1024x683.jpg

(Press image courtesy Disney)

The best part of MY night, personally, was when a middle school-aged girl came to the pit edge during intermission to excitedly tell me that she'd started playing the trombone in August, and loved it!! You go girl!! :D

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SUNDAY

I was up early to have breakfast before walking about a mile to fetch the rental car. That was easy, was back at the hotel within 30 minutes. Time to relax, get dressed for work, make sure that everything was ready for my Aunt, and eat lunch before carpool to the theater.

The afternoon show was fine and seemed well-attended. I'd planned to stay at the theater between shows and had brought my computer. DAR sent us some conductor cam footage (useful to give to subs and also for personal practice) so I busied myself downloading that and typed this post up in the meantime. After the night show I'll meet up with my Aunt and probably won't have time to write before we fall asleep. Hopefully the evening show goes well. Monday is a golden day, and I'm looking forward to spending the day with my favorite relative!

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Monday: Golden Day. Hanging out with my Aunt!

Tuesday: More time with my Aunt and one evening show.

mallorys_camera

If I'm braindead, so be it!

I'll spend the rest of my life watching movies.

###

Last night, I watched something called The Friend, in which Naomi Watts inherits a massive Great Dane from Bill Murray after he commits suicide, and it was the saddest movie ever because even though Naomi Watts eventually comes to love the dog, at the beginning of the movie she doesn't, she's just stuck with him because nobody else will take him, so the movie made me think of the fragility and ultimate unenforceability of the compacts we form with companion animals.
This hit home for me because I don't love the two cats currently my companion animals as much as I've loved companion animals in the past.

Molly & Mabel are not cuddly cats.

They don't sit on laps. They don't like to be picked up and... packaged, enfolded with affection. They will struggle if I try to do this. They are wary & guarded with everyone but me: Gus reported he did not see them once while I was away in Ithaca over Thanksgiving, and Icky reported that while Molly kiska would sit at the head of the stairs and stare down at him, she would never come down.

Sometimes, they are even wary & guarded with me.

Mabel will still hiss at me occasionally—not because she is an aggressive cat but because she is a very frightened cat. She has a scar on her head swooping down from her ear to her left eye, and I suspect she was badly used as a kitten, poor little girl.

Clearly, they love me in their own way.

Molly always trails me downstairs whenever I cook and at night, crawls into bed alongside me and kneads on blankets there; Mabel is forever flopping down on my feet and exposing her plump belly: Pet me please!

It's so odd the way both of them adore having their bellies rubbed but can hardly bear to be touched on any other part of their anatomy! Most cats of my acquaintance have been the other way around.

They are quite the most talkative cats I have ever been around. Molly will meow to me for 15 minutes straight if I keep asking her, "What, Molly? What?"

"It's good that you have the two cats," Brian told me. "They're like your little family. You need a little family."

###

But I am disloyal. I keep thinking, It would be easier to move if I didn't have the two cats. It would be easier to travel.

And I feel bad for thinking that because I take the animal/human compact very seriously. These kiskas are so eccentric and idiosyncratic that no one would ever want them except me—and I only half want them.

They trust me.

They hardly trust anything else outside their own bodies and instincts.

But they trust me.

Betraying that trust would be like betraying the universe somehow.

But I'm tempted to sometimes.

Watch on YouTube

ranunculus

We had a good time at practice today. Only 5 riders, but three of them were new. I got Firefly out and walked her through several obstacles. Then got on and did more obstacles. I also asked her to stand quietly a lot, not something she is always good about. Fortunately several of the horses around us were providing a good role model and she did great.
Tomorrow we have eight riders, I think. Had 10 signed up, but two canceled. One I had expected to cancel, the other is slightly surprising, but this morning was really foggy and they have to haul over a twisty road. Tomorrow is supposed to be clear, but I'm not betting on it.

mallorys_camera

When Ichabod called, I had this strong impulse not to answer the phone.

Because if I stop answering the phone when Ichabod calls, then I can pretend that nothing that happened to me last week when Ichabod was around actually happened!

I can reinvent myself as someone to whom embarrassing, humiliating things do not happen simply by cutting off every single person in my life who was around when the Embarrassing, Humiliating Thing did happen.

Easy peasy!

A simple & elegant solution!

Alas, I am not quite that crazy.

###

Honestly, I could not ask for a better son. I could not ask for two better sons. I should be on my knees thanking the Universe that my kids are so supportive and patient and protective.

But instead, I am filled with gall because the things that I like about myself are not the things my kids like about me, and thus, they will never know me as I want to be known. They will never see me as an artist. They will never see my life as a hero's adventure.

They will never see me.

So it goes.

###

Before Ichabod called, I forced myself to write 500 words on the Work in Progress. I hated every fucking word I wrote—Well. Not altogether true. The indefinite articles were okay—but that's all right because first draft, first draft, first draft, and the important things are momentum and consistency.

After Ichabod called, I hied over to New Paltz and spent a happy hour or so wafting from unspeakably adorable boutiquey shop to unspeakably adorable boutiquey shop, gift harvesting. It was a sunny afternoon, and I have acclimatized sufficiently to the colder temperatures to find 37° quite balmy.

###

Last night, I watched Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague, a film about the making of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.

When I was 14, I lied my way into a job as a candy girl at the Thalia movie house, and it was here I got my basic education in foreign films. Truffaut, Godard, Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni, the Brit kitchen sink auteurs, Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger—I loved them all passionately.

I wouldn't say Nouvelle Vague is a particularly entertaining movie, but it did make me nostalgic. Once upon a time, people were more passionate about creating art than they were about enhancing their brand.

In the post-Warhol world, of course, there is no such thing as art—only marketing categories and money-laundering schemes. (When a Van Gogh painting sells for millions & millions of dollars, that's a form of money-laundering.)

I've seen Breathless at least a dozen times, but it's not my favorite Godard film by a long shot. My favorite is Bande à part for purely egoistical reasons: As an 18-year-old, I bore a striking resemblance to Anna Karena:

Watch on YouTube

mallorys_camera

Tentative opening of Chapter 4, Work in Progress:

Wiltwyck Hospital was a small community hospital. We didn't have a lot of sophisticated resources. We didn't have________. We didn't have________. We didn't have________. We didn't have ________. There wasn't much we could do for COVID patients, but the COVID patients kept coming in anyway.

Problemo is not having been an RN during COVID, I don't have the slightest idea what resources might or might not have been available to a small community hospital.

I've been calling all my nurse friends and putting the question to them. Except they don't have the slightest idea either, since all of them had managed to get out of hospital nursing by the time COVID hit.

Yesterday, I chattered with Barbara Angell for an hour and a half.

And it was a great conversation, except that it did not yield me the info I was after.

Barbara did remind me that during COVID, all hospitals looked like lawn parties in the Hamptons since they were surrounded by these enormous white open-air tents where people were tested for COVID and had their vitals done so that once they were admitted, they could be shunted off to the COVID only wards.

And also that once they were admitted, COVID patients were forced to rest prone on beds, face down, because some CDC sartrap had ascertained that, however uncomfortable and unrestful this position might be, it provided the best aeration for damaged lungs.

So, I guess I will work with that.

###

Meanwhile, it is a balmy 7° here in the quaint and scenic Hudson Valley. So cold, the chickens' water has been freezing over, so mornings start with me literally hammering through the ice scrim on the poultry fountain.

When the thermometer hits double digits, I will toddle off for my annual haircut. I am lucky, I have great hair. It always looks good until it hits that length where it begins to get weedy. It hit that length about a week ago.

I have the beginnings of a cold, which I'm trying to ignore. And now that I've restarted the gummie protocol, I am a bit braindead.

But better braindead than sleepless.

Plus the great thing about "braindead" is that you don't have enough battery charge to actually care that you're braindead!

taz_39

**Disclaimer** The views and opinions expressed in this post are my own, and do not reflect the views or opinions of my employer. DO NOT RESHARE ANY PART OF THIS POST WITHOUT PERMISSION. Thank you.

This post covers Wednesday and Thursday.

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WEDNESDAY

Breakfast and Normal Morning Stuff, then I took the company rental car to 99 Ranch!
I tried not to be a psycho about taking pictures in the store (you've all seen enough of them too I'm sure) but here are a few.
( CLICK HERE for Asian Grocery! )

After lunch I did a little Christmas shopping and kinda chilled. It was wet and chilly out, I was unmotivated to go out further.

Carpooled to the theater for the evening show. We had a great audience, very reactive, and a standing O during Be Our Guest, always a special treat :) We can see the audience well here so if it happens again I will try to get footage.

Both of our Chip Kids have some sort of bug, so Vacation Chip Kid was flown in from somewhere to fill in! They just recently left the show so of course their costume is still here, they still know exactly what to do and how to do it. They did an excellent job!! We've got a few other people out for health issues...it's that time of year. But this is why there have been SO MANY understudy put-ins and rehearsals. The Show Must Go On!

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THURSDAY

I tried to get up early and kinda succeeded. It was rainy again but I had adulting to do!

Breakfast, meal prepping and planning, drafting an info email for my Aunt so she can access the hotel without me on Sunday night when she arrives. Making a to-do list for the layoff, packaging Jameson's records for shipping. I also wiped down the laminate floors in this apartment/room since there's no housekeeping and since it's been raining lately.

After the records were ready I bundled up against the rain and walked to the UPS store to ship them out. One less thing to worry about. Back home lunch, then I got a notification that USPS had tried to deliver a package to me but due to "Insufficient Address" was not even going to make a second attempt, but would return the package to sender immediately. Considering I've received packages from both Amazon and UPS at this address with no issue, I call BS. There's nothing wrong with the address, the delivery person either didn't know where to leave the package or didn't make contact with the front desk.

I have two more USPS packages coming this week, so this was concerning as all of them are addressed the same way. I tried calling USPS, which if you've ever tried to get a human via their helpline you'll know what THAT was like :p It took multiple calls and inputting a lot of info via a chat before I could talk to a person, then they told me there was nothing that I could do. But the package was somewhere in the city. It wasn't even anything important, but I hated the thought of the wasted time and gas and packaging of returning it when the thing was RIGHT HERE.

So I called again, and kept trying until I finally got an operator who kindly gave me the address and phone number of the local office where the package had been. I tried calling and of course no one answered....so I said, heck, I'll Uber over there and try to work something out.

I got very lucky. At the post office a very helpful associate said he'd leave a note for the driver to try again the next day. I tried to give more detailed instructions on where to bring the package, and gave my number in case he needed to call, and signed up for text notifications so I could try to meet him in the lobby. I also gave tracking for the other two packages on their way so this hopefully wouldn't happen with them as well. I thanked the associate with big smiles and wished him happy holidays, then stood to the side to call another Uber to get back home, having done all I could do.

And while I was doing that, he came running around the counter: "Your package was here! The driver brought it back already."

Wow! Something in the Universe really DOES love me.

Package in hand, I looked at my phone...and saw that Uber had found me a Waymo! A self-driving car!!
I was definitely nervous about it...but life is so short and I couldn't say no to the opportunity!

It didn't want to pull into the janky post office lot (I don't blame it) so had me walk to the McDonald's next door. As I approached the car the Uber app gave me a button to unlock the car's doors. I did, and got in.

Short 3-minute video of the experience.

Watch on YouTube

The first five minutes or so, I felt nervous and it felt WEIRD. Car moving all by itself, steering wheel turning, accelerating and braking appropriately. No one in the driver's seat. It was WILD. And it was a good driver!! After a few minutes I relaxed, and then a bit more. It felt pretty safe!

My view. And yes I was leaning forward like a nerd the whole time to watch!

The car has intense sensors on the roof and all four corners, and probably all over. They spin constantly, and must be doing some kind of scanning. The console screen showed all of the cars around us, their actual shapes. It also showed when cars had brake lights or turn signals on. We didn't pass many pedestrians so I didn't see if it saw them or not.

I could have picked my own music, set the thermostat, or viewed the route.
There is an option to pull over if you need to, or to call for help if you need to.

The car stuck to surface roads; I don't think they're allowed on the highway yet. But this is still a city and we got cut off about 3 times. The car reacted appropriately each time. Once it decelerated BEFORE the car pulled out, as though anticipating that getting cut off was a possibility. Another time it switched lanes for a car that was pulling out too close to us. And the third time it had to brake a little, but not hard because it apparently had "seen" what was about to happen.

Another time we were on a narrow street and turning left, and the car stopped a full bus length back from the white line near the stoplight. It then inched forward carefully. I wondered how it knew to do that! If a truck or bus had needed to turn onto that street, it would have needed the space in front of us to do that, and the car seemed to anticipate this. I am boggled by how much information it must be processing, how many "if this then that" scenarios, and then reacting, and taking actions based on...well...on what it "thinks."

After that moment, I truly thought that there MUST be a human somewhere remotely driving the car, or at least taking over in certain situations. But no: I looked it up, and Waymo cars are FULLY autonomous. It was the car making choices the whole time.

The car pulled up in front of the hotel. There were no spots available at the curb, but it pulled over as much as it could just like a real driver would and cautioned me to look carefully before getting out, make sure I had all of my things, etc. To get out I had to pull the door handle twice.

And that was it! Aside from there being, ya know, no driver, it was like a good Uber ride. The car stayed within speed limits, handled completely appropriately, and the only time I felt unsafe was when the human drivers were doing unpredictable things around us...which is of course the norm now, but I wonder if these cars will change that, 10 years from now.

As usual I am deeply fascinated by technology like this, and was very glad to have this special chance to ride in really one of the first driverless cars. If you get a chance to try it too, I think you should! You might be surprised :)

I spent the next hour or two editing and uploading my ride video, answering questions from friends about the car, and prepping for the show. Carpooled in, and Michael (Key 3) had spent the day baking us an apple pie! It was a delicious pre-show snack!

The show went well and seemed well attended, nothing else to report this time (and that's how we like it!)

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Friday: Laundry in the morning, not sure yet what to do in the afternoon. One show at night.

Saturday: Two shows and no plans.

Sunday: Prepping for my Aunt's visit + two shows.

ranunculus

Sat and Sun are December's Obstacle Practice Days here at the Ranch. As usual I have 8 obstacles planned. Sunday's event already has its limit of 10 riders signed up. Saturday has 5. I have no idea why Sunday is more popular, but that has been true on several recent events. In any case, I'm really happy to have this many riders signed up in the middle of winter. It is true that the weather has been spectacular for the last week and should be perfect on Sat: Sunny with a high of 65F. The hills are green and lovely.
Got some shelves half installed. They are good metal industrial style shelving that were being thrown out of the Opera House back when I was working there. I brought them up from Henry St last week.
Scored an excellent buy of some used but very good fence panels. Priced about $150 per panel. New they would be 250+. It was one of those deals that I tuck a little money away for. Thank goodness Ray was willing to pick them up for me, the seller wanted them gone ASAP.

mallorys_camera

What happens when one feels humiliated & ashamed is that one loses the narrative thread of one's own life.

Because how can what happens to you be at all important?

You're an idiot!!!

And idiots don't deserve to have stories.

Serious recalibration is called for.

###

Anyhoo, the storm was dramatic but only dropped four inches of snow. While I watched the snow fall, I baked banana bread & prepared a complicated chicken Florentine dish. (See? I can cook! I just choose not to most of the time.)

All I wanted to do was read & watch mindless television, but no could do because I have approximately 1 billion pages of the U.S. tax code to memorize, plus all the usual Remuneration.

Betsy invited me to spend a weekend at her fabulous house in Westchester County.

Real-life Daria invited me to spend the winter at her house in California. She wants to give Brian's car to her son, but I suspect she has not thought that one through because she's also on the verge of trading in 30 years of freelance teaching & translation for a real job with benefits & security & everything, but also with only two weeks of mandated vacation per year—is she really gonna want to spend that precious two weeks transporting a car from New York to California?

If she does, we are chatting about me driving with her. Road trip! That would be mid-April.

If she doesn't, then I end up with Brian's car.

###

Somewhere around then, too, I must mastermind my own next move.

I've been going back and forth between whether I should relocate to Ithaca or back to Dutchess County.

Dutchess County has the advantage of being a short train ride away from New York City where I would very much like to spend more time. And I have pals in the area.

I know more people in Ithaca, though. Plus RTT is there. If last week's unfortunate mishap is any kind of foreshadowing of how I can expect my dotage to transpire, it would be best to be around family members upon whom I can endlessly presume.

###

I haven't gone near the Work in Progress in a couple of weeks.

I'm thinking I should start Chapter 4 today.

A large chunk of it takes place in a small-ish community hospital during COVID.

But I don't know anything about how small-ish community hospitals operated during COVID. And I'm not sure how to track that information down.

I guess I'm just gonna have to make it up.

taz_39

**Disclaimer** The views and opinions expressed in this post are my own, and do not reflect the views or opinions of my employer. DO NOT RESHARE ANY PART OF THIS POST WITHOUT PERMISSION. Thank you.

This post covers Monday and Tuesday.

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MONDAY

A travel day to Austin, but BOY did it feel slow! Because San Antonio is so close to Austin and because hotels can't accommodate large group check-ins before 3pm, we stayed at the San Antonio hotel until 1pm. I didn't do much, just Houston Foodie Finds and a short walk outside to get fresh air.

Eventually we loaded up and got going. I ended up on the bus with Holly (Wardrobe/Madam), who loves to do...I don't know what she calls them but they're like little "travel day choreo" videos that she posts to social media. Basically if you're on the same bus as Holly, be prepared to do a little dance, lol! (Don't worry we can opt out if we don't feel like it!)

She waits until we're on the highway, then gets our attention and walks us through the choreo moves she's come up with. They're pretty simple, but sometimes there are a lot of them in rapid succession, so we do rehearse them several times and do 2-3 practice runs before she starts recording. Today it was a remix of the DuckTales theme song, paired with quite a lot of hand gestures. This is the second "travel day dance" I've been in...I never say no because it passes the time and helps me to be social for once :p

You'll barely see me but I'm in the very back on the right for most of the video, then closest on the left when she turns around at the back of the bus.

Watch on YouTube

It was a very short bus ride and before we knew it we were there. Our company management had to switch our hotel at the last minute due to Sonder's sudden bankruptcy, so we weren't sure what to expect...but this other hotel is really nice! It's a lot like little apartments actually, which is perfect because my Aunt is coming to visit and she can enter the room without a key card, and also gets her own room! I will share more about the hotel at the end of week 2 when we've already left, for safety reasons.

There were grocery stores in easy walking distance so off I went, got everything that I needed and more. Dinner and spent a lot of time trying to find ABC on the TV but couldn't :( Jameson had performed in the recording of The Wonderful World of Disney Holiday Spectacular with the band Good Charlotte!! I wanted to watch it air "with" him, but it didn't happen. I'll have to stream it tomorrow...but at least with streaming I can pause and get some good screenshots.

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TUESDAY

I got up at 9am which is late for me. Must have needed the sleep.

Breakfast and watching Jameson perform with Good Charlotte! I took some screenshots when I could see him. He was typically only visible in sweeping/moving camera shots, so it was hard to get a clear still image, but I did my best.

I'm not sure how long the special will be available to watch for free, but here it is on YouTube for as long as it lasts.
If you want to see Jameson's part, it starts at 18:47 timestamp.

Watch on YouTube

It was 90 minutes long and I didn't watch the whole thing, but did enjoy most of it. By the time that was done it was time for lunch, then I walked to Target again because this hotel is more apartment than hotel and I'm gonna need some extra little things to get through the week. Especially with my Aunt visiting! Mostly just more distilled water for my hot water kettle, and cleaning supplies because they don't do room servicing here. It was sunny out, and it was nice to get out and stretch my legs anyway.

I've been to Austin before...but I haven't BEEN to Austin before. With the circus we stayed on the train and bused straight to the arena with little time to explore; with Tootsie our hotel was far outside of town so kind of the same situation, I walked all around the campus and surrounding shops but never saw the suburbs or the actual downtown. This time we are staying pretty much in the suburbs, and I gotta say, it is hard to believe we're still in Texas!!

Coffee bars, bubble tea, industrial apartments, food trucks on every single block. Loads and loads of street art...art or stickers on every flat surface!

Weed vending machines!! Colorful houses!

Most interesting to me personally are the Waymo cars (self-driving cars.) I saw one on the night we arrived and thought maybe I'd just gotten lucky, but on this walk to Target I saw at least three more plus a competitor brand called Zoox. Not a single one had a driver.

Here's a compilation video of the self-driving cars I've seen so far. The night clip is my first time seeing one of these cars in person. The others are from watching one drive through an intersection. There was a third that stopped for me at a stop sign and let me cross. Sorry if oogling over this is lame but this tech is still novel and interesting to me.

Watch on YouTube

Back at the hotel I didn't do much, just made sure that I was packed and ready to get to the theater. I AM sucking it up and doing a carpool this week but ONLY because my Aunt is coming to visit. It happened that there are no extended-stay-type hotels or affordable Airbnbs available within walking distance of the theater, so company housing was the best option. Carpool this week is with Michael (Key 3) and Dane (Flute) who are both excellent drivers, anyway.

I remembered the theater right away, it's really an auditorium on the UT college campus. Kind of bunker-esque backstage, but a lot more space than we had in San Antonio, for which we're all really grateful. Setting up in the pit was a breeze because of all the space, and the drum booth is back with us down there, yay! Sound check was a little rough because some of the speakers were VERY loud, the sound possibly rebounding off the concrete walls of the pit. Sound crew did their best to help us out, and I think we just need to adjust...it's hard to tell anything on the first day in a new pit! One of the trials of performing in different venues is having to adjust to vast differences in sound in each and every space. It just takes time.

Anyway, we got it figured out. I ate my packed dinner and got into my trunk for this-and-that, then it was showtime. A really nice audience, and afterward a woman came down to the pit nearly in tears to tell us how touched she'd been by the music especially. How wonderful! :)

Since neither Michael or Dan need the car tomorrow, I'm stealing it to visit the Asian grocery stores!! MUHAHAHAHAAA

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Wednesday: Visiting 99 Ranch (which I've been to before here) followed by Asahi Imports. One show in the evening.

Thursday: No plans as yet, but will probably try to figure out shipping for the records I bought for Jameson several cities ago, to get them home in time for Christmas. One evening show.

mallorys_camera

The generic name for Wellbutrin is "bupropion," and to an addled brain that has been surviving on three hours of sleep per night for four days, "bupropion" does look like "ibuprofen." The pills look like ibuprofen, too.

Why the pills were in a pharmacy vial was something my exhausted brain was ill-prepared to reason through. (Lucid answer: They wouldn't be.)

Anyway, that's why I took them.

Sleepiness is not one of ibuprofen's on-label or off-label effects—except that ibuprofen does make me sleepy—and at that point, I would have done anything to sleep...

###

Afterwards, I thought about the actor Heath Ledger. Who died of a drug overdose at the age of 28 in 2008, not because he was trying to kill himself, but because he was trying to fall asleep.

"Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night. ... I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going," he told a New York Times journalist shortly before his death.

I could relate.

Like me, Heath Ledger had lost the ability to fall into unconsciousness.

He could not let go.

More or less, this has been my ground state, too, since Brian died. I could not fall because I could not lose control. Brian was no longer there to have my back if I lost control. Brian had been my emotional lodestar, the only person who really, really knew me, the good and the bad, and loved me anyway. I did not have to tap dance to keep Brian's love; I only had to be.

After Brian died, I was in a great hurry to bundle up the grief and dispose of it, but, of course, grief does not work that way; it is that thing in the ghost story that's impossible to give away.

###

Anyway, it took me an hour or so to figure out what I had done. Poison control was alerted: I needed to go to the ER. It was too late to do activated charcoal, but I needed to be on a lactated Ringers IV to flush the poison out of my system, and I needed to be observed for 24 hours in case I had a seizure.

First time in my adult life I'd spent time as a patient in a hospital without giving birth. Hospitals are unpleasant environments. Every 15 minutes, someone is coming in to take your blood pressure or run an electrocardiogram or use you as a prop while they discuss your case with medical colleagues. Ironic! You won't die from the drug OD, but they won't let you sleep, and sleeplessness was my real issue.

Wellbutrin in high doses turns out to be a hallucinogen. Fortunately for me, I did so much LSD as a young 'un that I am perfectly comfortable with hallucinations. The drug also fucks with your short-term memory & cognition—and that was interesting: At one point, I was trying to explain something to someone, and they were staring at me with this absolute lack of comprehension, and I realized, I am not making any sense.

And I thought: This is what it must feel like to have dementia! Things that make perfect sense to you make no sense to anyone else, and when you express them, they look at you with a panicky expression on their faces.

###

I was released after 24 hours of observation.

Thank God I have health insurance!

Naturally, I am feeling deeply embarrassed, ashamed, & demoralized by the whole episode. What an absolutely fucking stupid thing to do.

But I decided I was not going to cover up the experience, humiliating though it was.

I mean, I'm not going to go up to random people on the street: Guess where I spent the day-before the day before Thanksgiving!

But I'm not going to hide it. And I'm writing about it here.

RTT left me a phone message while I was in the hospital: Silly things happen so don't beat yourself up. I feel like my biggest concern right now is that you're beating yourself up. I love you lots. You are amazing.

Ichabod was more circumspect. "I would like you to get some sort of cognitive testing through your primary care provider," he told me, and I agreed to because doing something like this was just so fucking dumb, and if I am beginning some sort of mental spiral, I need to know.

Jeanna was the one who understood what happened best. "That is absolutely the worst, isn't it? That moment when you realize you can't maintain."

###

On the way back to the AirBnB from the hospital, the BoyZ took me by a dispensary where I loaded up on CBD (anti-anxiety) and cannabis sleep aids.

They seem to be working.

We spent Thanksgiving at Allyn's.

Allyn was working at New Roots when RTT was a student there, so technically, I've known her for 15 years, but this was the first time I'd hung out with her at any length. She's a chef and put on quite the spread, and we all cozied up in her living room eating three differently prepped turkeys and five kinds of pie and watching mindless football.

She could not have been any warmer or more supportive. "I feel such a strong connection with you!" she told me. "When it's time for you to move, I will help you find a place up here." Allyn is very well connected.

Friday, the BoyZ & I went to the movies and then hung out at Personal Best and played board games where you ask questions like At a restaurant, I resist the free bread because I don't want to spoil my dinner and If I don't get enough sleep, my whole day is ruined (sic!) and then guess if the person the statement is about would say it is true or false.

Then Saturday, Ichabod & I departed, and RTT went back to real life.

I arrived back in the Hudson Valley just before it started to snow. The first serious snow of winter: Thanksgiving is the official “Welcome to Winter” calendar moment, after all. That snow didn't stick.

Today's storm will though. We're expecting seven inches.

I am (understandably) feeling very fragile. It will take me a while to recalibrate emotionally. And Brian is still dead. But at least I can sleep, which means I can take care of what needs to be taken care of. It would be nice if "self-care" were on that list, but in fact, it seldom is.

ranunculus

Watch Duty app.watchduty.org/ has just announced that it has expanded to nationwide, including Alaska. In addition to their alerts for fires, they have added alerts for weather events. There are now layers showing air quality and wind speed and direction, also road closures due to flooding. M and I have paid subscriptions so we can look at the raw data from our local weather stations and graphics of fire perimeters.
If you haven't had access to this app before, it is really worth having. In case of a disaster they show the latest information from law enforcement, like what roads are open or closed, evacuation warnings and orders, evacuation centers and so on. The basic app is free, if you want to be able to see more, like how many and real time tracking of aircraft working a disaster, then there are paid versions. Those paid versions help support the work that goes into providing all that info. After a couple of years watching aircraft tracks over fires it is pretty easy to tell what the status of the fire is without even reading the updates. For those of you in urban areas who might not think you need it: in the disasterous Los Angeles fires, a huge number of people, something like 80% relied on Watch Duty to help in evacuations.

ranunculus

Lily and I worked for almost 4 hours picking up all the pallets that hay gets stacked on, cleaning old hay out of them before laying the pallets down to be covered with 3 pickup loads of bales from the barn. In doing so we moved the hay stack over a couple of feet. The move made room so we could move the supplement cart against the back wall. Tomorrow I'll extend out from the cart with 3 feet more counter space. At night, in the dark, it would be nice to lay out all four tubs that are used for supplements. Each horse gets a slightly different mix. Rio gets 5# of senior feed pellets mixed with rice bran for calories. The other three get 1 # each of Purina's Enrich. Beau gets a tiny scoop of a probiotic plus a splash of cider vinegar to help keep his gut happy. Baily gets water in his because he choked gobbling down a huge mass of dry pellets and the vet said to serve his damp from now on. Firefly just gets pellets. So far she eats her pellets quickly, but doesn't try and gobble them down.
After Lily left I stayed to finish cleanup. Mostly just moving things back into the center feed area, but also removing the insulated wire that brought power in for the electric fence since we no longer need it.
Tried a fix for the front of the wheelbarrow, a little cheap one. The piece of metal that goes in front of the tire refuses to stay in place. Every time the wheelbarrow is dumped the metal flips up and acts as a stop on the wheel. I screwed an L shaped piece of metal over the top. The L shaped piece was salvaged from the packing around my new stove. If that isn't enough I'll screw through the front of the L bracket, and the metal tire guard and into the end of the handle. I'm just afraid that will just crack the handle...
Tomorrow I'll finish putting in the new counter in Winter Quarters and possibly some little shelves. That should make it a pretty nice place to care for horses.
Was nice to find I'm still in good enough shape to pick up heavy, three wire bales and move them. On the way home I picked up three out of four bags of damp leaves that have been sitting down at the main gate. Those are really heavy, definitely heavier than the hay! A couple of the bags had multiple small holes torn in them. I can't decide if it was squirrels looking for acorns, or crows/ravens looking for trash to eat.

ranunculus

The last four days have been riding days. The weather is glorious, sunny and just the right temperature. I started with a very short session, then worked in the arena for two days before going out on a trail ride with Carrie and Juno. Firefly was all fired up today, full of energy and impatient to go, go, go. We worked on quiet and walking. I bet she is sore tomorrow. Even with all that energy Firefly was really pretty good. She is paying attention, has learned to walk ON the trail and is gaining confidence. She is very attuned to weight and leg aids which is lovely. At the top of Fairview Hill I got off and walked down. No sense in arguing with the horse all the way down the hill.
Here is Firefly after a good grooming.

ranunculus

The very last of the fall color is starting to fade, but not these leaves, seen here glowing in the late afternoon sun.

( More... )

taz_39

**Disclaimer** The views and opinions expressed in this post are my own, and do not reflect the views or opinions of my employer. DO NOT RESHARE ANY PART OF THIS POST WITHOUT PERMISSION. Thank you.

This post covers the weekend.

--- --- --- --- --- ---

FRIDAY

Up early to do laundry. FYI I get up early to do laundry because no one else does :p and this way I don't have to wait for a washer to free up.

Packed things to put back in my trunk, had breakfast, submitted Austin Foodie Finds to the group chat. I am kind of burnt out on all the work involved in Foodie Finds, it's a lot of research and linking and formatting, so I haven't even started on Houston yet. Hopefully I can dredge up some motivation for it while in Austin, or while on the December layoff.

The first show was fine. Perhaps because we're in "the holidays" now, there were loads of treats backstage! Someone brought a huge cinnamon roll the size of a cake; another a huge sheet pan of homemade cornbread; and someone's mom sent several loaves of pumpkin spice bread! These were gathered and put on a wardrobe hamper for everyone to enjoy. I had a small piece of each thing, it was all delicious :)

Between shows I went back to the hotel for dinner, then walked back a bit early because we'd heard there was a Thanksgiving parade on the river and that downtown would be packed. And it totally was! Cars were gridlocked and even walking was tough with packed sidewalks. I took this photo at a closed-off street. Look at the pretty lights! This is the first night they've been turned on, probably for the parade and to signal the start of "the holidays."

The evening show seemed well attended and the audience was kinda rowdy! It was nice :)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SATURDAY

I kept thinking it was Sunday because we had a two-show Friday :p

Awake way earlier than I wanted to be, but such is life. A slow morning, a lazy afternoon (I should have gone for a walk tbh), and walking to the theater for the show. Downtown is still incredibly crowded, I think there are more holiday events on the River Walk this weekend.

The matinee was good and well attended. Someone brought pecan and pumpkin pies for us...we have so many treats!
Between shows the usual dinner at the hotel and walking back and all that.

Evening show was also good. We have a substitute flutist in the pit with us, I suppose Dane (flute) is taking some time off in an upcoming city. I noticed someone working on our wall tag as well, it should be done by tomorrow and I'll be excited to sign!

After the show and before the exit music, some of the actors on stage made a speech about Broadway Cares. This has been going on for weeks, it's a current fundraising drive. The audience is asked to donate once they get to the lobby, and they can purchase donation prizes like photos with cast in costume (usually $20), playbills or posters signed by the whole cast (Ranging from $40-$100), and suchlike things. But tonight there was a special item: a piece of sheet music signed by Susan Egan! They brought the house lights up and did an auction right there. They had sold some of these previously for I think $400...but tonight, doing it auction-style, they managed to sell TWO of these for $1100 each!! Woooot!

I haven't really mentioned it in this blog, but the Broadway Cares fundraiser has been going on for the whole month of November. After almost every show and before people exit the theater, the actors announce that they'll be taking donations for this organization, which provides social service programs all across the country. From battling AIDS, to granting emergency financial aid, to providing food and shelter for actors in need, and so much more, Broadway Cares has done an INSANE amount of good in this country.

(reminder to click the image for a larger version)

From what I understand this is not only a fundraiser, but also a competition! I'm not sure where Beauty and the Beast stands in the donations rankings but hopefully we'll find out soon! Every week we get a report on how much we've raised, and I gotta say the generosity of audience members in EVERY city we visit is incredibly touching. Once the totals are in I will share them with you :)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SUNDAY

Slept in a bit, the usual breakfast routine followed by packing. We only had one show today. One-show Sundays are nice! It feels like you're getting a break even though you've still had 8 shows :p

The holiday crowds are clearing out so walking to the theater was a bit easier today.
Behind the theater they'd closed off the entire road and backed all of our tour trucks literally into the middle of the road for load out. The Majestic is an old theater with rather narrow hallways, and I imagine loading out is not going to be very easy.

Backstage our wall tag was ready to sign. It's the little blue one there near the floor :)

Pre-signatures:

Post-signatures (well, most of them.) I circled mine in red for you since they are a bit hard to see on the blue background.
(Remember that you can click the image to open in a new tab and view larger.)

The show was nice and went quickly, and loading out was fast for me personally as well. Before I knew it I was back at the hotel with the whole evening free! It was cold and windy out so I decided to have a lazy night, doing some casual Christmas shopping, looking up layoff flights, working on Houston Foodie Finds, eventually eating dinner and whatnot.

San Antonio has been good to us these two weeks :)
I must admit that I didn't get to do a whole lot this time because I was fixated on preparing for and taking that crazy trip to Orlando. But having been here many times before, I don't feel bad about it. Sightseeing or not, it's a lovely city and always a pleasure to visit.

Tomorrow we have quite the relaxing day. We get to stay in this hotel until 1pm, then a very short bus ride to Austin to arrive by 3pm.

Not sure how I will spend my time in Austin yet, but am looking forward to it!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday: Travel day, and I'm really hoping to hit two big Asian supermarkets once we arrive in Austin: 99 Ranch (Chinese) and Asahi Imports (Japanese)!

Tuesday: No plans, just opening day in Austin!

calzephyr

A BG3 fan fic written by a friend :-D

https://archiveofourown.org/works/73300221/chapters/191055321

ranunculus

I've been watching Acorn's Whitstable Pearl and enjoying it a good deal. It is very slightly too edgy to be called a cosy mystery. But it has enough lightness to be a good balance. The novels were written by Julie Wassmer, a TV script writer who took a break to write some novels. I might try reading the books, bet they are quite a bit different than the TV series.

ranunculus

The truck had several boxes of garden stuff, all filthy. It is so much nicer to reach for a nice clean pot or saucer for a pot! Unloading the truck involved several hours of washing up the "dishes". They are now all done except for a couple of touch ups. The saucers are all in a nice cardboard box to keep them clean and the pots soon will be. Still to go are the things that need new shelf space. Right now new shelf space is pretty limited. More reorganization needed.
Had a nice ride on Firefly today. It was one of those priceless sunny, cool winter days. We worked on turns and her listening to my cues instead of worrying about where the other horses are. I worked on not dropping my shoulder to the inside. Firefly did great, she has stopped having panic attacks when I ask for something new. She walked pretty quietly even though it was clear she had a lot of extra energy. As usual I quit while I was ahead, got off, hung her saddle on the fence and turned her loose. She had a wonderful time tearing around the big arena at top speed, mane and tail flying. My old friend Alice called out and said "she's gorgeous!" Alice had only ever seen a rather sad little dirty pony standing in the corral. Firefly doesn't like to run in Winter Quarters because the ground is so rocky. After making several rounds of the arena and expressing herself with some loud snorts, she calmed down and stood at the gate on the far end of the arena. I sometimes let her out to graze there. When I didn't come over she walked the length of the arena (250 ft) and straight up to me. I think Alice though that because I haven't actually been riding Firefly much that I hadn't spent time with her. It was a nice moment.
Tonight is my last night of "horse duty". The four of us who have horses at Winter Quarters trade off feeding and moving the horses around. Someone is there two times a day all winter. Maddie and Lily both went out of town for Thanksgiving so Grace and I split up the shifts. I took both shifts for 3 days and have one more this weekend.
In less exciting news, I got a lot of paperwork cleaned up and some stuff off to the county. Also exchanged my new Ariat jacket. The one I had purchased had a tiny flaw in the zipper that made it hard to zip up. The stitching was a fraction too close. It is a nice canvas, padded jacket, meant to replace two sweaters I have worn, quite literally to tatters over the last decade and a half. If I'm going to wear this jacket for that long, the zipper better work!

glinda

So, yes, I am in fact writing these out of order, but writing the last one made me think about this album and as it was also gig related I thought it was a natural companion piece to follow up with. So this album choice was a result of two different gigs. As noted previously I went to see the Scottish Ensemble and Anna Meredith doing their collaborative album Anno at the Barbican at the end of September, and then at the end of October I went to see the Scottish Ensemble here in the Inverness again. To my intense amusement, working with Anna Meredith again had clearly reminded the ensemble how much they enjoy playing her work, because the whole second half of the Inverness gig was pieces by Anna Meredith re-arranged for string ensemble. Mostly from her first electronic album Varmints - the lead violin noted with clear irony before they played Nautilus that that piece had been intended as a clear break from her previous orchestral work - and having experienced it as something akin to a transcendental experience - I virtually floated home afterwards - obviously I had to go and actually listen to the album in question.

I didn’t initially love this album, despite it being much more what I was expecting from Anna Meredith - before I encountered Anno I knew her mostly from her film scoring work - but as I’ve continued to listen to it across the last month, I’ve come to the conclusion that I like it more the further away from the gig I get. For example, I can now listen to Blackfriars and feel it’s glorious rhythms combine happily with my memories of my recent holiday in London, of standing outside Blackfriars station at rush hour, hearing bells and clocks striking all over the place, feeling the ebb and flow of traffic around me and the rumble of the tube below - I have a whole bunch of field recordings I made in and around that tube station - and think, yes, that part of London does indeed feel like that. I also feel like I’ve been able to fall in love with Nautilus and Scrimshaw all over again in their own right, without constantly comparing them negatively with their reimagined versions. (Honestly I want to hear Nautilus re-arranged for brass a la that Hannah Peel album I wrote about earlier this year.) I do think I need to go see Anna Meredith live in her own right next time she’s touring, because I think her work really lends itself to live performance, to variations on a theme and interacting with visuals and graphics, a proper multimedia experience. However, now that I’ve got enough distance from the gig, I can happily also enjoy it, lying on the sofa with low winter light and just the fairy lights on, through big headphones and let it transport me to other places.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Anna Meredith - Blackfriars

calzephyr

I didn't send a Christmas card call this year because I wasn't sure if Canada Post would be striking. If you recall, they were on strike last Christmas and it was a bummer! Chances are good that if you live in Canada, you'll receive your card on time.

If you live elsewhere, you'll probably get a New Year's card.

Admittedly, I am a little late out of the gate sending cards out! My address has not changed, so if you have it, you're good to go :-D

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Page Summary

taz_39 - Austin, TX 2025 part 3: Band Hang, Little Treats, Aunt Prep
mallorys_camera - Molly & Mabel
ranunculus - Obstacle Practice
mallorys_camera - New Wave
mallorys_camera - Protocols
taz_39 - Austin, TX 2025 part 2: Asian Treats, Ride in a Driverless Car
ranunculus - Obstacle Weekend Approaches
mallorys_camera - Recalibrating
taz_39 - Austin, TX 2025 part 1: Dance Bus, Good Charlotte, Keeping Austin Weird
mallorys_camera - That Moment When You Realize You Can't Maintain
ranunculus - Watch Duty now Nationwide!
ranunculus - Winter Quarters cleanup
ranunculus - Firefly
ranunculus - Early winter
taz_39 - San Antonio, TX 2025 Week 2 part 2: More Thanks and Giving
calzephyr - The World is Ours Alone
ranunculus - Almost Cosy Mystery
ranunculus - Dishes, Firefly
glinda - Definitely More of an Autumn vibe
calzephyr - Christmas cards kinda sorta?

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endless_musings

Reading

Austin, TX 2025 part 3: Band Hang, Little Treats, Aunt Prep

Molly & Mabel

Obstacle Practice

New Wave

Protocols

Austin, TX 2025 part 2: Asian Treats, Ride in a Driverless Car

Obstacle Weekend Approaches

Recalibrating

Austin, TX 2025 part 1: Dance Bus, Good Charlotte, Keeping Austin Weird

That Moment When You Realize You Can't Maintain

Watch Duty now Nationwide!

Winter Quarters cleanup

Firefly

Early winter

San Antonio, TX 2025 Week 2 part 2: More Thanks and Giving

The World is Ours Alone

Almost Cosy Mystery

Dishes, Firefly

Definitely More of an Autumn vibe

Christmas cards kinda sorta?

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April 2022

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