it's June ...
... and the garden is bustin' out all over!
I don't like to plan it this way, but sometimes I schedule too many things in a day! both of these were worthwhile though, so I chugged through and enjoyed it all. first, I made a reservation midway through the run of this fun variety live show. I knew the name of the theater troupe from my work with the Pride & Prejudice team (they loaned us costumes). I thought I would get dinner between gigs, but this lovely charcuterie plate filled the bill, and a little sparkling cider is always welcome! they performed show tunes from many generations, and all the performers were delightful - some were even phenomenal. if I can, I would like to audition for something and work with these folks. one character was the Cabaret MC, and he came out before the show and sat for a minute with me, making me feel welcome. we greeted each other after the show and he hugged me, and said I was such a responsive audience member. I chatted up a few of the performers, and they feel like a welcoming bunch. they are a bit of a "gypsy" troupe, like my P&P team, as they don't have a permanent performance venue. this show they were performing at the Elks Club, which was a perfect venue for this sort of a show, at least it seemed so to me!
the most delightful discovery at this show was seeing my tech director for P&P, Tom, at the light/sound board for this show. he was working it with his son-in-law. we chatted a bit and each mentioned our current and future grandparent statuses. their daughter is having a girl in August! I congratulated both of them. at the end of the show Tom came up and greeted me again in the group of performers I was standing with, confirming that I had indeed done a show with them, as if validating that I would be an okay addition. sometimes you need that in the insulated world of theater, where we have some absolute divas!
then I left Rancho Cordova and wended my way over to Carmichael. the temperature was hovering around 90, but there was a nice breeze occasionally. there were a number of folks enjoying the bands. I got there midway through the third-from-last band, this was the band who were trying to recruit me at the spaghetti fund raiser a few months ago. they sounded wonderful, and played several songs I liked. I chatted up a vendor at a booth selling artwork - - she's also a writer, and was very engaging!
finally it was our turn. the band shell was cool enough, but I almost needed my sunglasses. since I need my reading glasses to see my music, that would have been bad. our band director was doing his bit to recruit new members. we played our music very well.
for one piece of music - Ride of the Valkyries - all five of us horn players put on horned Viking helmets. As soon as our director saw us he cracked up, and had to take a moment to compose himself. this is the first time I've been in a band where we take a group photo after the performance, but they were all set up to do this with all the bands, so I guess it's a thing here! I happily posed for the serious version, then we horn players donned our horns once again for the silly version. that's me, the horn player most left!
the following week I caught up with my Pride & Prejudice director at a local Christian coffee bar. I shared with her my Grandma's Brag Book, to give her an idea for her upcoming grand daughter.
Janet spent several weeks this month in Israel on one of her archeological digs. sadly for me - since I'm so far away all I can do is worry and pray! - Israel was attacked by a neighboring country, and Janet was able to see, hear and feel the rockets as most were destroyed by the military defenses. still, they're only 98% successful. they eventually rebooked their return home taking a long bus ride to Egypt, flying from Cairo, to Dubai and home to Houston. I had trouble sleeping most nights until I knew she was finally safe on US ground. I crocheted this cute lavender and white Pegasus unicorn for her, from a kit she never got around to starting.
one of my favorite costumers passed away recently, and her family held a large and lovely memorial service for her, so I had to rent a car and drive down for that. while there I also picked up more of Janet's mail, and went to the SJ Harley store and got Joyce some T-shirts from SJ, SF and Alcatraz! this store got all their remaining inventory when those two stores closed. Since I was staying overnight, I rented an EV and was able to fast charge it at the hotel where I stayed; had our favorite Chi-town pizza for dinner, of course.
while we ate some of our artichokes, I wanted to grow one all the way to a flower. I think it was just beautiful!
it is one year since my last chemo treatment, so one of the women in my support group got me these lovely pink roses <3 and since it is on Juneteenth, as long as I'm working for Intel, I will have the day off as a company holiday!
three plays are happening over the next three weekends that are all "must-see!" the first is an all female staged production of 1776 - and due to an illness, my P&P director had to step in as one of the founding mothers! most of the performances were solid and well done, and I enjoyed it, of course.
as part of our return to office process at work, our small group of 16 people is going to move between buildings - again! we're moving back to the building we left about 18 months ago, but this time we're tucked into a corner for more confidentiality. I bought some snacks for the team so we had a little proximity party after we moved our equipment and boxes.
every year there is a picnic on the old property - now a county park - of our favorite SJ theme park! I haven't been to one since before the pandemic I think so I made a plan to go again this year. I had to rent another car - another EV - but this one caused me issues! live and learn. first, it only had about a 70% charge, so I needed to charge it again before I even got to the bay area! It had depleted to under 20% when I was at the half-way point. I hit two non-functioning charging stations before a nice man who also wanted to charge his EV said, "follow me, I'll take you to one I know is working." so I followed a stranger in a strange town, he helped me get my EV all charged up again for the rest of my drive. I met up with Janet in the parking lot of the old frontier village and gave her the mail and key and the unicorn. we chatted a little but she had saved the parking space for me with her car, so she was semi-parked and blocking traffic so we kept it short. then, happily, because a pokemon event was also happening at the same park, I got to run into our theater friends Dan and Lee, and talked to them for several minutes, catching up and showing off a picture of Finn <3 then I got to the picnic. it was so good to see the familiar faces - Bart the caterer gave me a hug, as himself and as Yogi Bear - and his food was fabulous as usual! someone had made new birdhouses - small representations of the original park buildings, but birdhouse-sized - so those were on display for all to see. and one of the guys who had one of the original cars trailered it in for kids big and small to sit in and take a picture! I stopped at the hotel where I normally stay, where they have a fast charger, and I charged it to 80%, the limit that most fast chargers have. then it was a long drive home with lots of stop and go traffic, but since that was charging the EV, I didn't need to stop to charge until I was safely home.
the day after this adventure, I went into Folsom, to my favorite little theater there and saw the musical Little Women. the women who sat next to me didn't realize it was a musical, and I promised them this is a good one! I knew I would need my hankie, and I did! it was warm in the theater, but this time I thought to bring my neck a/c device and kept cool throughout the production. I bought several raffle tickets - the last time I won something so I figured it wouldn't hurt to try again - and got to have a theater T-shirt too! not bad for a $20 donation :-)
I started with pics of the garden, so I'll wrap with some more pics - my gardenias, my QEII rose and my D'land rose are all bringing forth beautiful blooms!
ENJOY!
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