Tootsie on Tour: Greenville, SC

[taz_39]

**Disclaimer: The content of this post reflects my own personal views, opinions, and experiences.
This post does NOT express the views or opinions of my employer.**

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The venue: Peace Center


(stock photos)

Covid Tests to Date: 37

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TL;DR: Your TikTok summary:

TikTok by @tromboneontour

(Greenville is a city that brings me so much joy, and so much nostalgia. This will be a long post for all the right reasons.)

We finally had our first true botched travel day. Well, half of us did.

This week our flight bookings came in two groups. One group was to leave the hotel at 7:30am, fly to DC, then from there to Greenville. The second group was leaving two hours later, flying to Charlotte, and arriving in Greenville at the same time.

I found myself booked in the first group, the one leaving earlier. I don't generally mind getting up earlier for travel, but I know some folks were less pleased about having to wake up two hours earlier than their coworkers only to arrive at the same time. But more than this, we started to worry and speculate when we saw a big storm system moving across the east coast later in the week.

On Monday morning our flights remained unchanged, so our group got on the bus and went to the airport.
Where our flight was delayed. But then we still boarded the plane and waited on the tarmac, because the weather was improving.
BUT--possibly due to short staffing in addition to the poor weather--our flight was eventually cancelled.
We all disembarked and shuffled down to luggage claim to re-grab our luggage.

Now what?
Ours wasn't the only flight cancelled by far. Lots of flights grounded, and no flights available again at least until THURSDAY.
I stole a glance at our tour manager (who does all the bookings).
He was calmly munching on some granola.

If it were me, I'd have been twitching on the ground from the stress of having to rebook so many people, and with no flights available!
But he was cool as a cucumber. Once we had our luggage we gathered against a nearby wall, and our manager calmly explained that we'd be chartering a bus and riding the 10-ish hours to Greenville, stopping at the halfway point in Jacksonville.

Yay! I mean, of course we'd all rather be there Monday night. But at least we could GET THERE.
Not only that, our manager booked us a beautiful hotel on the waterfront in Jacksonville.


I've been in this situation on tour before, and have been thrown into whatever random motel was cheapest, so that's kind of what I was expecting. But no; our manager gave us the gift of a comfortable night in a safe place. Really, he's amazing. I deeply admire those abilities, especially the "keeping cool under pressure" part, which is something I struggle with myself at times.

And so we hopped on the bus and had a pretty pleasant ride to Jacksonville for the night.
We stopped once for gas, and I grabbed a bunch of stuff for breakfast the next day (there was breakfast at the hotel but I found it overpriced) then crashed at the nice hotel.

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Tuesday morning we continued our trek, stopping around noon for lunch in a plaza with a Walmart.
I took the opportunity to hunt for some non-refrigerated groceries and a new tupperware for my food because mine had shattered during the last flight. We arrived in Greenville, finally, eventually, around 3pm.

Sound check had been graciously delayed by a half hour so we could have time to unpack and find dinner.
I dumped my luggage in the room, eyeballed the fridge, and walked to Publix only a few minutes away to get all that I hadn't earlier in the day. They had Eat Fresco prepackaged meals here, God Bless America. Eat Fresco meals are affordable, ready to eat in 90 minutes, low in salt and fat, and high in protein. All you need is a microwave. I LOVE them, but they're definitely not sold everywhere. Anyway I got three of those along with my other groceries, then stashed them at the hotel.

It seemed like I had time still, so I took myself to the liquor store.
As mentioned in the previous post, I've been to Greenville many times, especially with the circus.
One of the fond memories that I have is of visiting Dark Corner Distillery on Main St. with my Jameson and enjoying the peach and butterscotch moonshines that they made right there in house. Everyone in the circus loved that stuff. Sadly, Dark Corner is defunct, but the owners have relocated to Hilton Head and started a new distillery there. In the liquor store in Greenville, I found four flavors of "Whiskey Girl" (which is basically the same moonshine that Dark Corner used to make, rebranded):


The bottles are very large, and the liquor store can't ship them, and I don't trust my own packaging to get a bottle to Florida intact either in my luggage or shipped. So instead, I went to the Hilton Head Distillery website and had a bottle shipped directly from the distillery. And I decided to try a new rum they've made: bananas Foster!! HELL YES. Can't wait to take that for a spin.

After that I barely had enough time to eat dinner and change before trekking to the theatre for sound check.
Gosh, I've missed Greenville so much. It's just so dang BEAUTIFUL. The Christmas tree was still up outside the courthouse, and a small ice skating rink was set up and full of people enjoying themselves. Many shops and bars were open (although I see that many still have reduced hours or are closed due to the pandemic) and people were coming and going, many of them making their way to the theatre for the show.

The pit is open and spacious, and the theatre is beautiful in the patron area and also backstage.


It's clear that Greenville invests a lot of money in their arts. I found a custodian backstage vacuuming enthusiastically with one of those hyper-expensive Dyson cordless vacuums, and exclaimed over it as I walked by. He shut it off long enough to grin at me and say, "I LOVE this vacuum!" before cheerfully resuming his work.

I think I'd rather be a custodian in Greenville, SC than a CEO in New York :)

After sound check (which went just fine) some of us went exploring and found a "secret" room behind a set of code-locked doors. A superintendent gave us the code to the lock, because there are bathrooms over there! And the room itself looks like it's used for receptions or intimate bar hangs or something; there was a perfectly-tuned full grand piano in the corner, and lounge chairs along the wall, and the floor looked ready for dancing. We claimed this as our new dressing room for the week :)


The show went well...more than well, actually.
The audence! Was responsive! They laughed! They enjoyed themselves!!
Although all of our audiences have been wonderful and present, we have noticed in the past several cities that audience reactions have been pretty subdued. I'm not sure why this is. Demographics? The holiday blues? Lack of interest in the subject material? Whatever the reason, it's been a little discouraging. But tonight the actors had to create space for laughter again, and that was such a wonderful thing. All any of us wants is for the audience to enjoy themselves, let loose and have a little fun with us. And when they laugh at the jokes, and clap for parts of the show that they like, it is really energizing!

So thank you, Greenville, for a lovely opening night!

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Wednesday morning. I took my very sweet time getting up and around, because riding a bus for 10 hours is exhausting even if you're not doing anything. The hotel's free breakfast ends at 10 so I didn't get up in time, but I made myself some delicious oats with flax milk and raspberries and spices and Greek yogurt, and slowly sipped my coffee while deciding what to do with my day.

Although it was an hour walk, I decided to visit Swamp Rabbit Cafe and Grocery.
This is a part of Greenville I'd never visited. Why not try something new?

(photo courtesy Swamp Rabbit Cafe)

Well guess what. It was totally worth the walk.
This wasn't just a grocery. It was a bike shop, and an outdoor cafe with a fire pit and toasting oven, and a walking trail, and a park for kids to play in. There were signs advertising an upcoming Japanese winter festival there (very sad to miss that!!) and there were lots of people sitting outside eating and enjoying the beautiful weather. I went inside to the grocery and was instantly in love.

There was a WALL of local honey.
A bakery churning out fresh stecca bread, croissants, scones, and cookies.
A fridge full of locally-butchered meats, locally-made fresh pasta, locally-sourced cheeses and butters and eggs and beverages.
In every aisle there was something I've never seen before.

Wine-marinated tomatoes!
Grapefruit quince seltzer!
Duck prosciutto!
Cheddar kale scones!

I could feel my mom's ghost tugging at my elbow. "Meggie! This place is AWESOME!!" she would have squealed. Couldn't agree more, Mom! I wanted to try everything! BUT, like always in Greenville, I had to exercise some self control because there's only so much I can eat and so much I can pack. I chose two seltzers to try, and two scones, and a nice canvas tote with the grocery logo on it because I want to always remember this place (and because my tote has a hole in it). And then before leaving I stopped at the cafe for a sandwich.

This is "The Jolly Goat". It's just a turkey sandwich with lettuce, but the addition of cranberry goat cheese and the grocery's own fresh stecca bread made it something special. I enjoyed it VERY much!


On the way back home I couldn't help popping in to Mast General Store, which we all loved in the circus because of the huge barrels of candy lining the floor. Sure enough, they're still there :)


I again exercised restraint and picked out a handful of gummies (Jameson has supplied me with enough Christmas chocolate to last the year!) before making my way back to the hotel, where I put everything away and started a load of laundry.

Gosh, I love Greenville.

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And then, disaster struck.
Sort of. Not really.

Our MD emailed to let us know that he'd tested positive for covid.
A few moments later, another email labeled URGENT! followed, asking us to get to the hotel lobby and take a rapid test ASAP.
Apparently quite a few of the PCRs from Saturday's batch came back positive.

Being in the middle of laundry, I went down in my pajamas and got swabbed, and was texted the word "Negative" about 15 minutes later.
Then I went back down for a PCR, which is being shipped overnight to the lab so they can start processing it tomorrow morning. It'll still take 48 hours for the results to come back, but this is all we can do.

In the meantime, the show went on. We had swings covering multiple roles, and two principles were out with covid so those parts had to be covered as well, and several backstage crew had also tested positive so the remaining crew and locals had to cover props and costume changes. And since our MD also tested positive (he conducts us and plays Key 2), Josh (Key 1) had to conduct while playing his book.

All of this is daunting, especially the parts involving getting props and staging and costumes where they need to be. If a setpiece is in the wrong place at the wrong time, someone could really get hurt. But everyone was SO careful, and everything went VERY smoothly all things considered. Yes, there were a few delays and unusual pauses in the show while things got worked out backstage. But we were still able to perform the WHOLE show, and the audience still had a great time, to judge by the reactions.

As for the rest of the week, I'm not sure what will happen.

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Thursday. Enjoyed a slow morning at the hotel watching BattleBots, eating breakfast, and waiting to see if there would be any updates on our covid situation. But, I guess there really can't be many updates until we get the PCR results back.

We were suddenly called down for a rapid test in the middle of the afternoon. Luckily I was still at the hotel so went down right away, but I know other people were out and about already so I'm not sure what happened there. Tested negative again, and then took myself for a walk to enjoy Greenville some more :)

I walked down Main Street just enjoying window shopping, seeing which businesses were still around and what is new.
I popped into a Tea and Spice Exchange where they had all sorts of things that I wanted, but limited myself to two sample bags of tea: "bread pudding" black tea and "bourbon chestnut" herbal tea. They smell delicious but I haven't tried them yet.


At the end of Main Street is an entrance to Falls Park on the Reedy River.
I've been visiting this beautiful park every time I come to Greenville (so since about 2010.)
It's beautifully designed (yes it's man-made!) and there are lots of paths, not just the main one, and lots of places to explore.

Falls Park TikTok:

TikTok by @tromboneontour

I was probably walking for about an hour, then it started to drizzle so I made my way home.
The time outdoors was refreshing, and I felt ready for the show that evening!
It went really well, better than yesterday's covid-depleted version (we are still covid-depleted but have had more time to rehearse and prepare). The audience was wonderful too.

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Friday! TGIF!

Another rapid test, this time with plenty of notice. I was there right at 10am and got my test quickly, then went back to my room to enjoy breakfast and chat with Jameson. I also messaged Jameson's dad, because he and Jameson's grandparents were supposed to meet with me for dinner after the Saturday matinee, but now I've been in touch with at least one person who tested positive for covid (the MD) and I wanted them to have full disclosure because the grandparents need to be careful about their health. It was decided that we'd likely just have a socially-distanced chat after the show, and that's fine with me. Eating indoors is still something I try to avoid anyway.

I lazed around the hotel all morning, which was lovely, even had a glass of wine with lunch.
As you probably know I do watch my calories using MyFitnessPal, so lunch was the wine, wheat bread, spinach, turkey, avocado, and a handful of pistachios. Healthy-ish! I'm not doing "local bread" this week because we arrived a day late, and I didn't want to waste a good loaf of bread if I couldn't eat it all.

Late afternoon I finally got around to going for a walk. Falls Park again, just a different route.
It was a little colder out so I kept my face mask on, and wore this hat I got recently with fuzzy animal ears!


I think the ears are cute. Some people will probably think I'm a Furry.
I don't really care. Life is short and *I* think it's cute :P

For this evening's show our MD was allowed back, but we had a sub on drums (preplanned, the drummer had to go out of town) and a sub on guitar, presumably because the guitarist's test came back positive.

Everyone did well, although not surprisingly there was some "stepping in holes", as we call it when a musician accidentally plays during a moment of silence, and some general tempo issues due to unfamiliarity. But this is truly to be expected when you've got people coming in on short notice. They still did an amazing job and it was still a great show!

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Saturday, I was tired but got up a little early to check out the hotel's free breakfast.
I am lazy, like to sleep in, and oatmeal is cheap, so I generally make my own breakfast in my room rather than get up early to catch hotel breakfast. But on Monday I'll be eating whatever's down there, so may as well scope it out.
It was a good selection, all the usual stuff. Good to know.

It was a two show day, and Jameson's dad and grandparents came to the matinee.
The grandparents have a bit of trouble getting around, and unfortunately they were sent to the wrong seating section resulting in the grandmother having to painfully gimp around the entire theatre at least once, so by the time the show was over I think everyone was ready to go home. But they enjoyed the show, and we did have a very nice and responsive audience overall. We had a social distanced meet-and-greet in the lobby where they asked me a few questions and I got caught up with Jameson's dad, but we parted ways pretty quickly. Some time is better than no time :)

Dinner at the hotel, then the evening show which was also well attended.
A former circus fan was in the audience, he made a point to come say hi and that was nice!
Overall just a good basic show day.

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Sunday, had breakfast and did another load of laundry since it's free here, then after lunch we had our matinee.
It went well! Our MD mentioned he'd had an awesome crepe from a restaurant downtown so I decided that would be my dinner. I got a chocolate crepe with whipped peanut butter mousse filling and Nutella drizzled on top, egg whites on the side. Sometimes it's good to be bad :D

The final show went well and we had an awesome crowd.
We're also saying goodbye to our subs on drums (Avion) and guitar (Chris) after this. Great job guys!!

Next stop is Fort Lauderdale, and we're there for TWO WEEKS! Wow!

I don't have any major plans, just visiting something called "Baked Pancake Company" because, c'mon.
And I also may need to pick up a large suitcase because mine is finally truly starting to fall apart :/ Argh.

Thank you for a wonderful week, Greenville. I hope to visit again <3

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Writing Prompts 2022:

12/04: What could make other people angry about you?
A: Loads of stuff. I'm antisocial, I'm abrasive and rude especially online. I'm difficult to approach and get to know, sometimes I say inappropriate or hurtful things. I get stressed if asked to do something last-minute without time to plan or prep. I mumble. I don't speak up when something needs to be said because I assume no one will listen anyway. I'm sarcastic and a pessimist. I mean there's loads here to anger anyone, take your pick.

12/05: What do you do to get rid of stress?
A: As much alone time as possible. Allowing myself time to just sit still and enjoy some anime, or a book, or watching TV with my Jameson. While on tour, letting myself enjoy the hotel room, or sleep in, or have a day without a specific activity or point of interest. It is very hard for me to "do nothing", but when I do, that's how I can relax.

12/06: How often do you binge watch TV shows?
A: Once every few months. I don't watch a lot of tv by myself. Alone I'll binge watch anime series. With Jameson I watch a lot more, and together we've binge watched GoT, Community, The Good Place, loads of Food Network and cooking shows, among other things.

12/07: What is distracting you?
A: Oh my gosh, loads of stuff. Thoughts about how I should be saving money instead of buying turkey sandwiches and tote bags. Worrying about my stepmom and whether she needs help. Worrying about losing work because of covid, worrying about finding a job after this contract. Thinking about how to spend the next two weeks in Fort Lauderdale. Worrying about Jameson, wondering how I can help him or if being "supportive" is enough. I'm still going about life and getting things done, but all of these thoughts are constantly buzzing in the background.

12/08: What past failure actually proved to be a blessing?
A: Possibly the time I was scammed into taking a job in New York that didn't actually exist. At the time, I moved out of a beautiful house in NC with two lovely roommates to supposedly join a start-up orchestra. It turned out to be a scam, and I had to make a lot of quick bad decisions. But I also ended up working at Busch Gardens as a result of this incident, which then led to being hired by the circus in 2012, which was the greatest experience of my life. And after hearing from Jameson how the bandmaster decided to hire me, I think if I hadn't had the theme park experience, I would have been overlooked for the best job I will ever have.

12/09: What about your current life situation makes you feel grateful?
A: I mean, it's pretty obvious, right? I am blessed with a job in my field, if only temporarily. I get to visit many beautiful cities and enjoy good food, and meet new people, and stay in nice hotels, and make audiences laugh. I have a place to return to when the contract ends, and a person who cares about me (also, it is a blessing to care about him in return!). I have good health, for which I'm extremely grateful in the time of covid. I have enough money to enjoy things without getting TOO stressed. I have sisters and a brother who are strong and beautiful and present. I still have opportunities and possibilities even at my age. Extremely grateful right now.